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PART III

*

RUSSIA UNDER THE FIRST ROMANOVS (1613-1689)

The central government and its institutions

MARSHALL РОЕ

For the Muscovite state, the seventeenth century was one of evolution and growth, rather than radical change.[1] The century experienced no political revolutions of the magnitude seen during the reigns of Ivan III and Ivan IV. Russia, having recovered from the confusion of the Time of Troubles, remained a strong autocracy held firmly in the hands of a small, martial rul­ing class. This is not to say that there was general stasis. Things still fell apart, though only for brief moments. And one can detect a single important political trend - the remarkable inflation of honours begun under Tsar Aleksei (Alexis) Mikhailovich and radically amplified by his weak successors. Nonetheless, the general picture was one of continuity, punctuated by momentary fits of confusion and gradual change.

The case is much the same in the realm of institutions.[2] Seventeenth-century Muscovy was administered by the same fundamental types of organisation that it had been before the great upheaval ofthe beginning ofthe century. The most important institutions remained the royal family, its court and courtiers (gosudarev dvor) and the administrative chancelleries (prikazy). Similarly, the boyar council and the Assembly ofthe Land-both inventions of an earlier age - continued to operate in the seventeenth century much as they had before. All of these institutions grew, but not so much as to fundamentally alter their essential character.

Finally, we might note that the state existed for the same purpose as it had in the sixteenth century and earlier - to serve the interests of the Muscovite ruling class.[3] Though one occasionally finds biblical tropes in Muscovite ornamental texts about monarchs 'tending their flocks' and such, the truth is that the elite did not hide the fact that they were a self-interested ruling class and that the state was the instrument of their domination. They showed open contempt for peasants, merchants and often clergymen, and almost never missed an opportunity to fleece them - a point made and bemoaned by the well-travelled, well-educated and well-informed political philosopher (and proto-Slavophile!) Iurii Krizhanich in the 1660s.4 Any attempt at protest that was not couched in the most subservient terms was met with a rush of horrific violence (violence that only the state could muster, since it was the only organised interest in early modern Russia). As visiting foreigners often noted, there was no talk of the 'commonwealth', the 'common good', or common anything (that would come with Peter and from Europe). Muscovites high and low believed the tsar owned everything - land and those occupying it - by heavenly proclamation.5 That he distributed his largesse unequally (and predominantly to the elite) bothered not a soul. No one could conceive of any other order, no one objected to it (at least for very long . . .) and no one even thought it wrong. It was the way of things, and that was that.

The tsar in his court

Muscovites had an entire catalogue of sayings to the effect that the tsar was like God (and, one might add, the God of Moses rather than Jesus),[4] so it is only appropriate that we begin our survey of seventeenth-century institutions with the ruler and his court.

Let us begin with the royal person, for he was an institution in his own right. In contrast to some monarchies, the Russians do not seem to have recognised or even known about the 'king's two bodies' doctrine.7 The clergy said and commoners believed that the tsar was selected by the Lord, not to hold the office of tsar, but to be tsar. This is why one finds so much talk of the 'true tsar' and 'pretenders', particularly during the Time of Troubles when it was hard to tell the difference, but also after the ascension of the Romanovs.8 Just how one could know the 'true tsar' was anybody's guess, but that there was a 'true' - that is, divinely appointed - tsar was never seriously questioned. There was, then, no office of'tsar'; there was just the 'true tsar', a person and family ordained by the hand of the All Mighty.

We know, of course, that Michael Romanov was elected or, rather, his family won out in a rough and tumble competition dominated by occupying cossacks in 1613. But it was not considered polite (or even safe)[5] to mention this after the fact. That is because Michael was the 'true tsar'. His family and their propagandists spent a lot of effort to drive this point home. They went so far as to argue that they were not only the very descendents and rightful heirs to the Riurikids (via one of Ivan IV's marriages), but that they were in some mystical sense Riurikids themselves. This effort to cloak themselves in other-worldly divinity appealed to the Muscovite mind, but it doubtless had little effect on the men who actually engineered the Romanov 'succession'. They knew, as politicians always know, what had actually happened. Nonetheless, it made no sense for them to do anything but play along. The tsar, after all, was one of them and would - if he were wisely selected - protect their interests. Michael and his successors did just this, and they became 'true tsars' as a result.

Though one reads occasionally in Muscovite didactic texts that the tsar should do this or that (take council, be merciful, be wise),[6] he really had only two hard and fast duties: to produce a suitable heir and to rule the country in consultation with his boyars. There were, naturally, rules about how he would perform these two tasks, the former governed by Christian doctrine and the latter by custom. Since the rights and obligations of Orthodox marriage are

Duma ranks

Boiare <

t

Okol'nichie -4— t

Dumnye dvoriane <

' t . Ceremonial ranks <

n
>Dumnye d'iaki
Figure 19.1. The sovereign's court in the seventeenth century

sufficiently well known (one wife, or at least one at a time), as is the process by which an heir is begotten, let us discuss the rules of Muscovite politics as they were practised in their principal arena, the sovereign's court (gosudarev dvor).11

The sovereign's court was the locus of political power in Muscovy. It was not a place (though the royal family did have quarters in the Kremlin called a 'court' or dvor), but rather a hierarchy of ranks. Figure 19.1 outlines them.

As one would expect, higher ranks were more honourable than lower ranks, and generally less populous. To some degree, different rank-holders did dif­ferent things: the men in the duma ranks (boiare i dumnye liudi) advised the tsar in the royal council (duma), an ill-defined customary body whose power waxed and waned depending on the age of the tsar, the authority of those around him and the number of counsellors present. Those below the duma ranks (the sub-duma court ranks in Figure 19.i) generally worked as footmen of various sorts at court - serving at table, guarding the palace, performing in ceremonies, escorting emissaries and so on. Despite their modern 'servile' connotations, these lines of employ were considered very honourable duty by high-born Muscovites (and certainly better than serving in the provinces). Finally, the administrators served in the chancelleries (prikazy). Because they performed servile work (writing), they were drawn from a less honourable class (sluzhilyeliudipopriboru, or 'service people by contract') rather than from the ranks of hereditary servitors (sluzhilye liudi po otechestvu, or 'service people by birth').[7]

As Figure 19.1 suggests, servitors sometimes moved through the ranks. The rules for entry into and promotion through the upper ranks were as follows.[8]The men in the three duma ranks above dumnyi d'iak (boiarin, okol'nichii, dumnyi dvorianin) were generally recruited from hereditary servitors in the sub-duma court ranks. Elected hereditary servitors could be appointed to any of these three ranks (that is, not dumnyi d'iak). Once they had assumed a rank, they could progress upward, for example, from dumnyi dvorianin to okol'nichii or from okol'nichii to boiarin. Ranks could not be skipped after entry - one could not go directly from dumnyi dvorianin to boiarin. Dumnye d'iaki were generally recruited from the ranks of d'iaki who were themselves recruited from clerks (pod'iachie), all of whom were men of lower birth.[9] Like their hereditary counterparts in the duma cohort, they could progress through ranks after appointment, again, without skipping.

To simplify a bit, the game of Muscovite politics had as its goal either advancement to the high ranks (for individuals and their families) or control of the composition of these ranks (for the royal family, or blocs of allied families). It bears mentioning that seventeenth-century politics had very little to do with policies and everything to do with persons. There may have been debate on this or that issue, but, as we have noted, everyone in the sovereign's court was (to continue our metaphor) on the same team and pursued the same goal - the maintenance and, if possible, the expansion of the elite's interests.15 Certainly there was conflict over issues. But it is telling that the Muscovites never developed a formal institution that might represent differing political agendas among notables. None was needed. The prime political question, it appears, was always who would pursue this common agenda, and only rarely whether it should be pursued.

There were, in essence, three players in this contest.[10] First, there was the tsar himself. In theory, he made all appointments to and promotions through the ranks. Yet in fact he did not rule alone, but rather with the aid of close relatives, advisers and mentors.[11] The existence of a small retinue of advis­ers around the tsar was recognised by the Muscovites themselves: Grigorii Kotoshikhin, the treasonous scribe who penned the only indigenous descrip­tion of the Muscovite political system, explicitly calls them the 'close people' (blizhnie liudi).[12] These confidants would and could bend the tsar's ear when it came to appointments and promotions. The second major class of players at the Muscovite court were old elite servitors, that is, men of very high, heritable status whose families traditionally held positions in the duma ranks. These were Muscovy's aristocrats: for centuries, they had commanded Muscovy's armies, administered Muscovy's central offices, and governed Muscovy's far- flung territories.[13] Their right to high offices was guarded by mestnichestvo,

The tsar and his retinue

4fil,

Lower-status courtiers
[2,000 men/1,000 families] Stolfniki Dvoriane moskovskie Striapchie Zhil'tsy

D'iaki
Administrative class
Figure 19.2. The sovereign's court (c.1620)

[2-4 f/milies]

The traditional elite

[30 m/n/20 faMies]

Boyars Okol'nichie

)umnye dvoriane Dumnye d'iaki

Younger members of the old\lite

early Russia's mechanism for protecting the order of precedence.[14] Finally, we have men and families serving in the lower orders of the sovereign's court - the thousands of stol'niki, dvoriane moskovskie, and striapchie who occupied minor offices in Moscow and the provinces. They could never reasonably hope to win appointments to the duma. Figure 19.2 describes the three interest groups within the system of ranks.

The contest over the duma ranks was not a fair one. The tsar held the most power - he, as we have said, made all the appointments. The old elite had considerable though less power - by Muscovite tradition, elite families had a special claim on the upper ranks, often passing them on through several generations. And the mass of courtiers had the least power - only very occa­sionally would the tsar reach down into the lower rungs ofthe court to elevate a common stol'nik, but the possibility was always open.

Each of these parties deployed different strategies to gain victory. The tsar's course was one of balance: he attempted to distribute just enough of the ranks to elite servitors so as to guarantee their allegiance, while at the same time reserving a portion for the purposes of patronage, reward of merit, or some

other end. Members of the old elite pursued a strategy of maintenance: they fought to preserve their hold on the duma ranks by keeping new servitors out ofexisting positions and preventing the tsar from creating new posts. The common courtiers' strategy was offensive: they used a variety of mechanisms to win favour with the tsar or elite (service, marriage alliances, etc.) in order to gain a place among the duma men.

Who won? A brief overview of seventeenth-century high politics

As Michael Romanov ascended the throne in 1613, he and the coalition of forces that supported him faced serious difficulties. There were several claimants to the crown (some arguably more legitimate than Mikhail Fedorovich), the country was occupied by Swedes, Poles and numerous rebel bands, and the economy was in shambles after many years of bloody civil war. No one was really sure who the 'true tsar' was. The Romanov party did the only thing it could to maintain power: issue a 'national' call to eject the foreigners, declare a de facto amnesty to those in other camps and begin the slow and painful process of reducing its opponents - alien and domestic - one at a time. First, the rebels were defeated (Zarutskii, Mniszech), then the otherwise distracted Swedes were pacified (the Treaty of Stolbovo, 1617) and finally the Poles were ejected (the Truce of Deulino, 1618). These measures shored up the Romanovs' hold on power. The return of Michael's father, soon-to-be Patriarch Filaret, from Polish captivity in 1619 solidified it. For the first and last time in Russian history, father and son - the head of the Church and head of the state - ruled together.

Aside from this single (albeit dramatic) innovation, the diarchy pursued a moderate course aimed at cultivating political support and recouping the considerable losses incurred during and after the Troubles. Even after the situation had stabilised, there was no general purge of elements who had fought for the 'wrong' side in the previous decades (though the Romanovs did turn hard on their former allies the cossacks). Rather, the sins of the Time of Troubles were forgotten for all but a few. The old boyars returned to their high places, irrespective of what port they had sought in the storm of the Troubles. The administrative class took its station as well, again without suffering for its prior allegiances. And the central and provincial military servitors were prepared for the imminent reckoning with Poland, which finally came in 1634.

Indeed, after the Romanov political settlement, Russian high politics were marked by a general peace for over thirty years. Certainly there were intrigues,

schemes and plots (many of which are unknown to us, hidden by the habit of not writing anything of importance down), but these were the quotidian affairs of every court in every country. The political quiet was shattered, finally, in 1648. Three years earlier, the young Aleksei Mikhailovich succeeded his much venerated father (see Table 19.1). Alexis's former tutor, Boris Ivanovich Morozov, became regent and packed the court and council with his cronies. Though a capable man, he was surrounded by the corrupt Miloslavskii clique (Alexis's first wife was a Miloslavskii; Morozov married her sister, thereby becoming the tsar's brother-in-law). Calls of government corruption grew louder until Moscow and several other cities exploded in riots aimed at bringing Morozov and the Miloslavskiis down. The mob lynched officials, burnt houses and looted shops. At one point, the tsar himself was threatened by the angry crowd. By all reports, this episode had a powerful effect on the youthful, pious ruler.[15] Bowing to pressure, Morozov and the tsar's father-in-law were exiled (only to return shortly), corrupt officials (or at least those the crowd said were corrupt) were brutally executed and the tsar resolved to reform the state in such a way as to make sure such things never happened again.

Alexis turned to the able Prince N. I. Odoevskii for help. He headed a commission designed to solve all the unattended problems faced by Muscovy at one bold, legislative stroke. Perhaps recalling his father's fondness for public input (it had saved them in 1613), Alexis called a massive assembly of 'all kinds of people' in Moscow for this purpose. In hindsight, it was a risky move for an immature leader still reeling from his first taste of popular protest. But the commission did its monumental work, the public acclaimed it, and Muscovy had a roadmap to permanent order - the Sobornoe Ulozhenie of 1649, one of the largest law codes of the early modern period. Like all successful compromises, there was something in it for everyone (or at least everyone who mattered): the powerful had their places next to the tsar affirmed; the gentry received the right to pursue runaway serfs and slaves as long as necessary to return them; and the common urban folks were promised that the corruption would be punished to the fullest extent of the law (which was, we should note, quite far).22 Again, peace reigned at court and in the country. Save two periods of

Table 19.1. The early Romanovs

Roman Iur'evich Zakhar'in

Nikita
Anastasiia

IVAN IV d. 1584

FEDOR r. 1584-98
Fedor (Patriarch Filaret) d. 1633

..m. (2) Natal'ia Naryshkina

MICHAEL r. 1613-45

ALEXIS m. (1) Mania Miloslavskaia . r. 1645-76

IVAN V r. 1682-96
FEDOR r. 1676-82

Sophia Regent, 1682-9

PETER I ('the Great') r. 1682-1725

urban unrest brought on by debasement of the silver with copper (1656 and 1662), all was quiet. Or so it appeared. Under the calm surface, however, an important struggle was occurring at the very heart of Muscovite high politics.

The greatest cause of Alexis's reign (and his greatest triumph) was the Thirteen Years War, his effort to recoup the losses suffered at the hands of the hated Poles. Personally marching off to battle in 1654, he took a direct interest in making sure his crusade was brought off successfully. In the course of his campaigning, Alexis must (and here we are speculating) have judged for himself the merits (and demerits) of his soldiers, for he came back to the capital devoted to the idea of reforming, if not overturning, the existing political order.[16] In the context of a rapidly evolving administrative and military situation, the traditional boyar elite had become distinctly less useful. Even men of low status did not respect them, as Kotoshikhin's unflattering portrait demonstrates.24 Talented men - regardless of birth - who were willing to serve and serve well were needed. Given the rules of appointment to the boyar ranks, such 'new men' had no chance to attain the highest honours. Merit was not being rewarded, at least not in the way Alexis believed it should be. Obviously, the rules had to be changed so as to allow the entry of the 'new men'.[17]

The tsar did not bring the 'new men' into the duma all at once. He could not do so without risking a costly and dangerous political battle with the old elites. Rather, he pursued a conservative approach, appointing a few 'new men' at time. But even here his options were limited by the hold of the old elites over the upper ranks. Alexis knew that they would probably grumble if he promoted men oflower status to the highest ranks in the duma orders, forthese were the traditional preserve of the old elite. Neither could Alexis make the more honourable of the 'new men' conciliar secretaries (dumnye d'iaki), for that rank was deemed too low for the hereditary servitors in the sovereign's court. Therefore Alexis opted for a strategy that would at once appease the hereditary boiarstvo and permit him to promote the 'new men': he transformed the rank of conciliar courtier (dumnyi dvorianin). The chronology of events is telling. In 1650, Alexis took the unprecedented step of appointing a fifth man to dumnyi dvorianin. Prior to that act, the largest number of dumnye dvoriane had been four (in 1634 and 1635), and ordinarily there had only been one. By the first year of the war, there were eight of them. During the war, he promoted sixteen more. Among them we find many of Alexis's 'new men'.[18] During the war the tsar began to promote his dumnye dvoriane into the ranks of okol'nichie.27 One of them, A. L. Ordin-Nashchokin, was made boyar in 1667 and served as effective prime minister until 1671. In that year another 'new man', A. S. Matveev, took his place, though he was not promoted to boyar until 1674.28

Under Alexis, then, two prominent 'new men' came to rule Russia. Others exercised less visible but no less important roles as leaders in the chancellery system. In all, Alexis appointed forty-eight low-status 'new men' to the duma ranks. As we can see in Figure 19.3, the tsar entrusted them with a great number of Muscovy's highest administrative offices.[19]

Particularly notable is the fact that Alexis placed his 'new men' in the most important prikazy: the Military Service Chancellery (Razriad), arguably the most powerful prikaz in seventeenth-century Muscovy; the Service Land Chancellery (Pomestnyi prikaz), which administered estates given to the gen­try throughout Russia; and the Ambassadorial Chancellery (Posol'skii prikaz), which controlled Muscovy's foreign affairs.30

Alexis began the process of supplementing hereditary rank-holders with competent 'new men'.[20] It is difficult to overestimate the impact of these appointments on the Muscovite political system. Alexis's alteration of duma appointment policy destroyed the equilibrium between the tsar and the elite families that ended the Time of Troubles. By the end of the Thirteen Years War, the tsar clearly had the upper hand in political matters. Alexis had successfully transformed the duma ranks from a royal council controlled by hereditary clans into a fount of royal patronage to be distributed as the tsar desired. The


DD > DDv > Ok > B

1646 1650 1655 Service Land [1643/4-63/4] 1646 Tsar's Workshop [1635 / 6-46 / 7]

1647 Grand Treasury [1630/1-46/7]; Ore [1641/2]; Ambassadorial [1646/7-47/8]

1648 Grand Revenue [1648 / 9-51 / 2]

1649 1664 Military Service [1648/9-63/4];

Monastery [1667/8-75/6]; New Tax District [1676/7] Kazan' Palace [1646/7-71/2]; Ambassadorial [i652/ 3-64/5]; Novgorod Tax District [1652/3-64/5]; Seal [1653/4-63/4]; Provisions [1674/5] 1655 Equerry [1646 / 7-53 / 4]

Patriarch's Court [1641/ 2-46/7, 1648/9-52/3]

Great Treasury [1634/5-61/2]; Ore [1641/ 2]

1653 Treasury [1639/40-44/5]; Ambassadorial

[1645/6-66/7]; Novgorod Tax District [1645/6-63/4]; Seal [1653/4-68/9]; Monastery [1654/5]; Seal Matters [1667/8]

Investigative [1654/5-56/7] NONE

Moscow (Zemskii) [1655/6-71/2]; Kostroma Tax District [1656/7-70/1]; Financial Investigation [i662/3-64/ 5] Moscow Judicial [1630/1-31/2]; Grand Revenue [1632/3-37/8]; Artillery [1658/9-62/3,1672/3-77/8]; Grand Treasury [1663/4-68/9]

1658 i665 i667 Ambassadorial [i666/7-70/ i]; Vladimir Tax District [1666/7-70/1]; Galich Tax District [1666/7-70/1]; Little Russian [1666/7-68/9]; Ransom [1667/8]

Name
Baklanovskii, I. I.
O.-Nashchokin, A. L.
Anichkov, G. M.
Pronchishchev, A. O. Eropkin, I. F. Elizarov, P. K.
Kondyrev, Z. V Ianov, V. F.
Matiushkin, I. P.
Ivanov, A. I.
Elizarov, F. K. Anichkov, I. M. Chistoi, N. I.
Narbekov, B. F. Zaborovskii, S. I.
Lopukhin, L. D. 1651 1667
1655 1655
1655
Ranks
Chancelleries led

1659 Grand Palace [1657/8-64/5]; Palace Judicial [i664/ 5]; New Tax District [1664/5-68/9]

Figure 19.3. Alexis's new men in the chancelleries

Ranks
Name

Chancelleries led

DD > DDv > Ok > B

Pronchishchev, I. A. 1661

Leont'ev, Z. F. 1662

Chaadaev, I. I. 1662

Nashchokin, G. B. 1664

Khitrovo, I. T. 1664

Bashmakov, D. M. 1664

Karaulov, G. S. 1665

Durov, A. S. 1665

Khitrovo, I. B. 1666 1674

O.-Nashchokin, B. I. 1667

Grand Treasury [1661/2-62/3]; Monastery [1664/5]; Grand Revenue [1667/8-69/70]; Ransom [1667/8-69/70]; Criminal [1673/ 4-74/ 5] NONE

Moscow (Zemskii) [1672/3-73/4]; Foreign Mercenaries [1676/7-77/8]; Dragoon [1676/7-86/7]; Siberian [1680/1-82/3] Vladimir Judicial [1648/9]; Slave [1658/9-61/2]; Postal [1662/3-66/7] NONE

Tsar's Workshop [1654/5]; Grand Palace [1655/6]; Privy Affairs [1655/6-63/4]; Lithuanian [1657/ 8]; Ustiug Tax District [1657/ 8-58/ 9]; Financial Investigation [1662/3]; Military Service [1663/4-69/70, 1675/6]; Ambassadorial [1669/70-70/1]; Vladimir [1669/70-70/1]; Galich [1669/70-70/1]; Little Russian [1669/70-70/1]; Petitions [1674/5]; Seal [1675/6-99/1700]; Treasury [1677/8-79/80,1681/2]; Investigative [1676/7,1679/80]; Financial Collection [1680/1]

Service Land [1659/60-69/70]; Grand Palace [1669/70]; Postal [1669/70-71/2]; Kazan' [1671/2-75/6]; Moscow (Zemskii) [1679/80]; Criminal [1682/3]; Investigative [1689/90] Postal [1630/1-31/2]; Equerry [1633/4]; Grand Revenue [1637/ 8-39/40]; Musketeers [1642/3-44/5,1661/2-69/70]; Ustiug Tax District [1653 / 4, 1669/ 70-70/ 1]; New Tax District [1660/1-61/2]

Grand Palace [1664/5-69/70]; Palace

Judicial [1664/ 5-69/ 70]

NONE

Figure 19.3 (cont.)


Ranks
Name

Chancelleries led

DD > DDv > Ok > B

Tolstoi, A. V. Rtishchev, G. I. Ivanov, L. I.

Titov, S. S.

Solovtsov, I. P. Sokovnin, F. P.

1669
1670
Dokhturov, G. S. 1667
Golosov, L. T. 1667
1670 1670
1670

Nesterov, A. I.

Patriarch's Court [1652/3-58/9, 1660/1-62/3]; Ambassadorial [1662/3-69/70,1680/1]; Novgorod [1662/3-69/70,1680/1]; Ransom [1667/ 8]; Tsarina's Workshop [1659/60-60/1]; Vladimir [1667/8-69/70, i680/ i]; Galich [i667/ 8-69/ 70, i680/ i]; Little Russian [i667/ 8-69/70, i680/ i]; Pharmaceutical [1669/70-71/2]; Smolensk [i680/ i]; Ustiug [i680/ i] Postal [1649/50-51/2]; Grand Palace [1651/2-53/4]; Musketeers [1653/4-61/2]; Grand Treasury [1661/2-63/4]; New Tax District [1664/5,1666/7,1669/70-75/6]; Ambassadorial [1666/7-69/70]; Vladimir Tax District [i667/ 8-69/ 70]; Galich Tax District [1667/8-69/70]; Novgorod Tax District [1667/8-69/70]; Little Russian [1667/8-69/70]; Seal [1668/9-75/6]; Service Land [i669/70-75/ 6]; Military Service [1673/4-75/ 6]; Ransom [1677/8] NONE

Tsar's Workshop [i649/50-68/9] New Tax District [1662/3-63/4]; Grand Palace [i663/4-69/ 70, i680/i]; Armoury [1663/4-69/70]; Musketeers [1669/70-75/6,1677/8]; Ustiug Tax District [1672/3-75/6,1679/80]; Lithuanian [1674/5]; Investigative [1675/6]; Ambassadorial [1675/6-81/2] Musketeers [1655/6-56/7]; Vladimir Tax District [1655/6-56/7]; Galich Tax District [1655/6-56/7]; Criminal [1656/7]; Military Service [i657/ 8-58/ 9, 1669/70-73/4]; Financial Collection [1662/3-63/4]; Grand Palace [1663/ 4-69/70]; Vladimir Judicial [1663/4] Provisions [1669/70-70/1] Tsarina's Workshop [1666/7-69/ 70, 1676/7-81/2, 1681/2]; Petitions [1675/6] Gun Barrel [1653/4,1655/6,1657/8, 1660/1, 1665/6]; Armoury [1659/60-67/8]; Gold Works [1667/8]

Figure 19.3 (cont.)

Name Ranks Chancelleries led

DD > DDv > Ok > B

Matveev, A. S. 1670 1672 1674 Little Russian [1668/9-75/6];

Ambassadorial [1669/70-75/6]; Vladimir Tax District [1669/70-75/6]; Galich Tax District [1669/70-75/6]; Novgorod Tax District [1669/70,1671/2-75/6]; Ransom [1670/1-71/2]; Pharmaceutical [1671/ 2-75/ 6]

Leont'ev, F. I. 1670 Artillery [1672/3-76/7]

Khitrovo, I. S. 1670 1676 Provisions [1667/ 8-69/70]; Ustiug Tax

District [1670/1-71/ 2]; Monastery [1675/6-77/8]; Judicial Review [1689/90] Poltev, S. F. 1671 Dragoons [1670/1-75/6]; Foreign

Mercenaries [1670/1-75/6]

Naryshkin, K. P. 1671 1672 1672 Ustiug Tax District [1676/7]; Grand

Treasury [1676/7-77/8]; Grand Revenue [1676/7-77/8]

Grand Palace [1669/70-78/9]; Court Judicial [1669/70-75/6,1677/8-78/9] Military Service [1656/7-60/1]; New Tax District [1660/1-65/6]; Ransom [1666/7, 1668/9, 1670/1-71/2]; Ambassadorial [1670/1-75/6]; Little Russian [1668/ 9-75/6]; Vladimir [1670/1-75/6]; Galich [1670/1-75/6]; Grand Treasury [1675/ 6-76/7]; Grand Revenue [1675/6-76/7] Privy Affairs [1671/2-75/6]; Provisions [1675/6-77/8]; Grand Revenue [1675/6]; Investigative [1675/6,1677/8]; Musketeers [1675/6-77/8,1681/2]; Ustiug Tax District [1675/6-77/8]; Judicial [1680/1]; Moscow (Zemskii) [1686/ 7-89/ 90]; Treasury [1689/ 90] NONE

Artillery [1655/ 6]; Foreign Mercenary [1656/7-57/8]; Grand Treasury [1659/60-63/4]; Grand Revenue [1662/3]; Privy Affairs [1663/ 4-71/ 2]; Grand Palace [1671/ 2-76/7]

Equerry [1653/4-63/4]; Gun Barrel

Khitrovo, A. S. 1671 1676
Bogdanov, G. K. 1671
Polianskii, D. L. 1672
Naryshkin, F. P. 1672 Mikhailov, F. 1672
Matiushkin, A. I. 1672
Lopukhin, A. N. 1672
Panin, V. N. 1673

[1653/4]

Tsarina's Workshop [1669/ 70-76/ 7] NONE

Figure 19.3 (cont.)


tsar no longer ruled exclusively with the duma men, but instead via special conciliar and executive bodies. Kotoshikhin described two of them. The first was a kind of privy council chosen from the 'closest boyars and okol'nichie' (boiare i okol'nichie blizhnie). Here Alexis discussed affairs 'in private', outside the large council.32 Second, Kotoshikhin detailed the workings of the Privy Chancellery (Prikaz tainykh del), where the 'boyars and duma men do not enter . . . and have no jurisdiction'.33 And that chancellery', he wrote, 'was established in the present reign, so that the tsar's will and all his affairs would be carried out as he desires, without the boyars and duma men having any knowledge ofthese matters.'34 Kotoshikhin's understanding of Alexis's relation to hereditary duma men is clear: while he honoured them, he did his real business with the 'closest people'. He was, it is true, hardly the first Russian ruler to surround himself with an inner circle of powerful advisers.35 He was, however, the first to do so since the political settlement that ended the Time of Troubles. For one of the few times in Muscovite history, the tsar had succeeded in liberating himself from the elite of which he was a part. Muscovy became an autocracy - or at least less of an oligarchy - as it had been under Ivan III and Ivan IV.

But only for a moment, for Alexis's new order proved untenable. He was strong enough and clever enough to use his novel tool of patronage sparingly. His successors were neither. As a result of their political insecurity, Fedor, Sophia and young Peter -together with those who urged them on - were forced to 'go to the well' of duma patronage often in order to win support among the boiarstvo. They made hordes of appointments from the ever-expanding court in a desperate effort to curry favour. The result can be seen in Figure 19.4.

The duma ranks ballooned, and thereby lost their meaning even as royal patronage. Alexis's weak successors had, in essence, devalued the currency bequeathed to them by their father. What Alexis had carefully designed as a mechanism to bring new talent into the political class resulted, under his children, in the destruction of that class. Confusion reigned among the elite; mestnichestvo - a nuisance from the point of view of the crown and meaningless from the point of view of the old elite - died an unmourned death.36 As early

32 Kotosixin, ORossii,fo. 36.

33 Ibid., fo. i23v.

34 Ibid., fo.i24.

35 On the existence ofsuch 'inner circles' in previous eras, see A. I. Filiushkin, Istoriiaodnoi mistifikatsii: Ivan Groznyi i 'IzbrannaiaRada' (Moscow: VGU, 1998), and Sergei Bogatyrev, The Sovereign and His Counsellors. Ritualised Consultations in Muscovite Political Culture, 135os-157os (Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters 2000).

36 Marshall T. Poe, 'The Imaginary World of Semen Koltovskii: Genealogical Anxiety and Falsification in Seventeenth-Century Russia', Cahiers du monde russe 39 (1998): 375-88.

40
J3 -
64 5
87
107
143
.„ 1
, 139
65 59 59
50 41
38
38
30
31
34 3U
3!
3S 39 3! 3!
_
3 3
3! 5 ™
41
3 7 !
UO[V JO ,|.М|ШП\
1712 1709 1706 1703 1700 1697 1694 1691 1688 1685 1682 1679 1676 1673 1670 1667 1664 1661 1658 1655 1652 1649 1646 1643 1640 1637 1634 1631 1628 1625 1622 1619 1616 1613

as 1681, even the wise old men of the traditional elite - led in this instance by Vasilii Golitsyn - were actively searching for a new order to replace what had obviously been broken.[21] They failed, and it would be up to Peter, who personally witnessed the corruption of his father's legacy, to forge a new and profoundly monarchical political system.

The chancelleries

While the boyar and court elite led Muscovy, chancellery personnel - the prikaznye liudi - administered it. They were, as we have seen, distinctly second- class citizens at court, 'employees at will' serving at the pleasure of the tsar - or not. But the state was growing rapidly in the seventeenth century, and with it the administrative burden of far-flung, complex operations. Since the prikaz personnel needed organisational skill and a deep knowledge of affairs, the elite generally kept them employed and reasonably satisfied - the state could not run without them. If a chancellery man performed well and had the proper connections, he could advance, first, through the administrative ranks (pod'iachii to d'iak) and, then, to the duma (though very rarely and almost always to dumnyi d'iak, no further). This cursus honorum was steep: only a small proportion of all clerks (pod'iachie) were made d'iaki (secretaries) and few d'iaki were made dumnye d'iaki.38 As we have noted, late in the century some of the prikaz people occupied important positions in the government, and one served as de facto prime minister. This remarkable shift upward was a reflection of the growing importance of administrative work for the state.

The world of the prikaz people was different from that of any other Muscovite in a number of ways. First, the chancellery employees were literate, a fact that differentiated them from even most members of the elite (Koto- shikhin called the latter 'unlettered and uneducated').[22] As the century drew to a close, a few of them would even develop a taste for something we might sensibly call 'literature' (almost all of it imported), a first for Muscovy.40 Second, the prikaz people worked in offices run in quasi-rational fashion. The chancel­leries had many ofthe trademarks of the classic Weberian bureaucracy: written rules, regular procedures, functional differentiation, reward to merit.41 This is not, of course, to say that prikaz employees were insulated from the winds of nepotism, favouritism and even caprice. Far from it: most prikaz people were the sons of prikaz officials, all had patrons and not a few were summarily dismissed without cause. Nevertheless, the rudiments of the modern adminis­trative office were all present in the prikazy. Finally, chancellery workers lived in Moscow cheek-by-jowl with the elite: the prikazy were located in the Krem­lin and Kitai gorod and their employees lived in the environs. This proximity gave them access to power that was unimaginable for the typical Russian.

As the interests of the state expanded, so too did the ranks of the prikazy.[23]The number of prikaz people grew significantly in the seventeenth century, from a few hundred in 1613 to several thousand in 1689. The vast majority of them were lowly clerks (pod'iachie). These men did most of the work in the offices, and their numbers expanded mightily during the century: in i626 there were around 500 of them in the Moscow offices; by i698 there were nearly 3,000.[24] As in all Muscovite institutions, we find hierarchy among the clerks - junior (mladshii), middle (srednii) and senior (starshii). If a man were partic­ularly lucky, he might be appointed to d'iak. D'iaki ordinarily commanded the chancelleries, serving together with an extra-administrative servitor (usu­ally a man holding duma rank). They could be tapped for other services as well, as Kotoshikhin tells us: 'they [d'iaki] serve as associates of the boyars and okol'nichie and duma men and closest men in the chancelleries in Moscow and in the provinces, and of ambassadors in embassies; and they . . . admin­ister affairs of every kind, and hold trials, and are sent on various missions.'44 Like the pod'iachie, the numbers of d'iaki grew in the seventeenth century: in i626 there were around fifty serving in the chancelleries; by i698, there were roughly twice that many.45 Of the roughly 800 men who served as d'iaki in the century, only forty-seven ever achieved the exalted status of dumnyi d'iak. These men were super-secretaries: they attended the royal council (though they were required to stand during the proceedings), advised the tsar, and administered the most sensitive affairs.46 Of them, thirteen achieved the rank of dumnyi dvorianin; four, okol'nichii; and one, boyar.47 Naturally, all of these men were advanced late in the century, after Aleksei Mikhailovich had 'opened the ranks to merit'.

The number of chancelleries themselves grew in the seventeenth century as well. In the ten years following the accession of Michael, the number rose from around 35 to around 50; thereafter, the number varied between 45 and 59.48 These figures are, however, misleading on a number of counts. First, most chancelleries were quite short-lived, reflecting the fact that they were often created on an ad hoc basis to fulfil a specific mission (for example, the collection of a tax, or the investigation of a particular affair). Only the largest chancelleries administering the most central functions - the Military Service, Service Land, the Ambassadorial and so on - operated continuously throughout the century.

Though the chancelleries were not officially arranged in any 'organisational chart', we can gauge their administrative scope by placing them in functional categories (see Figure 19.5: Numbers and type of chancelleries per decade, i6i0s-i690s).49 What is most apparent in Figure 19.5 is the concentration on military and foreign affairs - the prikazy were primarily instruments of war- making. Most of them were either directly engaged in provisioning the army (the military chancelleries, and we should include the Service Land Chan­cellery here as well) or funding the army (the financial chancelleries). Though

44 Kotosixin, O Rossii, fo. 37v.

45 Demidova, Sluzhilaia biurokratiia, p. 23.

46 Kotosixin, O Rossii, fos. 33ff.

47 See Poe, The Russian Elite in the Seventeenth Century, vol. 11, p. 35.

48 On all that follows concerning the prikazy, see Brown, 'Early Modern Russian Bureau­cracy' and his 'Muscovite Government Bureaus'.

49 Peter B. Brown, 'Bureaucratic Administration in Seventeenth-Century Russia', inJ. Koti- laine and M. Poe (eds.), Modernizing Muscovy: Reform and Social Change in Seventeenth- Century Russia (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), p. 66. Sub-headings such as 'Man­power mobilisation' indicate areas of competence, and the numbers do not add up to the sub-totals above them.

i6i0s i620s i630s i640s i650s i660s i670s i680s i690s
CHANCELLERIES OF THE REALM 44 50 48 47 50 54 51 40 46
MILITARY AFFAIRS i2 9 i7 i5 i5 i7 i5 ii i5
• Manpower 3 4 5 7 7 4 4 4 5
mobilisation
• Weapons production 3 3 3 4 4 4 3 3 5
• Fortification i i 2 2 i i i i i
• Finance and supply 4 i 5 2 3 5 6 3 3
• Prisoner of war 0 0 2 0 0 2 i 0 0
redemption
• Military administration 2 i i i i 2 i i 2
FINANCE i2 i2 i0 ii ii i2 i2 9 ii
• Taxation ii ii ii ii ii ii ii 9 i0
• Treasuries 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 2
• Minting i i 0 0 i 2 i 0 0
• Mining 0 0 0 i 0 0 0 0 i
SERVICE LAND i i i i i i i i i
FELONY PROSECUTION i i i i i i i 2 i
FOREIGN AND 2 2 3 5 7 9 6 5 5
COLONIAL AFFAIRS
• Diplomacy i i i 2 i 2 i i i
• Southern and western 0 0 0 0 2 3 2 2 2
territories
• Colonial i i 2 2 2 3 3 2 2
administration
• Judicial instance for i i i 2 3 2 i i i
foreigners
POSTAL SERVICE i i i i i i i i i
URBAN AFFAIRS 2 2 2 3 3 2 2 i i
• Townsmen i i i 2 i 0 0 0 0
• Moscow i i i i i i i i i
• Health statistics 0 0 0 0 i 0 0 0 0
• Social welfare 0 0 0 0 0 i i 0 0
LITIGATION 7 i0 6 5 5 7 7 7 8
• Petitioning 2 2 2 i i i i i 0
• Upper and middle ii i3 9 9 9 ii ii ii ii
service classes
DOCUMENTS AND 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 2 2
PRINTED MATTER
ECCLESIASTICAL 3 2 0 i 2 i i 0 0
AFFAIRS
MISCELLANEOUS i 8 5 2 2 i 2 i i
Figure i9.5. Numbers and type of chancelleries per decade, i6i0s-i690s
PALACE 10 14 14 13 12 7 8 9 8
CHANCELLERIES
COURT AND ITS LANDS 3 3 3 2 1 1 1 3 2
CARE OF THE TSAR 5 5 5 5 3 2 3 2 2
PRECIOUS METALS AND OBJECTS 2 5 5 5 6 3 3 3 3
MEMORIAL SERVICES AND HISTORY 0 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1
PRIVY CHANCELLERIES OF THE TSAR 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 3 3
ALEKSEI MIKHAILOVICH 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0
PETER THE GREAT 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 3
PATRIARCHAL CHANCELLERIES 3 4 3 3 3 4 5 4 4
TOTAL 57 68 65 63 66 66 65 56 61
Figure 19.5 (cont.)
the foreign affairs chancelleries were fewer in number, one ofthem - the mas-

sive Ambassadorial Chancellery - was a locus of state power which controlled far-flung territories. Chancelleries in these categories were the largest, best funded, most powerful and most honourable of all the administrative organs in the central government.

Like the workaday lower-court nobility, the chancellery personnel grew more powerful during the course of the century for the simple reason that the tsar found their services increasingly indispensable. Modern states cannot operate without relatively efficient - or at minimum, effective - bureaucra­cies. They collect the taxes, recruit personnel, and organise complex affairs generally Throughout early modern Europe, states were travelling a road that made them more and more dependent on the offices of well-trained, skilled administrators. So it was in Muscovy By the close of the century, the status of both administrators and administrative work had risen appreciably More and more of them were elevated to the royal council, and increasingly hereditary military servitors of very high status (the old boyars and 'new men') opted to serve the tsar in the prikazy.50 The once entirely martial ruling class gained a hybrid character, working with near equal frequency in the court, army and

50 Robert O. Crummey, 'The Origins of the Noble Official: The Boyar Elite, 1613-1689', in D. K. Rowney and W M. Pintner (eds.), Russian Officialdom: The Bureaucratization of

offices. It was a common story, one that has parallels in Prussia, France and all other successful early modern states.51

Other central institutions: the 'boyar council' and 'Assembly of the Land'

The tsar, the court and the prikazy were the central stable elements of Mus­covite governance throughout the seventeenth century. This being said, there were two other institutions, quite different in character, that we find in this era: the so-called 'boyar council' (boiarskaia duma) and Assembly of the Land' (zemskii sobor). Both have been the subject of considerable controversy. Early historians, with their eyes to the West, saw in them formal counselling and even representative bodies, the Russian analogues to peer councils and parliaments. Later historians called these views into question, noting that both terms were invented by eighteenth-century Russian historians and that there is very little in law or custom that defined the competence or operation of these bodies. With this in mind, let us look at what is known about these institutions today.

The phrase boiarskaia duma, though a later coinage, has come to stand for the regular high councils held at the courts of Kievan, apanage and particularly Muscovite princes from the ninth to the early eighteenth century.52 It appears in no medieval or early modern Russian source. The terms 'council' (duma), 'privy council' (blizhniaia duma) and 'tsar's senate' (tsarskii sinklit) appear in Muscovite sources and refer to a royal council of some sort. In early Mus­covy, dependent service families, not princes or independent lords, staffed the council. Consistent with this fact, the council seems to have evolved into an

Russian Society from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), pp. 46-75. Also see Bickford O'Brien, 'Muscovite Prikaz Administration of the Seventeenth Century: The Quality of Leadership', FOG 24 (1978):

223-35.

51 On the All-European context, see Marshall T. Poe, 'The Military Revolution, Admin­istrative Development, and Cultural Change in Early Modern Russia', Journal of Early Modern History 2 (1998): 247-73, and his 'The Consequences of the Military Revolution in Muscovy in Comparative Perspective', Comparative Studies in Society and History 38 (1996): 603-18.

52 The literature on the boyar elite (what we have called the duma ranks of the sovereign's court) is immense, while studies of the duma per se are few (largely due to a lack of sources). The standard treatments, all somewhat dated, are: V O.Kliuchevskii, Boiarskaia duma drevnei Rusi. Opytistoriipravitel'stvennogo uchrezhdeniiav sviazi s istoriei ohshchestva, 3rd edn (Moscow: Sinodal'naia tipografiia, 1902); S. F. Platonov, 'Boiarskaia duma - predshestvennitsa senata', in his Stat'ipo russkoi istorii (1883-1912), 2nd edn (St Petersburg: M. A. Aleksandrov 1912), pp. 447-94; V I. Sergeevich, Drevnosti russkogo prava, vol. 11: Vecheikniaz'. Sovetnikikniazia, 3rd edn (St Petersburg, 1908). The best modern treatment is Bogatyrev, The Sovereign and his Counsellors.

instrument of the prince's private administration (his 'patrimony' (votchina)). Officers of the domain ('chiliarchs' (tysiatskie)), 'major-domos' (dvoretskie), 'seal-bearers' (pechatniki), 'treasurers' (kaznacheia)) are identified among his counsellors. Classes appear among the boyars in the council early on: the 'privy boyars' (vvedennye boiare) and 'departmental boyars' (putnye boiare), for example, are distinguished from all others. These men were probably agents of the prince's private administration, but this is not certain. The competence of the council appears to have been extensive but is indistinguishable from that of the prince. No formal definition of powers is found in any source. Similarly, nothing is known of the internal operation of the council in the early period.

The princely council underwent considerable development in connection with the rise of Muscovy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. To the old Muscovite service families were added immigrants from defeated apanages, the Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Tatar khanates. These new arrivals were at first given minor positions in the grand-princely administration and later, after they had been tested, were given high court rank and served as coun­cillors. Records of this era permit the identification of most of those holding these ranks, something impossible in the Kievan and Apanage periods.[25] The evidence suggests that the number of men holding 'conciliar ranks' (dumnye chiny) was small, hovering around fifteen members in the years of Ivan III and Vasilii III, though it increased in size to about fifty under Ivan IV In this period the competence of the duma - or at least of certain members of the council - is suggested in legislation and legal documents for the first time. The Law Code (Sudebnik) of 1497 directs that the 'boyars and okol'nichie are to admin­ister justice' (suditi sud boiaram i okol'nichim), and it is known from surviving cases that they did so.54 In like measure, the duma seems to have had some legislative authority, as can be seen in the often-repeated Muscovite formula 'the sovereign orders and the boyars affirm' (gosudar' ukazal i boiare prigov- orili). Despite these hints, the exact boundaries of the duma's independent competence, if any, remained unregulated.

Towards the end ofthe sixteenth century foreigners provided some sketchy evidence of the operation of the council.55 They report seeing the council arrayed during ambassadorial audiences. However, it is evident that on such occasions the members played highly scripted roles that probably did not reflect the proceeding of 'private' council meetings. According to the English ambassador Giles Fletcher, central and provincial administrators, as well as private suitors, appeared before the duma on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fri­days at seven in the morning.[26] The foreigners generally dismissed the duma as an ineffectual body, but this is not entirely accurate.[27] The council was very active during the Time of Troubles and succeeded in imposing an oath on Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii in 1606. According to Kotoshikhin, a similar oath was taken by Michael Romanov in 1613, but this is uncorroborated.58

In the seventeenth century, the competence of the council, as well as its exact composition and mode of operation, remained undefined - there was no constitution or even coherent (and inscribed) custom detailing who was (or should be) on it, or what it was to do (other than deliberate with the tsar). Kotoshikhin thoroughly describes general congresses of council members in which affairs were discussed and legislation was considered, affirmed and sent to the chancelleries for promulgation.[28] He tells us that 'although [Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich] used the title "autocrat", [he] could do nothing without the boyars' council'.[29] His son, in contrast, did quite a bit without their council. He favoured smaller groups of familiars (the blizhnie liudi) over the mass of courtiers who were coming to occupy the duma ranks.[30] By the second half of the century, the number of men who held these ranks was in all probability too large for all of them to serve as councillors, and there is no evidence that they did so. The duma ranks, as we have said, had turned into a source of patronage for weakmonarchs and thus the councillors - at least most of them - were deprived of their council.

The history of the zemskii sobor is just as controversial and murky.[31] The phrase itself was coined by the radical Slavophile Konstantin Aksakov around 1850.[32] It is found in no Muscovite source. Nineteenth-century Russian his­torians of a liberal bent tried their best to make out of the thin evidence a 'proto-parliamentary' body that - but for the unbridled power of self-seeking tsars and boyars - might have led Russia to enlightened liberal democracy. More sober historians, focusing on the evidence rather than projecting their fantasies on bygone eras, contradicted this rosy interpretation. The battle continues.

What can be said with confidence is this.[33] Some sort of popular assembly was first called by Ivan IV and, thereafter, occasionally by his successors. The regime of Michael Romanov-weakand attemptingto establishits legitimacy- seemed particularly fond of them (he was 'elected' by one), though his father was not. Though the assemblies (usually called sobory) could be assigned very specific tasks -for example, ratification ofthe Ulozhenie of 1649 (called 'Sobornoe' because it was affirmed by a sobor) - they were generally organised by the government to take stock of opinion on affairs domestic and international.

The composition of the assemblies was never set, though they appear to have had two salient characteristics-they were elite (almost entirely composed of high-born military servitors) and they were ad hoc (the government often simply gathered servitors and clerics already in Moscow). Some were large - several hundred delegates; others were small - several dozen delegates. The assemblies were not regularly conferred according to any schedule. Rather, they seem to have been called in moments of doubt or crisis. Delegates almost always supported the government; there was no forceful 'debate' as far as we know. Their exact competence - like the royal council - was never defined in law or custom, though they were consulted on a wide range of affairs. As we can see in Figure 19.6, some acclaimed tsars, others declared war, while others still adopted legislation.[34]

Delegates were called as a matter of service obligation (and sometimes viewed said service as onerous), not as a matter of 'right'. Neither in years

Year Primary activity
1613 Chose Michael as tsar
1614 Advised on stopping movements of Zarutskii and the cossacks
1616 Discussed conditions of peace with Sweden and a monetary levy
1617 Advised on a monetary levy
1619 Advised on raising of Filaret to the patriarchal throne
1621 Advised on war with Poland
1622 Advised on war with Poland
1632 Advised on the collection of money for the Polish campaign
1634 Advised on the collection of money and on the Polish campaign
1637 Advised on an invasion of the Crimean Khan Sefat Girey and the
collection of money
1639 Advised on response to Crimean treatment of two Muscovite envoys
1642 Recommended support of Don cossacks in relation to the taking of
Azov
1645 Chose Alexis as tsar
1648 Advised the composition of a new law code
1648-9 Approved the new law code
1650 Advised on the movement of people into Pskov
1651 Advised on Russo-Polish relations and Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi
1653 Advised on war with Poland and support of Zaporozhian cossacks
1681-2 Advised on military, financial and land reforms
1682 Chose Peter as tsar (27 April); chose Peter and Ivan as co-tsars (May)
1683-4 Advised on peace with Poland
Figure 19.6. Seventeenth-century 'Assemblies of the Land' and their activities

without assemblies, nor in the year they were extinguished finally, was there any protest or even mention of them in Muscovite sources. Foreigners, who were often careful observers of Russian politics, very rarely note them and when they do attribute little importance to them.66

Concluding remarks

In the end, the seventeenth-century Muscovite state proved to be quite robust. Even after it was almost totally taken apart in the maelstrom of the Time of Troubles, the triptych tsar-court-prikazy re-emerged rapidly and in full form. The ruling class wasted no time or effort on costly government experimenta­tion in 1613. It simply picked itself up and got down to business. And its business was rule, plain and simple. For the tsar, his court and the men of offices, the

66 Poe, A People Born to Slavery', pp. 66-7.

entire point ofthe state was to rule over others and live off them. Never was this point seriously questioned. One must admire the single-minded purpose this sort of concentration bespeaks. While other early modern states (whatever their form) might pursue any number of goals - fostering science, patronising the arts, educating the public, spreading the Good Word-the Muscovite elite focused nearly all its energy in ruling others or conquering others so that they might rule them. Domination was their raison d'etre.

As the century closed, this focus was, for good or ill, lost. Peter and his cohort were enamoured of a different vision of the state and its goals, one that was as new to Russia as it was profoundly alien to the Muscovite spirit. Aleksei Mikhailovich could no more have said he was the 'first servant of the state' than he could have sworn off the Orthodox faith. He could not serve the state because he owned the state. It was his instrument to do with as his master - God in Heaven - commanded. Neither could his servitors have said they were serving anything like the 'common good'. Such a thing was impossible, for they were honourable men and truly honourable men served only God and his representative, the tsar. As for the rest - all those who were neither tsars nor servants of tsars - they just did not matter.Local government and administration

BRIAN DAYIES

There were two important developments affecting local government in the period 1613-89. The first was the spread of the town governor system of local administration. In the sixteenth century annually appointed town comman­dants (godovye voevody) with some civil as well as military authority had been found in some districts on the southern and western frontier. But by the 1620s most districts were under commandants turned town governors (gorodovye voevody), with staffs of clerks and constables, and exercising authority over the guba and zemskii elders, fortifications stewards, siege captains and other local officials. Responsibility for most aspects of defence, taxation, policing, civil and criminal justice, the remuneration of servicemen and the regulation of pomest'e landholding at the district level was now concentrated in the town governors' offices. The second development was the increasing reliance of town governor administration on codified law, written instructions and regu­lar reporting and account-keeping. This enhanced central chancellery control over local administration and partly compensated for the avocational nature of town governor service.

The spread of town governor administration

The universalisation of gorodovyi voevoda administration had been a response to the breakdown of the political order in the Time of Troubles. On the one hand, the spread of town governor administration across the southern frontier in the late sixteenth century had helped to fuel the Troubles: mass discontent with the heavy burdens of defence duty and agricultural corvee on the 'Sovereign's tithe ploughlands' had led to the overthrow of several south­ern frontier town governors and placed much of the south in the hands of the First False Dmitrii and successor insurgents. On the other hand, after the disintegration of Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii's regime in 1608 the tasks of defeating the rebels and foreign invaders and re-establishing strong central authority fell by default to other town governors, notably P. P. Liapunov of Riazan' and D. M. Pozharskii of Zaraisk, who had the military experience and political connec­tions to lead the governors and lesser officials of the towns of the north-east into forming an army of national liberation and a provisional government. In coalition with certain boyars and cossack leaders Pozharskii's army drove the Poles from Moscow (1612) and restored the Russian monarchy under the new Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich (1613). It was natural that the new Romanov monarchy should see its continued survival in the utmost centralisation and militarisa­tion of provincial government - the logical agents of which were the town governors, appointed by and accountable to the central chancelleries, selected from the court nobility, and given broad authority over district military, fiscal, judicial and police affairs. Upon Tsar Michael's accession his government was supposedly deluged with collective petitions from the provinces, 'from many towns, from the dvoriane and deti boiarskie and various servicemen and inhab­itants', begging that town governors be placed in charge of their districts, for 'without town governors their towns would not exist'.[35] Whether these petitions really represented local will or its ventriloquism by the central gov­ernment cannot be determined, but three days later the central government authorised the general restoration and expansion of town governor rule, to all districts in need of town governors. Whereas town governor administration had been confined mostly to the western and southern frontiers before the Troubles, it came to prevail throughout the centre and north as well by the 1620s. By 1633 there were 190 governors' offices, and 299 by 1682.[36]

After 1613 most of the local administrative organs common before the Trou­bles were liquidated or were absorbed into town governor administration. The title of vicegerent (namestnik) was still used at court as a ceremonial honorific, but vicegerents no longer governed in the provinces. The fortifica­tions and siege stewards declined in number and became subordinate officials (prikaznye liudi) of the town governors' offices. Customs and tavern adminis­tration remained in the hands of elected community representatives or tax- farmers, but they came under the supervision of the town governors, who supervised their operations and gave them quarterly or annual accountings. District-level and canton-level elected zemskii offices for tax collection and jus­tice continued to exist in the north, but most of them were subordinated to the town governors, so that zemskii officials no longer dealt with the chancelleries directly but only through their local governor; the more important kinds of court cases traditionally heard in the district-level zemskii court were now held in the governor's court, which also became a court of second instance over those matters still heard in zemskii courts; and the tax-collection activities of zemskii officials were subject to especially tight control from the governor's office, for the governor had the authority to beat zemskii officials under righter (pravezh), that is, in the stocks, for any tax arrears or irregularities and the tendency was towards requiring zemskii collections to be turned in to the governor's office.

For some time the guba constabulary offices for policing and investigating felonies were permitted greater autonomy, for Moscow saw some advantage in keeping the defence of the community against banditry and violent crime in the hands of elected community representatives - especially as those elected as chief constables were supposed to be the communities' 'best men', ideally prosperous dvoriane or deti boiarskie, reporting their investigations directly to the Robbery Chancellery (Razboinyi prikaz) at Moscow for pronouncement of verdict. Besides reducing the need to send down special inquisitors from Moscow, this would have the advantage of shifting blame for policing failures from state officials to community representatives. Moscow's preference for the continued independence of the guba system was indicated in the 1649 Ulozhenie and 1669 New Decree Statutes as well as in a 1627 decree that announced that guba chief constables should be elected in all towns. But this came up against fiscal and manpower concerns: maintaining guba offices cost the community additional taxes, and in wartime prosperous dvoriane and deti boiarskie were needed in the army, not at home performing constabulary duties which could be assumed by the town governors or, in worst cases, by inquisitors from the Robbery Chancellery. The guba system was therefore not expanded; the town governors increasingly sought to subordinate the guba officials de facto; and in 1679 all guba offices were closed.[37]

Enhanced control through improved record-keeping

Town governor administration operated under closer central chancellery con­trol than had vicegerent administration in the previous century because the town governors' offices were held to higher expectations of written reporting and compliance with written instructions. The town governors were guided in their general or long-term responsibilities by written working orders (nakazy), and in more particular and non-routine matters by decree rescripts from the chancelleries; they were expected to submit frequent reports, even if all they had to relate was their progress in implementing relatively routine directives; and they had to maintain an increasingly wide range of rolls, inventories, land allotment and surveying books, court hearing inquest transcripts and account books for various indirect and direct revenues. Inventories of the archives of governors' offices generally show a significant increase in the rate of record pro­duction, especially from mid-century. This reflected the increasing demands upon the governors' offices by the central chancelleries, but also the demands upon them from the community in terms of litigation and petitioning of needs and grievances. [38]

Because the primary purpose of the governor's office was to gather and systematise information to facilitate executive decision-making in the central chancelleries and duma, the clerical staffing of the governor's offices was a cru­cial concern. It was the governor's clerks (pod'iachie) who produced, routed and stored all this information and kept order in the town archive and treasury. The clerks also performed important tasks in the field - supervising corvee, conducting obysk polling at inquests, conveying cash to and from Moscow, or surveying property boundaries. In some districts the governor's clerical staff was too small, too inexperienced or too poorly remunerated to maintain the flow of information required by the chancelleries. The smaller governors' offices might have only one or two clerks in permanent service and so be forced to turn over some tasks to public notaries or even press passing trav­ellers into temporary clerical service. In the 1640s the clericate of the provincial governors' offices officially numbered no more than 775, slightly fewer than the number of clerks staffing the central chancelleries.[39] However, the total clerical manpower at work in provincial administration may have been sig­nificantly larger because this total does not include the clerks serving in the customs, liquor excise, guba and zemskii offices. Furthermore, the small cler­ical staffs of the smaller governorships could be compensated for by making these governorships satellites of the larger offices found in the bigger towns of the region or the capitals of regional military administrations (razriady). The larger governors' offices came to have nearly as many clerks as some Moscow chancelleries and to imitate chancellery internal organisation by distributing them among bureaux (stoly, 'desks') for specialised functions under the gen­eral direction of an experienced senior executive clerk. In the 1640s the Pskov governor's office had twenty-one clerks and by 1699 it would have fifty-four clerks, some of whom had thirty or forty years' experience.[40]

The demand for clerical manpower in the provinces after the end of the Troubles had made it necessary for Moscow to give its town governors a free hand in appointing clerks and to accept as eligible men of all kinds of backgrounds: church clerks, the sons of priests, servicemen, merchants' sons, the sons of taxpaying townsmen and state peasants and declasse itinerants. After about 1640 this was no longer affordable, for taxpayers or servicemen enrolled as clerks thereby left the tax and military service rolls. The central chancelleries therefore began tightening their control over the appointment of clerks (eventually all appointments would be controlled by the Military Chan­cellery). The chancelleries moved towards standardising clerical pay rates, and they gradually reduced the range of social estates and ranks eligible for cleri­cal appointment. Cossacks and musketeers were forbidden to take service as clerks; by the i660s-i670s it was the rule that deti boiarskie could be appointed as clerks only if they had retired from military service, lacked the pomest'e lands to render military service or had not yet received formal initiation into military service. By the end of the century not even this was permitted: now no candidate could be appointed whose father had been registered in military service or on the tax rolls; only those whose fathers had been clerks were allowed to continue clerking in the governors' offices.

Thus the clericate became a closed hereditary corporation. Although this probably had the effect of slowing the growth rate of the provincial clericate, it had the advantage ofimproving clerical training and esprit de corps and making clerical service a life profession. Local clerical 'dynasties' emerged, with clerks accumulating decades of experience in the local governor's office and passing their training on to their sons, some of whom eventually worked their way up into the clericate of the central chancelleries. There was increased likelihood that clerical dynasties would tend to conduct themselves as local elites and exploit their neighbours, but clerical dynasties at least were motivated to attend closely to apprentice training out of self-interest.[41]

Local government in reconstruction and reform

The spread and systematisation of town governor administration was crucial to Patriarch Filaret's reconstruction programme (1619-33): the town governors helped reassemble and update chancellery cadastral knowledge, review the monasteries' fiscal immunities, return fugitive townsmen to the tax rolls, introduce new extraordinary taxes for military exigencies, suppress banditry and rebuild the pomest'e-based cavalry army by expediting response to petitions for entitlement award and land allotment.

In the period 1633-48 policy was made by the succession of cliques led by I. B. Cherkasskii, F. I. Sheremetev and B. I. Morozov. They gave priority to accel­erating colonisation of the southern frontier and eliminating the tax-exempt social categories and enclaves in the towns. Town governor administration played an essential role in both projects.

The years 1648-54 saw town governor authority used to implement several important reforms strengthening the southern frontier defence system: the completion of most of the Belgorod Line; levies into the newly revived foreign formation infantry and cavalry regiments; the subjection of southern service­men to the grain taxes (quarter grain, siege grain etc.) previously paid only by peasants and townsmen; and the laying of foundations for the vast Belgo­rod regional military administration (Belgorodskii razriad), which subordinated several town governors' offices in the south to the senior commander's office at Belgorod, not only for mobilisations and joint military operations but also for review of judicial, fiscal and land allotment matters. An equally significant reform in this period affected civil and criminal justice in governors' courts across the realm: the Ulozhenie law code (1649) greatly expanded and stan­dardised instructions for investigations and hearings in the local courts and streamlined and further centralised judicial administration by giving the duma functions of an appellate court and by further concentrating the supervision of criminal justice matters in the Robbery Chancellery. The Ulozhenie also ended the time limit for the recovery of fugitive peasants, thereby completing the process of peasant enserfment, and provided instructions for the governors' offices to enforce enserfment by conducting mass dragnets of fugitive peas­ants and townsmen as well as holding hearings for fugitive remands. The fact that the zemskii sobor was no longer convened after 1653 may testify to the centre's confidence in town governor administration by this point: apparently the flow of information from governors' reports and accounts and community petitions was now considered regular and reliable enough to support decision- making in the duma and chancelleries without any need to supplement it by periodically assembling representatives of the estates to solicit their views.

During the Thirteen Years War expenditure on army pay (particularly upon the more expensive foreign formation regiments, which accounted for some 75-80 per cent) increased enormously, exceeding a million roubles annually by 1663, about four times what army service allowances had totalled in 1632.[42]The sharp rise in tax rates and infantry levy quotas in the war years was all the harder to bear because grain taxes and infantry conscription no longer fell only upon men of draft (tiaglye liudi) traditionally defined, and because ruinous inflation had resulted from the government's decision to debase coinage. The governors' offices came under great pressure to keep cash, grain and manpower resources flowing while at the same time policing against desertion, taxpayer flight and riot. To tighten central control over their accounting and policing two new chancelleries with broad investigatory powers were created: a Privy Chancellery (founded in 1654) and an Auditing Chancellery (founded in 1656). A second great regional military administration was also established at Sevsk to further co-ordinate resource mobilisation and military operations on the southern frontier.

The Andrusovo Armistice (1667) did not lead to any significant relief from high grain taxation and infantry conscription rates. It remained necessary to garrison eastern Ukraine, to keep Moscow's puppet hetmans Mnogogreshnyi and Samoilovich in power and hold Hetman Doroshenko at bay; it was also necessary to defend against the Crimean Tatars by reinforcing the Belgorod Line and sending troops down the Donto assist (and control) the Don cossacks; and in 1674 a Muscovite army had to take the field in western Ukraine to defeat Doroshenko, who was now actively supported by Ottoman forces. The defeat ofDoroshenko led immediately to the first Russo-Turkish war (1676-81), which depopulated much of eastern Ukraine and deterred the Ottomans from invad­ing western Ukraine but also revealed the need to reform Muscovite military and fiscal practices. More regional military administrations were therefore formed (the Riazan', Tambov, Kazan', Smolensk and Vladimir razriady). A new Iziuma Line was built to extend the southern frontier defence a further 160 kilometres southward and shield military colonisation in Sloboda Ukraine. In 1678-80 six new foreign formation cavalry and ten new foreign forma­tion infantry regiments were created, while the number of southern service­men in the traditional formation cavalry was reduced by limiting eligibility to prosperous men holding at least twenty-four peasant households and there­fore presumably able to maintain themselves in service from their pomest'ia alone, without cash allowances. To meet the higher costs for new foreign for­mation troop pay, a major reform of state finances was undertaken. It started with a new general cadastral survey (1677-9), the first since 1646; led to the decision (1679) to shift to the assessment of direct taxes by household, thereby abandoning the old method of assessing by sokha (i.e. by area and produc­tive capacity of cultivated land); saw the amalgamation of a number of minor direct taxes into a single 'musketeers' money' tax for the army; and culminated in the founding of the Grand Treasury and the production of the first rudi­mentary state budget (1680). The simplification of direct taxation enhanced central chancellery control and permitted a further division of labour over fis­cal matters at the local level, with the town governors' offices made responsible largely for recording and actual collection of taxes left to elected community representatives.

Efforts at bureaucratic rationalisation

Over the course of the seventeenth century voevoda administration came to display more of the characteristics of rational bureaucratic organisation. It was already significantly differentiated: official duties were distinguished from the pursuit of personal interests, it being an already long-established principle that the governor's office (the s"ezzhaia izba, assembly house) was separate from his residence (voevodskii dvor) and that he was forbidden to hold doc­uments or the town seal at the latter; and there was some formal division of labour, at least within the larger offices - horizontally, in the form of dis­crete clerkships or even bureaux with specialised functions, and vertically, with supervising signatory clerks, document clerks and secretaries reporting in turn to the governor. By mid-century it had even become the tendency to rename the governor's office a prikaznaia izba in recognition that its organisa­tion was increasingly resembling that of a small chancellery. Office work was subject to various integrating mechanisms promoting standardised practice: there was a comprehensive and fairly consistent repertory of routines for han­dling incoming business, recording expenditures and services performed and reporting up important information and unresolved business; and although there was as yet no uniform written General Regulation covering all aspects of office work, that sphere of activity where written regulations were most nec­essary - the administration of justice - had finally received a comprehensive code of procedures with the promulgation of the Ulozhenie. Surety bonding, oaths ofconduct, annual and end-of-term audits and investigations went some way towards tightening constraints over the conduct of governors and their staffs. To enhance co-ordination and compensate for the limited effectiveness of central control mechanisms, most executive decision-making was removed from the governors' offices and located above them in the chancelleries, with ultimate executive policy-making removed to an even higher level, above the central chancellery bureaucracy, in the duma counselling circle.

But in one important respect voevoda administration resisted full bureau­cratic rationalisation. Although clerical staffs were expanding and office work undergoing further regulation in the governors' offices, neither process was sufficiently advanced to fully compensate for the fact that the organising link between the central and provincial clericates - the gorodovye voevody - were not themselves career administrative specialists. Those appointed as town governors were court notables serving only avocationally, without any special training for the task, as an occasional respite from their field army and court duties. There was no Muscovite noblesse de robe, trained in the law and seeking promotion to nobility through the path of judicial and administrative service, from which to draw in filling town governorships.

This by itself presented an obstacle to further centralisation of command- and-control, as avocational administration by notables is generally thought to have been slower, less precise, and less unified than fully bureaucratised administration, being 'less bound to schemata and more formless ... and also because it is less dependent upon superiors'.[43] Notables were more inclined to ignore bureaucratic rules and abuse their authority because they were not permanently subordinated to bureaucratic superiors, had not internalised a bureaucratic ethos of impersonalised objectivised service to the organisation and its larger mission, and meanwhile claimed social status above that of pro­fessional bureaucrats. And in Muscovy the problem was further exacerbated by the fact that town governor duty carried less honour and less remuneration than other forms of state service and so was less likely to be sought by notables pursuing promotion and influence at court.

There were various reasons to seek appointment as a town governor. It offered a rest from the rigours and risks of campaign duty, which is why measures had to be taken in wartime to tighten the Military Chancellery's control over appointments lest the provincial governors' offices become havens for shirkers. Those appointed to certain distant towns were immune from lawsuit for the duration of their terms. Governorships 'in array' (v razriade - as when one was appointed to govern a larger town with some authority over the governors of nearby lesser satellite towns) offered the opportunity to demonstrate higher mestnichestvo precedence over certain other nobles. Many seeking governorships were probably drawn by the opportunity to collect 'feeding' income in kind and cash (kormlenie, see below) to supplement their regular annual bounties from the sovereign's treasury.

Petitioners for appointment therefore usually cited as grounds their need for relief: they had been on campaign duty for many years with no real respite, held inadequate service lands, had fallen into debt and so sought governorships 'for their poverty'.[44] There were at any time many metropolitan nobles feeling themselves in need of relief, so there were usually multiple candidates available to take over vacant governorships. The chancelleries therefore had some choice as to whom to appoint - indeed, probably greater choice than in appointments to army commands, which were by nature 'in array' and therefore more subject to mestnichestvo precedence considerations.

But these motives for seeking appointment all treated town governor duty as merely avocational, a temporary surcease from the proper vocations of a metropolitan nobleman, duty in the field army and in the court. The Muscovite state service system had traditionally valorised field army and court duty over administrative duty in the provinces, so that rank promotions and raises to service bounties were much more often awarded for the former than for the latter. When town governors did see raises or royal gifts in honorarium, it was less likely to be as a reward for governor duty than part of a general distribution of largesse across the entire upper service class in commemoration of a special event such as a great military victory or the birth of a tsarevich. Nor was town governor duty as good a path to rank promotion or political influence as army and court duty, which were more visibly meritorious - performed in proximity to the sovereign and one's fellow nobles - and did not require long absence from the circles ofgossip, counsel and patronage at court that were so important to career advancement. Strictly speaking, town governor duty was not even routinely formally remunerated; it did not ordinarily carry its own salary precisely because it was considered a respite from vocational service. A notable appointed to a town governorship was usually expected to live off the annual zhalovanie bounty he already received in accordance with his rank and entitlement rating.11 Whatever feeding arrangement he could negotiate with those he governed was his own concern, unless the chancelleries received complaint that he was extorting too much of it.

Therefore, although governorships were reserved for servitors of Moscow rank, that is, members of the metropolitan nobility, and the governorships of especially important towns like Novgorod and Astrakhan' might go to the elite of duma rank, the vast majority of governorships were given out to the middle and lower Moscow ranks; and while examination of service career patterns shows many metropolitan nobles taking turns at town gov­ernor duty, it presents few instances of them specialising in it. Those serving as town governors did so only avocationally, and most of them only on infre­quent occasions, with little or no prior experience. There was little opportu­nity for them to familiarise themselves fully with bureaucratic routines and norms, and little reason for them to internalise a professional bureaucratic ethos.

Fortunately there were mechanisms partly compensating for the avoca- tional character of town governor service.

While the discipline of career bureaucratic service was largely alien to the Muscovite metropolitan nobility, the discipline of general state service was not. Since the mid-fifteenth century the metropolitan nobility had been liable for compulsory life service to the sovereign - if not so much for provincial administrative service, certainly for court service and especially service in the field army. The Muscovite notable therefore differed from the Western European notable in accepting to a far greater degree the notion that rank and entitlements derived from service to the sovereign (even if town governor duty was not the preferred service track for winning them); more importantly, even while he was resting from campaign duty by feeding in the provinces as a town governor he remained under a military discipline which provided penalties for malfeasance.

In districts where the governor's office had direct responsibility for tax col­lection as well as tax recording the governor could be held accountable to the central chancelleries for any arrears or deficits caused by unfair or negligent collection measures as well as by embezzlement. Even for minor deficits he could be fined, deprived of rank, subjected to corporal punishment, impris­oned or exiled. When such irregularities had been caught at Moscow during examination of records submitted from the governor's office, the task of exact­ing the missing sum and imposing a fine or other penalty was entrusted to chancellery clerks and constables sent down for the purpose. In general, though, irregularities were not so easily discovered this way because until late in the century most chancelleries were not insistent that governors regularly send in full copies of their income and expenditure books (the Military Chan­cellery, for example, began requiring this only from 1685); they only required regular submission of short summaries (smety) comparing the current year's balance with that of the previous year and brief projections (pomety) of rev­enue and expenditure for the coming year. This may be why, when chancellery officials were sent down to exact arrears and deficits, it was sometimes to sev­eral districts in succession, arrears and deficits having been found to have accumulated undetected for some time across a broad region. In 1646, for example, the Ustiug Territorial Chancellery authorised that 35,000 roubles of missing revenues be exacted from the governors of several districts in its jurisdiction.[45]

The chancelleries recognised that central control could not rely entirely on quarterly or annual account submissions and therefore they continued to place greater reliance on subjecting outgoing governors to end-of-term audits by their replacements. The outgoing governor was required to give his replace­ment full assistance in conducting a general inventory and audit. This could take many days to complete, as it involved inspections of fortifications and troops, counting and weighing cash and grain stores, examining s"ezzhaia izba logbooks and archive inventories, reviewing income and expenditure accounts and conducting interrogations into expenditures that appeared to lack autho­risation from Moscow. In some cases the centre expected this audit to assess the profitability of the outgoing governor's administration compared to pre­vious governors' terms, in which case a profit report (pribyl'naia kniga) as well as audit report had to be prepared. The outgoing governor was not allowed to depart until the chancelleries had received these audit results and ruled on whether he had to pay any fines, make restitution of missing funds, or pay any damages to local inhabitants. Fines of a hundred roubles or more were com­mon enough; restitution of missing funds sometimes was ordered at double rate, to the total value of thousands of roubles.

The end-of-term audit was also recognised as an opportunity for the inhabi­tants to file complaint against the outgoing governor and askhis replacement to begin an investigation. In the Siberian towns the opportunity to file complaint was an especially important supplement to other central control measures and was accompanied by a special ritual: each new governor was under instruction to invite community representatives to a bienvenue feast, ply them with food and drink - expressly identified as largesse provided by the tsar himself, not by his governor - and then read them the 'sovereign's declaration of vouchsafe' (gosudarevo zhalovannoe slovo), an address promising them the new governor would protect them against extortion and oppression and investigate whatever complaints they chose to bring against the outgoing governor.

The chancelleries sometimes sent down from Moscow special inquisitors (syshchiki) to investigate specific complaints of corruption or abuse of authority made in collective petitions from the community or in denunciations by asso­ciate governors, clerks or other subordinate officials. The inquisitors made audits, took witness testimony, polled the community by poval'nyi obysk, reported up, and then implemented whatever penalty Moscow decreed. A good number of inquest records have been preserved, especially from Siberia, and some are quite long and painstaking and produced verdicts giving vic­tims of governor corruption meaningful relief. But when victims failed to get redress they charged the inquisitor with failing to take particular crucial tes­timonies or misrecording or forging testimonies. In other instances inquests dragged on for years without result.

The struggles against governor malfeasance therefore had to employ pre­ventive measures as well. The tendency over the course of the century was towards standardising the length of town governor terms - to two years in most towns under the authority of the Military Chancellery, with extensions of one or two years for merit or upon the petition of local inhabitants unwilling to risk possibly greater exploitation under a new governor. Besides providing more appointment opportunities to nobles seeking respite from army and court duty, appointing for shorter terms gave governors less time to build local clientage machines and drive their districts to revolt with their extortion and oppression. Governor terms in the larger and more strategic towns, in territorial razriad capitals and in distant Siberian towns were usually longer, to provide greater continuity in frontier defence and diplomatic operations and to reduce opportunities for governors homebound from Siberian posts to smuggle contraband furs in their baggage.

To check abuse of power it was also frequent practice to appoint to the larger towns and razriad capitals a senior governor and one to three associate town governors (tovarishchi) or secretaries on instruction to operate collegially, 'acting together as one, without dissension'.[46] Actual procedures for collegial decision-making were not spelled out (and so may not always have been observed in practice), but it was usually stipulated that the senior governor could put his seal on official acts only in the presence of his associates, that court cases had to be heard by senior governors and their associates together and resolved by unanimous verdict and that a senior governor or one or more of his associates had the right to challenge other kinds of decisions reached unilaterally without consultation.

An especially important means of minimising opportunities for governor malfeasance was sharpening the division of labour between central and local government. Maximum separation of policy-making from policy implementa­tion was sought, with the former centralised in the chancelleries and duma at Moscow and the latter left to the town governors. Governors were forbidden to set entitlement rates on their own initiative, without express authorisation from Moscow. Even many routine expenditures could not be made without prior chancellery authorisation. The 1670s saw efforts to remove the governors' offices further from the business of collecting taxes and entrusting collection to elected elders and deputies. In most capital criminal cases sentence of death could be made only by the Robbery Chancellery, and the governors of mid­dling and smaller towns were usually restricted from hearing civil cases over a certain rouble value. Some of these restrictions were routinised in governors' working orders, while others were imposed in particular circumstances, by special decree. The centre reserved for itself practically any decision which, if left entirely up to the governor's discretion, might become a tiagost', that is, a ruinous burden on the community. The exceptions were matters requir­ing immediate local response, such as military emergencies. Working orders tried to specify such circumstances in advance and instruct governors that in responding to these exigencies they could consider themselves free to act 'according to the matter at hand, and as God so enlightens them', provided they make immediate report to Moscow afterwards.

The practice of concentrating executive decision-making in the central government did not much reduce the range of tasks the governor was respon­sible for implementing - he still investigated and heard court cases and carried out sentences on them, even if the sentence was pronounced at Moscow - so it could be said the governor was still expected to be omni-competent even if forbidden opportunities tempting him to assert omnipotence. Centralising decision-making at Moscow of course had the disadvantage of encouraging prevarication among the town governors, who instead of acting in timely fashion would write repeatedly to Moscow asking for further clarification as to what they were supposed to do. But the sacrifice of speed to central con­trol was exactly the kind of cost an autocracy was willing to pay, preferable to accepting increased abuse of authority, the higher price that would have attached to entrusting greater discretion to the governors.

Given that executive decision-making was increasingly concentrated at Moscow, ever greater emphasis had to be placed on the reportorial function of the s"ezzhaia izba clericate. The governors and their clerks had to make more frequent and detailed reports to Moscow and submit extracts from or copies of their account books. More attention was given to documenting other matters in which the chancelleries had shown less interest in the first half of the century: keeping accurate trial records and obysk polling records, updating prisoner lists, inventorying confiscated property, compiling logs of interroga­tions of travellers and new settlers, issuing travel passes (now detailed enough to serve almost as passports) and submitting more informative protocols on the elections of customs deputies and jail guards. Ideally, the increased flow of information from such record-keeping would support the centralisation of decision-making at Moscow, making it more realistic and proactive; any con­tradictions or omissions discovered in audits and record checks would expose instances of governor malfeasance; and by making information-gathering and reporting the primary function of the s"ezzhaia izba some further devolution of district-level administrative authority from the governors to their clerks could be expected, thereby partly compensating for the governors' compara­tive inexperience.

The results of this push for greater documentation from the governors' offices were mixed. There was clearly a great increase in the volume of s"ezzhaia izba record production after mid-century, especially in the larger towns; some of it was in response to the chancelleries' increased demands for documentation, but some of it was also in response to expanded grievance and need petitioning from the local population. There are some signs already by the 1660s that the flow of information to Moscow had so expanded as to exceed the processing capabilities of certain chancelleries. This was dealt with by restructuring higher administration, in three ways: by forming new territorial razriady so that financial accounting and supervision of judicial mat­ters could be undertaken at the regional level, by razriad commanders stand­ing between the town governors and the central chancelleries; by further subordinating other military-function chancelleries to the great Military Chancellery, so as to streamline and improve co-ordination of military administration; and by creating a Privy Chancellery and Auditing Chancellery to gather intelligence on commanders and town governors, conduct audits of the governors' offices and other chancelleries and investigate malfeasance and red tape.

On the other hand many s"ezzhaia izba and guba, zemskii, customs and excise offices were not up to the chancelleries' demands for fuller, more reliable and timelier reporting and accounting. They fell months or years behind in submitting annual accounts, failed to record important information like vacant entitlements or property boundaries, or miscounted when tallying servicemen or cash and grain reserves. Governors blamed these failures on clerks who were 'drunkards and brawlers . . . stupid and unable to write'.[47] The clerks in turn could complain of the unreliable information provided by the lower prikaznye liudi and elected officials, who were often outright illiterate (at Kazan' in 1627 the fortifications steward, one of the two musketeer captains, the customs chief, one of the two tavern chiefs, one of the two zemskii elders and eighteen of the nineteen customs and tavern deputies were illiterate).[48] We also find instances of governors accused by their own clerks and other subordinates of seriously neglecting their responsibilities.

A large part of chancellery communications to the provinces there­fore comprised warnings and rebukes about delays or errors in submit­ting annual accounts. The chancelleries obviously could not afford to rely entirely upon official reporting and accounting to catch error, and certainly not to expose abuse of authority and corruption in local administration. B. N. Chicherin and other liberal historians attributed the persistence of error and malfeasance to the underdevelopment of bureaucratic rationality in cen­tral administration, to the centre's inability to articulate a General Regulation and enforce it through regular control mechanisms.[49] Actually, the central chancelleries had developed and were continuing to develop a wide range of measures to enhance central control and combat malfeasance. The sys­tem's real weakness was at the local level, and derived from cadre inadequacy rather than insufficient attention to central control measures: the centre still did not receive enough reliable and timely information because most districts had too few experienced clerks, and too often inattentive as well as inexperi­enced governors; and for lack of revenue the centre was unable adequately to remunerate either governors or clerks, thereby giving them greater reason to embezzle and especially to prey upon the community through bribe-taking, extortion and excessive feeding.

The political economy of corruption

The practice of permitting officials in the provinces to take part of their remu­neration in the form of feedings in cash and kind collected from the communi­ties they governed had not actually been abolished everywhere in the reform of 1555-6. Only certain cantons and districts, mostly in northern Muscovy, appear to have availed themselves of that reform by purchasing their removal from vicegerent jurisdiction and the right to elect their own zemskii officials in exchange for quit-rent payments, equivalent to the old feeding norms, paid into the central chancelleries. The military exigencies of the Livonian war and Troubles discouraged the further expansion of zemskii self-government: it was more important to free up the middle service class for campaign duty and to militarise local government in the frontier districts by expanding the powers of their fortifications stewards or placing them under annually appointed com­mandants or town governors. In fact the practice of feeding enjoyed a revival from the 1570s. Vicegerents and feeding obligations were now officially restored in certain towns and districts which had gone on feeding quit-rent just a few years before. Shares of feeding quit-rent revenues from particular regions were officially awarded to certain powerful boyars (the Shuiskiis, Boris Godunov). In most instances, however, the revival of feeding was not officially decreed but privately arranged between officials and the communities they governed, the feeding rates set by custom and negotiation. The centre now exercised less direct control over feedings than before, since feeding arrangements were no longer defined by charter or revenue list as those before 1556 had been. A 1620 decree attempted to criminalise feeding but quickly proved unenforce­able, above all because of the treasury's continued need to keep down costs for salary remuneration; so the central government thereafter had to content itself with threatening penalties upon officials convicted of illegal exactions, without any clear identification in the law of what constituted these.[50] Deter­mining what was an acceptable feeding rate and what was an illegal feeding exaction was left up to the community; the central government did not inter­vene unless it received complaints of extortionate feeding demands so heavy as to leave the community with too little to meet its tax obligations to Moscow.

Because feeding transactions were no longer regulated by charter or revenue list one can only guess as to the spread and scale of feeding of town governors and their staffs in the seventeenth century. Anecdotal evidence from investiga­tion records and the expenditure books kept by zemskii officials in the north suggest the practice was common there and the amounts involved often con­siderable. If Moscow's toleration of feeding was only tacit, it was not much concealed. It was not unknown for a servitor to petition for appointment as town governor on grounds he needed feeding income ('I beg leave to go out and feed') and to request posting to a particular district on the basis of its feeding yield. Upon completing his term as town governor of Kostroma, one Moscow dvorianin complained his appointment had yielded him far less than the 500-600 roubles' feeding previous governors had received; Moscow agreed to find him another appointment after its investigation confirmed that the 400 roubles of feeding he had received at Kostroma had been with community consent: 'He took what they brought him, and plundered no one.'iS

Many othertowngovernors and prikaznyeliudi didplunderthe communities in their charge, using their power to quash petitions and order jailings and beatings of community representatives in order to extort wildly excessive feedings. This appears to have happened on such a scale as to suggest the town governors treated feeding as a strategy of semi-feudal rent-taking - further evidence that feudal techniques of governance had not been fully supplanted by state bureaucratic techniques.

But there may have been a second reason for the persistence of feeding: the possibility that communities were unwilling to demand its outright abolition or at least a return to its charter regulation because feeding could be turned to some community advantage under the right circumstances. Feeding deliveries were made in the name of the entire community (as what Marcel Mauss called 'total prestations') and were conducted with some ceremony as gestures of obsequy towards the person of the receiving official. Feeding payments not fixed by charter but 'negotiated' between community representatives and the receiving official, arranged at sufficiently generous rates and delivered on time in a confident and ungrudging spirit, could therefore be represented as com­munity gifts and used to partly disarm the official (countering his demand that he be dealt with solely as an outsider present in impersonal superior official capacity, responsible only to the central government), to take his measure (gauging the limits of his greed and his readiness to bargain), to familiarise him (drawing him into a kind of honorary kinship with the community) and finally to obligate him (first in a general sense, and later, at the right moment, to specific favours reciprocating the community's hospitality). The favour sought might be permission for a delegation of petitioners to travel to Moscow, or the governor's favourable report upon the community's petition of need, but occa­sionally it could go as far as requesting that fines or corporal punishment be mitigated or the collection of tax arrears be postponed. In the latter instances there was the danger that feeding was suborning officials, undermining chan­cellery control over them. But because the centre had decided to tolerate feeding remuneration freely offered, the only means it had of counteracting this effect was to engage in its own kind of ritual gifting to the community past the suborned official. Thus the ritual of the sovereign's vouchsafe had the purpose of using gift prestation to re-establish direct personalised reciprocity of trust between sovereign and subjects and to reassert the autocracy's claim that all bounty issued from the sovereign, not from his officials, who merely distributed it on his command.

The same expenditure concerns that left the central government unwilling to suppress feeding complicated its struggle against bribery; and because tol­erance of feeding permitted open collective gift prestation to officials, it was harder to ban outright other more private and particular forms of gifting that could be used to camouflage bribery. Black corruption - obvious embracery and extortion - could be prosecuted, but a large sphere of activity taking the forms of grey and white corruption (purchasing influence and services through tips, gratuities, honorances and feeding prestations) escaped regulation.

The government's commitment to struggle against bribe-taking and bribe- giving in its courts had already been proclaimed in the 1497 Sudebnik, although it took longer for the law to specify penalties and extend them to judges of the highest rank. The 1550 Sudebnik had got around to specifying punish­ments for litigants caught bribing judges or witnesses and for bailiffs, clerks, and secretaries falsifying bonds and court transcripts for bribes; and the 1649 Ulozhenie finally prescribed punishment for witnesses who perjured them­selves for bribes (knouting) and for judges who convicted the innocent or exculpated the guilty for bribes (judges of duma rank were to be deprived of rank, while those below duma rank were to be knouted). By that point it could be said that Muscovite law clearly forbade bribes of embracery (posuly). The bribe of embracery aimed at establishing a relationship between giver and recipient which was prejudicial to state interests and to the interests of the community; it purchased influence or judgements which were denied to others and adversely affected others; and it enabled the bribe-taking official to abuse for his own gain the authority delegated to him by the sovereign, thereby defaming the reputation for impartiality of the sovereign's justice. By these tests, nearly any gift offered or accepted in the courts could potentially result in embracery if complaint of it had been made. Hence the law was most explicit in condemning bribery injudicial settings.

The law also made it a crime for officials to extort illegal payments (vziatki or nalogi i nasil'stvo). There were frequent complaints, especially in Siberia, of governors unjustly imprisoning and tormenting innocent men in order to extort ransoms, and the cash value of some ofthese ransoms was considerable - 20 or 30 roubles or more. If subjects were willing to press a charge that they had been victims of such extortion it was possible to convict a governor and get him deprived of rank or knouted and forced to make restitution to the victims and pay a fine to the treasury.

But there were also various common gift transactions which had the effect of bribes, purchasing some form of official influence yet falling short of obvi­ous discriminatory embracery and deriving from no obvious extortion. The law continued to recognise petitioners' rights to offer officials earnest money and gratuities (pochesti, pominki) to expedite processing of their requests or express their thanks for a service performed. Earnest money and gratuities were in fact such widely accepted income for officials that clerks working in particular chancelleries which traditionally handled a heavy load of court cases or petitioners' requests were usually given lower salary entitlements on the assumption they were better positioned to supplement their pay with gifts. Naturally these clerks came to expect particular gifts for particular services rendered, that is, came to set their own schedules of fees, and such fee-charging in turn received legitimation by analogy with the kormlenie feeding tradition; it even came to be known as 'feeding from services' (kormlenie ot del).[51] Only in one context did the Ulozhenie equate the acceptance of gratuities with the crime of bribe-taking: when a commander discharged troops from service in exchange for gratuities.

This meant it was easy enough, even in a judicial setting, to disguise a bribe as an innocent gratuity provided both giver and recipient connived to support the illusion; and even if such a transaction left an injured party, he might find it difficult to demonstrate the bribe had purchased a judgement that would not have otherwise been forthcoming.

Muscovite law was not unique in struggling to maintain some distinction between innocent gift and corrupting bribe; this problem persisted elsewhere in early modern Europe, especially wherever officials depended at least in part upon fees and gratuities for remuneration. On the one hand, Moscow could not afford to ignore the problem of corruption, as it undermined central control and bureaucratic discipline and discredited the sovereign's claim to offer his subjects protection and redress; therefore there was some chance that community complaints against particularly egregious official corruption could bring about special investigations. On the other hand, Moscow recognised the remuneration of its officials depended partly upon feeding prestations, earnest money and gratuities, so it could not afford a policy of aggressive 'zero tolerance' prosecuting any kind of gifting on the grounds that it had the potential to encourage embracery or extortion; therefore Moscow continued to receive collective petitions complaining that its central chancelleries and governors' offices in general remained too easily bribable by 'strong people', and foreign observers (Olearius, Mayerberg, Perry) continued to consider the selling of verdicts common practice in Muscovite courts.

The community's attitude towards bribery in the governor's office may have been ambivalent. Much of the time, when bribery worked against their own interests, they would have had cause to decry it; but, as with feeding, there would also have been opportunities to exploit it. Whether bribery damaged or served community interests depended on the structure of the local market for bribe-subornable government services. If the governor and his staff set cheap enough rates for their own subornment and bribes could be tendered at low risk, the bribe economy underwent some democratisation and those of modest means and status could purchase some ofthe favours connected elites enjoyed as a matter of course. Where the risk of bribe-giving was greater and bribe prices were higher, only the wealthier strong men of the community were likely to be able to purchase services - which they might use to prey upon their weaker neighbours. Under some circumstances the community could counter the bribes tendered by local strong men by increasing the value of the community's own collective prestations of kormlenie; otherwise the community's only resort was to petition the central chancelleries for an investigation.

Travel to Moscow to present a petition in person was generally restricted to those given travel passes by the governor; some chancelleries held audiences for petitioners only at Christmas time; and after 1649 it was illegal to bypass the chancelleries by trying to petition the tsar directly. But the centre could not afford to deny its subjects altogether the right to petition against local strong men or malfeasant officials. The tsar owed his subjects some defence against official malfeasance. This was not seen as limiting his autocratic power, but rather as strengthening it, for by eliminating malfeasance by officials who defied his will he reinforced and re-legitimated his power as autocrat and ultimate source of all justice and bounty. This was another indication of the transitional character of the Muscovite state in this period: when techniques of bureaucratic centralisation failed it, it freely reverted to traditional centralisa­tion techniques invoking the personal patriarchal authority of the tsar. There­fore the sovereign's vouchsafe invited subjects to voice complaints against their outgoing governor; governors caught quashing petitions against themselves could be prosecuted for crimes against the tsar; and petitioners charging their governor or his staff with abuses betraying the sovereign's interest (gosudarevo delo) could circumvent their governor and come to Moscow without his pass to petition the chancelleries in person.

Muscovy at war and peace

BRIAN DAYIES

At the end of the sixteenth century Muscovite territory covered about 5.4 million square kilometres and carried a population of about seven million inhabitants. During the Troubles its territory and population probably con­tracted significantly, for much of the north-west and west fell under Swedish or Polish occupation and Moscow's control over much of the south was contested by rebel cossack bands and the Tatars. But by 1678 Muscovite territory had tripled and its population had recovered and expanded to about 10.5 million

souls.[52]

Much of this territorial expansion had occurred east of the Urals, on land that was sparsely populated and unable to mount much resistance. The real demonstration of revived Muscovite imperial power had been made on the southern steppe frontier and in the south-west and west. Through protracted war, military colonisation and more adroit diplomacy the government of the early Romanov tsars had recovered the lost provinces of Smolensk and Seversk, placed Kiev and eastern Ukraine under protectorate and moved the realm's southern frontier from the forest-steppe zone into the depths of the steppe. In the process two traditional enemies of Muscovite imperial power, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Crimean khanate, found their own military and diplomatic power considerably reduced. Two more powerful challengers, Sweden and the Ottoman Empire, had also been fought, but for relatively brief periods and with mixed results (failure to wrest control of the Livonian coast, but success at deterring Ottoman attack on left-bank Ukraine). Recognition that Muscovy was becoming a great power in northern and east­ern Europe was apparent in Swedish and Ottoman efforts in the i62os-i63os to enlist her in coalition against the Commonwealth and German Empire and in Polish and Austrian efforts in the 1680s to bring her into the Holy League.

Muscovy's recovery from the humiliating foreign occupations of the Trou­bles and her emergence as a great power owed a great deal to her ability to learn the art of patience: her greatest gains were won through readiness to wait until the opportune geopolitical moment to exploit her rivals' weaknesses and readiness to devote long-term attention to working out ways to overcome friction in the mobilisation and use of military power.

Recovery and revanche, 1613-34

The first task facing the government of Tsar Michael was to assure its survival. The Swedes still occupied Novgorod and King Gustav II Adolf was bent on occupying north-west Muscovy from Narva down to Pskov, holding Karelia, conquering the White Sea coast as far as Archangel, and placing his brother Karl Filip on the Moscow throne. Cossack insurgencies remained a threat: although Zarutskii's cossack army was destroyed on the lower Volga in 1614, a new cossack army under Balovnia had just appeared in Pomor'e. The Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth still presented a mortal danger; Sigismund III held to his plan of driving on Moscow to place his son Wladyslaw on the throne, and a Polish army under Chodkiewicz and Wladyslaw stood ready for this purpose at Smolensk. Lisowski's force of cossacks and Polish and foreign mercenary freebooters engaged Muscovite armies at Orel and Kaluga.

Fortunately Gustav Adolf's long siege of Pskov had failed by early 1616 and with the encouragement of Dutch and English diplomats he began to shift his attention to a project for war against the Commonwealth that would assist the Protestant cause of weakening Habsburg power in Central Europe. Peace talks mediated by John Merrick finally produced a Russo-Swedish peace treaty at Stolbovo in February 1617. By its terms Gustav Adolf abandoned Novgorod and restored it and Staraia Rusa, Porkhov and Sumersk canton to the tsar; in return the tsar ceded him Korela, Kopor'e, Oreshek, Iam and Ivangorod, thereby surrendering direct trade access to the Baltic. Sweden now controlled the Baltic coast from Livonia to Finland.title="">[53]

In the early autumn of 1618 the Poles made their assault upon Moscow. The army of Chodkiewicz and Wladyslaw advanced upon Moscow from Mozhaisk while a second army of Ukrainian cossacks under Sahaidachnyi moved up from the south. They were beaten back from the gates of Moscow in September, but fears that they would attack again brought Tsar Michael's government to sue for truce. In December 1618 a fourteen-year armistice was signed at Deulino. This treaty's terms were even harsher for Muscovy: the western Rus' territories of Smolensk, Chernigov and most of Seversk - holding about thirty towns in all - were ceded to the Commonwealth, bringing its frontier as far east as Viaz'ma, Rzhev and Kaluga (Russia's western borders in 1618 are shown in Map 21.1). Wladyslaw also maintained his claim to the Muscovite throne.[54]

The Stolbovo and Deulino treaties at least bought Muscovy time for recon­struction and rearmament. Muscovy's reconstruction occurred in two stages. In the first stage (1613-18) the boyar duma worked with the Assembly of the Land to restore basic order by re-establishing chancellery control over the town governors, appointing town governors to districts which had not had them before, suppressing banditry in the provinces, co-opting cossack bands, pres­suring communities to resubmit to taxation and militia levies and imposing extraordinary taxes to raise revenue for further reconstruction. The second phase (1619-30) proceeded under the leadership of the young tsar's powerful father Patriarch Filaret (F. N. Romanov), newly returned from nine years' cap­tivity in Poland; it devoted further effort to these tasks while also attempting to repair and improve resource mobilisation for war. Filaret's administration gave priority to repopulating state lands and posad communes with taxpayers, updating cadastres and restoring accounting for arrears and future regular taxes, issuing commercial privileges to European merchants and restoring chancellery control over the distribution of service lands and service salaries. In both stages there were also unsuccessful attempts to secure large loans from England, the Netherlands, Denmark and Persia in exchange for free transit trade rights.

Filaret was strongly committed to a revanchist campaign to recover the western Rus' territories that had been lost to the Commonwealth during the Troubles. Regaining control of Smolensk was especially important to him, for its massive fortress commanded the main road from the frontier to Moscow. The first few years of his government produced no opportunity to undertake this, however; reconstruction had to take priority, there was some opposition to a war of revanche in the Ambassadors' Chancellery, and Filaret was as yet unable to get assurance that Sweden and the Ottoman Empire would join Muscovy in coalition against the Commonwealth. After their defeat at Chocim (1621) the Ottomans had negotiated a peace with the Poles and were making some effort to restrain the Crimean khan from raiding Commonwealth

Map 21.1. Russia's western borders, 1618

territory; Gustav Adolf was interested in alliance with Muscovy, but on terms of commercial concessions too high for Moscow to pay.

But by the end of the decade opportunity had finally presented itself. Gustav Adolf's war against the Poles had ended in an armistice, the Dutch and French having pressed him to sign a peace at Altmark (i629) so he would carry his war into northern Germany instead. But to be free to concentrate his forces in Germany Gustav Adolf now needed a guarantee that the Poles would not breaktheir armistice and drive his garrisons out of Livonia and Ducal Prussia. A Muscovite invasion of eastern Lithuania to reconquer Smolensk could provide the diversion needed to prevent this.

In 1630 Monier, Gustav's ambassador to Moscow, negotiated a commercial agreement of great potential benefit to the Swedish campaign in Germany: Sweden would be given the right to purchase duty-free 50,000 quarters of Muscovite rye annually, for resale at Amsterdam; given that war had disrupted the traditional pattern of the Baltic grain trade, this would yield Sweden a considerable windfall; and in return Sweden would export arms to Muscovy for its invasion of the Commonwealth. The Monier Agreement paved the way for an active Swedish-Muscovite alliance. By i632 this alliance had expanded into a tentative broader coalition with the Ottomans and Crimean Tatars. Filaret's campaign to recover Smolensk thereby became part of a more ambi­tious coalition war conducted simultaneously on the German, Hungarian and southern and eastern Commonwealth fronts.[55]

In i630 the Muscovite government began issuing large cash bounties to hire mercenary officers in Sweden, the Netherlands and Scotland to train a new foreign formation force (inozemskii stroi) in the new tactics used so effectively by the armies of the United Provinces and Sweden. Six regiments of infantry (soldaty), a regiment of heavy cavalry pistoleers (reitary), and a regiment of dra­goons (draguny) were formed from Muscovite peasant militiamen, cossacks, novitiate middle service class cavalrymen and free volunteers from various social categories. These regiments would comprise about half the force oper­ating in the Smolensk theatre in 1632-4. Unlike the traditional formation troops the new regiments were outfitted and salaried at treasury expense - at very considerable expense, in fact, the cost of maintaining just 6,610 soldaty in 1633 exceeding 129,000 roubles.[56] Such a heavy investment in units of European type was necessary, though, because the recent Polish-Swedish war had given the Commonwealth reason to begin expanding and modernising its own foreign formation (cudzoziemski autorament).

The death of Sigismund III in April 1632 was followed by an interregnum which Filaret thought would last at least several months and provide a window of opportunity for war to recover Smolensk. Filaret therefore launched an invasion in August 1632, sending M. B. Sheininto Lithuania with 29,000 men. By October Shein had managed to capture over twenty towns and place Smolensk, his main objective, under siege. But then the Russian offensive stalled. Muddy roads delayed the arrival of Shein's heavy artillery. Wladyslaw IV finally took the throne in February 1633 and immediately began assembling an army of 23,000 men to relieve Smolensk. Because Shein's troops had neglected their lines of circumvallation Wladyslaw's army was able to surround them and place the besiegers under siege in August 1633. In January 1634 Shein sued for armistice in order to evacuate what was left of his army. As Moscow had not authorised this, and because a scapegoat was needed for the collapse of the campaign, the boyar duma charged Shein with treason and had him beheaded.[57]

Continuing the war against the Commonwealth was unthinkable now. The war's chief architect, Patriarch Filaret, had died in October 1633; Gustav Adolf had fallen at Lutzen in November 1632 and Swedish forces in Pomerania were now left more vulnerable to a Polish attack; help from the Ottomans could no longer be expected, for internal revolts and war with Persia had prevented the sultan from carrying out the invasion of Poland scheduled for spring 1634. Above all Muscovy again faced a major threat from the Crimean khanate - not so much from Khan Janibek Girey as from certain Crimean Tatar beys and mirzas hungry for plunder opportunities after several years of harvest failure, heavy inflation, and civil war in Crimea. In the spring and summer of 1632 some 20,000 Tatars ravaged southern Muscovy. In 1633 they came in even greater strength - over 30,000 strong - and this time circumvented the fortifications of the Abatis Line and crossed the Oka into central Muscovy, taking thousands of captives in Serpukhov, Kolomna, Kashira and Riazan' districts. This invasion may have contributed to Shein's defeat at Smolensk by provoking mass desertion by those of his troops whose home districts had come under Tatar attack.

The Ambassadors' Chancellery and boyar duma had already decided to seek armistice in November 1633. But Shein's capitulation at Smolensk made it impossible for them to demand that the Poles should evacuate Smolensk and Dorogobuzh as the price of peace. The armistice signed at Polianovka on 4 June 1634 therefore left the Smolensk, Chernigov and Seversk lands in Polish hands. Filaret's project of recovering the western Rus' territories had failed. For Muscovy there was some partial compensation in Wladyslaw IV's agreement to abandon his claims to the Moscow throne, but it was no longer realistic for Wladyslaw to pursue these claims through war.

The Crimean khanate and the Don cossack host

The peace established by the Polianovka Treaty was undisturbed for two decades. Resumption of war between the Commonwealth and Muscovy was deterred by both sides' recognition that their simultaneously reformed military establishments had put them at rough parity; and after 1634 Wladyslaw IV was preoccupied with Sweden, cossack unrest in Ukraine, pay arrears in his army and his magnates' fears of royal military absolutism.

After the Polianovka Treaty Muscovy could no longer expect active support from Sweden. The cheap Russian grain exports Gustav Adolf had counted on to help subsidise Swedish operations had been cut back; Wladyslaw IV was freerto concentrate his forces against Swedish garrisons on the Baltic coast; and meanwhile most of Sweden's allies against the German Empire were suing for peace with Ferdinand II. Oxenstierna therefore had begun withdrawing Swedish forces from Germany in anticipation of a Polish or Danish attack somewhere on the Baltic front. Queen Christina's other regents were even more alarmed and made several important concessions, including Swedish evacuation of Prussia, in order to obtain a truce with the Commonwealth (the Treaty of Stuhmsdorf, 1635).

This shift in the balance of power in the Baltic made it necessary for Moscow to disentangle itself from northern European affairs and maintain cautious neutrality vis-a-vis both Sweden and the Commonwealth. For the most part it kept to this course, departing from it only briefly, in 1643, when Denmark and the Commonwealth tried to tempt Muscovy into coalition against Sweden by holding out the possibility of a marriage between Tsar Michael's daughter Irina and the Danish crown prince Waldemar. Entering such a coalition would have been unwise, for Swedish military power had revived by that point, strengthened by alliance with France and generous French subsidies. The tsar and his councillors fortunately realised this just in time, when a Swedish army under Torstensson invaded and overwhelmed Denmark on the eve of Waldemar's arrival in Moscow. The tsar immediately abandoned the marriage project and even placed Waldemar under house arrest to reassure the Swedes he would no longer listen to Danish blandishments.

As there were no opportunities for territorial expansion or influence on the Baltic and western Rus' fronts, Muscovite diplomatic and military activity in 1635-54 focused almost entirely on defending the southern frontier against the threat from the Crimean khanate.

It was logical and necessary to give the Crimean problem priority because the khanate was now more dangerous than ever, its behaviour more unpre­dictable and more resistant to traditional means of containment. The Crimean Tatar invasions of southern and central Muscovy in i632-3 showed that the khan was losing control of his beys and Nogai confederates, that they were willing to defy him and launch attacks on Muscovite border towns with nearly as many troops as the khan could mobilise on his own authority. Furthermore, less could now be expected from Moscow's traditional diplomatic approach to deterring Crimean aggression - appealing to the Ottoman sultan to rein in the khan - for the Crimean nobility was increasingly anti-Ottoman and even separatist in spirit and the khans under greater pressure to play to this spirit in order to keep themselves in power.[58]

Meanwhile Muscovy had lost much of its leverage over its own vassal polities on the Kipchak steppe. It could not count on the fealty of the Great Nogai beys as a counterweight to the khanate, for the Great Nogai Horde was in disintegration and many of its elements driven west across the Volga by the invading Kalmyks and forced into alliance with the Crimean Tatars and Lesser Nogais. The Don cossack host remained implacably hostile to the khanate and the Porte, but also ready to defy Moscow whenever their interests diverged; it had baulked when called upon to support an expedition out of Astrakhan' to punish the Lesser Nogais in 1633, and it repeatedly ignored Moscow's urgings to cease making naval raids on Crimean and Ottoman territory. Don cossack raiding activity thereby risked provoking retaliation not only by the Crimean Tatars but by the Turks. But there was little Moscow could do to prevent it; reducing the semi-annual cash and stores subsidy (Don shipment, Donskoi otpusk) sent down the Don just had the effect of giving the host more reason to turn to raiding to make up its lost revenue. In fact throughout this period the independent political-military course taken by the host would be nearly as much a problem for Moscow as the hostility of the Crimean khanate.

As diplomacy could accomplish little, security on the southern frontier came to depend all the more on military measures: resuming military coloni­sation in the forest-steppe and steppe, on a vastly expanded scale and using new, more cost-effective manpower categories; strengthening and expanding defence lines; experimenting with new military formations and tactics, and reorganising command-and-control; and giving greater attention to small- scale offensive operations, sending small forces down the Don to put more pressure on the Crimean Tatars while tightening Moscow's control over the Don cossack host.

During the Smolensk war the total strength of the Borderland and Riazan' arrays had been reduced to about 5,000 men. It was now substantially increased, to 12,000 men by 1635 and 17,000 men by 1636. This made it easier for the corps of the Borderland and Riazan' arrays to reinforce each other and for the Great Corps (Bol'shoi polk) finally to begin providing a forward defence, to march south from Tula to the relief of the towns south of the Abatis Line. The Military Chancellery also undertook a general inspection of the Abatis Line, and in 1638-9 it put 20,000 men to work rebuilding some 600 kilometres of the line. The forces manning the repaired Abatis Line now included foreign formation infantry and dragoons - some from regiments that had served in the Smolensk campaign, others newly enlisted - and although their deployment was only seasonal, this at least set the precedent for using foreign formation units on the southern frontier against the Tatar enemy.[59]

Military colonisation beyond the Abatis Line was resumed in order to estab­lish an outer perimeter far to the south of the Oka. Several new garrison towns were built in 1635-7 (Chernavsk, Kozlov, Verkhnii Lomov, Nizhnii Lomov, Tambov, Userdsk, Iablonov, Efremov), mostly in the south-east, to secure the territory threatened from the Nogai Road. An earthen steppe wall built from Kozlov to the Chelnova River proved especially effective in blocking Tatar raids up the Nogai Road. By early 1637 this had convinced the tsar and duma to authorise 111,000 roubles to build similar new garrison towns and steppe wall segments to the south-west, to stop Tatar movement up the Muravskii, Iziumskii and Kal'miusskii trails. These new towns and steppe wall segments were built in such proximity that it was an easy matter to link them with the older steppe town of Belgorod to form a single defence line network, the central length of the future Belgorod Line.[60]

The Military Chancellery wanted to settle these new garrison towns as rapidly and cheaply as possible, so it took up new methods and formats of military colonisation. It mobilised thousands of volunteers by relaxing stan­dards of social eligibility for enlistment in military service, even to the point of permitting the enlistment of ruined former servicemen who had been forced by poverty or calamity to take up residence under lords as peasant tenants; and it altered standards and procedures in court hearings for the remand of fugitive peasants, to make it harder for lords to recover peasant tenants who had fled south to enrol illegally in the new garrison towns. Revolt in Common­wealth Ukraine was driving thousands of Ukrainian refugees into southern Muscovy; many of them were settled in special new service colonies in the south-west, on the steppes below Belgorod and Valuiki, in what would come to be called Sloboda Ukraine, while others were distributed among the new garrison towns of the Belgorod Line, even as far east as Kozlov. Their cos­sack experience and their skills at milling, distilling and mouldboard plough farming would contribute significantly to the success of the Muscovite drive to colonise the southern steppe. And in a decision very consequential for the sub­sequent social history of southern Muscovy, the Military Chancellery chose not to reproduce in the new southern frontier districts the kind of middle service class - deti boiarskie with service lands of over 200 quarters per field and peasant tenants - traditionally encountered in central and northern Mus­covy. Instead it reconfigured the middle service class, adapting it to southern frontier economic and service conditions, by enrolling deti boiarskie who were also odnodvortsy and siabry - yeomen with much smaller service land entitle­ment rates and land allotments, lacking peasant tenant labour and holding their service lands as repartitionable allotments within collective block grants administered by their village communes.

These measures strengthening southern frontier defences helped Muscovy weather the crisis that broke out in spring 1637 when the Don cossacks mur­dered the Ottoman diplomat Foma Cantacuzene and besieged and captured the Ottoman fortress of Azov. Azov had been left suddenly vulnerable to a Don cossack attackbecause Khan Inaet Girey's forces were mostly off in Bucak fighting Khantimur and Sultan Murad IV was preoccupied with wars in Persia and Hungary. The Don host couldjustify seizing Azov because its garrison had provided support for Tatar raids upon Don cossack settlements on the lower Don, and Ataman Ivan Katorzhnyi may also have calculated that possessing Azov would allow him to bargain for more generous treatment from the tsar and larger Don shipment subsidies. But Moscow had no reason to authorise the seizure of Azov. While Azov's Ottoman garrison was too small to pose a threat to the towns of southern Muscovy, its presence had been enough to serve as a tripwire providing the sultan with cause, if he chose to make use of it, to retaliate directly against Don cossack or Muscovite aggression. If the sultan should get the impression that Moscow was in any way complicit in the attack on Azov it would damage Muscovite trade at Azov and Kaffa and might even drag Muscovy into war with the Porte.

As long as the Don cossacks occupied Azov (1637-42) Moscow therefore followed the policy of strengthening its southern frontier defence while simul­taneously using diplomacy to absolve the tsar of any blame for the crisis. Tsar Michael sent some grain and munitions to the host but refused their request to send troops and place Azov under his protection. An Assembly of the Land convened in 1642 was all for going to war, but Tsar Michael ignored it and resumed paying tribute to the new Crimean khan even while Muscovite envoys sent to Crimea were being abused. Missions were sent to Sultan Murad IV and, after his death in 1640, to Sultan Ibrahim, to give reassurance that the murder of Cantacuzene and seizure of Azov had been the work of brigands acting 'for reasons unknown... without our instruction'.[61] In June-September 1641 a large Ottoman army commanded by the pasha of Silistria besieged the cossacks in Azov; although it failed to retake Azov, it clearly demonstrated how important recovery of Azov was to Sultan Ibrahim, so when Ibrahim issued a new ultimatum to Moscow in March 1642 Tsar Michael complied and ordered the Don cossacks to evacuate Azov. Ottoman forces reoccupied Azov in September 1642 and reinforced its garrison.

War with the Ottoman Empire had been avoided. The new Turkish garrison at Azov carried out some retaliatory raids on Don cossack settlements but left the southern Muscovite border towns alone. There had been Crimean Tatar raids into southern Muscovy in 1637 and 1641-3, but they had been undertaken by beys and princes acting on their own, driven by famine and livestock epidemics in Crimea (Inaet Girey's successors Begadyr Girey, r. 1637­41, and Mehmed Girey, r. 1641-4, were no more able to curb the Crimean nobility).

Muscovite-Ottoman relations had suffered serious damage, however. The Don cossacks had rebuilt their forts and settlements near Azov and were again attacking Turkish troops; Sultan Ibrahim demanded the tsar remove the host from the lower Don, a request beyond the tsar's power to fulfil. The new Crimean khan Islam Girey III (r. 1644-54) decided the best way to tame the Crimean nobility was to realign with the Ottoman sultan and put himself at the head of major invasions against the Commonwealth and Muscovy. Therefore 20,000 Tatars invaded the Commonwealth and another 20,000 swept across southern Muscovy in the summer of 1644, carrying off about 10,000 prisoners. Another 6,000 Muscovite captives were taken the following year. Sultan Ibrahim gave his approval for these operations.[62] By unleashing Islam Girey III and threatening direct Ottoman military retaliation Ibrahim was able to stop the Polish-Muscovite rapprochement. In 1646 Wladyslaw IV renewed peace with the Porte and resumed tribute gifts to the khan.

Moscow therefore had to increase investment in its southern frontier defence system. The Tatar incursions of 1644-5 had taken advantage of partic­ular weaknesses in that system: the absence of unified command in the corps of the southern field army, and the over-centralisation of command initia­tive in the Military Chancellery; the inability of the field army (still stationed along the Abatis Line) to offer a forward defence for the districts to its south; large gaps in the Belgorod Line, especially between Voronezh and Kozlov and between the Tikhaia Sosna and Oskol' rivers; and Moscow's inability to stop Don cossack raids further provoking the Tatars and Turks.

The new government of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich addressed each of these weaknesses in i646-54. Several more garrison towns were built and linked up with the Belgorod Line. Most of the gaps in the line were filled by 1654; by 1658 the line extended all along the southern edge of the forest steppe zone, from Akhtyrka on the Vorskla River to Chelnavsk about 800 kilometres to the east, and a second defence line some 500 kilometres long extended from Chelnavsk to the Volga. Twenty-five garrison towns stood on or just behind the Belgorod Line; thousands of odnodvortsy deti boiarskie, service cossacks and musketeers had been settled on ploughlands in these new garrison districts.

In 1646 the corps previously deployed far to the north in the Borderland and Riazan' arrays were restationed along the new perimeter formed by the Belgorod Line. The Great Corps, Vanguard and Rear Guard now stood at Livny, Kursk and Elets each spring and shifted in June to Belgorod, Karpov and Iablonov. Garrison contingents and small field units south of the Abatis Line no longer had to march north to rendezvous with the corps but could move south to join them on the Belgorod Line.

This in turn led to new command-and-control practices along the Belgorod Line. Because southern garrison forces could now play a larger role in rein­forcing corps operations, it became necessary for the corps commander at Belgorod to take up broader year-round operational and logistics authority over all the troops residing in the Belgorod Array territory, those in the gar­risons as well as the Belgorod corps. The town governors of the southern garrison towns were thereby subordinated in military affairs, and gradually in broader administrative affairs, to the commander at Belgorod, to whom the Military Chancellery could now devolve resource logistic and monitoring functions that had previously been centralised at Moscow. By 1653 one can speak of a large Belgorod Line regional military administration (Belgorodskii razriad) operating out of the corps commander's headquarters at Belgorod or Kursk. During the Thirteen Years War this new principle of regional military administration would take on even greater importance: similar territorial razri- ady would be formed on the north-western front at Novgorod and Smolensk and the westernmost districts of the Belgorod razriad spun off into a separate Sevsk razriad.

After the Smolensk war most but not all of the expensive foreign formation regiments had been disbanded. A few thousand foreign formation soldaty and dragoons had manned the Abatis Line in 1638,1639 and 1642, but it had not been considered cost-effective to deploy them every year. But in 1646 the government decided to make foreign formation units an important permanent element in the southern frontier defence system. A number of officers were hired abroad, especially in the Netherlands; a kriegsbuch on the exercise of musket and pike was translated into Russian, to help in training Muscovite infantry; a new census was conducted to levy troops by household rather than from inhabited chetvert'; and Tsar Alexis endorsed the Military Chancellery's recommendation that the southern garrisons cease relying on irregularly levied peasant militia to help defend the Belgorod Line and instead place entire peasant communities in standing service as 'settled' dragoons and infantry, drilled in their villages year-round under foreign officers. In Komaritskaia canton in 1646 5,125 state peasants were taken into three dragoon regiments; the next year several private votchina villages along the Voronezh River west of Kozlov were likewise put in dragoon service.[63]

In 1648 a new cossack revolt in Ukraine, led by Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi and in alliance with the Crimean Tatars, dealt devastating defeats to Polish armies at Zhevty Vody and Korsun'. The massacre of another Polish army at Batih in May 1652 placed Khmel'nyts'kyi in control of most of Ukraine as far west as Kamienets in Podol'ia and made the prospect of Muscovite alliance with rebel Ukraine more attractive and war with the Commonwealth in Ukraine and Belarus' more likely. The Military Chancellery therefore began organising foreign formation units for the southern field army, not just for local defence. Four regiments (8,000 men) of soldaty were formed at Iablonov, in the Belgorod razriad, filled largely from conscripts levied from the non-taxpaying populations of eighteen southern districts. The next year some soldat regiments were also formed near Smolensk on the north-western front.[64]

Moscow also took steps to tighten its control over the Don cossack host. Larger Don shipment subsidies were dispatched in 1644,1646 and 1647, but there were also attempts in 1646 and 1648 to 'reinforce' the host with new Muscovite manpower in such a way as to bind it to Moscow-directed operations. Larger expeditions, resupplied by river flotillas built on the Voronezh and upper Don, were sent down in 1659-62; although they still held back from assaulting Azov, they did join the Don cossacks in land and sea raids to harass Ottoman forces building new fortresses on the Mertvyi Donets and Kalancha rivers. From 1662 to 1671 Muscovite forces on the lower Don refrained from operations against the Turks and devoted their attention to distributing the Don shipments and keeping the host under surveillance.

All of these Don expeditions suffered heavy losses to hunger and desertion, and they did not accomplish much against the Tatars and Turks. But they did give the Muscovite army valuable experience in land-sea operations and did begin to restrict the Don cossack host's freedom of initiative. By the late 1660s the host was in transformation. Muscovite military colonisation of the Belgorod Line had set off a cascade migration of thousands of deserters and fugitive peasants southward into the Don host. The resources provided by the Don agricultural economy and Don shipments were not enough to support them. Meanwhile Moscow's diplomacy to get the sultan and the khan to stop attacks in Ukraine on behalf of Hetman Doroshenko (see below) meant that Moscow could no longer sanction Don cossack raids on the khanate or on Ottoman coastal towns. Denied plunder opportunities on the Black Sea, part of the host rebelled and followed Stepan Razin on a campaign of piracy on the Caspian and then on a revolt against Ataman Kornilo Iakovlev and Muscovite garrisons on the lower Volga. Razin's defeat in 1671 left the host further servilised to Moscow.[65]

The Thirteen Years War, 1654-67

As early as 1649 Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi had tried to convince Moscow to assist his revolt against the Commonwealth and put Ukraine under the tsar's pro­tection. At that time Moscow had not been interested; taking responsibility for Ukraine as a client or vassal polity had been a major objective of Muscovite grand strategy, and joining the Ukrainians in war upon the Commonwealth also meant going to war against the Crimean Tatars, who had left their alliance with Khmel'nyts'kyi. By late 1652, however, the tsar's government was ready to ally with Khmel'nyts'kyi. Khmel'nyts'kyi's great victory at Batih meant that Muscovite intervention in Ukraine was likely to meet a greatly reduced Polish military threat, and there was still hope that Ukrainian and Muscovite diplomacy could convince the Crimean khan to rejoin the alliance against the Poles. But the primary reason Tsar Alexis accepted Khmel'nyts'kyi's alliance proposal in June 1653 and formalised it in the Pereiaslav (Pereiaslavl') Treaty in January 1654 had much less to do with Ukraine than with Muscovite designs upon Lithuanian Belarus'. The Commonwealth's war against Khmel'nyts'kyi's cossacks had left very few troops defending Lithuania and the west Rus' ter­ritories - Smolensk, Seversk, Chernigov - wrested from Muscovy during the Troubles. Reconquering these territories promised to be considerably eas­ier than in 1632-4, particularly now that Khmel'nyts'kyi promised to send thousands of cossack troops north to assist such a campaign. Furthermore, Moscow felt that the window of opportunity to accomplish this was closing, for Lithuanian Grand HetmanJanusz Radziwill, aware of Lithuania's vulner­ability to Muscovite invasion, was trying to get the hospodar of Moldavia to mediate a peace treaty between the Commonwealth and Khmel'nyts'kyi's hetmanate.

There was therefore an impulsive element in Moscow's decision to inter­vene in Ukraine. Muscovite military preparations for the war were thorough: the invasion of Lithuania was soundly planned, and it was decided that for­eign formation units would comprise a larger part of the field armies on the Lithuanian and Ukrainian fronts, towards which end 40,000 muskets were bought from the Dutch and Swedes and more enlistees and conscripts were taken into the soldat regiments of the Belgorod razriad.15 But the full strate­gic consequences of placing Ukraine under Muscovite protection were not yet apparent. Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi had created a de facto independent het- manate across most of Ukraine in six years of war; it was Khmel'nyts'kyi's mil­itary leadership and diplomatic cunning which held this hetmanate together;

15 A. N. Mal'tsev, RossiiaiBelorussiiav seredine XVllveka (Moscow: MGU, 1974), p. 23.

and it was Khmel'nyts'kyi's vision of an autonomous Ukraine in loose con­federation and military alliance with Muscovy that his colonels understood to be the objective of the Pereiaslav Treaty. But once Khmel'nyts'kyi passed from the scene the hetmanate would be riven by conflicts between the cos­sack elite and rank-and-file, between cossacks and townsmen and peasants and between the cossack colonels and the Muscovite commanders garrisoning the larger Ukrainian towns. The task of protecting Ukraine would inevitably give Moscow reason to increase the number of its garrisons, make greater demands upon Ukrainian revenue sources to provision them and thereby encroach upon Ukrainian liberties. Furthermore, because Khmel'nyts'kyi had been pursu­ing an imaginative but complicated diplomacy since i648 before turning to Moscow for protection, the Crimean Tatars, Moldavians, Wallachians, Tran- sylvanians, Ottomans and Swedes had come to have stakes in what happened to Ukraine. Muscovite protectorate over Ukraine therefore had serious reper­cussions for Muscovy's relations with these nations, and Ukrainian cossacks growing disillusioned with Muscovite protectorate would have alternative alliance models (Ottoman-Tatar protectorate, reincorporation in the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth, and later, Swedish protectorate) to which to turn.

On 15 May 1654 Muscovite armies invaded Lithuanian Belarus' and entered eastern Ukraine. The primary objective in this opening campaign was clearly the recapture of Smolensk and the west Rus' territories annexed to the grand duchy of Lithuania. Three large army groups entered Lithuanian territory: a main army of 40,000 men under the command of the tsar himself, moving from Viaz'ma towards Smolensk; a second army of 15,000 under V P. Sheremetev, advancing from Velikie Luki against Polotsk and Vitebsk; and another army of 15,000 under A. N. Trubetskoi, moving from Briansk towards Minsk. A smaller force under L. Saltykov also advanced from Pskov, and Khmel'nyts'kyi sent some 20,000 Ukrainian cossacks under Colonel Zolotarenko to invade Belarus' from the south. Muscovite troop deployments in Ukraine were considerably smaller: 4,000 troops under A. V Buturlin were sent to reinforce Zolotarenko, and 2,500 troops went to garrison Kiev. Another 7,000 Muscovite troops held the Belgorod Line against Tatar attack.[66]

The invasion of Belarus' and Lithuania was strikingly successful. The Mus­covites had overwhelming numerical superiority (Lithuanian Grand Hetman Janusz Radziwill, charged with the task of throwing them back, had no more than 6,000—7,000 effectives); their operation had been planned long in advance;

and the tsar's presence with the army provided better command-and-control than if supreme command had remained back at Moscow. In June the Mus­covites took Belaia, Dorogobuzh and Roslavl'; by late August they had captured Mstislavl', Orsha, Mogilev and the capital at Vilnius; Smolensk fell to them in September, and Vitebsk in November.

In the summer of 1655 Sweden's King Karl X Gustav (r. 1654-60) began his own invasion of the Commonwealth in order to exploit the Muscovites' suc­cesses in Lithuania while pre-empting their advance towards his own intended sphere of influence in the region. As most Polish and Lithuanian troops were already engaged against the Muscovites the invading Swedes were able to make remarkable progress in just a few months - and their sudden gains threatened to usurp everything the Muscovites had won to that point. On 13 June Swedish troops landed in Riga and seized Dunaburg, then under siege by the Muscovites; on 17 August, a week after Muscovite troops had taken Vilnius, Lithuanian Grand Hetman Janusz Radziwillll signed the Treaty ofNiej- dany, recognising Karl Gustav as grand duke over all of Lithuania; and on 8 September the Swedes entered Warsaw, forcing Jan Kazimierz to flee into exile in Silesia.

Karl Gustav had no desire to see the Muscovites seize Riga or any other part of the Baltic coast, but he had been prepared to accept Muscovite control over the southern Lithuanian hinterland if this kept his peace with Muscovy while he finished off the Poles.17 But Moscow was not interested in such a compromise, for it had revised its original war aims: A. L. Ordin-Nashchokin, the rising star of Muscovite diplomacy, now considered it paramount that Muscovy secure its dominion over occupied Lithuania and win access to the Baltic, and he therefore urged the tsar to negotiate a peace withJan Kazimierz and an alliance with him against the Swedes. This was against the advice of Khmel'nyts'kyi, who was seeking to form a Swedish-Ukrainian alliance which would finish off the Commonwealth and guarantee the liberation of right-bank Ukraine. In fact Ordin-Nashchokin so felt the need for haste that Muscovy declared war upon Sweden in May 1656 while peace talks with the Poles at Vilnius were still in their preliminary stage. A treaty with the Commonwealth was finally signed in November, but it was only for an armistice, not a permanent peace and true alliance, for the Muscovite envoys at Vilnius had not been satisfied with Jan Kazimierz's offer to cede Smolensk and Seversk and had held out for even larger concessions: the cession of Lithuania, or the 'election' of Tsar Alexis as Poland's king upon the death of Jan Kazimierz.

17 L. V Zaborovskii, Rossiia, Rech' Pospolitaia, i Shvetsiia v seredine XVII v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1981), pp. 118,121.

Muscovy's war with Sweden mostly took the form of operations against small Swedish garrisons in Karelia, Izhorsk and Livonia. In the summer and autumn of 1656 Muscovite forces were able to capture Dunaburg, Koknes and Iur'ev (Dorpat), but they failed to take Riga even after three months' siege because they had no fleet to blockade its reinforcement by sea. The Swedes launched a counter-offensive the next year, defeating the Muscovites at Walk but failing to capture Gdov.

In December 1658 the breakdown of peace talks with the Commonwealth and Vyhovs'kyi's betrayal in Ukraine forced Tsar Alexis to sign a three-year armistice with the Swedes. Sweden was ready for truce; the Polish and Lithua­nian hetmans had joined in confederatio against the Swedes and had brought back Jan Kazimierz, who had regained the military initiative; and Karl X Gustav's operations against Prussia and Denmark had provoked the Danes, Prussians, Austrians and Dutch to join the Commonwealth in coalition against him. His sudden death in February 1660 gave his successor, Karl XI, the oppor­tunity to sue for peace while terms were still favourable. The Treaty of Oliva (May 1660) recognised Hohenzollern sovereignty over Prussia in exchange for recognition of Swedish control over Livonia and Jan Kazimierz's abandonment of his claim to the Swedish throne. The Treaty of Kardis (June 1661) established a permanent peace between Sweden and Muscovy and compelled Tsar Alexis to return to Swedish control the Baltic towns and territories he had captured since 1656.

The 1656-8 armistice between Muscovy and the Commonwealth had not bound Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi from continuing his operations against the Poles, or the Crimean Tatars from continuing their raids into Ukraine and southern Muscovy. Khmel'nyts'kyi's attempts to bring Moldavia and Wallachia into alliance with him and George II Rakoczi, along with Zaporozhian and Don cossack raids on Azov, had the effect of provoking a rapprochement between the Poles and the Turks and Tatars. The sultan and khan launched a punitive invasion of Moldavia and Wallachia and offered Jan Kazimierz detachments to strike against the Ukrainians and the Don cossacks.

Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi died in July 1657. His secretary Ivan Vyhovs'kyi was proclaimed the new hetman. From the start three problems confronted Vyhovs'kyi: it was now clear that any chance for resumed alliance with the khanate required reconciliation with the Poles as well; his own authority was being challenged by Pushkar, the colonel of the Poltava regiment, and by Barabash, the Zaporozhian ataman, who enjoyed the protection of the Muscovite general Romodanovskii; and there was growing dissatisfaction in Ukraine with the Muscovite protectorate. Moscow diplomats had been ready at the Vilnius talks (from which Ukrainian envoys had been excluded) to trade Ukraine for Polish recognition of Tsar Alexis's future right to the Polish throne; and in preparation for resumed hostilities with the Commonwealth Moscow was establishing more garrisons in Ukraine and requisitioning army provisions and transport at ruinous rates.[67]

When Muscovy's war with the Commonwealth resumed in Lithuania in September 1658 it was therefore without a secured Ukrainian rear. On 6 September Vyhovs'kyi signed a treaty with the Poles at Hadiach, by terms of which Jan Kazimierz agreed to reincorporate Ukraine in the Commonwealth as a grand duchy of Ruthenia, recognise Vyhovs'kyi as grand duke subject to the king alone, and dismantle the Uniate Church (although the Sejm ratified but never honoured this treaty, Hadiach henceforth served as an alternative model of Ukrainian autonomy for those cossacks unable to trust in Muscovite protectorate).

Military alliance with Vyhovs'kyi's cossacks allowed Jan Kazimierz to redou­ble his efforts against the Muscovites on the Lithuanian front. The war here took an increasingly brutal turn involving long sieges and ambushes provok­ing the Muscovites to cruel reprisals against the local population - thereby intensifying resistance to Muscovite occupation. Fighting Vyhovs'kyi and his Tatar and Polish allies in Ukraine also required much larger Muscovite forces than the Ukrainian theatre had previously seen. G. G. Romodanovskii's corps had some success against them at Lokhvitsa, but S. I. Pozharskii's corps was ambushed and crushed at Konotop in July 1659. Muscovite forces then began to withdraw from Ukraine to regroup at Sevsk. Fortunately for Moscow, its protectorate over Ukraine - at least over its left bank - was saved at this moment by a cossack revolt against Vyhovs'kyi. Muscovite armies exploited this revolt and re-entered Ukraine. In September 1659 Vyhovs'kyi was deposed and Muscovite troops awarded the hetmanate to Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi's son Iurii.

Iurii Khmel'nyts'kyi was inexperienced and easily led, and Moscow was determined to do the leading; the chance that the new hetman might also turn renegade had to be prevented. Moscow therefore took his accession as the opportunity to redefine its protectorate responsibilities so as to limit the hetman's authority. The kind of Ukrainian autonomy Moscow had intended to recognise in the 1654 Pereiaslav Treaty can still be debated; but it is very clear that the revised Pereiaslav Articles promulgated in 1659 aimed at greatly reducing Ukraine's autonomy. Chernigov, Starodub and Novgorod Severskii were declared part of Muscovy, not of Ukraine, and were put under full Mus­covite administration; the hetman could no longer receive foreign envoys or undertake his own campaigns without the tsar's permission; and a successor hetman could not be chosen without 'report' to Moscow.[68]

Not surprisingly the 1659 Pereiaslav Articles had the opposite effect to what Moscow intended: they heightened cossack discontent with the Muscovite protectorate and increased the pressure on Iurii Khmel'nyts'kyi to follow the example of Vyhovs'kyi and turn renegade. In the autumn of 1660 a large Muscovite army under V B. Sheremetev drove into Volynia with the objec­tive of crushing the Polish-Lithuanian field army and capturing L'viv. Iurii Khmel'nyts'kyi's army was supposed to reinforce Sheremetev at Chudnov, but Iurii instead signed a peace treaty with the Poles and pledged to restore Ukraine to the Commonwealth. Sheremetev's army of 40,000 men, surrounded by Polish and Crimean forces, was forced to surrender.

Operations in Ukraine in 1660-2 generally took the form of raids and counter-raids across the Dnieper. Polish and Tatar attacks on the left bank did the greatest damage; Khmel'nyts'kyi's cossacks were less effective because their ranks were increasingly divided by doubts over the ultimate intentions of their Polish and Tatar allies. Khmel'nyts'kyi's army suffered a serious defeat in July 1662 when the Crimean Tatars failed to come to his rescue from Romodanovskii. In January 1663 a cossack assembly at Chyhyryn deposed Iurii Khmel'nyts'kyi and elected Pavel Teteria hetman. Teteria, a supporter of the Hadiach Articles and alliance with the Poles, was rejected by the Zaporozhian host and the cossacks of the left bank, who in June 1663 proclaimed Ivan Briukhovets'kyi, a client of Moscow, as their hetman.

November 1663 to January 1664 saw the last great campaign of the war. Three large corps under King Jan Kazimierz, Stefan Czarniecki and Hetman Teteria crossed the Dnieper, sacked a number of small towns on the left bank, and pushed as far east as Hlukhiv and Novgorod Severskii before being thrown back by Romodanovskii's and Briukhovets'kyi's forces.

Both sides were now too exhausted to continue major operations. There were no major battles in Belarus' or Lithuania in 1665, and, except for some raids near Korsun' and Bila Tsirkva, no Muscovite attempt to push deep into right-bank Ukraine.

In 1666 Petro Doroshenko, Teteria's successor as hetman on the right bank, provided further reason for the Commonwealth and Muscovy to begin peace talks: he suddenly broke with the Poles and allied with the Crimean khan in a campaign to liberate and unite both banks of Ukraine. In January 1667 the Commonwealth and Muscovy signed a thirteen-year armistice at Andrusovo. With the signing of the Andrusovo Armistice the Poles finally con­ceded Smolensk, Seversk and Chernigov to Muscovy (a concession they had been ready to make in 1656 at Vilnius) and confirmed Muscovite sovereignty over left-bank Ukraine. They also left Muscovy in temporary control of Kiev, having agreed to postpone final resolution of the Kiev question to expedite signing of the armistice and free their forces for campaign against Doroshenko.

The strain the war had placed on Muscovite finances and manpower mobil­isation had been considerable but not as permanently damaging as the strain upon the Commonwealth's resources. The Tsar's government was not under the same political restraints as the Polish crown; its ability to mobilise troops and provisions did not depend upon the vote of a Sejm fearful of feeding a royal military absolutism. The decision to increase the relative weight in the army of the foreign formation troops (7 per cent of the Muscovite military establishment in 1651, 79 per cent in 1663) had been sound. With the excep­tion of the better-trained elite guards regiments based in Moscow the soldat infantry were still of limited tactical effectiveness on the battlefield. More importantly, though, the soldat regiments were conscripted from politically subaltern commoners, so it was easier to rebuild them than damaged units of traditional middle service class cavalry. Over the course of the war about 100,000 men were conscripted into the soldat regiments; the original rate of one conscript from every twenty-five households (1658) was soon increased to one from every twenty (1660) and in many districts on the Belgorod Line this rate was ignored and men taken from nearly every household. Furthermore, although the government was still unable to collect cash taxes on a scale suffi­cient to pay its growing foreign formations (and the inflation of the early 1660s made this all the harder), it was free to compensate by switching to payment in grain and imposing new grain taxes, even on social categories previously considered exempt.[69] For these reasons it did not take long after Andrusovo for Muscovite military resource mobilisation to recover and demonstrate its ability to meet the even greater demands of the continuing war in Ukraine.

Conflict with the Ottomans and Crimean Tatars, 1667-89

After the Andrusovo Armistice the Muscovite government pursued a very cautious policy towards Sweden. It did press for right of free trade at Riga and Revel' in 1673 and significantly reinforced its border near Narva in 1677, but throughout the Scanian war (1674-9) it rebuffed Denmark's efforts to drag it into conflict with Sweden, even though this might have provided Moscow an opportunity to regain Livonian territory. Sweden eventually prevailed in the Scanian war, but at the cost of some temporary weakening of its military power, so the Swedish threat to Muscovy through the 1680s was considerably

reduced. [70]

Muscovite attention in this period was instead focused largely upon the situation in Ukraine, where it faced four major threats to its control of the left bank: the emergence of a rival right-bank hetmanate bent on rolling back the Muscovites and reunifying Ukraine; the Commonwealth's resistance to Ordin-Nashchokin's project of a permanent peace and alliance and, worse, the possibility the Commonwealth might break the Andrusovo Armistice and resume war with Muscovy; the continuing problems of Crimean Tatar raiding; and the growing danger of Ottoman invasion.

By 1663 the military and political stalemate had already resulted in the de facto division of Ukraine along the Dnieper. This division was formalised at the peace talks at Andrusovo in 1667, from which Ukrainian cossackrepresentatives had been excluded. Cossacks on both banks of the Dnieper were therefore deeply dissatisfied with the outcome of the Andrusovo talks. By 1666 many cossacks on the left bank had come to resent the tsar's protectorate: there were now over 11,000 Muscovite troops garrisoning Kiev and the left-bank towns, Muscovite voevoda administration was spreading, mill and tavern revenues now went to the tsar's treasury and Hetman Briukhovets'kyi was unsuitably obsequious towards Moscow. Meanwhile cossack colonels on the right bank had abandoned any hope of relying on Polish assistance to reunify Ukraine under their own hetman, Petro Doroshenko, and had instead chosen to pursue alliance with Crimean khan Aadil Girey and Ottoman sultan Mehmed IV

Hetman Doroshenko's acceptance of Ottoman political and military sup­port threatened the Polish-Muscovite armistice as well as Muscovite control over the left bank. This gave Doroshenko the freedom to campaign against either Muscovy or the Commonwealth while holding out to each the possibility that the right concessions might give him reason to break with the Turks and reconcile.

Ordin-Nashchokin, by this time in declining health, had limited options in dealing with the Doroshenko problem. The missions he sent to Istanbul and Edirne to get the sultan to accept Andrusovo were rebuffed, and his efforts to negotiate with the sultan through Crimean Tatar mediation were blocked by the Zaporozhian host, which went so far as to assassinate the Crimean and Muscovite envoys. This left him no real alternative but to concentrate on diplomacy with Warsaw, communicating his willingness to negotiate some kind of shared Polish-Muscovite suzerainty over the right bank in order to transform the Andrusovo Armistice into a permanent peace and a mutual defence pact against the Ottomans. He also sent missions to Vienna, to enlist at the least the emperor's mediation and optimally his agreement to join in coalition against the sultan.

But besides risking giving Doroshenko, the khan, and the sultan provo­cation to declare war, these negotiations caused alarm among the left-bank cossacks, who feared Ordin-Nashchokin might give back Kiev or even part of the left bank to the Poles in order to achieve his alliance project. Many of those left-bank cossacks losing faith in Muscovy's readiness to stand firm for a unified Ukraine freed from Polish rule began defecting to Doroshenko, who appeared at the time a more resolute defender of these principles even with his troublingties to the Turks and Tatars. Support for Doroshenko on the left bank reached such proportions that eventually even Briukhovet'skyi recognised the extent of his delegitimation, turned renegade, and began expelling the Mus­covite garrisons. Briukhovets'kyi apparently expected that Doroshenko and the sultan would reward him by confirming him as vassal hetman over the left bank and Zaporozhia. But Briukhovets'kyi was deceived: Doroshenko crossed the Dnieper and overthrew him, replacing him with commissioned hetman Demian Mnogogreshnyi.

Ordin-Nashchokin retired in 1671. Within a year the new director of the Ambassadors' Chancellery, Artamon Matveev, confronted a simpler if starker and more dangerous situation in Ukraine. Muscovite control over the left bank had been partly restored: Mnogogreshnyi had shifted his allegiance to Moscow and had ratified the Hlukhiv Articles (February 1669). The Hlukhiv Articles had the effect of quelling anti-Muscovite feeling while putting the left- bank hetman on a tighter leash: they conceded some greater autonomy to the hetman's administration (revenues to maintain the Muscovite garrisons and voevody were once again to be collected into the hetman's treasury, not into the tsar's) yet reaffirmed the tsar's right to maintain garrisons for the time being in other towns besides Kiev and to control the Hetmanate's foreign relations.[71]When Mnogogreshnyi began chafing under these restraints Moscow easily deposed him (June 1672) and replaced him with the more compliant Ivan Samoilovich.

Furthermore, support for Doroshenko was now ebbing on the right bank as well as on the left. He was perceived as having gone too far in servilising himself to the sultan, his Korsun' Articles (April 1669) having pledged his full alliance with the Porte and khanate and even his formal vassalage to the sultan. The terms of these Korsun' Articles were meant to commit Ottoman and Crimean Tatar forces to joint operations with Doroshenko's regiments without compromising the autonomy ofUkraine, but the sultan and the khan did not send quick and unequivocal assurance they accepted these terms. The right-bank colonels therefore began falling away from Doroshenko, leaving him all the more dependent upon his Ottoman and Tatar auxiliaries and all the more isolated from the Ukrainian population.

The most important development of all, however, was the escalation of Ottoman military support for Doroshenko into a full-blown Ottoman invasion of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the summer of i672.On 17 October King Michal signed a peace treaty at Buczacz ceding all of Podol'ia to the sultan and recognising the independence of right-bank Ukraine under Hetman Doroshenko.

Podol'ia thereby came under an Ottoman occupation that would last until 1699. And Doroshenko was emboldened to step up agitation on the left bank to unite all Ukraine under his leadership. Muscovite commitment to a protec­torate over a left-bank hetmanate now carried much greater risk of provoking war with the Ottoman Empire, the most imposing military power in Eastern Europe.

Yet Artamon Matveev accepted this risk and reaffirmed Moscow's com­mitment to Samoilovich's left-bank hetmanate. Ironically, Doroshenko's own intransigence had made this possible. Doroshenko was still talking to Mus­covite envoys and presenting himself as amenable to reconciliation with Moscow, but he had raised the price for this reconciliation: not only the cession of Kiev, the left bank and Zaporozhia, but also now Moscow's pledge it would assist him militarily to protect Ukraine from the Turks.[72] Thus Muscovy now ran the risk ofwar with the sultan regardless ofwhether it accepted or rejected Doroshenko's sovereignty over all Ukraine. War against the Ottomans was a frightening prospect, but Muscovy was at least better prepared for it now. The Muscovite army had had time to recover from the revenue and manpower shortfalls that had produced stalemate in the Thirteen Years War (by 1669 the total strength of the Belgorod and Sevsk army groups had expanded to over ii2,000);[73] G. G. Romodanovskii had emerged as a competent commander capable of carrying the war over to the right bank; Moscow knew it could count on the loyalty of the Zaporozhian host; great numbers of refugees were crossing the Dnieper to resettle on the left bank; and Samoilovich was as intent on conquering the right bank as Doroshenko was on subjugating the left. The Turks were at the time too preoccupied in Podol'ia to offer Doroshenko much help in holding the eastern reaches of the right bank. Furthermore, Matveev could still hope for alliance with the Commonwealth: the Sejm had refused to ratify the shameful Buczacz Treaty and a number of Polish commanders had joined Crown Hetman Sobieski in a confederatio to resume military operations against the Turks. The wretched King Michal died on 10 November 1673; that same day Sobieski dealt the main Ottoman army a crushing blow at Chocim and forced it to withdraw across the Danube.

In early 1674 Moscow therefore abandoned negotiations with Doroshenko. Romodanovskii and Samoilovich invaded the right bank, captured Cherkassk and a number of other towns, and put Doroshenko's capital of Chyhyryn under siege. An assembly (rada) at Pereiaslav proclaimed Samoilovich het­man of all Ukraine - prematurely, it turned out, for Chyhyryn was well fortified and able to withstand long siege and a large Ottoman army under Kaplan Pasha finally began marching to Doroshenko's relief in the summer. Romodanovskii and Samoilovich were forced to lift the siege and withdraw across the Dnieper. The real damage to Doroshenko's cause was done by his own ally, Kaplan Pasha, whose massacres of civilians at Lodyzhin and Uman' drove thousands of refugees eastward across the Dnieper, and by Hetman Sobieski, recently elected king of Poland, who re-entered right-bank Ukraine and captured a number of important towns as soon as Kaplan Pasha's army had withdrawn.

By December i676 Doroshenko's forces numbered no more than 2,000 and Doroshenko was compelled to surrender. But Samoilovich was unable to exploit this to establish his control over the right bank, for the Ottomans still claimed sovereignty over Ukraine, now as a principality of Lesser Sarmatia under their new puppet, Iurii Khmel'nyts'kyi, and they appeared to be ready to campaign on Iurii's behalf to seize not only Chyhyryn but Kiev and thereby eliminate any Muscovite military presence on the eastern side of the Dnieper. Sufficient provocations for an Ottoman attack had already been given - Zaporozhian cossack raids on the Crimean coast and small-scale operations by Don cossacks and Muscovite forces against the Ottoman fortresses on the lower Don. And the Poles could no longer be counted on to divert the Ottomans on the right bank: now that he was king, Sobieski found it harder to raise armies of the size he had commanded while in confederatio revolt, so in October 1676 he had signed an armistice with the Turks at Zorawno and ceded the right bank to them. The Turks seem to have led him to expect that Smolensk would be restored to the Commonwealth once Samoilovich and the Muscovites were defeated. Moscow was unable to present Sobieski with a compelling counter-offer, especially as Tsar Alexis had just died and Matveev's influence over foreign policy was fading.

In June 1677 an Ottoman army of 45,000 under Ibraim Pasha crossed the Danube and marched towards Chyhyryn, the symbolic capital of the Het- manate. Muscovy now risked being dragged into full-scale war with the Ottoman Empire. But Romodanovskii and Samoilovich were able to con­vince Moscow to reinforce the Muscovite-Ukrainian garrison at Chyhyryn and to let them lead a large relief expedition of over 50,000 men. Samoilovich was especially adamant about holding Chyhyryn, without which he could not maintain the loyalty of the Zaporozhian host much less extend his sovereignty over the towns and villages of the right bank. Moscow was probably more con­vinced by Romodanovskii's argument - that the capture of Chyhyryn would give the Turks and Tatars a staging area for attacks upon Kiev and the towns of the left bank - and by the realisation that failure to endorse Samoilovich's projects could weaken Samoilovich's support for Muscovite occupation over the left bank.

In late August Romodanovskii and Samoilovich succeeded in routing the Ottoman and Crimean forces besieging Chyhyryn. Their victory appears to have been one of the more striking Muscovite military successes to date: total Muscovite and Ukrainian casualties were reported at just 3,000 dead and 5,000 wounded, while the Turks and Tatars allegedly lost about 20,000 men.[74]The sultan subsequently expressed his displeasure by imprisoning both Ibraim Pasha and Khan Selim.

In June 1678 the Ottomans made a second bid to seize Chyhyryn. This time the invading Ottoman army numbered 70,000 (not counting Crimean Tatar auxiliaries), had a much larger artillery train and was commanded by Kara Mustafa Pasha, the grand vizier. Romodanovskii and Samoilovich again marched to the relief of Chyhyryn, with the same forces and nearly the same plan of operations as the year before. The crucial difference this time was that they halted their armies on the far side of the Tias'min River, nearly four kilometres from Chyhyryn, on 4 August, ostensibly to await reinforcements, and meanwhile made no serious effort to harass the Ottoman camp. This gave the Turks time to continue their bombardment of Chyhyryn and move their trenches up to its walls. On 11 August Romodanovskii ordered Chyhyryn evacuated and burned to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. He and Samoilovich then withdrew across the Dnieper.

Given Romodanovskii's insistence the year before on the strategic necessity of holding Chyhyryn, this had the appearance of a major defeat, and it led many Ukrainians to blame Romodanovskii for incompetence or even treason. Actually Moscow had issued Romodanovskii secret orders to do everything to avoid battle with the Turks, to seek peace talks with them and to be prepared to sacrifice Chyhyryn rather than his army so as not to leave Kiev and the left bank under-defended. Chyhyryn was of greater importance to Samoilovich than to Moscow, which placed higher priority on defending Kiev and the left bank.[75]

The Russo-Turkish war of 1676-81 is usually seen as a stalemate or even as a Russian defeat because Chyhyryn had to be destroyed and the right bank was thereby lost to the Turks and Iurii Khmel'nyts'kyi. In fact the right bank did not fall to them. The higher Ottoman priority at the time was consolidating control over Podol'ia, to hold the Moldavian and Wallachian hospodars in line and block Sobieski from invading Moldavia. A massive Muscovite force build-up on the left bank, in Sloboda Ukraine, and along the Belgorod Line provided sufficient deterrent against an Ottoman attackacross the Dnieper or a Crimean Tatar invasion from the south: in 1679 70,000 Muscovite troops and 30,000 of Samoilovich's cossacks defended Kiev and the left bank, while 50,000 Muscovite troops held the Belgorod Line; roughly equal numbers were fielded in 1680.[76] The Ottomans therefore made no effort to rebuild Chyhyryn as a base for operations against Kiev and the left bank, and most of the Ottoman and

Crimean troops supporting Khmel'nyts'kyi were soon withdrawn. By January 1681 the pasha of Azov was signalling the Sultan's interest in armistice talks.

Chyhyryn proved far less decisive in shaping the destiny of the right bank than the spring 1679 raids on right bank towns and villages undertaken by Samoilovich's son Semen and Muscovite troops out of the Kiev garrison and the regiment of Grigorii Kosagov. This operation came to be called the Great Expulsion. Several of the larger right-bank towns were burned and about 20,000 of their inhabitants were driven across the Dnieper into the left-bank hetmanate. This depopulated most of the right bank as far as the Bug River, turning it into a no man's land buffering the Dnieper frontier of the left-bank hetmanate. Iurii Khmel'nyts'kyi was left only with the western part of Bratslav palatinate as a resource base. The Turks deposed him in 1681 and tried to set Moldavian hospodar Gheorghe Duca over Podol'ia and the right bank, but this was frustrated by a cossack revolt supported by the Poles. Sulimenko, the next pro-Ottoman hetman on the right bank, was overthrown in 1685.

The 20,000 refugees pushed across the Dnieper could not all be resettled on the territories of Samoilovich's cossack regiments, where competition for ploughland was already intense, so two-thirds of them were transferred to Sloboda Ukraine, to perform cossack service from virgin steppe land along the Northern Donets and Oskol' rivers. This strengthened the Sloboda Ukraine cossack regiments serving in the Muscovite army and encouraged further Muscovite and Ukrainian colonisation of the region, to safeguard which the Military Chancellery began erecting a new defence line, the Iziuma Line, running 530 kilometres in all, linking up twenty garrison towns, enclosing an area of 30,000 square kilometres, and thereby extending the Muscovite frontier another 160 kilometres southward. With the construction of the towns of Maiatsk and Tor Muscovy now had garrisons within 150 kilometres of the Black Sea coast.28

The build-up in Sloboda Ukraine and link-up of the Iziuma Line with the Belgorod Line provided much greater protection against Crimean Tatar raids. Khan Murad Girey was compelled to negotiate at Bakhchisarai a twenty-year armistice with Muscovy (1681), formally recognising Kiev and the left bank as Muscovite possessions and a 10-kilometre-wide strip ofthe right bank along the Dnieper as a neutral zone closed to territorial aggrandisement by any power. The khan subsequently induced Sultan Mehmed IV to ratify these same terms.

It could therefore be argued that Muscovy won its first great war with the Ottoman Empire. It had secured its position on the left bank, eliminated for

28 On the construction and colonisation ofthe Iziuma Line, see V P. Zagorovskii, Iziumskaia cherta (Voronezh: Voronezhskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 1980).

some time the danger of a rival right-bank hetmanate, and further reduced the Crimean Tatar threat. A further indication that the war had strengthened Muscovy's military and political standing was the new foreign policy pursued by the Commonwealth after the collapse of the Gninski mission to Istanbul in 1678. The Sejm finally ratified a fifteen-year extension of the Andrusovo Armistice (on terms less advantageous to the Commonwealth than previously demanded) and King Jan Sobieski abandoned attempts to ally with the Porte and returned to his project of driving the Turks from Podol'ia and Moldavia. He therefore began negotiations to induce Tsar Fedor to join him, Emperor Leopold I and Venetian Doge Alvise Contarini in coalition to drive the Turks from Europe.

By 1684 Moscow was ready to join this Holy League. Sobieski's surprising victory over the army of Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa at the gates of Vienna (12 September 1683) undoubtedly helped to convince the Muscovite government, but there were other reasons. The most important consideration was the Com­monwealth's clear eagerness for Muscovite alliance, which showed Golitsyn the time had come to demand that the Poles renounce all claim to Kiev, the left bank, the Zaporozhian Sech' and the regions of Smolensk, Chernigov and Seversk. Golitsyn demanded the Commonwealth sign a treaty of permanent peace on these terms, and to the Sejm's dismay King Jan Sobieski's envoys signed it (26 April 1686).[77] Hetman Samoilovich was also angered by this, for the treaty had the effect of recognising Polish claims over the right bank and frustrating his campaign to unite all Ukraine under his own mace.

The Treaty of Eternal Peace can be said to mark the point at which Mus­covy achieved lasting geopolitical preponderance over the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Map 21.2 shows territory ceded by Poland-Lithuania after 1667). Sobieski had hoped to compensate the Commonwealth for these lost territories by driving the Turks out of Podol'ia and Moldavia, but neither of these objectives was accomplished in his lifetime and the lives and revenue he squandered on them ultimately provoked a backlash by the magnates, who further reduced the military power available to the crown. Nor was he able to re-establish control over the right bank; efforts by Polish magnates to recolonise the region drove the majority of right-bank cossacks into a new revolt led by Colonel Semen Palii.

Ratification of the Eternal Peace now obligated Muscovy to make good its pledge to the Holy League and wage war upon the Crimean khanate. Golitsyn


undertook two expeditions against Perekop (1687,1689) to pin the Tatars down in Crimea while the Poles invaded Moldavia, the Austrians engaged the Turks in Transylvania and the Venetians campaigned in Dalmatia. On both of these expeditions Golitsyn led an enormous army of over 110,000 Muscovite troops and 30,000-50,000 Ukrainian troops across hundreds of kilometres of empty and arid steppe; both expeditions failed to besiege Perekop and withdrew with heavy casualties, mostly from drought and lack of fodder; and Golitsyn con­tributed to his own downfall and the downfall of regent Sophia by trying to pass offboth campaigns as successes, to the disgust ofhis officers and the court. In fairness to Golitsyn, a successful expedition across the steppe to capture Perekop was probably beyond the capabilities of any other power of the age and may not even have been Golitsyn's real objective. The Crimean expedi­tions did divert the Crimean Tatars from reinforcing Ottoman operations on other fronts and did show the Holy League the tremendous powers of resource mobilisation Muscovy now possessed (if also of its ability to waste resources); they did establish two important garrisons and supply depots (Novobogorodit- skoe and Novosergeevsk) for future expeditions against the khanate and the Ottoman fortresses on the Dnieper; and they had the effect of tightening Moscow's control over the Zaporozhian host and the left bank, by planting Muscovite garrisons just across the Dnieper from the host and by creating the opportunity to scapegoat and depose Samoilovich and replace him with Ivan Mazepa.

Besides profiting politically from the discrediting of Golitsyn's Crimean expeditions, Tsar Peter and his circle initially saw no advantage to campaign­ing on behalf of the Holy League; they were convinced the Poles and Austrians were already bogged down in Moldavia and Hungary and inclining to a sep­arate peace with the Ottomans, so it would be better for Muscovy to seek its own reconciliation with the Porte and khanate lest it be left struggling on alone. For the time being, then, the new government would distance itself from Warsaw and Vienna and soften its demands upon the sultan and khan in hope of negotiating an armistice. It was not until 1694 that Peter would renew commitment to the Holy League by preparing a major expedition against Azov.

Muscovy's emergence as a great power

In Tsar Alexis's reign Muscovite foreign policy had played for very high stakes but had run high losses in the process. Tsar Alexis had entered the Ukrainian quagmire in 1654 in order to obtain Bogdan Khmel'nyts'kyi's aid in Belarus' and Lithuania; he had prolonged the war with the Commonwealth by set­ting unrealistic terms for peace, including his election to the Polish throne; and he had left the conflict with the Commonwealth unresolved in order to suddenly open an unsuccessful war upon the Swedes for control of the Baltic coast.

Muscovite foreign policy after 1676 was generally more cautious but sure­footed. The 1677 Chyhyryn campaign (which ended very fortunately) or Golitsyn's Crimean expeditions (which wasted lives but did not leave the south­ern frontier more vulnerable) cannot be compared with Tsar Alexis's gambles. Yet several major strategic objectives were achieved by 1689. Muscovy had won Polish and Ottoman recognition of the Tsar's sovereignty over left-bank Ukraine and had begun to exercise greater control over the Zaporozhian and Don cossack hosts. It no longer faced any significant threat from a right-bank hetmanate (the right bank's pro-Polish hetmans could seldom mobilise more than 5,000 men, its pro-Ottoman hetmans no more than a few hundred). The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was no longer Muscovy's mortal enemy; it had finally signed a treaty of permanent peace and abandoned its claims to the long-contested territories of Smolensk and Chernigov in return for Mus­covite entry into the Holy League. The Crimean khanate remained a threat to the towns of Sloboda Ukraine and the Belgorod Line, but no longer to the Muscovite heartland; more of the steppe had come under Muscovite mili­tary colonisation, advancing the front to just a few hundred kilometres of the khanate and encouraging Muscovite and cossack forces to go on the offensive with a series of operations on the lower Don and Dnieper. Muscovy still did not have mastery over the Livonian coast of the Baltic but had been able to enjoy a long respite from conflict with Sweden.

These successes were owed inpart to blunders by Muscovy's rivals. A contributing factor was the greater experience and enlarged scope of Muscovite diplomacy. Now that Muscovy had demonstrated its military usefulness to the Ottoman Empire's enemies it became practical to send frequent missions to most of the European powers. Muscovy finally had its first permanent mission, at Warsaw, which served as a clearing house for reports from its envoys in other European capitals as well as a source of improved intelligence on foreign efforts to manipulate Polish political factions. The Little Russian Chancellery (Malorossiiskii prikaz) had also taken on great importance for managing political relations with the hetmans, colonels and towns of the left bank. Its work made it possible to reduce the ability of the later hetmans (Samoilovich, Mazepa) to pursue their own foreign policies while maintaining their loyalty for longer than had been possible before; by further servilising the hetmans it was possible in turn to force the colonels and starshina to accept Muscovite garrisons as an essentially permanent fact.

Muscovite military power, near exhaustion by the end of the Thirteen Years War, had revived very quickly and grown to impressive new proportions. The number of effectives for field army service reached 164,600 men in 1680 (55 per cent of these were in the foreign formation infantry and cavalry).[78]Thousands more performed garrison duty on the Belgorod Line and the new Iziuma Line. The two Chyhyryn operations, the great defensive deployment of 1679, and Golitsyn's Perekop expeditions demonstrated Muscovite ability to mobilise and maintain campaign armies of extraordinary size.[79] The campaigns of the i670s-i680s also show more authority for command-and-control being moved out of the Military Chancellery at Moscow and closer to the front. The Chyhyryn campaigns also show the foreign formation infantry finally fulfilling its tactical potential, especially in their 26 August i677 night descent across the Sula River and their 3 August 1678 assault on Strel'nikov Hill.[80]

During or immediately after the Russo-Turkish war there were a number of important reforms further addressing the needs of the army. In 1678 the Military Chancellery issued revised standards for assignment to the traditional and foreign formation cavalry units in the Belgorod corps, limiting eligibility for service in these units to those holding a certain minimum number ofpeas- ant households, that is to men prosperous enough to maintain themselves in cavalry service from their pomest'ia alone. This made it possible to eliminate the need to pay cash allowances to cavalrymen and reassign less prosperous servicemen from cavalry units to the infantry regiments. Over the next two years the infantry regiments were further expanded through a drive to enrol thousands of vagrants, pardoned shirkers, impoverished deti boiarskie and cos­sacks and musketeers. By i68i these measures had succeeded in increasing the relative weight of foreign formation troops in the field army and establishing a ratio of infantry to cavalry of nearly 2:1. The strel'tsy were not abolished but their units were restructured along the lines of the foreign formation infantry, reformed into companies under captains and regiments under colonels, so that they could be put to drilling in foreign formation infantry evolutions. The centuries of traditional cavalry were likewise reorganised as companies.[81]

To raise more revenue for paying the expanded foreign formation infantry a major reform of state finances was undertaken in 1677-81. A new general cadastral survey was undertaken; a number of minor direct taxes were amal­gamated into one army maintenance cash tax (streletskie den'gi, 'musketeers' money'); this cash tax, along with the army grain tax, was now assessed by household (no longer by sokha, i.e. by area and productive capacity of culti­vated land); and authority over direct taxation was further centralised in the Grand Treasury to reduce collection costs and facilitate budgeting.

Command-and-control was strengthened in two ways. The razriad principle of territorial army group command and administration was extended across the rest of European Russia by creating five new territorial army groups, for a total of nine, and assigning to them all troops in field army service, either in traditional or foreign formation units. This had the effect of simplifying muster procedures (each army group had two or more permanent designated muster points), devolving more authority for logistics to the territorial level, and reinforcing the tendency to use army groups as large corps in operations. The abolition of mestnichestvo in 1682 was in part motivated by the need to improve command-and-control; the tasks of modernising force structure (reor­ganising traditional cavalry and strel'tsy units into companies and regiments) and mounting more complex operations (by territorial corps, and by multiple corps together) made it necessary to eliminate precedence suits and discourage quarrels over precedence honour that might undermine such efforts.

These reforms constituted a foundation for Peter I's programme of military modernisation just as the expansion of diplomatic activity paved the way for Peter's efforts to make Russia a leading player in the concert of European nations.

Non-Russian subjects

MICHAEL KHODARKOYSKY

From 1598 to 1613 Muscovy experienced the most severe crises known as the Time of Troubles. Despite the ravages of civil war and foreign inter­ventions which marked the Time of Troubles, some in the Muscovite government continued to attend dutifully to their daily routines and obli­gations. The local voevodas on the frontiers proceeded to govern their forts and towns and construct new ones. The Foreign Office in Moscow contin­ued to receive and dispatch envoys to the peoples on the distant frontiers and churn out reports about them. The pace of Russian colonisation might have been slowed down but it did not stop. The ascension to the Russian throne of the Romanov dynasty in 1613 put an end to the Time of Trou­bles. Russia emerged from the Time of Troubles with a rediscovered sense of national identity and a newly found confidence in its incessant territorial expansion.

Throughout the seventeenth century the Russian government expended great resources and energy on consolidating its hold over annexed territories and moving into new ones. By the end of the century, Moscow could boast of enduring success in expanding further east, where the Russians reached the shores of the Pacific Ocean, and south and south-east, where the newly built forts and towns pushed the imperial boundaries further into the steppe. The seventeenth century also marked the beginning of Russia's expansion in the west, where Moscow's acquisition of territories in Ukraine added a new dimension to the Russian imperial foundation. No longer did Moscow expand into lands populated by non-Christians: Muslims, animists, and Buddhists. In its western borderlands, Russia had come to acquire a large population of Orthodox Christians who were non-Russian. The ever-growing number of Russia's subjects now included non-Christians in the east and non-Russians in the west.

The steppe

Russia's steppe frontier remained ambiguous and ill defined. To the extent that this frontier was defined, it represented a boundary between Russia and those who were deemed hostile to it. A peace treaty (shert') prepared in 1604 by the government officials for the ruler ofthe Greater Nogai Horde, beg Ishterek, gave a clear indication ofwhere Moscowbelieved its southern frontierto lie. Ishterek was expected to have no contacts with the Ottoman sultan, the Crimean khan, the Persian shah, the Bukharan khan, Tashkent, Urgench, the Kazakh Horde, the Kumyk shamkhal or the Circassians. In other words, Moscow roughly delineated its southern boundaries stretching from the Crimea to the North Caucasus to Central Asia.[82]

By the early seventeenth century, Russia's policies in the steppe, which were meant to encourage the Nogais' dependence on Russia and to weaken them by promoting the factional struggle among their leaders, proved to have the desired effect. Once a powerful confederation of Turkic nomads, the Nogais' significance had been greatly reduced by the debilitating internal struggle. In the early seventeenth century, the Nogais of the Greater Horde were no longer capable of mounting any serious challenge to the Russian state in the south and instead grew desperately dependent on Russia's economic and military aid.

But the stability and relative safety on Russia's southern frontier was always short-lived, subject to the rapidly changing situation in the steppe. Continuing the centuries-old pattern, the steppes of Inner Asia disgorged another power­ful nomadic confederation which came to replace the Nogais in the Caspian steppe. The intruders shared with their new neighbours neither the overlap­ping structures of related Turkic clans nor their Islamic religion. The newly arrived steppe nomads were a Mongol people and avowed Tibetan Buddhists guided by the Dalai Lama. Their neighbours called them Kalmyks.

Even early exploratory forays by the Kalmyks used to send the Nogais fleeing in panic from their formidable foe. Moscow's attempts to arrest the movement of the Kalmyks further west and to control the situation in the steppe proved to be futile. In the first decade of the seventeenth century, most of the Kalmyks roamed along the Irtysh, Ishim and Tobol' rivers of south­western Siberia. In the second decade they had crossed the Iaik River, and by the early 1630s they reached the vicinity of Astrakhan', routed the Nogais and the Russian musketeers dispatched to help them, and occupied the pastures along the Volga. Russia's inability to protect the Nogais from the Kalmyk raids led some of the Nogais to join the Kalmyks, while the majority chose to flee further west towards Azov, seeking the protection of the Ottoman Porte.

The arrival of the Kalmyks in the 1630s had a dramatic impact on the entire southern region. The decades of Moscow's careful strategies of weak­ening, dividing and impoverishing the Nogais and its significant expenditures to implement such policies, seemed to have been wasted. The Nogais, whom Moscow considered long pacified, had now joined the Crimean Tatars and the Lesser Nogai Horde near Azov. Together they launched devastating raids into Russia's southern borderlands. Only in the three years of 1632, 1633 and 1637 the Nogais and Crimeans captured and brought to the Crimea more than 10,000 Russian prisoners. The newly colonised southern region with its towns and peasants urgently needed protection.

The danger of the Nogais and Crimeans breaking through the southern defences and approaching Moscow was no exaggeration. The intentions of the Kalmyks, who came to replace the Nogais in the Caspian steppe, remained unknown. It is unlikely that Russia's previous historical experiences in the steppe left Moscow sanguine about the prospect of peace with the Kalmyks. Faced with the new and dangerous situation along the southern frontier, Moscow hastened to conclude a peace treaty with Poland in 1634 and to turn its attention to the south. Indeed, this time Moscow decided to embark on a new strategy and to invest unprecedented resources in order to secure the lands already settled and populated by the Russians and to end the threat of nomadic invasion once and for all.

In a change from previous policies Moscow decided to play the 'cossack card'. The cossacks were the ultimate 'melting pot' in early modern Russia. Among several cossack hosts which Moscow claimed to control, the Don cossacks were the most powerful. In the seventeenth century, they included a motley crowd of Russians, new converts, Zaporozhian cossacks, Poles, Lithua­nians, peasants and various fugitives from justice.[83] Mirroring the lifestyle and the military organisation of the steppe societies, the cossacks were a perfect antidote to the nomadic peoples of the steppe. And like many non-Russian peoples, the cossacks proved to be some of Russia's most mutinous subjects.

In a shift from the previous policy of restraining the Don cossacks to avoid provoking the Ottoman Porte, Moscow was now prepared to further arm the cossacks and encourage their raids. Such raids, however, were to be carefully calibrated, and the cossacks were instructed to limit their attacks to the Nogais and Crimeans alone, and not to raid Ottoman possessions, Azov and Kaffa in particular.3

To be sure, controlling the cossacks was no easy matter, as the interests of the government and the cossacks did not always coincide. After all, it was not the impoverished Nogais that the cossacks were after. Their eyes were set on the wealthy Ottoman and Crimean towns and villages along the Black Sea coast. The only obstacles between the cossacks and the promise of rich booty and numerous captives were the fortifications of Azov, the Ottoman fortress in the estuary of the Don, which prevented the cossacks from sailing down the river to the sea.

When in 1636, enticed by the Crimean khan and under continuous pressure from the Kalmyks and cossacks, the Nogais abandoned the area around Azov and crossed the Don on the way to the Crimea, the Don cossacks quickly moved to lay siege to Azov. In June 1637, Azov was in the hands of the tri­umphant cossacks. In the next five years, taken aback by this unexpected and undesired development, Moscow was presented with an unpalatable dilemma: to support the cossacks and thus enter war with the Ottoman Empire, or to avoid war by having the cossacks abandon the fortress. After much hesitation and deliberation, the government chose avoidance over confrontation.

But the cossacks' degree of independence from Moscow and a history of their unruliness and participation in popular revolts made the government suspicious of their true intentions, and, as the Azov affair proved, not unrea­sonably so. Use of the cossacks along the frontier had to be supplemented by a more reliable strategy. In 1635, the government undertook a new and bold initiative; it began the construction of the fortification lines in the south. The duration of the construction, the expenditures on these extensive fortification networks, and the utilisation of human and natural resources for this purpose made the project the single most ambitious and important strategic under­taking in seventeenth-century Russia. It was to become Moscow's own Great Wall to fend off the 'infidels' from the southern steppe.

Constructing a fortification line in the southern region was not an entirely novel idea. Such fortification lines were already known in tenth-century Kievan Rus', and more recently, in the middle of the sixteenth century, they had been constructed just south of the Oka River. By the 1630s numerous forts and towns emerged far south of Moscow Still, these proliferating vanguard military out­posts had to be supplied from the central regions of Russia because agriculture

3 A. A. Novosel'skii, Bor'ba Moskovskogo gosudarstva s tatarami v pervoi polovine XVII veka (Moscow and Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1948), pp. 237-8, 296.

remained a dangerous undertaking on the frontier. It was paramount to pro­vide further security, if a peasant colonisation of the region were to take place. The fortification lines were to serve exactly that purpose, becoming, in time, both the primary means of Moscow's defence against predations and an effec­tive tool of Russia's territorial expansion.

In the decade from 1635 to 1646, Moscow moved its frontier defences much further south, connecting, in one uninterrupted defence line, the natural obsta­cles, such as rivers and swamps, with man-made fortifications: several rows of moats, felled trees and palisades studded with advance warning towers and forts armed with cannon and other firearms. The first such fortification line (zaseka or zasechnaia cherta), stretching for more than 800 kilometres from the Akhtyrka River in the west to Tambov in the east, became known as the Belgo­rod Line. It tookthe government another decade to extend the fortification line further east, from Tambov to Simbirsk on the Volga. By the mid-seventeenth century, both the colonists arriving in the southern regions of Russia and the residents of Kazan' province found themselves in relative safety behind the Belgorod and Simbirsk fortification lines.[84]

The Kalmyks were seen as the dangerous outsiders whose raids disrupted the status quo in the region and thus, in addition to Russia, threatened the interests of other regional powers from the Crimea to the North Caucasus, to the Central Asian khanates. At first invincible, the Kalmyks suffered a major debacle in the steppe and mountains of the North Caucasus in 1644. A large Kalmyk contingent was decimated by the combined forces of the Nogais and Kabardinians with the help of Crimean Tatar and Russian detachments which provided the crucial fire power. Driven by mutual interests, the Russians and Crimeans succeeded in pushing the Kalmyks back east of the Iaik River.

A few years later the Kalmyks were back in force. Led by their new chief tay- ishi, Daichin, the Kalmyks ravaged the Kazan' and Ufa provinces, routed the Crimean troops, and demanded the return of the remains of Daichin's father and brothers killed in 1644. When a Russian envoy approached Daichin with demands to confirm the Kalmyks' allegiance and submit hostages, Daichin called him a liar for making such grotesque claims. A realisation that the Kalmyks' arrival in the Caspian steppe was irreversible prompted the Russian authorities to drop some of their customary demands and to adopt a more conciliatory tone. To enlist the Kalmyks as a counterforce to the Crimeans, Moscow returned the remains of Daichin's father and brothers, offered Kalmyks payments and rewards for their military campaigns, and trade privileges in the frontier towns. In i654, after Moscow annexed parts of Ukraine, the rival alliances took shape: Poland and Crimea were facing Russia and its new ally, the Kalmyks.

Similar to Moscow's relationship with other nomadic peoples, Russia's alliance with the Kalmyks remained precarious. While the written treaties (shert') prepared in Moscow and written in Russian were inevitably phrased as the Kalmyks' oath of allegiance, they were, in fact, peace treaties with mutual obligations by both parties to maintain peace, trade and military co-operation. Insisting that the Kalmyks were the subjects ofthe tsar, Moscow objected to the Kalmyks' independent relations with the Crimea, Ottomans or other powers potentially hostile to Moscow, suspecting, and correctly so, that the Kalmyks' allegiances could be easily bought and sold. The Kalmyks, however, believed that Moscow often failed to live up to its commitments when the Russian officials did not deliver payments, demanded custom duties and bribes, did not protect Kalmyks from the raids of Russia's purported subjects, cossacks and Bashkirs, and above all, converted to Christianity fugitive or captured Kalmyks.

Throughout the seventeenth century, the Kalmyks' relationship with Russia continued to alternate between that of a military alliance against the Crimea and openly hostile acts against Russia. By the end of the century, a more pragmatic attitude prevailed in Moscow. In July 1697, a Kalmyk khan, Ayuki, and the high-ranking Russian envoy, the boyar Prince B. A. Golitsyn, signed a treaty which was strikingly different from the previous ones. This time it was the Russian side which undertook commitments to assist the Kalmyks, to put a stop to the Bashkir and cossack raids, not to dictate the boundaries of Kalmyks' pastures, and neither give refuge, nor convert the runaway Kalmyks.[85]

With the Russian conquest of the Ottoman fort of Azov in 1696, the Kalmyks realised that, for the time being, their fortunes lay with Russia.

Map 22.1. Russian expansion in Siberia to 1689

At the same time, Moscow also concluded that it would gain more by mollifying the Kalmyks than confronting them. In addressing the Kalmyk grievances and putting down in writing its own obligations, the govern­ment was ready to admit that assuring the co-operation of the Kalmyks and achieving a modicum of peace along the frontier required more than emphasising the Kalmyks' submissive status and their obligations. Rather, it required a clearly articulated recognition that such a relationship was a two- way street with mutual obligations and commitments. Such an understanding of their relationship would last for the next two decades, when the newly confident Russian authorities would once again impose a new set of restric­tions on the Kalmyks and insist on their explicit submission to the Russian emperor.

Siberia

By the beginning of the seventeenth century, Moscow was well established in western Siberia and reached the banks of the Enisei River. Russia's further expansion in Siberia skirted a careful line between the northern boundaries of the steppe and the southern boundaries of the Siberian forest, thus avoiding the inhospitable terrain of the permafrost wilderness in the north and the open arid steppe in the south. Russia had to wait for another hundred years before undertaking an incremental expansion into the steppe lands (presently northern Kazakhstan), dominated by two powerful nomadic confederations, the Kazakhs and the Oirats.

In the meantime, the Russians moved south-east reaching the Ili River where in 1630 they founded Fort Ilimsk. From here, Russia's first colonists took two different paths. One route of colonisation took the Russians down the Lena River into central Siberia, the other moved south down the Ilim river towards Lake Baikal and the Amur River. In the first instance, the Russians met little resistance and advanced speedily to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. In two years, the Russian colonists sailed down the Lena River across the lands populated by the Evenk (Tungus) and Sakha (Iakut) to found Fort Iakutsk in 1632. In 1647, the Russians reached the Pacific coast and founded Fort Okhotsk in 1649. In the second half of the century, Russian forts and settlements emerged in the lands populated by the Even (Lamut), Yukagir, Chukchi and Koriak of north-eastern Siberia. By the end of the century several Russian forts dotted the landscape of the Kamchatka peninsula (see Map 22.1).

Russia's expansion along this northern route was no different from other parts of Siberia where the native population could offer sporadic but ultimately ineffective resistance, the local elites could be easily co-opted, divided and manipulated and the furs would be collected either in form of a tribute or trade. The native peoples were to become 'the iasak-paying subjects eternally' and the only choice they had was to 'enter the sublime protection of the Grand Sovereign, the Tsar' voluntarily or to be reduced into submission by Russian

arms.[86]

The second route of Russia's expansion into Siberia took the Russians into the lands of the Buriats and Evenk around Lake Baikal and the Daurs of the Amur River. Then Russia's advance had quickly come to a halt. Here, the Russians encountered another sovereign state and empire, whose ruler too claimed suzerainty over numerous native residents of the area. The Russians approached the imperial boundaries of Ch'ing China.

It was not uncommon for both sides to claim suzerainty and the right to collect iasak from the same native people and for the natives to pay trib­ute to both Russians and Chinese. Russia's encroachment into the Chinese sphere of influence and the numerous arguments and disputes over the loy­alty and tributary payments of the native peoples were annoying enough for the Manchu rulers of China. But when the rebellious Russian cossacks arrived to found Fort Albazin on the Amur River in 1665 and Russian set­tlers, attracted by the stories of the Amur region's fabulous riches, began to arrive in larger numbers, Beijing realised that negotiations alone would not resolve the contentious issues. Chinese armies marched towards the Russian forts of Albazin and Nerchinsk, eventually forcing the Russians to raze most of their forts and settlements and to abandon any further expansion in the region. The Treaty of Nerchinsk signed in 1689 established a boundary between the Russian and Chinese empires along the Argun and Shilka rivers and the Stanovoi mountain range, effectively denying Russia any access to the Amur region. The Russians had to wait for over 150 years before annexing the Amur region and turning it into the far-eastern corner of the Russian Empire.[87]

The North Caucasus

Throughout the seventeenth century Russia could boast of no visible territorial expansion in the North Caucasus. Russia's advance here had been stalled for the same reasons as its march eastward into south-eastern Siberia was halted in the 1650s. In the Caucasus, Moscow approached the sphere ofinfluence oftwo sovereign states, the Ottoman and Persian empires. At the time when Russia's unquestionable military and economic superiority enabled it to expand with relative ease into the lands inhabited by various tribal societies, Moscow had to take a long pause before it was able to confront the similarly organised and dynamic empires of the Chinese, Persians and Ottomans.

Since its first penetration of the Caucasus in the 1560s Moscow struggled to maintain a foothold there. Forced to raze Fort Tersk several times, Moscow had decided to build a fort at a new location further north in the estuary of the Terek River. In 1588, Moscow dispatched a contingent of musketeers and cossacks to defend the newly built fort at the site of the old Turkic town of Tiumen'. Initially named Fort Tiumen', it was quickly renamed Fort Tersk. The survival of Tersk remained precarious for a few more years under the renewed Ottoman demands to raze the fort and the rumours of the impending Crimean campaign. But the Ottomans were busy prosecuting their successful war against Safavid Persia and their priorities were to maintain the newly won possessions along the Caspian coast: Derbent, Shemakha and Baku. The issue seemed to have been raised by the Ottomans for the last time in 1593. When Moscow assured the Ottomans of its peaceful intentions and promised not to interfere with the Ottoman interests in the region, the Porte stopped demanding the demolition of Tersk.[88]

If anything, Russia's presence in the North Caucasus in the seventeenth century was a testimony to its tenacity and determination. Moscow's attempts to move south of Tersk proved to be unsuccessful. Several large-scale military campaigns into Daghestan were a failure. Twice Moscow built and rebuilt Fort Sunzhenskii on the Sunzha River where it flows into the Terek River, and twice Moscow was forced to abandon it. The small cossack settlements which emerged in the foothills of the Caucasus along the Terek River (the Greben' Mountains) had to be razed in the 1650s. Only Tersk stayed and remained Russia's principal base in the North Caucasus throughout the seventeenth century.

The absence of a visible territorial expansion notwithstanding, Russia suc­ceeded in establishing itself as a major power in the north-eastern corner of the Caucasus. Throughout the seventeenth century, Moscow cultivated ties with the numerous chiefs and nobles among the local peoples: the Kumyks, Nogais, Chechens and particularly the Kabardinians. Occasionally, the Russian troops marched from Tersk to assist a loyal native chief against his rivals. But most of the time, Moscow extended its influence through a system of payments, rewards and other benefits to those who represented Russian interests in the region.

Throughout the seventeenth century, a growing number of native nobles chose to seek refuge in Tersk from their rivals and foes. They often arrived with their retinue and were given land, grain and cash in exchange for their military service. Native commoners too fled to Terskin ever-increasingnumbers fleeing justice, or heavy taxation or simply lured by promises of better life. Many of the commoners became converts to Christianity. By the 1620s, four large quarters populated solely by the indigenous people grew outside the walls of Tersk: Circassian (Kabardinian), Okochane (members of the Ingush clan of Ako who came to Tersk in the 1590s), New convert and Tatar. The Kabardinian quarter was the largest with about 175 households by the end of the century. All in all, the population of these four quarters was almost three times larger than the Russian population of Tersk.[89]

Perhaps the most celebrated example of the natives' co-operation with Russia was the Kabardinian dynasty of the Cherkasskiis, whose members for several generations faithfully served Russian interests in the region. With the construction of Fort Tersk in 1588, several Kabardinian chiefs offered their service to Moscow and arrived at Tersk to reside there with their retinues. Among these chiefs, one, Sunchalei Ianglychev, earned the complete trust of the Russian government. He travelled to Moscow several times, was granted an annuity, and in 1615 was appointed a ruling prince over the non-Christian population of Tersk. His son Mutsal and grandson Kaspulat continued to serve Russia faithfully.

In the last half of the seventeenth century, Kaspulat Mutsalovich Cherkasskii proved to be Russia's indispensable liaison in the entire southern region. He ensured that important chiefs in Daghestan and various Kabardinian nobles were at peace with Russia. His sister's marriage to a Kalmyk chief tayishi accounted for his special relations with the Kalmyks. On numerous occasions, his motley contingent of the Kabardinians, Kumyks, Nogais and others in Russian service joined the Kalmyks in their campaigns against the Crimea and in Ukraine against the Ottomans. Handsomely rewarded for his service, Kaspulat Cherkasskii was put in charge of all the non-Christians of Tersk, had fortified houses near Astrakhan' and Tersk and was granted for life the right to collect customs duties in Tersk.[90]

By the end of the century Tersk grew into an important frontier town. The Russian government was making sure that Tersk was adequately protected. In 1650 alone, 1,379 musketeers and cossacks were transferred to Tersk from other frontier towns and settled there with their families.[91] Tersk remained Russia's principal frontier garrison in the Caucasus until the second quarter of the eighteenth century when the advancing Russian forts and cossack settlements turned this once strategic frontier town into a provincial backwater.

The Baltics and Ukraine

Like its double-headed eagle, the symbol of the Russian monarchy, Russia faced simultaneously two very different worlds: one in the east with its animist, Mus­lim and Buddhist populations and the other in the west with a predominantly Christian population. Unlike its rapid advance in the east, Russia's numerous attempts to expand in the west were frustrated by the superior militaries of its neighbours: the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Sweden. Two wars in the Baltic region (1558-83,1656-61) brought Moscow in control of some parts of Livonia and Estonia, only to be given up shortly thereafter. Only in the early eighteenth century was Russia able to establish itself in the Baltic region. The significance attributed to the Baltics was inescapable when Peter the Great imposed his vision on the region and founded a new imperial capital on the Baltic shores.

In the second half of the seventeenth century, Moscow's newly claimed subjects in the west came from eastern Ukraine. They were also Orthodox and, in Moscow's view, shared the same historical traditions of Kievan Rus'. Yet for centuries, the residents of Ukraine had remained cut off from Moscow and instead subjected to influences from Poland and Lithuania. Linguistically and culturally, they clearly possessed an identity different from their Orthodox co-religionists in Moscow. Given their common confessional identity, Moscow considered the Ukrainians to be Russian, but with a small nod to their difference it referred to them as 'little Russians'.

Russia's acquisition of eastern Ukraine was very similar to its annexation of Siberia in the sense that Russia's involvement and expansion here was equally hesitant and cautious. The annexation of Ukraine might also have had to await the early 1700s, when the modernised Russian military proved superior to its western neighbours, had not the opportunity presented itself in 1654. For decades the Dnieper cossacks who resided in the well-fortified territory called the Zaporozhian Sech' enjoyed their freedom and privileges like their counterparts on the Don, Volga and Iaik rivers. But when the Polish govern­ment attempted to increase its control over the Zaporozhian cossacks, they revolted. The largest such uprising tookplace in 1648-9 under the leadership of Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi, who was able to unite the cossacks and the Ukrainian peasants under the anti-Polish, anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic banner.

First and foremost the cossacks were opportunists. Their sense of shared Orthodox Christian identity with the Russians mattered less than their inde­pendence and privileges. It was only after failing to form an alliance with the Ottomans and the Crimean Tatars that the cossacks approached Moscow. Realising that the support of the Zaporozhian host would mean a war with Poland-Lithuania, Moscow rebuffed Khmel'nyts'kyi and his cossacks. Yet a few years later in a momentous decision, the tsar, the Church and the boyars felt that they could no longer pass the opportunity to liberate their co-religionists from Catholic oppression and finally to acquire the lands of ancient Kievan Rus'.

In January of 1654, in the town of Pereiaslav the Zaporozhian hetman Khmel'nyts'kyi and other cossack leaders affixed their signatures to a doc­ument which the cossacks regarded as the terms of their military alliance with Russia and which Moscow considered an affirmation of the cossacks' new status as the subjects of the tsar. Such divergent understanding of their relationship inevitably led to a speedy fall-out. Two years later, in 1656, the cossacks entered an alliance with Sweden, and in 1658 chose to revert to the protection of the Polish king. But Moscow was no longer shy about its ambitions in Ukraine. The fate of Ukraine was decided in a war between Russia and Poland and the truce which the two concluded at Andrusovo in 1667. Ukraine would become divided: the left bank of the Dnieper River would come under Russian control and the right bank would remain in Polish hands.

Several other cossack revolts in the seventeenth century failed to change the status quo and to unify the cossacks again. For some time, the cossack hetmanate on the left bank of the Dnieper retained most of its privileges and sufficient autonomy. Typical incongruities of Russia's policies which were in evidence elsewhere were also present in Russia's relationship with the cossack hetmanate. While considering the occupants of the left bank to be Russian subjects, Moscow dealt with the hetmanate via the Little Russian Chancellery which was part of Russia's Foreign Office.

In many ways Moscow's relationship with the cossacks fell into a pattern of Russia's relations with the peoples elsewhere on its expanding frontiers. Like various non-Christian peoples along the Russian frontier, the cossacks too interpreted their treaty with Moscow as a military alliance with mutual obligations. They too initially were allowed autonomy which then was slowly eroded as Moscow engaged in co-opting the elites, manipulating the local rivalries and resettling those who chose to serve Russia and enrolling them in the Russian military (thus, the eastern part of the hetmanate became known as the Sloboda Ukraine and was settled with the Ukrainian cossacks who were organised into the regular regiments under the military command of the Russian governor in Belgorod). It seems that the nature of Russian autocracy allowed no exceptions, and the Russian imperial policies applied to both the non-Christians and Christians alike.

The fate of the hetmanate was likewise similar to many of its steppe neigh­bours. The Ukrainian hetmanate too was slowly stripped of its autonomy. By the 1720s the hetmanate was increasingly drawn into the Russian administra­tive and social structures, a process which was completed by the end of the eighteenth century.

The mid-Volga region

While rapidly expanding into the new areas, Russia also continued to consol­idate its control in the regions conquered in the previous century. By far the most diverse and important was the middle Volga region. Here, in addition to the conquered peoples - Tatar, Bashkir, Mari, Mordva, Chuvash and Udmurt - others arrived to settle and colonise the region. By the end of the seventeenth century, not only did many towns have a sizeable Slavic population, but the countryside too was transformed by the arrival of Russian landlords and peas­ants and exiled Polish prisoners of war. If in the frontier regions Moscow's objectives did not go beyond the initial demands of political loyalty, in the mid- Volga region the previously vanquished population was already thoroughly integrated into the Russian administrative system. Some non-Christians were enlisted into the Russian military and occupied a special position known as the service Tatars. Other non-Christians were levied specific iasak or other payments and performed sundry state services.

The natives had several choices: to succumb to the Russian dominance, resist it or to flee further away; and they exercised all of these options. The majority of the non-Christians stayed on their ancestral lands, but their acceptance of Russian domination was hardly peaceful. Throughout the centuries the non-Christians of the Volga region together with the cossacks of Russia's southern borderlands were the main source of resistance to Moscow and its policies. The mid-Volga region was systematically rocked by both small- scale popular disturbances and large-scale uprisings. Amongnumerous peoples of the regions, the Bashkirs unquestionably took the prize and suffered the consequences of being the most rebellious subjects of the tsar.[92]

The Russian conquest and colonisation policies of the mid-Volga region also triggered a large-scale migration of the non-Christians. Some reported fleeing to avoid onerous taxation, others were fearful of forceful conversion to Christianity, whether real or rumoured. Thousands of those who fled and settled on the Bashkir lands eventually formed two social categories of regis­tered peasants (tepter) and unregistered migrant peasants, who later became state peasants (bobyl'). In 1631-2, there were 8,355 tepter and bobyl' households residing on the Bashkir lands.[93]

While some among the native elites with the status of tarkhan had their traditional privilege of tax exemption confirmed and others were bestowed with it anew, a great number of the native population found itself labouring under the increased burden of taxation, corvee, state services and various legal restrictions. The impoverishment of the native peoples was evident in the flight of the population, numerous rebellions and a ceaseless paper trail of formal complaints to the governing Russian authorities. One desperate measure to which the natives resorted at the hard economic times was selling their children and kin into slavery to their wealthy co-religionists or the Russians.[94]

Russian policies of incremental integration of the conquered native popu­lation in the Russian Empire and their consequences were best described by the fugitive Bashkirs. In 1755, in the wake of yet another Bashkir uprising, a group of more than 1,500 Bashkir households came to seek refuge among the Kazakhs and warned them about the dangers of submitting to Russia. The fugitive Bashkirs explained that they had become Russian subjects of their own volition, had agreed to pay iasak and had provided numerous services and labour. In the beginning they too, like the Kazakhs, had been granted privileges, but then the government had begun to demand from them more than from their ancestors. Every year they were getting worse off, and now they were brought into such misery that they could not even feed themselves. Their petitions did not reach the empress, and their petitions to the governor remained unheeded. The governor forbade them to petition the empress, and seized, tortured and killed many of their people; they were no longer free in their own lands and waters. How could they live without the land? Military reg­iments came and ruined them; they cut their trees with the beehives, built forts and forced Bashkirs to fell trees, dig soil, cut stones, provide transportation, join the military patrols and buy salt at a higher price. Finally, the desperate Bashkirs resolved to flee, even though the Russian authorities tried to prevent them from fleeing by ordering executions of one remaining Bashkir resident for each fugitive. The Bashkirs warned that the same fate would soon befall the Kazakhs.[95]

Methods of conquest and colonisation

Russia's methods of conquest and colonisation appear to have formed a clear pattern. The newly encountered peoples were expected to submit an oath of allegiance seeking the tsar's protection and favour and pledging their eternal loyalty. These oaths of allegiance were prepared in Moscow and were often available only in Russian. After the native rulers, either coerced or beguiled by Russian promises, had agreed to affix their signatures to the shert', Moscow held them responsible and insisted that they became Russia's subjects. A disin- genuity on the part of both Moscow and the native chiefs was obvious. The chiefs were mostly interested in economic largesse and political advantages, but never considered such documents binding. Moscow too understood very well the precarious nature of its relationship with the various peoples on its frontiers. It might have claimed them as subjects, but it treated them as for­eigners and considered all related matters through Russia's Foreign Office. In a further sign of Moscow's conscious and deliberate obfuscation, the royal titles which claimed suzerainty over various peoples in the frontier regions were mentioned only in correspondence with the Western Christian rulers and were carefully omitted in letters to the Ottoman sultans and Persian shahs.[96]

In the initial stages, Moscow relied heavily on the local elites, winning them over through a system ofpayments and rewards and retaining their privileges. In time, however, the growing military and economic dependence of these elites on Russia and increasing proximity of the Russian settlements, towns, monasteries and forts allowed Moscow to move into a more intrusive stage of bringing the native population under a tighter Russian rule. In other words, Moscow proceeded cautiously from indirect rule in the borderlands to direct rule once the borderlands were more firmly integrated.

Of course, such an evolution of Russia's rule over the non-Russian peoples was not a straight line, and Moscow had to overcome numerous pitfalls along the way. One of the typical dilemmas confronted by the Russian authorities along the frontiers was whether to unite a native people by supporting a single authority of a strong local ruler or to divide them by encouraging the rivalry among their elites. Both approaches were deployed at different times: the former when Moscow was in a weak position and chose to rely on the non-Russians' military aid, the latter when such aid was no longer needed and Moscow's goals then were to weaken and subdue its new non-Russian subjects.

Other issues seemed to have worked at cross-purposes. It was well under­stood in Moscow that winning over the native elites was critical to Russia's interests and Moscow pursued the policies of co-optation. At the same time, other Russian policies served to undermine the collaboration of the native elites. One of the major issues which emerged throughout the seventeenth century was the flight of native slaves and commoners to seek freedom and a better life in Russia. While the arrival of the native elites to seek military service and protection in Russia was an old and established practice, the exo­dus of commoners was a new and disturbing phenomenon in the view of the non-Russian elites.

The native nobles bitterly complained that they were losing their people to their great detriment and demanded the fugitives' return or a monetary com­pensation. Such complaints were most of the time dismissed by the authorities in neighbouring Russian towns under the pretext that the fugitives had been converted to Christianity and therefore could not be returned. Even in Siberia, where the increased number of fugitives meant diminished quantities of fur iasak, the Russian authorities accepted such fugitives and converted them to

Christianity as long as their conversion was 'voluntary'. The drain of the natives into Russia remained an issue of great importance throughout the centuries and continued to undermine Russia's relations with various native chiefs along the frontiers.[97]

Even when, compelled by political circumstances, Moscow instructed its governors to return such fugitives unconverted, few of them found their way back home. The unaware native fugitives, who could be profitably exploited or sold, represented an attractive source of profit to the corrupt local Russian authorities. Half a century later, in 1755, respondingto the undeniable reality of massive exodus, purchase and conversion of the natives, the government gave a green light to those who wished to purchase and convert the natives in the frontier regions of Astrakhan', Orenburg and Siberia. In a remarkable violation of the exclusive privilege of the Russian nobility to purchase and own serfs, the government permitted priests, merchants, cossacks and others to buy, convert and teach non-Christians, who were to remain their serfs until the owners' death. The Senate sanctioned the purchase of Kalmyks, Kumyks, Chechens, Kazakhs, Karakalpaks, Turkmens, Tomuts, Tatars, Bashkirs, Baraba Tatars and other Muslims and idol-worshippers. Thus, the non-Christians would be acquired without force, 'so that they could be converted to Christianity'. Such transactions were to take place only with written permission from the native chiefs or parents of those offered for sale, and with the reasonable assurances that those to be sold had not been kidnapped.[98] Of course, given the desperate situation of many natives and the corruption of both the Russian officials and the native chiefs, these conditions were unlikely to prevent any illegal sales. What was in the seventeenth century still a cautious government policy by the mid-eighteenth century had developed into a direct encouragement of a wide-ranging enserfment and Christianisation of the non-Christians in the frontier regions.

Whether through deliberate policies or the circumstances of its overwhelm­ing dominance, Russia's impact on the indigenous societies was destabilising and destructive. In time, the native elites found themselves drawn into the orbit of Russia's influence, becoming dependent on Moscow in political, military and economic matters. The attraction of the Russian market and access to a variety of goods, cash and loans compelled the native elites to increase the tax burden on their own population in order to obtain various items of prestige and luxury. This in turn led to the problem of 'the labour drain', that is, the fleeing of the native commoners to Russia to escape their plight at home. The commoners in the indigenous societies had found themselves overburdened by the increasing demands of both their own elites and the Russian government.

What followed was the interminable civil wars between the elites vying for power and closer ties to Moscow on the one hand, and popular uprisings against the Russian government and those native elites who collaborated with Moscow on the other. The ultimate result was continuous and irreversible political and economic debilitation of the native societies, their increased dependence on Russia and their eventual incorporation into the imperial structures.

For many non-Russian peoples, the seventeenth century marked the begin­ning of their integration into the Russian Empire. At the time, the Russian government was still struggling to close a large gap between the rate of Moscow's expansion and its ability to control and govern the new territo­ries and peoples. The under-governed nature of Russia's new territories and frontiers meant that the government preferred to rely on indirect control and mostly a set of non-coercive policies and incentives. It was in the eighteenth century, after the Petrine revolution, that the new Westernised generations of Russian bureaucrats and officers brought with them to the Russian frontiers the conviction ofRussian and Christian superiority and their determination to achieve both the submission of the natives in no uncertain terms and a change in their way of life. In relative terms, the events of the seventeenth century were less traumatic and destructive for the native societies than the following century would prove to be.

The economy, trade and serfdom

RICHARD HELLIE

Commerce and the merchantry

The Russian economy in the period 1613-89 was quite sophisticated. The leaders of the hypertrophic Muscovite state were basically monetarists a la Milton Friedman who understood well that the quantity and quality of the money in circulation determined the price level. The currency was based on silver, primarily reminted thalers imported from other countries in Europe because Muscovy in that period mined no precious metals, which did not exist on its territory. By manipulating the quantity and quality of silver in the currency, the government could make the price level rise, fall or remain constant.

Throughout these decades of the 'short Russian seventeenth century', the price level of commodities varied wildly for brief periods, but always returned sooner or later to the median for the period.[99] Events such as famines and wars also had an impact on the price level, but they were not nearly as dramatic as the monetary impacts. Thus prices tended to rise for the Smolensk war (1632-4) and the Thirteen Years War (1654-67), but the major inflationary swing in prices in 1662-3 was caused not by the war, but by the government's devaluing the currency. This commenced at the end of the 1650s, when the government decided to try to pay for the war by replacing the silver currency with copper coinage.[100] Probably because faith in the government was strong, the 'bogus currency' was accepted at 'face value' for four years. A crisis occurred only when the government began to refuse to accept the copper coinage for tax payments and when word began to circulate that government leaders were minting copper coins for their own profit. Then bedlam broke loose, prices skyrocketed and the populace of Moscow rebelled in the famous Copper Upris­ing. Almost immediately the government increased the silver content of the currency by 2 per cent, all protest subsided and prices fell back to the median. Aside from war years, prices generally were stable for long periods of time. Of course crop failures caused temporary, localised price spikes. The general rule of the data on this period is that whenever an agricultural commodity price veers far from the median (i.e. looks 'wrong'), the source will typically say that the high price was the result of a crop failure.

All commerce in Russia was based on cash or barter. Russia had no banks until the middle of the eighteenth century,[101] and the merchants were not Rothschild-types who could proffer loans to the government or to each other. The Russian merchantry had a reputation for dishonesty, and the level oftrust was certainly very low Monasteries had reserves, which sometimes the govern­ment would 'borrow': there is no evidence that such 'loans' were ever repaid. The nexus between the mercantile monasteries, integrated vertical conglom­erates which engaged in production and trade and the merchant class is not fully understood.

The government understood that its capacity to control prices generally was extraordinarily limited. One might expect that a government with pretensions akin to those of the Muscovite Agapetus state'[102] would have been in and out of the market all the time, but this was not the case. In its purchases, the government both in Moscow and at the local level generally was a 'price taker', that is, it paid market prices if it wanted to buy something. Only very rarely did the government impose price controls on ordinary traded goods, such as sturgeon in 1623 on the lower Volga.[103] The major exception was the price of slaves: the government set the price of limited service contract slaves at 2 roubles apiece during the Time ofTroubles and raised it to 3 roubles apiece in the mid-i62os.[104] Earlier the price for slaves had been set by the market;[105] the intervention by the government changed the composition of slaves. Forcing a buyer to pay the same price for a young child as for a prime-age worker motivated buyers to bypass the over-priced slaves who thus could not get the welfare which the institution of slavery provided. Whether the government had anticipated this consequence of its action is unknown. The government was able to intervene in the pricing of slaves because all purchases of slaves had to be registered with the government. Without registration of the slave in the Slavery Chancellery (see Chapter 12 above), the buyer had no legal claim to his chattel, who then would have been able to flee with impunity. The government was not similarly involved with any other sale transactions in Muscovy. One might imagine that the government, which by the time of this chapter had complete control over the economic factors of land and labour, would have been similarly involved with registration of the sale of immovable property, but the fact is that sales of agricultural land were almost non-existent.[106] As shown in Chapter 16 above, government control over most of the agricultural land fund plus the right of clan redemption combined to stifle free sales transactions in land.

The vast quantity of price data permit the calculation of costs for almost any­thing when quantitative data are available. Thus the cost of the great Smolensk fortress, built between 1596 and 1600, perhaps the largest construction project in the sixteenth-century world, can be calculated at about 1.5 million rou­bles.[107] One can further calculate that the government saved vast quantities of money by abandoning that stationary form of defence in favour of the system of the fortified lines south of the Oka in the seventeenth century, and that, moreover, around mid-century, the army cost about one-eighth of Muscovy's GDP.[108]

Muscovite legislation did much of what it could to facilitate commerce. Interest on loans in common law was limited to 20 per cent in the six­teenth century.[109] In 1649, however, it was forbidden.[110] Although Russia was in the Roman law tradition in many respects because much of its law came from Byzantium, Russia for some reason never developed the Roman law of contract.[111] Other areas of law of interest to merchants, such as the storage of goods, however, were well developed and it would be fair to say that the legal climate for trade was generally favourable. Throughout most of this period access to courts was inexpensive, trials were expeditious and judges seem to have been relatively (if not totally) honest. Muscovite law helped to lower commercial transaction costs.

Muscovy had a well-developed group of merchants of all types, ranging from petty merchants who traded in local market stalls to long-distance mer­chants such as the Stroganovs who traded in salt, furs, precious objects and imported goods. The long-distance merchants used slaves to expand their fam­ily firms as was done in other countries, especially in Africa. The merchants were greatly facilitated by a number of institutional factors which considerably ante-dated this period. Most crucial was the practice stressed during Ivan IV's minority that Russia had 'one faith, one unit of currency and one measure'. This was strengthened in 1653 by a proclamation of standard units as well as a rationalisation of internal customs fees. Although internal customs collec­tions were not abolished until 1753, they seem to have been relatively few and seem not to have inhibited commerce significantly. Given these factors, it is not surprising that Russia had something approximating a single market in the seventeenth century: costs of any similar item were similar throughout Russia, with differences being accounted for by the cost of transportation. Merchants had sufficient information to learn of differences in the costs of similar items throughout the country, and took advantage of arbitrage oppor­tunities wherever they might arise by shipping goods from low-cost areas to higher-cost areas whenever it would have been profitable. By 1689 merchants, who created dynasties often lasting three generations, could trade unhindered throughout much of the Eurasian land mass, from the White Sea in the north to the Caspian Sea in the south, from Smolensk in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. This trade provided opportunities for significant accumu­lation of capital - which was spent on large houses, the Church, luxury goods and household slaves, who produced little or nothing and consumed much.

The elite merchants were organised by the government into three groups: the gosti, the gostinaia sotnia and the sukonnaia sotnia.[112] The assignments were based on capital. Rather than being an honour, such assignments were some­thing to be avoided and even dreaded, for the government regarded them as members of the service class who could be pressed into government service as needed. This service took them away from their businesses and had the potential to bankrupt them. The first, the gosti, were based in Moscow and were the leading merchants of the realm. There were only a handful of them and they were assigned to run the major customs houses, such as at Archangel, in Astrakhan', and elsewhere. The second group, the gostinaia sotnia (some­times translated as 'the merchants' hundred') were also Moscow-based and ran lesser customs houses. If collections did not match anticipation, they could be charged the difference. The third group, the sukonnaia sotnia ('the cloth hundred') were the elite of the provincial merchants and were assigned lesser government tasks. All of these merchants from time to time were assigned to trade the tsar's goods, particularly sables.

Chapter 19 of the Law Code (Sobornoe Ulozhenie) of 1649 made the mer- chantry into a privileged estate or caste. Except for monasteries and the tsar himself, town merchants faced little competition. Peasants, landowners and landholders, clergymen and most military servitors were forbidden to engage in trade, manufacturing and the ownership of urban property. Townsmen, those juridically on the urban tax rolls, had an exclusive monopoly on trade, manufacturing and the ownership of urban property. A small exception was made for members ofthe upper and middle service-class capital and provincial cavalry: they could own one house in town and keep one slave there. Such properties could not be used as bases for enterprises which would compete with the townsmen.[113] Armed musketeers were allowed to engage in petty trade and urban employment to supplement their inadequate wages. Church establishments had to surrender their urban properties and keep outside a wide greenbelt around towns, where the townsmen could keep gardens and pasture livestock. In exchange for these monopolies, the townsmen, who were largely either craftsmen or merchants, had to provide the government with the cash it needed. This arrangement, the product of disturbances in many Russian towns in June 1648, produced a settlement that kept the townsmen from rioting for over a century while providing the government with its needed revenues.[114]

Although the Russian merchants did comparatively well domestically, they could not compete in the international sphere. The larger merchants expressed this in an elaborate petition to the government in 1649 in which they requested the expulsion of Western merchants from the interior of Russia and their confinement to the ports and frontier cities. The petition rehearsed foreign trade in Muscovy for the previous century and its dominance by the English and Dutch. They noted that the English gave local Russian merchants loans, which the Russians themselves could not do, and employed them as their factors. The foreigners kept the Russians confined to their White Sea ports.[115]The fact is that the English were just better merchants. This was proved in the Mediterranean in the last quarter of the sixteenth century when in two decades the English seized all long-distance trade from all competitors.[116] It was also proved in the period 1740-1810, when the French dominated Russian culture but were a poor third in the trade sector. The French complained about English loans to Russian factors, just as the elite Russians had complained a century earlier. In all of these cases, the Mediterranean, the pre-i649 era and the post-1740 era, the key to English success was communications.[117] This was high on the list of the things the Russians said that they just were unable to compete with.

Without any assistance from the government, by i6i3 the Russians were able to borrow the names and styles of much of their clothing from the Turkic peoples who had been their southern neighbours for the previous millennium.[118] But when it came to major technology transfer after 1613 from the West, nothing happened without governmental intervention. Moscow hired not only medical doctors, linguists, translators, astronomers andpainters, but also architects, silk weavers, ship builders, food specialists, paper makers, vintners, iron makers and ore prospectors from the West. Metal specialists were requested from abroad in i62i, and the Dutch in the i620s and i630s enjoyed monopoly hegemony in the iron industry. In 1623 Dutch entrepreneurs established a rope works, complementing that set up by the English at the end of the sixteenth century. The Dutch got a pitch monopoly in the i620s and a potash monopoly in the 1630s. Dutch and Holstein shipwrights built a fleet on the Caspian in the 1630s. In 1634, the Dutch got a monopoly on the manufacture of velvet. In the same year, the first glass factory was established. Westerners also organised a temporary postal system and taught the Russians how to dig deeper wells. The first paper mill was built in 1655, and foreigners established a rag paper factory six years later. In 1667 foreigners set up woollen mills and a decade later an Italian set up a silk factory. In the late 1660s, at the invitation of the government, foreign prospectors discovered copper ores in the north, north of the Volga, and began to mine and process them for the state. These people were in addition to the mercenaries who modernised the Russian army for the Smolensk war (1632-4) by introducing the new formation regiments. About half of the Russian army at Smolensk consisted of these mercenaries and their men. They proved to be a tremendous drain on the treasury, so the majority were sent home after the war. Recruitment was initiated again in 1647 in preparation for the Thirteen Years War (1654-67), but this time was largely limited to officers.21 In 1654 the government, primarily at the urging of the Orthodox Church, closed one of the last openings in the caste society created by the Ulozhenie of 1649 (see below) when it forced the foreigners, almost all of whom were very highly compensated, to live in the Northern European Settlement (nemetskaia sloboda: the Foreign - literally German - Quarter). This later served as the incubator for Peter the Great's Western orientation.

In the mid-seventeenth century mercantilism (a slight variation on the French Colbertism) came to Russia. The first mercantilist was Fedor Rtishchev, but its major spokesman was A. L. Ordin-Nashchokin. A native of Pskov, Ordin-Nashchokin wrote the Pskov merchant charter of 1665 and the New Trade Regulations of 1667. He advocated Western-style efficiency and gaining an outlet in the Baltic to the West. Inter alia, he was a mild protectionist who advocated keeping as much specie as possible in Russia, which may have been partially responsible for the general decline in the price level between 1663 and 1689.22

The process of enserfment, 1613-49

The Muscovite economy did not provide well for most Russians. As mentioned, there are no useful minerals between the Volga and the Oka and all had to be imported. The thin podzol topsoil is acidic and provides very low yields, in this period three seeds harvested for each one sown. The growing season was too short and the precipitation typically considerably more than would have been ideal. Lesser yields led to famine and starvation, which occurred roughly once in every seven years in Russia.

Most people lived in smoky huts, log cabins with a large brick or stone and mortar stove which vented their lethal smoke into the room rather than

21 Hellie, Enserfment, chs. 10 and 11.

22 See most of the figures in Hellie, Economy.

outside via a chimney, to save heat. One may surmise that most people had very little energy, both because they were gassed six months of the year by their own air-polluting stoves and because of inadequate nutrition. Most people lived at a subsistence level with a life expectancy of less than thirty years. Per capita income was probably less than $600 (£ 350). The median wage for the entirepop- ulation was 4 kopecks per day, and for the 'working class' it was 3 kopecks per day. A smoky hut's median price was 3.25 roubles, or about 100 days' pay.[119] Fre­quent fires meant that housing was replaced often. As discussed in Chapter 12 above, there was little inside most of the huts: the three-chambered stove (which could be large enough for two people to sleep on the top), benches around two-plus walls of the room to sit and sleep on, occasionally a table, perhaps a trunk for extra clothing and little more.

The vast majority of the population in the years 1613-89 were serfs, perhaps 85 per cent. Of the rest, perhaps 5 to 15 per cent were slaves. Then the clergy, townsmen and military forces comprised around another 2 per cent each. These were of the roughly five million inhabitants in 1613, perhaps nine or ten million in 1689.[120]

For reasons that are still not clear, the Time of Troubles had little impact on the process of enserfing the peasantry. Shuiskii's 1607 decree seems to have gone into limbo, and the legal situation reverted to the decrees of 1592: the peasants were bound to the land with the repeal of the right to move on St George's Day until further notice and the five-year statute of limitations on the filing of suits for the recovery of fugitive serfs. What may be called 'the Soviet' explanation for this was that the government was so terrified by first the Khlopko uprising (1601-3) and then the Bolotnikov uprising (1606-7) that it lacked the spirit to repress the peasants any further. I would be inclined towards another interpretation: the 1592 provisions satisfied those who were running the government, so they were not about to make any changes unless forced to do so.[121]

Other elements, however, were restive with the status quo. In the social stratification sweepstakes, the townsmen held a special place. Their problem was the Russian system of collective taxation. The census takers came around and would find x number of people living in an urban area. Assuming that x number of people lived in the area, the tax collectors assessed the area y roubles until the next census. Problems arose when some townsmen moved away or fled. The tax collectors still insisted that the area pay y roubles, even though there were fewer taxpayers than there had been when the census was taken. As a result, the remaining townsmen began to ask the government to forbid any further people from moving away and that those who had moved away be returned to share in the tax burden. An early example of this was in 1590/1, when the people of Toropets (on the western frontier) asked that their fellow townsmen be forbidden to move. The government complied by extending the forbidden years concept from the peasantry to the townsmen of Toropets.[122]

The Time of Troubles was brutal to the Russian towns. Townsmen were sent scurrying in all directions, much as Ivan IV's savage reign had sent the peasants scattering. By 1613 many towns were completely depopulated.[123] 'Recovery economics' is an important branch of economics, and it is probably correct to infer that Russia had recovered from the Time of Troubles by 1629. The year 1613 became the reference point for urban residence. After then, when townsmen asked that their peers who had departed be returned, the reference point always was back to 1613. By the late 1630s, townsmen were being returned who had fled a quarter-century earlier. This example played a major role in the campaign to have peasants returned who had fled more than five years previously. Also exemplary for the institution of serfdom was the fact that the government in the late 1630s became directly involved in the search for and return of fugitive townsmen.[124] For fugitive serfs and slaves, on the other hand, the government took no role until after the Ulozhenie of 1649.

Monasteries also suffered from the dislocations caused by the Time of Troubles. This recalls the time in the 1450s, when monasteries initiated the limitation of indebted peasants to the period around St George's Day, the very first steps on the road to serfdom. Shortly after 1613 elite monasteries were the first to be heard from on the issue of fugitive serfs. They complained that five years were inadequate for the recovery of their fugitive serfs, and the government extended the time to ten and more years, depending on when the peasants had fled.[125]

Other than these developments, the social stratification front was relatively quiet between the end ofthe Time ofTroubles and the end ofthe Smolensk war. Recovery tookmost ofthe social energy there was, and Patriarch Filaret, father of Tsar Michael, ran a tight ship while he was at the helm of the Russian state between 1619 and 1633. After his death, self-serving and corruption became the order of the day in the Russian government between 1633 and 1648. The ruling elite were occupied with allotting lands to themselves and looting the treasury. Witnessing that orgy of corruption, the members of the middle service class decided that it was time to get theirs. So, in 1637 they initiated perhaps the most famous petition campaign in Russian history for the completion of the enserfment of the peasantry.[126] They enumerated the troubles the five-year statute of limitations on the recovery of fugitive serfs caused them. They noted that 'contumacious (literally, strong) people' (sil'nye liudi) used the statute of limitations to conceal fugitives; once the statute of limitations had expired, the 'contumacious people' would send the fugitives back whence theyhad come to recruit other fugitives. The only solution, said the petitioners, was to repeal the statute of limitations. The government responded by extending the statute of limitations from five to nine years.[127]

The provincial cavalrymen found this concession to be of little help, so in 1641 again petitioned for a repeal of the statute of limitations. The govern­ment responded by extending the statute of limitations from nine to fifteen years.[128] Here one must stop to examine the context of these petitions. After the conclusion of the Smolensk war, which ended in a 'draw' because the Poles surrendered their claim to the Russian throne but refused to return the great fortress of Smolensk to the Russians, the government turned its attention from the western front to the southern front. The Crimean Tatars were still a major threat to Muscovy; their annual slave raids had carried off tens of thousands of Russians into the slave markets of the Crimea, and their raids diverted the Russians during the Smolensk war from concentrating their full attention on Smolensk. So the Muscovites began to wall off the southern frontier by constructing what became known as the Belgorod fortified line in the years 1636-54. This moved the formal frontier of Muscovy hundreds of miles south of the Oka and added tens of thousands of hectares of some of the best agricultural land in the world to Muscovite control. Those directing the Belgorod Line operation wanted the region between the line and the Oka settled for strategic purposes. The new settlers could be recruited for military purposes for service on the fortified line if necessary, and as farmers added significantly to the GNP of Muscovy while providing ready food to the frontier forces. Peasants were delighted to oblige by migrating to the frontier because their incomes rose farming the rich chernozem vis-a-vis what they could get from the poor podzol soils north of the Oka; besides that, south of the Oka, they had no landlords to worry about or pay rent to. Government officials behind the Belgorod Line were reluctant to return fugitives to their places of origins north of the Oka.

Thus in the years after 1636 the middle service-class cavalry landholders north of the Oka came to know that every time they would report for their annual military service, their peasants would use their absence to move to a frontier region where they could not possibly locate them, both because of the distances involved and because of the hostility of the frontier officials should by some stroke of luck they manage to find their fugitives. Slaves reg­istered in the Moscow Slavery Chancellery were accurately enough described so that in a judicial contest for the return of a fugitive slave, the central records could be brought to the courtroom and a reasonable decision made whether the person being contested was the slave described in the government docu­ment. But in the case of peasant serfs, no such records existed.33 In a hostile frontier courtroom, a serf-hunter could claim that the contested person x was his fugitive serf Ivan son of Pavel, x could respond that he was Nikolai son of Aleksei, that this was a case of mistaken identity - and the judge almost certainly would throw out the plaintiff's claim for x. The provin­cial cavalrymen, who only had 5.6 peasant households apiece, were hardly wealthy to begin with. When their labour force began to vanish, they became desperate.

Fifteen years proved to be of no more use to the middle service class than had nine or five. So, in 1645 they submitted a third petition asking for the repeal of the statute of limitations. This time, the government, in transition from Tsar Michael to Tsar Alexis, caved in and promised to repeal the statute

33 A decree of 30 March 1688 tried to compensate for this inadequacy by requiring the reg­istration of purchased and ceded/exchanged hereditary estate and service landholding serfs in the Service Landholding Chancellery (SLC) while loans and similar documents were to be registered in the Slavery Chancellery (SC). This measure could not be effective because the SLC was already overburdened with trying to keep track of the ownership and possession of much of the land in Russia, and could not possibly cope with keeping records on all the serfs as well. The SC's task was much more manageable. See RZ, 9 vols. (Moscow: Iuridicheskaia literatura, 1984-94), vol. iv: Zakonodatel'stvo perioda stanovleniia absoliutizma, ed. A. G. Man'kov (1986), pp. 102-3.

of limitations - once a new census had been taken.[129] The census was taken, in 1646-7, but the government was taken over (in the name of Alexis) by his tutor, Boris Ivanovich Morozov. Morozov was one of the most able men ever to head a Russian government, but also one of the most greedy and corrupt. Contemporaries reported that he had a 'thirst for gold as others thirst for water'. Morozov tried to rationalise and simplify the taxation system, which consisted of countless imposts on almost everything that moved or was stationary. Morozov got the idea of annulling many of them and consolidating them into a tax on salt. What Morozov forgot was that the demand for salt is elastic. With a dramatic rise in the price of salt because of the new tax, the consumption fell dramatically, and the reform collapsed. The rage against Morozov, however, did not collapse, but was only strengthened by many of his other activities. Of a rather minor if ancient Muscovite family, but not a noble, he began life with modest peasant holdings and ended it as the largest serf- holder in Muscovy. He enriched himselfboth with lands and peasants and with state property. He surrounded himself with a loyal cadre of equally rapacious individuals. Not only did he 'forget' the 1645 promise to repeal the statute of limitations, all the while he was luring away other landholders' peasants and dispatching them to distant properties he appropriated for himself on the Volga. He issued orders to his estate stewards to conceal fugitives even as his days in active government service were expiring in 1648.[130]

Morozov was so corrupt that the townsmen of Moscow could no longer endure it. They composed a petition to Alexis and tried to present it to him on 1 June 1648, as he rode through Moscow. That monumental document was translated into Swedish by a visitor at the time in Moscow and survives both in the original Middle Russian and in Swedish.[131] When the petitioners tried to present the document to Alexis, his accompanying musketeer guards tore it up and threw it into their faces. This touched off two days of rioting in Moscow in which a considerable portion of the city was burned, and two of Morozov's collaborators were torn to bits by the mob and their remains cast on some of the many dung heaps gracing the city's streets.[132] Morozov was saved from a similar fate only by the personal intervention of the tsar, who promised that Boris Ivanovich would never again serve in the Muscovite government.

In their petition the people of Moscow complained about the Morozov gang corruption and asked for the compilation of a new law code, with references to the Byzantine lawgivers Constantine and Justinian. The government, which was frightened out of its wits as the rioting spread to a dozen other towns, made several responses. First, Morozov and his cohort were permanently purged from the government and replaced with another group. Second, a commission of five men, headed by N. I. Odoevskii, was appointed to compile the laws. And third, calls were issued for the election of delegates to an Assembly of the Land (zemskii sobor), a proto-parliamentary body which originated in 1566 and was called at times when major national issues needed to be resolved, such as war and peace, dynastic succession and major legal issues. A full Assembly of the Land consisted of two chambers. The upper chamber contained members of the upper service class and the clergy. The lower chamber had elected delegates from the towns and the provincial middle service class. It is known that at least some of the 1648 delegate elections were vigorously contested.[133]

The Ulozhenie of 1649

The Odoevskii legislative commission was one of the most efficient in all Rus­sian history. Its members sent requests to the major chancelleries requesting that they send them their statute books, scrolls on which laws were entered as they were made. About ten of the forty chancelleries participated in that process. The commission extracted the most relevant provisions from the statute books and grouped them into what became the twenty-five chapters of the Law Code of 1649 (Sobornoe Ulozhenie), the most important written monument in all of Russian history before the nineteenth century - with perhaps the exception of the chronicles. On 1 October 1648, the delegates to the Assembly of the Land assembled with the petitions and demands of their constituents. About 7 per cent of the 968 articles of the Ulozhenie resulted from the petitions brought to the Assembly of the Land, including one for the repeal of the statute of limitations for filing suits for the recovery of fugi­tive serfs. The Odoevskii Commission read its draft to the delegates of each chamber, who voted each article either up or down. The provisions demanded by the delegates were integrated in with the Odoevskii Commission's draft extracted from the chancellery records. The whole project was completed in January 1649, and on 29 January the delegates who were willing signed the scroll copy of the Ulozhenie. This point must be stressed, for it is known that a number of the upper chamber clerics refused to sign the document to protest against the beating the Church had taken in the document on issues ranging from a semi-secularisation of the Church (a lay governmental chancellery, the Monastery Chancellery, was appointed to manage much of the Church; this was an ancestor of Peter the Great's Holy Synod) to issues on Church prop­erty discussed at the beginning of this chapter. The scroll copy, which is still extant, was taken to the state typography, and then 1,200 copies were pub­lished. This was the second civil (non-religious) book published in Muscovy. The 1,200 copies sold out rapidly, and a second printing of another 1,200 copies was ordered immediately, which sold out in a couple of years.39 The entire Ulozhenie is a printed manifestation of the dictum of the Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan that governments will acquire more power when­ever the opportunity arises. The Ulozhenie gave the government power over nearly all of society, thus consolidating its almost total control over two of the major economic factors (land and labour).40 The third factor, capital, was

39 Richard Hellie, 'Muscovite Law and Society: the Ulozhenie of 1649 as a Reflection of the Political and Social Development of Russia since the Sudebnik of 1589', unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1965; Richard Hellie, 'The Ulozhenie of 1649', MERSH, vol. xl (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International Press, 1985), pp. 192-8; Richard Hellie, 'Early Modern Russian Law: The Ulozhenie of 1649', and 'Ulozhenie Commentary: Preamble and Chapters 1-2', RH 15 (1988): 155-224; Richard Hellie, 'Commentary on Chapters 3 through 6', RH 17 (1990): 65-78; Richard Hellie, 'Commentary on Chapters 7-9', RH 17 (1990): 179-226; Richard Hellie, 'Commentary on Chapter 11 (The Judicial Process for Peasants)', RH 17 (1990): 305-39; Richard Hellie, 'The Church and the Law in Late Muscovy: Chapters 12 and 13 of the Ulozhenie of 1649', CASS 25 (1991): 179-99.

40 Perhaps a chapter such as this should discuss in detail the evolution of the exploitation of the peasants/serfs in this period, but space limitations and other considerations prevent such a presentation. Soviet scholars did much work on this issue, but never systematised their findings. The problems are immense. One is the passage of time, and the facts that rents were always changing. Another is the fact that there were numerous forms of rent, ranging from labour rent (barshchina) in which a serf farmed his lord's land to money or in kind rent (obrok) to any possible combination of these forms of rent. Geographical variations were important. Perhaps most important was the variety of landowners and landholders ranging from the state itself to the tsar, from the Church (consisting of the patriarch, monasteries, individual institutions) to magnate landowners down to provincial cavalry landholders. With the passage oftime, pure 'rent' gets mixed up with taxes. The general assumption is that rent and taxes took about a third of a peasant's harvest and his time (ifproperly priced), the peasant could consume about a third ofwhat he produced, andhehad to save about a third ofhis harvest for seed for the following year. See e.g. A. N. Sakharov Russkaia derevnia XVII v. Po materialam Patriarshego khoziaistva (Moscow: Nauka, 1966), pp. 66-7; N. A. Gorskaia, Monastyrskie krest'iane Tsentral'noi Rossii v XVII veke. O sushchnosti i formakh feodal'no-krepostnicheskikh otnoshenii (Moscow: Nauka, 1977), pp. 239-339; Iu. A. Tikhonov, Pomeshchich'i krest'iane v Rossii. Feodal'naia renta v XVII - nachale XVIII v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1974), pp. 117-305. Tikhonov's table 59 shows the vast variations in rents on service landholdings in this period (p. 297). See also L. V Milov, Velikorusskii pakhar' i osobennosti rossiiskogo istoricheskogo protsessa (Moscow:

still largely in private hands, although the discussion above about technology transfers indicates that the government, which also was the largest merchant, had considerable control over this factor as well.

The Ulozhenie became known everywhere almost immediately and was referred to by those with legal interests for decades thereafter. The major changes in the law were announced by public criers. For the purposes of this chapter, the major items of interest were contained in the Ulozhenies chapter 11 (serfdom, 34 articles), chapter 19 (townsmen, 40 articles), and chapter 20 (slaves, 119 articles). The Assembly of the Land added little to chapter 20, which was a codification of the practices of the Slavery Chancellery. On the other hand, much of chapters 11 and 19 came from petitions by the delegates to the Assembly of the Land. The principles of these three chapters interacted with one another in the production of the system which was to last in Russia - even beyond the abolition of personal serfdom in 1861 - until the reforms of 1906 onwards.

The first principle of serfdom was that the peasant could not move without his lord's permission. The same was true for the townsmen (for whom the town was the 'lord'). According to articles 1 and 2 of chapter 11, this was true for all peasants, regardless of whether they lived on lay or Church seigniorial land, or on land that had no lord, 'taxable land', that still belonged to the peasants or to the state. Later on, in the eighteenth century, the provisions for seigniorial and state peasants diverged, but this was not the case in 1649. Second, there was the issue of the return of fugitives. Here the measures for serfs resembled more those for slaves than for townsmen. For the return of slaves, there had never been a statute of limitations for the filing of suits for the recovery of fugitives. Now, the same applied to serfs. As mentioned earlier, however, the evidentiary bases for the status of slavery and serfdom differed dramatically. Slaves were registered in the Moscow Slavery Chancellery; otherwise they were not slaves. There was no formal registration for serfs, so the issue arose ofwhat evidence would apply in the case of disputes involving serfs. The Ulozhenie preferred written evidence, and mentioned the land cadastres compiled in 1626, the recently compiled 1646-7 census, or records transmitting possession oflands to servicemen. In practice, such written evidence overrode the clause in the Ulozhenie which declared that a peasant was supposed to live where his/her grandfather had lived. On the other hand, there were no provisions for the return of townsmen who had fled prior to the Ulozhenie; for them,

Rosspen, 1998), pp. 483-5; Z. A. Ogrizko, Iz istorii krest'ianstva na Severe feodal'noi Rossii

XVIIv. (Osobyeformykrepostnoizavisimosti) (Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1968), pp. 26-57;

Aleksandrov et al., Krest'ianstvo, p. 154.

the binding process began on 29 January i649, and continued indefinitely into the future. No definitive explanation for the difference has ever been offered, but one may surmise that the Odoevskii commission believed that townsmen were involved in a trade whose disruption would be economically deleterious, whereas peasants moved their agricultural site regularly because of soil exhaustion and thus transportation back to a legal lord's estate would be little more disruptive than moving to a new site on the same estate in slash/burn (assartage) agriculture, or rotating around in the three-field system. Of course the explanation may have been more political than economic, that the delegates from the middle service-class cavalry at the Assembly ofthe Land were more persuasive/intimidating than were the urban delegates.

A major issue that concerned all three population categories was that of marriage. If one or two fugitives wed while one or both were in flight from their lawful owners or places of residence, what should happen to the couple? The Russian Orthodox Church was adamant that marriage was inviolable. In response to this simple dogma, a simple solution for fugitives was found: receiving fugitive slaves, serfs and townsmen was illegal, so whoever received the fugitive was penalised by losing the couple. However, the family was not inviolable, so that if they had children, the law-breaking harbourer of the fugitive could keep the offspring born while in his 'care' even though he (or it: a town) lost the parents. If the fugitives married while on 'neutral ground', such as on the frontier where there were no lords, then the lords cast lots to determine possession. The winner got the couple and had to pay the loser 10 roubles. If a female fugitive serf married a frontier serviceman, he could keep her for 50 roubles. This was an impossible sum, presumably meant to deter servicemen from marrying fugitive women and the women from fleeing to the frontiers.

One final issue, the abasement of the person of the serf which began in the reign of Ivan IV (see Chapter 12 above) remains to be discussed. The Ulozhenie surprisingly has little to say about that, even though the chapter on slaves is the second longest in the law code and thus the Odoevskii commission cannot be suspected of having been squeamish on this topic. One may surmise that the legislators wanted to concentrate on the principle at hand, the perpetual binding of the peasants to the land, not its possible derivative which could easily enough turn into its opposite, the binding of the peasant to the person of a lord. The culmination of this fate of the serfs waited until the early eighteenth century, to last until 1861. But the forebodings of what was to come are evident in the Ulozhenie. Ominous is article 3 of chapter i5 which permits a hereditary landowner (votchinnik) to issue a manumission charter freeing his serf, but denies that privilege to a service landholder (pomeshchik). This, of course, equates one category of serfs with slaves, both of whom can become freedmen (nearly the sole category of free people in Muscovy). This also served as a vehicle for an owner of a hereditary estate to transfer his peasants to another holding. Article 7 of chapter 16 permits outright someone who acquired waste lands to move peasants from his other lands to populate those waste lands. Nothing is said about the consent of the serfs in this process, which probably enhanced economic efficiency at the expense of the personal freedom of the serfs.

Another ominous sign of the abasement of the peasant is in article 141 of chapter 10. It had long been assumed that a slave was an extension of his owner, and that putting pressure on a slave would force his owner to comply with the law. This article extends that provision to the serf: if a defendant hid from a bailiff, the bailiff could detain either his slave or his serf to force him to appear. Chapter 10, article 161 establishes the procedures for conducting a general investigation (poval'nyi obysk). Members of the middle service class (dvoriane and deti boiarskie) were to be interrogated separately, and their testimony was to be recorded separately from that of their slaves and serfs. Notice here that again the serfs are linked with slaves, and both are less full witnesses than their masters. (Further on, however, article 163 decrees that serfs who lied in such investigations were to be fined a rouble, but nothing was said about slaves who lied at all; their owners were fined 30 roubles for their own perjury. Article 261 contains further evidence that slave status had not yet been fully extended to serfs. A member of the middle service class who did not pay his debts could be placed in a righter (pravezh), a form of stocks, where force would be used to compel the debtor to pay. His slave could be put in the righter instead of the debtor, but this did not extend to serfs.) On the other hand, debts could be collected both from the slaves and the serfs of a landholder or estate owner (art. 262). In 1642 peasants had been denied the right to make contracts which, upon default, would have led to their formal enslavement.

At the request of the provincial cavalry delegates to the Assembly of the Land, apracticeborrowedfrom the history ofthe townsmen was soon adopted: the mass dragnet. The difficulty of finding fugitive serfs in the condition of constant labour shortage and the willingness of other lords to take them in was a constant theme of Russian history.[134] The same was true, of course, for townsmen, except that townsmen were likely to flee from one town to another;

the number of urban settlements was limited, and it was comparatively easy for a dragnet to go through urban areas and identify those who did not legally belong there. The magnitude of the difficulty of such endeavours in the vast Russian countryside and the new frontier areas can only be imagined. It was modestly facilitated by the Russian practice of living in villages, however, rather than on isolated farmsteads. Be that as it may, after the Ulozhenie, the government formed dragnet teams which scoured the countryside for fugitive peasants.[135] No doubt the legal practice ofthe mass inquisition (poval'nyi obysk) gave the Russian government practice in running dragnets; the mass inquisi­tion could be called for by litigants, and a team of investigators would go out to the area to survey the region to ask up to several hundred people such a question as, 'Who owned the spotted cow with the crooked horn?' Whichever litigant got the majority won the case. When hunting for fugitive serfs (slaves were thrown in, too), the interrogators asked everyone to prove that he/she lived where he/she was at the moment. If no proof could be offered, the assumption was that the object of the inquisition must belong somewhere else. Torture could be used to find out where that somewhere else was. Then the fugitives were loaded on carts and returned where they belonged. Records survive revealing that some investigators returned more than a thousand runaways.

Creating a legal caste of peasant serfs, the Ulozhenie forbade them to leave their caste. Earlier, a down-and-out peasant could sell him/herself into slav­ery, but this was now forbidden. The government was always short ofmilitary personnel, and occasionally peasants joined the middle service-class cavalry or the lower service-class musketeers, artillerymen or cossacks. That was also categorically forbidden. Becoming a townsman had also been an option. It is doubtful that the townsmen reproduced themselves, and they always wel­comed additions to their numbers who would share the tax burden. Moreover, there were no guilds to keep interlopers out. But rural to urban migration was also forbidden. Nevertheless, it persisted, in spite ofthe law. After the Ulozhenie, the townsmen on several occasions asked that amnesties be granted to fugitive peasants currently living in their midst. The government, anxious to collect the cash taxes paid by townsmen, agreed in 1684,1685 and 1688 not to return fugitive serfs who had been registered in a town in the 1678 census. In 1693, this date was moved up to 1684.43 Regrettably, I know of no way to calculate the economic cost to the Russian economy up until 1689 of the prohibition against rural-urban migration, but there must have been some - just as there unquestionably must have been economic costs from the stratification of the entire society. The fact was that the Muscovite state exhibited its maximalist tendencies in the social sphere, regardless of the economic costs.

In spite of the Ulozhenie, peasants continued to flee, both to other landlords and to the frontiers. About the latter little could be done, and it is not clear that the government was opposed to the settling of the frontier areas in any case.44 But the government learned that there was something it could do to inhibit lords from receiving fugitives. The first step was a fine, which had no impact. Then the government decided to confiscate an additional peasant besides the fugitive being returned. This had no impact. So the government raised the number to two. This also had no impact. But when the number was raised to four, would-be recipients of others' fugitive serfs drove them out en masse.45 Historians have been able to learn of only a handful of enforcements of this sanction. For the savage Peter the Great, this was still insufficient, so he decreed the death penalty for the receiver of another's serf. Whether this sanction was ever effected is unknown.

The post-Ulozhenie era was replete with legislation on serfs, as we have seen. The last measure which must be mentioned came about as a result of the census of 1678, which uncovered the fact that vast numbers of serfs, now differing little from slaves, had left the tax rolls by selling themselves into slavery. The following year the government solved this problem on 2 September 1679 by unilaterally converting all slaves engaged in agriculture into serfs, that is, putting them on the tax rolls.46 This left household slavery as the sole exit for the exploited peasantry, a fact uncovered in the census of 1719. Peter liquidated that problem on 5 February i722, and again on i9 January i723, by making all household slaves subject to the soul tax (a head tax on all males), thus extinguishing the institution of slavery in favour of serfdom.47

Ibid., pp. 146-7; PRP, 8 vols. (Moscow: Gosiurizdat, 1952-63), vyp. vii: Pamiatniki prava periodasozdaniiaabsoliutnoi monarkhii. VtoraiapolovinaXVIIv., ed. L. V Cherepnin (1963), pp. 298-30i. See also the decree of 5 March i677, permitting peasants of the Saviour monastery who had settled in the town of Iaroslavl' after the Ulozhenie to remain there (PRP, vyp. vii, p. 297). In 1699 a similar decree was issued for Kazan' (ibid., p. 302).

Hellie, Enserfment, p. 250.

Ibid., pp. 252-3. Additionally, fines of 20 roubles per year per fugitive were to be collected, and offending estate stewards were to be beaten with the knout: Vorms, Pamiatniki, pp. 84-6.

Hellie, Slavery, pp. 686, 697.

Ibid., p. 698.

The census of I678 changed the method of assessment of taxation. Previ­ously, peasants had been taxed on the basis of the quantity and quality of the land they tilled. As one might expect, this led to a diminution of agricultural tillage. So the government decided to tax on the basis of households. The mean household size had been four. The new provision changed the nature ofthe peasant/serf household. Like all economic creatures, the Russians soon figured out a way to 'beat' the tax collector: to crowd as many people into a house as possible. The smoky hut had limited capacity, but fundamentally soli­taries disappeared and the three-generational family was created. The same thing had happened earlier in the Balkans, when the Ottomans had introduced household taxation a few centuries earlier. Mean household size increased to ten, as surviving grandparents, their male children and spouses and their chil­dren all crowded into one hut. Nineteenth-century Slavophiles believed that the extended family was a primordial Slavic peasant institution, but in fact it had been created, really unknowingly, by the powerful Muscovite state. Peter figured out what had happened, and shifted to the system of soul taxation. Crowding so many people into one hut was undoubtedly deleterious for both health and social relations, but it saved money (first, on heat, like the stove ventilating into the room), so that the extended family persisted to 1861, and in many cases to the end of the tsarist regime. This was done under pressure from landlords desiring to maximise rents and peasant communes desiring each household to have maximum disposable income to pay its share of the collectively assessed taxes. Recall that the soul tax was imposed on all males. Only working males actually could pay the tax burden, whereas a widow with five small boys paid nothing, even though five 'souls' were entered in the tax records. Thus the tax burden of a community was collectively assessed and paid by the able-bodied males, who were interested in every household's taxpaying ability to support the demands of the hypertrophic state.

24

Law and society

NANCY SHIELDS KQLLMANN

Addressing the interconnections of 'law and society' in seventeenth-century Muscovy is challenging, because of the complexity of the judicial system. Russia was far from the uniformity in law, adjudication and procedure that the contemporary European Polizeistaat was striving for (and even there the goal was achieved more in the breach than the norm).[136] In its multiplicity of venues and legal norms and in the flexibility of the enforcement of those norms, Russian justice was decidedly medieval.

This is not to say that the state was passive in the legal arena. Codification and centralisation of judicial power were, indeed, key goals of seventeenth-century rulers. But their ambition exceeded reality. Moscow's rulers were hindered by the challenge of administering an empire that was immense, ethnically diverse and riddled with pockets of immunity. This chapter will explore that complexity by surveying the multiple venues of legal proceedings in Muscovy, then by examining judicial practice and finally by surveying changes in the positive law.

Judicial venues

In principle a centralised bureaucratic structure of chancelleries in Moscow and regional governors in the provinces provided the judicial system in the seventeenth century. Chancelleries sent governors, called voevody, to appointed regions. They exercised administrative, fiscal and judicial authority; they often oversaw subordinate officials and courts in smaller towns. On paper the system was hierarchical and empire wide. In practice, however, many groups and regions fell out of range of the governor's authority because of explicit or implicit charters of judicial immunity, religious, ethnic or colonial status, or personal dependency

The Russian Orthodox Church was a key beneficiary of judicial immunity. Collectively the largest landholder in Muscovy in the seventeenth century, the Church had enjoyed fiscal and judicial privileges since the time of Christianisa- tion in 988.[137] The most undisputed immunity enjoyed by the Church was the right to adjudicate cases involving spiritual issues over all Orthodox Christians. In the seventeenth century spiritual issues were defined widely, ranging from blasphemy, heresy and witchcraft to family law, inheritance and divorce. These cases were tried in bishops' courts, with the patriarch as appeal.

More problematic was secular jurisdiction over the Church's dependants. In the seventeenth century the state claimed a role here, providing in the Chancellery of the Great Palace a higher instance for trials of Church depen­dants and clergy (except for the patriarch's people) in secular cases. In practice, however, Church people litigated in a dizzying array of venues.

Since at least the fifteenth century Muscovite grand princes regularly granted charters of judicial, fiscal and/or administrative immunity, or priv­ileges of appeal directly to the tsar, to monasteries, private individuals, col­lectives of artisans and the like, reserving to the tsar only criminal law. The patriarch adjudicated over laymen and clergy in the parishes and monasteries on his lands under an immunity received in 1625 and affirmed throughout the century. Metropolitans, archbishops and bishops or the patriarch also granted immunities to monasteries or communities from their own courts, allowing monastic hierarchs to judge their dependants or allowing appeal to the tsar, not the bishop. Immunities could be limited to a certain type of crime or value of suit; the options were myriad and almost every imaginable combination can be encountered. Although the state proclaimed a policy of curtailing immu­nities in the mid-sixteenth century, they continued to be awarded through the seventeenth. The result was that almost each ecclesiastical community had a different relationship with Church and state courts, often preferring high-level secular courts to Church courts.

In the seventeenth century the state tried to gain jurisdiction over Church people. The Conciliar Law Code of 1649 (hereafter Ulozhenie) affirmedthe patri­arch's judicial autonomy (chapter 12), but created a Monastery Chancellery (chapter 13) for clergy and laymen in all but spiritual suits.[138] This prompted the 1667 Church Council to claim judicial authority over clergy in all affairs, even in criminal cases, where it established the primacy of Church investigators in a shared Church-state criminal trial. The Monastery Chancellery lost its juridical authority and was abolished in 1677, only to be reinstated in 1701 by Peter the Great.

As landlords, Church institutions exercised legal jurisdiction over their lay staff and peasants in petty crime. In principle, criminal cases involving Church dependants were to be judged by the tsar's courts. Even here, however, some immunity charters allowed criminal jurisdiction, and many monasteries rou­tinely usurped this authority and judged and punished criminal suits in-house.[139]In monasteries the hegumen often delegated the task of adjudication to the treasurer or cellarer, who presided over court with a council of monastic brothers; very large monasteries also maintained a network of local judicial officials. Bishops similarly divided their lands into 'tenths' and appointed an official (desiatinnik) in each area. These local judges were so harsh that bish­ops often awarded immunities from them to monasteries or parish churches.[140]The patriarch maintained a hierarchy of central and local judicial offices in his dominions as well. Church courts used Byzantine canon law for spiritual issues and a combination of Church and secular law for secular jurisdiction.[141]

All in all, never in the seventeenth century did one single principle govern the issue of jurisdiction for people associated with the Church. All depended upon one's social status, institutional affiliation and its immunity rights, physical location and type of crime.

A second large incidence of immunity from the tsar's judicial authority related to dependant status, that is, serfdom and slavery. The vast majority of the Muscovite population were peasants and in the seventeenth century a growing portion of them were transferred (by purchase, by tsar's grant) to private landholders. Perhaps 10 per cent of the population were slaves.[142] The right to own peasants and slaves was limited to the Church, the traditional cavalry army (Moscow ranks and provincial gentry) and Moscow merchants (gosti), who also had exclusive rights to ownership of hereditary (votchina) and service tenure (pomest'e) land. Landlords traditionally enjoyed jurisdiction over dependant peasants and slaves in petty disputes and the culmination of enserfment in the 1649 Ulozhenie simply intensified their coercive control. Landlords relied on village communal institutions for basic law and order, overseen by their bailiffs; in the largest estates a bailiff would hold court in a formal venue.[143]

Large areas ofthe Russian Empire, however, did not know serfdom. Serfdom was limited to the most fertile agrarian lands - the centre, the north-west and the expanding southern borderlands. In the north and Siberia the challenges of distance, low yields and labour scarcity made it impossible to keep peasants fixed to land and landlord. In areas without serfdom, peasants enjoyed local self- governance, subordinate to the governor's administration. Similarly enjoying more judicial autonomy than serfs were groups who stood midway between peasants and the privileged military elite, the so-called 'contract servitors'. These included military or quasi-military units such as engineers, artillery, cossacks, musketeers, postal riders. In addition to their military functions, they farmed (land was often granted communally to the group, rather than to individuals) and/or produced and sold goods. They could not own populated land or dependent labour. As we shall see below, jurisdiction over them was complex.

In addition to Church and landlord jurisdiction, much of the population of seventeenth-century Russia was exempt from the central administration in all but criminal cases because of ethnic, religious and colonial status. Muscovy's colonial policy was laissez-faire in the seventeenth century, tolerating diversity in law, judicial institutions and elites.

The acquisition of the key trade depot of Kazan' in 1552 served as a spring­board for Russian expansion into the middle Volga and steppe.[144] Expansion into the steppe was in full swing by the seventeenth century, with fortified lines and frontier outposts staffed by Russians and elites of the Tatar, Mari, Mordva and other native peoples. Such border troops were granted pomest'e as cavalrymen or were enlisted into contract servitor ranks. In the 1650s and 1660s the state also transferred to the southern frontier servitors from recently conquered Smolensk and Polotsk, often also transferring peasants from the centre to populate their lands. All these military servitors and non-enserfed peasants were subject to the governor's authority. But indigenous communi­ties were permitted to use their own administrative and judicial institutions and Islamic or customary law. Natives were subject to the governor only in criminal cases.

Siberia presented an equally complex task of governance when Russia sub­dued the west Siberian khanate in the late sixteenth century. By the mid- seventeenth, Russians had settled in thin lines along the southern steppe fron­tier and had established trade depots along the Ob, Enisei and other rivers to their mouths in the Arctic. The Russian population in Siberia was small, estimated by the end of the century at 25,000, including around 11,000 military servitors, about 2,500 urban dwellers (posadskie) and the rest peasants.

Peasants fled to Siberia from the Russian north, the heartland, the middle Volga area and southern frontier. They farmed their own land and a portion of the tsar's grain fields (which provided military grain supplies). Enserfment did not develop to any great extent, although the Church did own some peasants (by the end of the century about 1,500 peasant households belonged to Siberian monasteries). Russian peasants in Siberia governed themselves in local communes (on the model of the north discussed below) and were subject to the local governor in criminal affairs. Because of the sparseness of settlement and distance from Moscow, governors in Siberia were given longer terms (two to three years) and broader authority than governors in the centre. They were renowned for corruption, ruling like satraps far from Moscow's controlling hand.[145]

Siberian governors also oversaw a far-flung, sparsely settled population of ethnic groups, who were taxed primarily in precious furs. In economy these peoples ranged from settled forest exploitation and hunting to pastoral nomadism of horses and cattle in the steppe to reindeer pastoralism in the Arc­tic to hunting ocean mammals. Their communities were tiny, their languages numbered in the hundreds, most Paleo-Asiatic, unrelated one to the other. Siberian governors prosecuted natives for major crimes and made Russian courts available to Siberian natives as they wished, often making concessions to native customs, even in criminal cases. For petty crimes, governors allowed native communities to govern themselves with native elites, laws and councils.

The situation was equally complex in Russia's relations with the Bashkirs south of the Urals in the seventeenth century. The area was diverse in economy and ethnic groups. The more northern area was primarily agricultural, while Bashkirs settled to the south in the steppe practised pastoral nomadism. The judicial landscape was highly complex. Newly arrived Russians, Tatar peasants and military men, Chuvash, Udmurts, forcibly transferred Polotsk noblemen, all settled in the northern agricultural area, each with different social and political statuses. Some, like the Russian cavalrymen and Polotsk noblemen, received pomest'e with serfs. Service Tatars were equated with contract servi­tors and farmed land that they rented from native Bashkirs. Russian peasants fell into serfdom to military men or the Church, or settled state lands. Bashkir peasants, meanwhile, maintained their traditional customs, institutions and elites.

When Moscow acquired significant lands in left-bank Ukraine and Belarus' in the Khmel'nyts'kyi uprising and the subsequent Russo-Polish wars (ended by peace treaties of 1667,1687), it faced an administrative challenge far different fromthatposedby the sparsely settled farming, forest and steppe communities east of Moscow. The Ukrainian and Belarusian lands, previously part of the parliamentary noble democracy ofthe Commonwealth of Poland and Lithua­nia, were densely and diversely populated. The cossack state, or hetmanate, governed most of the left bank from 1648 into the last third of the eighteenth century. Muscovy placed governors in key centres such as Kiev, Chernigov and Pereiaslav and administered Ukraine through the Little Russian Chan­cellery, or Malorossiiskii prikaz (to 1722). But through treaties renegotiated with each new hetman Moscow allowed the cossack administration to remain essentially unchanged. The hetmanate was divided into approximately six­teen regimental units, run by cossack colonels, who served as head appellate judges for the regional courts in their area. In adjudication they used diverse law codes - decrees of hetmans and tsars, Lithuanian Statutes of 1566 and 1588 and customary law. The result was so complex that the cossack administration commissioned a codification of laws in 1728. The new code - submitted to the Russian Senate in 1743 but not approved - was nevertheless used in the Ukrainian lands in the second half of the eighteenth century.[146]

Pockets of judicial practice outside the hetmanate still existed in Ukraine. Landlords operated their own manorial courts with authority over civil and minor criminal affairs; so also did the Church, which was the largest single proprietor of land. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (led by the Metropolitan of Kiev) maintained ecclesiastical courts for clerics, using Church law, and also for general issues of marriage, divorce and morality. Uniate Church institutions were almost unknown in this part of the Commonwealth.

Outside the hetmanate Muscovy ruled more directly through governors in Sloboda Ukraine and Zaporozhia. In the sixteenth and seventeenth cen­turies municipal self-government through German law was granted to major towns in Ukraine and Belarus'. About twelve towns in the hetmanate enjoyed such privileges, while smaller towns were privately governed by landlords or ruled by cossack administration. Magdeburg law was maintained for at least a century after Muscovy took over, finally falling into disuse in favour of the hetmanate's law codes by the end of the eighteenth century. After Moscow acquired the Smolensk and upper Oka areas in Belarus', it revoked municipal privileges and transferred the areas to governor control. But tsars affirmed the landholdings and privileges granted to Smolensk noblemen by Polish kings; special rights for the Smolensk nobility were revoked only in 1761.

So, large areas and groups stood beyond the tsar's courts. The judicial arena that was covered by the tsar's centralised system reflected his claims to power. A principal area was criminal law - murder, robbery, theft with material evi­dence, treason, heresy, arson. The tsar also claimed authority over immoveable property, dispensing land in service or hereditary tenure. Accordingly, great attention in seventeenth-century law codes was devoted to the issues of owner­ship and inheritance of land. By the same token, to support the landed cavalry and to produce steady revenues for state expansion, the state concerned itself extensively with social legislation. Not only did it enforce enserfment but it also regulated slavery and limited the mobility of the urban populace. These key areas - criminal, property and social law - were adjudicated by the tsar's governors.

As judge the governor in the seventeenth century tried civil cases.[147] Gov­ernors with large jurisdictions who were accompanied by a state secretary (d'iak) appointed by Moscow could judge cases beyond 20 roubles in value and also land and slave disputes. Governors of smaller towns, without a state secretary, were limited to cases up to 20 roubles in value, after which their corresponding chancellery took over (Ulozhenie chapter 13: article 3).[148] In the­ory criminal cases were done by locally elected criminal officers - the guba elders and swornmen. But by the mid-seventeenth century the guba system was falling under the authority of governors. Guba officers might develop a case and turn it over to the governor to judge, or resolve it jointly with him. Whole areas of the realm did not have guba institutions, and often did not want them. V N. Glaz'ev shows that in the seventeenth century communities often refused to support both a governor and a guba apparatus, since it was too

expensive. [149]

The legal system embraced by the system of governors was uniform across the state in law and procedure, but not in judicial venue. Leaving aside the many areas of immunity discussed above, legal jurisdiction was complex even within the tsar's system. F. Dmitriev argued that the Ulozhenie of 1649 had simplified legal jurisdiction from sixteenth-century complexity to three prin­ciples -jurisdiction by residence, by social status or by type of crime.[150] His simplification is deceptive: the resulting system still provided multiple court systems and judicial personnel, resulting in frequent transfer of venue and quarrels between centre and periphery over jurisdiction.

Residence was the principal determinant of judicial venue. Different chan­celleries administered discrete regions ofthe country, and sent out governorsto their delegated parts of the realm. The Military Service Chancellery (Razriad) administered the southern frontier; the Kazan' Palace and Siberia Chancellery oversaw those areas. A handful of territorial chancelleries called chetverti (Nov­gorod, Ustiug, Kostroma and Galich) oversaw the north-west and northern areas to the Urals. The chancellery that oversaw the governor provided the higher instance for local cases. A significant exception was the city of Moscow, which did not have a governor. There the Moscow Administrative Chancellery enforced law and order for the taxpaying populace of the town.

A governor's administration varied according to the region he governed. Siberia, the middle Volga and the southern frontier were sparsely populated, had a high percentage of servitors of a contract service type, and relatively few taxpaying peasants to pay the costs of elected administration such as the guba system. The governor therefore ruled rather autonomously. But in the north - the lands stretching from the Novgorodian hinterland, to the Dvina watershed, eastward to the Urals and north to the White and Arctic Seas - peasant communities balanced meagre farming with forest exploitation, fishing, hunting, modest artisan work and trade and they organised them­selves into self-governing communes at the regional (volost') and village lev­els here. Those belonging to the large monasteries so dominant in the north (Solovetskii, Kirillo-Belozerskii monasteries) were dependant on them, but the majority of the population was not enserfed, subject only to the tsars. For petty crimes, such as minor theft, brawls, land disputes, disagreements between neighbours, drunkenness, these communities handled their own affairs, with limited oversight by the governor. In criminal affairs they were overseen by governors and sometimes by guba institutions, although these were weakly developed in the north.[151]

Following Dmitriev's second principle - social status - many corporate groups were subordinate in fiscal, administrative and judicial matters to one of the chancelleries in Moscow, bypassing the jurisdiction of the local gov­ernor. The Foreign Affairs Chancellery had jurisdiction over most foreigners visiting Moscow as well as the Don cossacks, while the Foreign Military Chan­cellery had jurisdiction over European soldiers in Russian service. The Postal Chancellery had jurisdiction over post riders, the Stonework for stone and brick-workers on the southern frontier, the Armoury for factory workers, the Musketeer for musketeers and cossacks serving in towns, the Engineers' Chancellery for artillerymen. Privileged Moscow merchants were granted jurisdiction by the Chancellery of the Great Treasury, while the Moscow and Vladimir Judicial Chancelleries judged the higher ranks of landed servitors in civil issues. The Chancellery of the Great Palace was court of appeal for the tsar's (dvortsovye) properties, for non-enserfed communes, and in principle for Church people. When a plaintiff presented a case, he followed the rule that the venue was determined by the defendant's jurisdiction.

Finally, Dmitriev's third principle - type of crime - also determined juris­diction. As we have seen, the Church claimed jurisdiction over spiritual issues. The Felony Chancellery had authority over the criminal law through the guba system. The Slavery Chancellery handled disputes about slave ownership, while the Service Land Chancellery handled probably the greatest volume of litigation in the seventeenth century, over land.

All in all, the Muscovite state was riddled with pockets ofjudicial autonomies within the overarching law asserted by the centre. These pockets included eth­nic, religious and political communities in non-Russian colonial areas; courts of private landlords and the Church; ecclesiastical courts for religious and moral issues. The law interacted with 'society' in myriad venues and laws depending upon one's social status, religion, ethnicity and crime.

The practice of the law

The 1649 Ulozhenie declared itself authoritative over 'all people of the Mus­covite state, from highest to lowest rank' (10: 1). In practice we see the full social range active in litigations. Even slaves could initiate suits, testify and offer evidence. Landlords also represented their dependants in court. Women could participate in court cases, although they were often represented by male kinsmen and spouses when such were available. Widows could litigate on their own behalf. Some limitations were introduced in this century: minors could not take an oath or sue (10: 185; 14: 5); the mentally incompetent could not litigate; peasants could not sue their landlords, nor spouses their partners, nor children their parents; freed slaves could not sue their former masters (10:174, 176-7).[152]

A striking aspect of Muscovite judicial practice in the seventeenth century was the lack of a specialised class of lawyers serving as judges or advocates. Muscovy had no professional legal schools. Most judges did not specialise in judging - provincial governors were jacks of all trades and relied upon the expertise of local under-secretaries or state secretaries assigned from Moscow chancelleries. The situation was somewhat different in the chancelleries, partic­ularly by the second half ofthe century, when judges began to serve consistently in one chancellery, building up expertise.

Moscow's bureaucratic stratum - state secretaries (d'iaki) and under­secretaries (pod'iachie) - constituted a repository of practical judicial knowl­edge.[153] These men wrote the documentation for stages of a suit, selected relevant excerpts from law codes to advise the judge and hired themselves out to write petitions for litigants. We also find parish priests writing petitions and signing documents in place of illiterate litigants. But in the seventeenth century these literate judicial experts did not develop into a notarial class or a stratum of lawyers and legal advocates.

Corruption and bribery were constants in this judicial system, so much so that we do well to reorient our thinking on the topic. Local governors lived off fees collected injudicial and bureaucratic activities and from payments in cash and kind from their communities. They stood in a gift-exchange relationship with their community: they expected gifts from their subjects and the subjects in turn expected attention and concern. Muscovites recognised several types of gifts to judges and officials, only one of which - excessive fees for services not rendered - was considered illegal. The others - gifts at holidays, gifts to the official's family - were just considered the cost of doing business.[154]

For reasons of lack of specialisation, or the press of other duties, or conflicts over venue, or corruption or a host of other causes, the law was not a highly professional arena in seventeenth-century Russia. Delay was endemic, as well as complaints against judges for favouritism and enmity. Moscow chancelleries were responsive to replacing a judge when a litigant complained, and law codes are replete with exhortations, incentives and punishments to ensure speedy and honest justice. The late seventeenth century saw several efforts to reform governors' authority to make it less predatory on the taxpaying and merchant populations, and in a few celebrated cases governors were punished for excessive graft and corruption.[155]

Muscovite law in the seventeenth century knew two types of procedure - accusatory (sud) and inquisitorial (sysk), the latter being used primarily but not exclusively in criminal cases. In an accusatory trial, litigants presented wit­nesses and evidence, while in the inquisitorial the judge directed the search for evidence. Accusatory suits, discussed in Ulozhenie chapter 10, were used primarily for material loss - land disputes, damage to crops and farm equip­ment, contracts and debts. A typical litigation began, even in criminal cases, with a complaint that listed the circumstances and value of the loss. The plaintiff couched his petition in formulaic language suggesting his personal dependency on the tsar. Each social class used a self-deprecating diminutive to describe itself - servitors styled themselves the 'slaves' of the tsar, clergy, the tsar's 'pilgrims', peasants and urban taxpayers, the tsar's 'orphans'. Litigants used the diminutive version of first names: Ivan presented himself as 'Ivashko', Vasilii as 'Vaska'. The conceit was that the tsar was personally bestowing his justice and mercy on the litigant, through his representative, the judge.

In an accusatory trial, the judge summoned the litigants, itself a complex process due to the expanse of the realm and demands of military service. Laws of the seventeenth century established detailed rules about time limits for appearing for trial, default for late appearance and norms for delay of trial.

Once assembled, both sides of the story were heard and the litigants presented evidence. Written documentation was preferred; each side could also present witnesses and reject any ofthe other's proposed witnesses.[156] The lawmandated that if they agreed on a small number of witnesses, they were to abide by that testimony. In the absence of documents and definitive witnesses, judges put litigants into a face-to-face confrontation (ochnaia stavka), or as a last resort asked the litigants to submit to an oath, which usually resulted in one side settling with the other before taking the oath.[157]

Many cases were not carried to conclusion, judging by extant records. Some of this might be loss of records over time. But a great proportion of cases were settled out of court, demonstrating the persistence of traditional concepts of distributive justice. Community sentiment valued social harmony and stability over strife and vindication. Even criminal cases were settled, contravening the law. Murder cases, for example, might be settled so that an aggrieved widow would be provided with upkeep for herself and her children. Other cases would be abandoned before conclusion because of expense, or preoccupations of military service, or waning of interest.

In an inquisitorial suit, the judge took the active role. When a complaint of major crime came to him, he swung into action, ordering the arrest of the accused, the investigation of the crime scene, corpse or injured party, and the defendant and other important parties to be put on surety bond (poruka; whereby a group of friends, neighbours and/or kinsmen guaranteed that they will show up for trial). Depending upon the alleged crime, the defendant was held in jail or released on surety.

The judge collected evidence through a few means of questioning. Wit­nesses could be questioned individually or the judge could order a survey of the community. Traditionally reputation and standing in the community had been a factor in assessing guilt and punishment in Muscovite litigation. By the mid-seventeenth century, however, the community inquest was declining in significance in favour of more 'rational', that is, eyewitness, evidence. The inquest was finally abolished in 1688 because of abuses.

The judge's most powerful weapon in questioning the accused and others implicated by him was torture, regarded as an ordeal of God. Such question­ing proceeded in stages: simple questioning, questioning in the presence of executioner and instruments of torture and under torture. The goal was to elicit confession and information about intent and accomplices. The methods of torture were not ornate, usually flogging, but for very serious accusations burning with fire was done.

A judge resolved a case after the entire transcript of the proceedings had been copied afresh and read to him. This lengthy document included copies of the initial and subsequent petitions presented by litigants in the course of the trial, all the judge's orders to subordinates, all their reports, copies of surety documents, excerpts of relevant laws and transcripts of torture sessions and community investigations. In most criminal trials the governors or guba authorities sent the case to Moscow for decision, although the 1669 Criminal Articles allowed investigators (syshchiki) for very serious crimes to resolve cases and carry out punishments, including execution, on the spot.

In criminal cases, judges rarely invoked the full terror of the law. They often sentenced felons to punishments less severe than prescribed by law, taking into account the circumstances of the crime, intent and community standing. In 1650, for example, a woman who admitted conspiring to murder her husband was spared execution because the community vouched for her character and maligned that of the deceased.[158] Extending the fiction that the litigant was appealing to and being judged by the tsar, after sentencing judges often proffered 'mercy' in his name, reducing punishments. Exceptions to this flexible sentencing pattern concerned the most serious crimes - political treason, heresy and witchcraft and the like - for which punishments were very severe.

In cases where material damage was at stake, losing defendants paid court fees, the value of the suit and sometimes a fine for losses incurred in the trial process (volokita). In cases of physical or symbolic harm (dishonour), sanctions ranged from fines to short periods of incarceration, exile to hard labour and a range of corporal punishment from beating to flogging to execution (var­ious types of corporal punishment in this period are illustrated in Plate 21). Punishment was not administered equally across social classes. Although the military servitors did not enjoy explicit protections from corporal punishment, de facto they were rarely subject to it, either because of a provision of 'mercy' or because the law avoided it.

When cases were appealed, it usually took the form of judges applying to a higher instance - for example, from the governor to his chancellery to the boyar council and the tsar - to resolve a disputed or difficult case. Corporal punishment, even execution, was administered promptly. The collection offees and fines could drag on for years, either because of poverty or vindictiveness. Many case transcripts end with repeated appeals to the court to force a losing litigant to settle his obligations.

Muscovite judicial practice was in many ways more medieval than early modern in its distributive justice: it widely used settlement out of court, counte­nanced reputation and community standards as evidence or mitigating factors; it bestowed mercy to lessen sentences and considered torture a credible form of evidence collection. Nevertheless, as the century developed, similarities with contemporary European practice emerged, such as a rationalisation of forms of evidence, standardisation of norms and procedure, a heightening of punishments and a more extensive claim of tsarist power.

Codifications of the law

The seventeenth century was remarkable for the generation and codification of secular law. Going into the seventeenth century, judges had available to them several codes of law. The Russian Law (Russkaia pravda), dating to Kievan times, was edited in an abbreviated version around 1630, but where and how its norms, that emphasised debt, slaveholding and punishments, were current is unclear. The Law Code (sudebnik) of 1550 of 100 articles, which extended the 1497 Law Code and was later extended by over seventy-three supplementary articles, clearly remained in force. It was primarily an advisory to judges, setting fees for services in an attempt to limit judicial corruption, decreeing punishments for some crimes and setting out procedural rules and standards of evidence. The 1550 sudebnik was followed by a longer (231 articles) edition of 1589 for the north and a compiled sudebnik of 1606-7 that added later decrees on landholding, debts and enserfment and developed the inquisitorial procedure. It was notable for being divided into thematic chapters, a first step towards more rational codification.[159] In addition, the Lithuanian Statute of 1588 was translated and disseminated in Moscow chancelleries, and Byzantine secular law became influential by the 1620s.[160]

In the seventeenth century the law proliferated. Moscow chancelleries kept books of laws and precedents that guided their work; these were occasionally compiled and then added to; at mid-century they became the basis for relevant portions of the 1649 Ulozhenie. Such ustavnye knigi from the first half of the seventeenth century are known from the Felony, Slavery, Great Palace, Moscow Administrative, Service Land and Postal chancelleries.[161]

Local governors made do with handwritten copies of the sudehniki and of decrees they received from the centre. The 1649 Ulozhenie was the first law code to be issued in print (about 2,500 copies by 1651) and it was distributed to local governors. Another body of law relevant in the seventeenth century comprised charters granting immunities and privileges to various corporate entities, as we have seen.

The 1649 Ulozhenie codified the preceding half-century of law and added some innovations, based on legal sources enumerated above. It was massive - in twenty-five thematic chapters, it included 967 articles. The second half of the century saw feverish legislation, presaging Peter the Great's legislative blitz of the early eighteenth century. By one count, 1,583 new decrees were issued in the second half of the seventeenth century, reflecting the state's desire to regulate society and mobilise resources through the law. Many new decrees concerned public order, reflecting European concepts of Polizeistaat.

New compendia appeared in various fields: in 1653 and 1667, tariff and trade regulations; in 1669, a new criminal code; in 1676,1680 and 1681, codifications on service tenure and hereditary land.[162] General codifications to replace the Ulozhenie were ordered in 1681 and 1695, to no avail. In 1700 Peter the Great created a commission to codify the laws but it too was fruitless. The Ulozhenie remained the standard in most areas of the law until late in the eighteenth century.

The most significant changes in positive law were made in the realm of social legislation.[163] Laws defined social groups and limited access into privileged ranks and egress from dependent ranks. The Ulozhenie's list of compensation for insult to honour is telling: longer (almost eighty articles) than those of the 1550 and 1589 sudehniki, it included ecclesiastical and lay social ranks from the patriarch and boyars to peasants and slaves (10: 26-99). Its guiding principle - that all people have honour, but higher ranks deserve greater compensation - reflects the law code's resolute emphasis on social hierarchy.

The military service class cemented its position with the Ulozhenie by the full enserfment of the peasantry, a particularly direct benefit to the provin­cial gentry, strapped for land and labour. Wealthy landholders (including the Church) were inconvenienced by the Ulozhenie's new prohibitions on their taking in runaway peasants or purchasing lands in the provinces, but were by no means severely hampered in their social and economic ascendancy.

The Ulozhenie devoted significant attention to the needs and duties of the privileged military elite, Moscow-based and provincial. Chapter 7 ofthe Ulozhe­nie concerned itself with their conduct during service, including strict punish­ment for desertion from service and from battle. Laws prohibiting gentry to sell themselves into slavery were repeated, as was the requirement of mandatory service (it was gradually reduced in the last quarter of the century, only to be reinstated by Peter I). Landed servitors enjoyed economic and legal privileges: preferential access to the grain market in time of shortage, lower tax rates on many commercial transactions, a higher rate of ransom if captured in war.

Major attention was given to landholding in the Ulozhenie (chapters 16 and 17) and legislation of 1676, 1680 and 1681. Norms, generally more theoretical than enforceable, were established for land grants to servitors. Over the course of the century service tenure and hereditary types of land converged in law and practice; there was an active market in the sale, mortgaging and devolution of service-tenure land and purchased hereditary estates. Norms of inheritance recognised this, and widened women's access to landholding despite legal attempts to limit it. By law widows and minor children and unmarried daugh­ters were granted portions of their deceased husband's or father's pomest'e for upkeep but had very limited access to hereditary lands. As Valerie Kivelson has shown, however, families disregarded the law to ensure that widows, sons and daughters were taken care of. Practising partible inheritance, they awarded almost as much land of all types to women for upkeep or dowry as to male

kin.[164]

Other groups - the Church, merchants - benefited from legal change in the seventeenth century. Since the mid-sixteenth century the state had been legis­lating against donating votchina land to the Church; these laws were repeated in the Ulozhenie, but ignored. Church landholding boomed in the seventeenth century. Church institutions continued to enjoy immunities from the local courts, despite the brief tenure of the Monastery Chancellery. Laws of the seventeenth century extended the privileges of Moscow merchants (gosti) and the other two merchant corporations (gostinnaia and sukonnaia sotni). Of the three groups, only gosti could trade abroad. Otherwise, all enjoyed the right to own hereditary land, to be immune from governors' courts, to distil and keep spirits and to enjoy various tax breaks and privileges. The tax privileges of the musketeers and cossacks were affirmed in the Ulozhenie as well (chapters

23-4).

The townsmen, like the provincial gentry, received significant attention in the Ulozhenie (chapter 19), resulting from their persistent petitioning to the state in the first half of the century. It provided that townsmen who had fled to join other social groups - musketeers, cossacks, merchant corporations - should be returned to their taxpaying town commune. Laws forbade townsmen to put themselves in dependent status. Most importantly, the Ulozhenie abolished the tax-exempt neighbourhoods of Church and wealthy landlords that had caused unfair competition to urban taxpayers, awarding taxpaying townsmen monopolies on urban trade, manufacturing and landholding. But, on the other hand, townsmen were in effect enserfed by the Ulozhenie - they were registered in their town commune and the statute of limitations to track down runaway townsmen was abolished. They had become a hereditary social class, but, like the peasants, an immobile one.

In the area of trade the seventeenth century saw significant codification, in response to Russian merchants' petitions against foreign competition and as manifestation of the state's developing mercantilism. The Ulozhenie of 1649 devoted little attention to foreign trade, but it addressed some domestic trade and taxation issues. It regulated tolls, ferry fees and bridge fees, assuring exemp­tion from them to servitors and foreigners and prohibiting fraudulent tolls (chapter 9); it established a sliding scale of rates to ransom Russian captives in war according to social status (chapter 8); it regulated illicit taverns, production of spirits and sale and use of tobacco (chapter 25).

Soon after the Ulozhenie, trade regulations of 1653 addressed issues of foreign trade. They instituted a single trade tariff for the transit of commercial goods for domestic merchants, and a higher, uniform rate for foreign merchants. These norms were included in the much broader 1667 New Commercial Regulations. Authored in part by the progressive reformer A. L. Ordin-Nashchokin, the articles also removed trade and the customs service from the jurisdiction of local governors, and further restricted foreigners to trading at the border towns in a limited range of goods and only at certain times of the year. Its protectionist norms remained in force until1755.[165]

Peasants and slaves suffered most from seventeenth-century social legisla­tion. The Ulozhenie culminated the process of enserfment that began in earnest in the late sixteenth century. By the seventeenth century, laws forbade peasants to move from their landlords; the Ulozhenie capped the process by ending the statute of limitations on the recapture of runaways (chapter 11). Thereafter the state committed significant resources into sending investigators (syshchiki) to chase down fugitive serfs and townsmen. In the second half of the seventeenth century peasants could sue and be a witness in courts; they paid taxes, could be tried for crimes and could hold local elected offices. But gradually, in a process that reached its apex in the eighteenth century, peasants fell into more servile dependency on their lords. Serf owners could judge and corporally punish their peasants for all but criminal offences, they could force their serfs and slaves to pay their debts and, although serfs were legally supposed to be tied to their lands, de facto landlords moved them at will.

Even more dependent on their lords were slaves. Of the many categories of slavery cited in Muscovite sources, in the seventeenth century the most common was limited contract slavery (kabal'noe kholopstvo). In the seventeenth century this was hereditary slavery for the life of the owner. The state's interest in slavery in the seventeenth century was to reap fees from the registration of slaves and to limit the phenomenon, since slavery deprived the state oflabour power and tax revenues. The Ulozhenie devoted its second-longest chapter to slavery (chapter 20). After 1649 the state captured more of the productive power of slaves by including rural slaves in taxation when the household basis was introduced in the late 1670s and by merging household slaves with serfs in 1722.

Social legislation in the seventeenth century mobilised productive resources by binding people to a limited number of social ranks. Practice, however, often contradicted this trend. Slavery persisted, despite attempts to keep individuals from selling themselves into it. Peasants fled from serfdom to the frontier and to Siberia; contract servitors on the frontier transgressed the monopolies on landholding, serf ownership or trade guaranteed to other groups. Fanatic in the heartland at tracking down runaway serfs and townsmen and fixing people to social categories because of its great needs for labour and income, in the colonies the state tolerated social and legal diversity. Seventeenth-century leg­islation did not pursue a single goal of social control or Polizeistaat uniformity, but profited from an expedient diversity.

Nevertheless the state's ambition to aggrandise its stature through the law is striking in seventeenth-century legislation. The first several chapters ofthe 1649 Ulozhenie constitute an innovation. Borrowed from the 1588 Lithuanian Statute and motivated most likely by the social unrest of the 1640s, they introduce the concept of lese majeste, focusing on assaults to the state's dignity, embodied in the Church hierarchs and cathedrals, the tsar and his palaces, and in seals and official documents representing his authority (chapters 1-6).

Criminal law became harsher in comparison with sixteenth-century codes, under the influence of foreign, probably Byzantine, law codes (Ulozhenie chap­ters 21 and 22; 1669 New Articles). Harsher corporal punishments were intro­duced - burying alive, nose-splitting, branding and other forms of mutilation. Torture was prescribed more widely, the death penalty was applied to over sixty crimes (almost twice that number in codes of Peter the Great's time). Public floggings and executions were prescribed to deter others but the death penalty was not used as widely as in some West European countries of the time and was not carried out with such 'spectacle of suffering'.[166] Executions were usually performed by hanging within a day of sentencing. The Church schism in the second half of the century elicited an escalation in corporal punishment. Secular courts judged schismatics as traitors as well as heretics and inflicted extreme punishments. Similarly punishments for witchcraft and sorcery, as well as for recidivist crime, were harsher than those for less charged criminal acts.

For lesser crimes, the death penalty was often commuted to exile to capture the labour power of criminals. Long-term imprisonment was rarely used as punishment, but towns kept jails for the detention of criminals awaiting trial and people could stay in prison many years paying off fines from court cases (21: 92).

In the seventeenth century various principles affecting responsibility for crime were introduced into Russian law that were developed more thor­oughly in the eighteenth century. Notions of intent, negligence and malice first appeared; the law found defence of self and property to be exonerating, and punished unintentional assault and homicide more leniently than inten­tional. Drunkenness was considered a mitigating circumstance (21: 69, 71, 88). In the realm of civil law, unlike criminal, much regularisation but little sub­stantive change occurred. Chapters in the Ulozhenie (14,15,18) concerned oath- taking, settled cases and fees for documents. The Ulozhenie's longest chapter (10) addressed judicial corruption, courtroom procedure and civil suits. By the end of the century Moscow's legal heritage was rich and complex, but scattered in a panoply of thematic compendia and individual decrees and precedents.

Society interacted with law in a multitude of ways in seventeenth-century Muscovy. Traditional distributive justice shaped adjudication; the multiplic­ity of norms and venues undermined judicial consistency. But the trend was nevertheless towards a greater rationalisation. Codification was proceeding, standardised norms of record-keeping were being established; standards of evidence favoured rational proof. Scholars have deemed these trends 'abso­lutist'. So also might one term the concept of'the common good' that appears in the law by the end of the century. The concept that the state uses law to serve the public good came to court circles from Ukraine by the 1680s and inspired many of the projects of military and bureaucratic reform of that decade. Despite its complexity, seventeenth-century law provided Peter the Great with a firm foundation when he launched his bold effort to standardise law and administration on the 'well-ordered police state' model in the next century.

Urban developments

DENIS J. B. SHAW

The seventeenth century was a difficult period for Russia, as it appears to have been for much of Europe. Yet this is a very broad generalisation, difficult to substantiate from the limited evidence and paying scant heed to geographical and chronological differences. After 1613 Russia was able to enjoy the benefits of a stable dynasty, a situation in marked contrast to the anarchic times which went before. And it was a realm still undergoing vigorous expansion and colonisation. Such discordant processes were naturally reflected in the life of Russia's towns. Fortunately the sources which permit the study of urban developments are richer and fuller for this period than they are for the sixteenth century and they have been better explored by historians. But they are all too often sporadic and uneven, and their meaning sometimes obscure. This chapter will consider a number of facets of urbanism in the period. It will also address two issues, namely the symbolic and religious role of towns and their physical morphology, which do not figure in Chapter 13 on the sixteenth century but which can be profitably studied for both periods taken together.

The urban network

As was the case in the sixteenth century, the legal status of towns in the seven­teenth remained uncertain and the places referred to as 'towns' (goroda) in the sources were often fortresses with little or no commercial function, or some­times they did have a trading function but lacked a posad population.[167] Some 'towns' even had no subsidiary district (uezd), such as the threegorodki (literally, 'little towns') of Kostensk, Orlov and Belokolodsk built on the Belgorod Line near Voronezh in the middle of the century or, it appears, the nearby private town of Romanov which belonged to the tsar's kinsman, boyar N. I. Romanov.[168]Equally other places, like the monastic settlement of Tikhvin Posad towards the north-west, had commercial functions but were not referred to as towns. Adopting a catholic definition of the term, French has argued that there were around 220 towns in Russia at the beginning of a century which witnessed the appearance of about a hundred new ones during its course.[169] Vodarskii, however, argued for a stricter, Marxist definition of a town as a place having both a legal commercial suburb (posad) and a commercial function. On this basis he recognised 160 towns in 1652, rising to 173 in 1678 and 189 by 1722.[170]

The appearance of many new towns in Russia during the course of the seventeenth century is largely explained by the process of frontier expansion and colonisation of new territories. In the west many towns were acquired as the state expanded its frontiers in that direction. To the east numerous new towns were built as the Russian state took control of more and more of Siberia. The first Russian town on the Pacific, Okhotsk, was founded in 1649. Many Siberian towns remained quite small, however. Thus Vodarskii names nineteen principal administrative centres in Siberia for 1699, only thirteen of which were towns by his definition. According to his figures, at the end of the century Siberia had a total of only 2,535 posad households.[171] More significant in terms of town founding was Russia's southern frontier west of the Urals. Here a concerted effort was made from the 1630s to 1650s to set up a series of forti­fied towns along and behind the new Belgorod and Simbirsk military lines.[172]Subsequently, in the second half of the century, many new towns appeared in the forest-steppe and steppe south and east of these lines.

A number of studies have been made of the broad population data for towns, using the rather richer sources which are available for this period.[173]

The latter include cadastral surveys, census books and associated enumera­tions which provide statistics on numbers of posad households, most notably in censuses of 1646-7 and 1678-9. Additionally there are enumerations dat­ing from 1649-52 which record the households of traders and handicrafts people, many in 'white places',[174] which were added to the posady of towns as a result of the 1649 Legislative Commission (see below). Also important are enumerations of military servitors and 'able-bodied' personnel under­taken for towns in various years, usually under the auspices of the Military Chancellery (Razriadnyi prikaz). Most notable among these is a military cen­sus for 1678.[175] Vodarskii has provided urban household data for 212 towns (plus Siberian towns taken together) for 1630-50, 1670-80 and 1722 based on Smirnov's data for 1646-7 and 1649-52 and on his own analyses for the later dates.[176] Figure 25.1 reproduces his data for towns having 500 or more posad households in the seventeenth century His data for 1722 are omitted. For comparison the table also lists numbers of posad households recorded for the latter part of the sixteenth century where available, based on the study by Eaton.[177]

The data are too uncertain and too scanty to allow solid conclusions to be drawn about urban growth trends, though perhaps the apparent sharp fall in the size of the posad in some commercial centres (Kaluga, Nizhnii Novgorod, Novgorod, Suzdal') between the late sixteenth century and the i640s is worthy of note. Moscow was clearly dominant, as in the previous century, although once again the sources are sparse.[178] In addition to Moscow, the largest towns, with over 1,000 posad households (Vologda, Kazan', Kaluga, Kostroma, Nizhnii Novgorod, Iaroslavl') were all old towns which dated from before the sixteenth century and, apart from Kazan', all having a long history of connection with Muscovy. They were all situated on major river and trading routes. The fall of Novgorod from this group over the previous century no doubt reflects the troubles of the latter half of the sixteenth century and the early seventeenth, together with the problems of accessing the Baltic (see Chapter 13). The disappearance of Smolensk is also significant, connected to its loss to Poland down to the middle years of the century. The wars with

Town i 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Archangel and Kholmogory 645 i,0i8 263 7i5 835 4 i38
Arzamas 430 2 i35 559 560 98
Balakhna 637 ii2 66i 642 9 i40
Galich 729 (4i) 46 788 48i i9 46
Iaroslavl' 259a 2,87i i74 564 3,042 2,3i0 57 468
Kaluga 723 588 339 i05 694 i,0i5 45
Kargopol' and 476 538 20 6 666
Turchasov
Kazan' 598 i,i9i i,600 200 3i0
Khlynov 247 624 i 26 66i 6i6 20 i42
Kolomna 34 6i5 8 26i 740 352 79
Kostroma i,726 54 4i4 2,086 i,069 i06
Kursk 270 396 20 538 i04 ii
Moscow i,22ib (20,000)b 8,000b 3,6i5 7,043c
Nizhnii Novgorod 242ia i,i07 500 666 i,874 i,270 600
Novgorod 4i57 640 i,050 i45 770 862 i53 344
Olonets 376 i55 i55 637
Pereslavl'-Zalesskii 525 (80) i04 624 408 ii0
Pskov 940 (1,306) 5i 997 9i2 372 i,043
Rostov 16a 4i6 (i5) i67 552 49i 2i7
Simbirsk i9 504 ii4
Sol' Kamskaia 549 9 i46 686 83i 25 20
Suzdal' 4i4 360 (i4) 495 435 5i9 7 596
Torzhok 89a 486 8 58 508 659
Tver' 345 53 250 497 524 ii0
Uglich 447 226 603 548 49
Ustiug Velikii 744 53 36 920 ii9
Vladimir 483 58 405 703 400 290
Vologda 59i i,234 i75 363 i,674 i,i96 i3 284
Zaraisk 446 (i27) 65 587 254 i

Poland badly affected Russo-Polish trade, which did not in fact recover until after about 1750.[179]

Eaton has ascribed the apparent fall in the size of the posad in some of the biggest towns (Vologda, Kazan', Kostroma, Nizhnii Novgorod and Iaroslavl') between 1652 and 1678 to general lack of economic buoyancy in the latter half of the century compared to the apparent recovery in the first half. He thus questions those Soviet scholars who took a more optimistic view, regarding the century as the time when the 'all-Russian market' appeared, following Lenin's dictum. It may be that Vodarskii exaggerated the overall growth in the total number of posad dwellers in Russia between the two dates, although numbers do seem to have grown absolutely. The sluggish growth or even stagnation of some of the older towns in central Muscovy was probably offset by greater economic vigour on some of the frontiers.[180]

The official posad dwellers were, of course, by no means the only residents of Russian towns in the seventeenth century. According to Vodarskii, they constituted only 34 per cent of the total urban population in 1646, 44 per cent in 1652 (after the addition of the 'white places'), and 41 per cent in 1678. Of greater numerical significance were the state servitors or military personnel who formed 53 per cent in 1652 and 45 per cent by 1678.[181] Figure 25.1, which shows only the towns with 500 posad households or more, omits some of those with really big urban garrisons. Belgorod, for example, recorded only 44 posad households in 1646 but 459 servitor households in 1650. Kursk recorded 270 and 396 respectively, Sevsk none and 6,017, Voronezh 85 and 1,135, and Astrakhan' none and 3,350.[182] Servitors often engaged in trade and craft activity, especially before 1649, though many were paid and others lived by agrarian pursuits, particularly in the south. In the 1640s the bigger urban garrisons were clearly located in Moscow, along the vulnerable western and southern frontiers, and at three strategic points on the Volga (Nizhnii Novgorod, Kazan' and Astrakhan') (see Map 25.1).

In addition to the posad dwellers and military personnel, towns had other elements in their populations, not all of whom were recorded in the various censuses. Depending on the size and location of the town, these would include state officials and higher or middle-ranking servitors, their dependents, clergy and their dependents, cottars (bobyli), peasants, beggars and other unofficial

Map 25.1. Towns in mid-seventeenth-century European Russia

groups, and sometimes foreigners and non-Russian peoples. To measure the level of urbanisation in Russia by considering only the proportion of the total population who were posad dwellers (a legal rather than an occupational or social category) is therefore quite misleading.

Russian towns of this period have often been described as static with little commercial vivacity and, at best, sluggish in growth. There is some truth in this picture for, as we have noted already, the seventeenth century was a difficult period. Sluggishness in a demographic sense, however, was a normal charac­teristic of early modern (pre-industrial) towns all over Europe.[183] Furthermore such assessments often overlook a most important feature of Russian towns in this period - their significance not as individual places but in the broader urban network which was developing across the Russian state. In other words towns had a pivotal role in the building of the state, acting as co-ordinating points for all kinds of activities which helped bind the state together. It is in this sense that de Vries talks of'structural urbanisation'.[184] It is this issue which forms the focus of the rest of this chapter.

Urban society and administration

The establishment of the Romanov dynasty in 1613 was quickly followed by moves to pacify and control the extensive territories of the state. Towns played a significant role in this process. Towns had long been regarded as admin­istrative centres for their surrounding districts or uezdy. This function was now strengthened as the office of voevoda, or military governor, which was an appointment of the central government, was now extended from the frontier regions to central and northern towns. The voevoda was now the tsar's rep­resentative in the locality, charged with upholding the state's interests and overseeing both military and civil matters within his area of jurisdiction. In these tasks he was aided by a small bureaucracy of officials centred in the governor's office (prikaznaia izba). Nowhere perhaps was the voevoda's function more apparent than on the vulnerable southern frontier where the entire defensive and civilian life of each town and its district was meant to be organised by the voevoda with the strictest eye on security.[185] It was also on the frontier that the closer co-ordination of the town's functions as nodes in the state's military and administrative structures at local level was pioneered. Here the founding and development of each town, and its subsequent life and defensive role, was the immediate concern of the Military Chancellery in Moscow. By the middle of the century that chancellery was attempting to improve defensive co-ordination between the towns by designating military districts (razriady) under the jurisdiction of one central town. The first per­manent one was established in the i640s and i650s centred on Belgorod. This was followed by other frontier districts (Sevsk, Smolensk, Novgorod, Kazan', Tambov) and, in the last quarter of the century, by some in the country's inte­rior (Moscow, Vladimir, Riazan'). This move was clearly a harbinger of Peter the Great's provincial reform in the early eighteenth century and was moti­vated by some of the same goals - to improve control and co-ordination over localities.[186]

The office of voevoda, characterised by a continual tendency to interfere in local affairs and not a little corruption, rarely sat well with the felt interests of urban communities or with the functions of locally elected officials like the police elders (gubnye starosty) and land elders (zemskie starosty) who were invested with the responsibility of carrying out certain key functions on behalf of the state. As has been remarked so often, the latter's elected status did not imply any real measure of urban autonomy. But numerous tensions arose out of the primitive character of the system of administration as well as from the conflicting nature of the state's goals - for example, between the need to raise as much revenue as possible from the towns, on the one hand, and the desire to foster urban trade and commerce on the other. Most towns, except the smaller frontier forts, were multifunctional, but the different functions were not always easily reconcilable.

The fragmented character of urban society which characterised sixteenth- century towns continued to be a feature of the seventeenth. However, as explained in Chapter 23, the situation was somewhat simplified by the Ulozhenie of 1649 which abolished the 'white' (tax privileged) status of many ecclesiastical and private suburbs and added them to the posad. According to Vodarskii's cal­culations, the total number of male posad dwellers in Russian towns rose from about 83,000 in 1646 to some 108,000 in 1652, a rise very largely accounted for by the effects of the Ulozhenie. The great majority of the households confiscated by the state in 1649 were in fact Church and monastic ones.[187] There had long been resentment on the part of the 'black' posad dwellers over commercial competition from their more privileged neighbours in the 'white' suburbs, and the 1649 reform was stimulated by a series of urban riots over this and other issues the previous year. However, another effect of the reform was to strengthen the attachment of the posad dweller to the posad where he lived. Henceforth the posad dweller was to stay put and share the burden of taxation and service laid upon the posad community as a whole by the government. He was not to move elsewhere, even if superior commercial opportunities seemed to warrant it. Similarly, those posad traders who were discovered to be living in non-urban centres (often engaged in trade there) were to be returned to their own posad, whilst no posad dweller was to 'commend' himself (sell himself into slavery, usually by reason of debt) to a wealthy landowner or to the Church.[188] In this way not only was the posad consolidated as a source of revenue for the state but its role as a co-ordinator of the commercial life of the country was strengthened.

Urban commerce

We have seen that the 1649 Ulozhenie abolished the 'white places', added their inhabitants to the ranks of the 'black' posad dwellers and tied the latter to the posad by forbidding migration. It also had a number of other implications. Thus article 6 of chapter 19 (the chapter dealing with the townspeople) orders any agricultural peasants from hereditary or service estates who have shops, ware­houses or salt boilers in Moscow or other towns to sell them to members of the posad community and return to their estates. 'Henceforth no one other than the sovereign's taxpayers shall keep shops, warehouses and salt boilers.'[189] Thus the posad community was guaranteed a virtual monopoly over urban trade. This monopoly was constrained by two exceptions. Firstly, article 11 permit­ted the minor servitors of provincial towns, namely musketeers, cossacks and dragoons who were engaged in commercial enterprises and kept shops to con­tinue with those activities provided they paid customs duties and the annual shop tax. Since, however, they were not members of the posad community but engaged in the tsar's service, they were freed from other urban taxes and the compulsory service obligations of the townsmen.[190] Commercial activ­ity was probably essential to the livelihoods of such poorly paid groups. By contrast, other minor servitors (gunners, artillerymen, gatekeepers, state car­penters and smiths) who were engaged in commerce and trade were obliged to pay the same taxes and render the same services as the townsmen (perhaps because their military duties were such that they had more opportunity to engage in commercial activities).[191] The indulgence granted to the musketeers and other minor servitors was particularly important to the southern frontier towns where the 'black' posad dwellers were at first a minority and much trade was in the hands of servitors.[192] The other exception to the posad dwellers' monopoly over trade was made in article 17 of chapter 19 which permitted peasants coming to town with goods for sale to trade those goods in the mar­ketplace from their carts or from boats but forbade them to buy or rent shops.[193]Peasants were similarly prevented from holding taxable houses in town.

Moscow remained the centre of Russian commercial life in this period. Some scholars assert that the city's population rose to 200,000 people during the course of the century, but this seems high.[194] The sources are incomplete and ambiguous and the population seems to have fluctuated considerably in any case.[195] A spectacular instance of the latter came in 1654 when the city was devastated by plague, killing up to 80 per cent of the population in the opinion of some.[196] Nevertheless it is clear that the city, with its mixed population and enormous range of occupations and activities, was a focus for trade and production of all kinds. Moreover, Moscow merchants played a major role in linking the various parts of the country's commercial network together, as with the northern trade via Archangel, the Volga trade, that towards the Urals and Siberia, and to a lesser extent that with the north-west and the Baltic.[197]Moscow's role was clearly a reflection of its status as the country's capital and the fact that it was the home of the country's wealthiest merchants.

Outside the Kremlin seventeenth-century Moscow was subdivided into a series of 'hundreds' (sotni) and suburban settlements (slobody) which were the habitations of different social groups. Their exact number appears to have varied through time, and the sources disagree. Accordingto Snegirev, however, they included suburbsbelongingto the court and treasury, those ofthe military servitors, monastic and Church settlements, foreign suburbs and the 'black' suburbs.[198] Basic to the commercial life of the city were the 'black' hundreds and suburbs, the core of the posad community. Whatever may have been the original difference in meaning between sotnia and sloboda, by the seventeenth century the two words were synonymous, designating a settlement populated by people of one status or origin (or sometimes occupation). In principle a sloboda also had one communal organisation, but this was not always the case in Moscow.[199] In 1649, as a result of the Ulozhenie, nineteen private ('white') suburbs with 1410 households were transferred to the 'black' hundreds and suburbs, thus enhancing the significance of the latter to the commercial life of the city as a whole.[200] According to one source, eleven years earlier in 1638 the 'black' and 'white' commercial suburbs together with those belonging to the court and treasury accounted for 48.7 per cent of the city's population.[201] This population formed the core of the city's commercial life.

An important feature of Moscow's economy in the seventeenth century was the extensive 'in house' production for the benefit of the court, govern­ment, army and other central agencies. Much of this took place in the court and treasury suburbs located mainly to the west of the Kremlin. The residents of these suburbs had a status which was rather similar to that of minor state servitors, being obliged to supply the court or government agencies with nec­essary goods and services in return for payments made in money or in kind. Whenever possible, they might supplement their income by producing for the market or in response to private orders. Many court craftsmen, for example, worked for the Armoury, making firearms or other kinds of light weaponry, or engaged in other skilled pursuits like joinery, cabinet-making, icon-painting, map-making and ornamental arts. The Great Palace chancellery was respon­sible for provisioning the court, whilst those working for the Treasury Court prepared costume and cloth, and also furs for diplomatic exchanges. Trea­sury craftsmen worked for the various government chancelleries as smiths, carpenters, carriage makers, furriers, coinage makers, builders, brick makers, stonemasons, furriers, costumiers, jewellers, workers in precious metals and gems, cloth makers and so on. To the extent that such craftspeople also pro­duced for the marketplace their relatively privileged situation caused resent­ment among the 'black' posad dwellers.

Craftspeople among the latter group, working mainly for the market, engaged in a wide variety of pursuits. Thus Moscow had many metalworkers. An inventory of 1641 lists sixty-nine smithies in the Earth Town[202] beyond the Tver' Gate, thirty-five in different parts of the White Town,[203] twenty-nine south of the river in Zamoskvorech'e and various others.[204] Other metalwork­ers worked in copper, tin, gold and silver, all metals which were lacking in seventeenth-century Muscovy. Carpentry in various forms employed many in the city. For large projects like court or government buildings teams of car­penters were sometimes brought to Moscow from other towns and regions. Workers with hemp and flax and their derivatives were limited in number, per­haps because of the significance of such crafts as rural pursuits, but Moscow did provide a market for some specialists. Workers in leather were many - perhaps 200 in 1638 - whilst there were about 100 furriers.[205] Other significant crafts in the posad included wool-working, working in tallow and wax (there were thirty-five candle makers and ten soap makers in 1638), producing food (about 600 producers and traders of various kinds in 1638, including those working for the court) and cloth (about 250 producers and traders in 1638).

Large-scale activity in the seventeenth-century city was essentially restricted to that under the aegis of the government. It included the cannon foundry, which dated from the fifteenth century but which expanded from the 1620s, the already-mentioned Armoury with its offshoots the Gold and Silver Chambers (palaty), state powder mills, state brickworks, the mints, two paper mills, and others. Such manufactories worked predominantly to state orders rather than to the market.

Something was said in Chapter 13 about the hierarchy of merchants and posad traders which characterised sixteenth-century Russian towns. This hier­archy continued to be significant in the seventeenth century and nowhere more so than in Moscow where the richest merchants of the realm lived. At one extreme, wealthy merchants (gosti and members of the gost' hundreds) traded over wide regions and also with foreigners, and sometimes controlled or had interests in local trade as well. At the other were minor traders, selling their wares in local shops (bought or rented), from mere temporary stalls and carts in the marketplace, or working in shops belonging to others. The organ­isation of trade lagged behind that of a growing number of European states. Merchants lacked capital, there were no banks or modern credit facilities, and Russian merchants sometimes found it difficult to compete with foreigners. Not until the New Trade Statute of 1667 did they enjoy a measure of protection from foreign competition, particularly in local and retail trade.

The essential geographical patterns of trade in seventeenth-century Moscow did not greatly differ from those of the sixteenth century, for the city continued to be a great consumer of food and other necessities as well as of the many raw materials needed by its manufactories. As before, the Kitai gorod with its large trading square adjacent to the Kremlin continued to be the focus of activity. Retail trade was still conducted through shops organised into specialised trading rows (and also through warehouses, cellars and other outlets). The names of about 120 trading rows are known from the seventeenth century. Wholesale trade and trade by foreign merchants was also conducted through the two merchants' bazaars (gostinnye dvory), completed in 1641 and 1667. Olearius and other travellers noted the liveliness and diversity of trade in the city - of the ancestor of Red Square, for example, he asserts that 'all day long it is full of tradespeople, both men and women, and slaves and idlers'.[206]But his account also makes it clear that there was a lively trade in other parts of the city, notably in the White Town ('Tsargorod'). In the latter, he asserts 'are located the bread and flour stalls, the butchers' blocks, the cattle market, and taverns selling beer, mead and vodka'.[207]

The seventeenth-century geography of trade and commerce outside Moscow can only be reconstructed in part thanks to the patchy nature of the evidence. Something has been said already about the location of the towns with the largest posad communities along the major trading routes. Space will allow a brief discussion of towns on only one of these routes.

The route northwards from Moscow to Archangel was the most important seventeenth-century route for trade with Western Europe. After 1600 this trade was dominated by the Dutch. Although the English had first arrived at the mouth of the Northern Dvina in the 1550s, the town itself was constructed only in 1583-4 close to the nearby monastery. At first the foreign trade had mainly taken place at Kholmogory, the goods being transferred upriver to that town by shallow draft vessels from the anchorages in the mouth of the river.

Gradually, however, Archangel assumed the character of a proper port. In the 1620s it contained 115 posad households,43 and the 1622-4 cadastre describes government offices, warehouses and trading establishments.44 A proportion of the trade was in the hands of local servitors. It has been estimated that foreign trade at Archangel increased by two to three times on average between the beginning and the middle of the century.45 The liveliest time for commerce was the annual fair between June and September when the foreign ships arrived and merchants and traders came from many parts of Russia, especially Moscow, various northern towns and the important northern monasteries. Between 1668 and 1684 a large new stone merchants' bazaar was constructed to government order to cope with the trade. A community of foreign merchants resided permanently in the town. But the overall population remained small, no doubt reflecting the restricted period for trading. In fact Archangel's seventy shops in the 1620s (not counting the trading spaces in the merchants' bazaar) and limited number of trades contrasted poorly with nearby Kholmogory which had 316 shops and a much wider variety of craft activities. The latter was the true centre of the region for local commerce.46

From Archangel the main trading route ran up the Northern Dvina and then up the Sukhona to the transhipment point at Vologda. Before reaching Vologda, however, traders would arrive at Ustiug Velikii, where the main route to Siberia began. Ustiug Velikii had played an important role in the fur trade, connecting Siberia with Archangel, and was also noted for a range of manu­facture and commerce including metalworking, carpentry and woodworking, leather, fur-dressing, clothing, food and others.47 Nearby Tot'ma, also on the Sukhona, was a centre for salt production.48 Vologda itself was the principal commercial point on the route to Moscow because merchants would wait here for the winter freeze before proceeding overland to the capital by sledge. In the 1620s it had a population of perhaps 5,000 and contained the houses of eleven foreign traders and five Moscow gosti. It had a wide variety of crafts, over 300 shops, a large merchants' bazaar and other commercial facilities.49

43 Eaton, 'Decline and Recovery', p. 235.

44 Iu. A. Barashkov, Arkhangel'sk:arkhitekturnaiabiografiia(Arkhangel'sk: Severo-Zapadnoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, 1984), p. 18.

45 Bushkovitch, The Merchants of Moscow, pp. 51, 56.

46 O. V Ovsiannikov, 'Kholmogorskii i Arkhangel'skii posady po pistsovym i perepisnym knigam XVII v.', in Materialy po istorii Evropeiskogo Severa SSSR, vol. i (Vologda, 1970), pp. 197-211.

47 A. Ts. Merzon and Iu.A. Tikhonov Rynok Ustiuga Velikogo v period skladyvaniia vserossi- iskogo rynka (XVII vek) (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1960).

48 R. E. F. Smith and David Christian, Bread and Salt: A Social and Economic History ofFood and Drink in Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 46-8.

49 A. E. Mertsalov, Ocherki goroda Vologdy po pistsovoi knige 1627 goda (Vologda, 1885).

The final important point on the road to Moscow was Iaroslavl' on the Volga, a major centre for leather and other kinds of manufacturing and a centre of trade interlinking the Volga and routes to Siberia with those to the north-west, as well as Moscow and the centre with Archangel and the north.

As noted in Chapter 13, not all commerce took place in towns. Monastic centres like Tikhvin Posad were also significant, as were numerous villages. Not until the eighteenth century, however, do the statistics on trade at this level permit anything like a comprehensive picture of the geography of trade to be drawn.[208]

The symbolic and religious role of towns

Religion was central to the life of Russian towns in the seventeenth century. Something of its significance for the individual town emerges in the 1627 cadas­tre for Vologda, as discussed by Mertsalov.[209] In that year, the town of about 5,000-6,000 inhabitants had sixty churches, including the cathedral, and three monasteries. In addition to more than eighty inhabited houses of priests and other church officials, there were the houses and homes of monastic personnel, their dependents and the servants and dependents of the archbishop. Monas­teries outside Vologda, including some of Russia's most important, maintained establishments in the town. All this infrastructure underpinned the elaborate life of religious observance and regulation which characterised all Russian towns in this period. Thus the lives of urban dwellers were punctuated by the round of religious holidays, festivals, fasts and days of abstinence which marked the Orthodox year. For the devout both public religious worship and private devotion were regular and demanding. Processions and pilgrimages were normal parts of urban life. The town itself, furthermore, was an assem­blage of sacred spaces. Whether in the individual house, which might devote a sacred corner to a holy icon, or in church confronted by the cosmic sym­bolism of its architecture and its elaborate arrays of mosaics, icons and other decorations, to say nothing of the verbal, musical and dramatic enactments of its rituals, the town dweller was constantly reminded of religious truth, and his or her behaviour was affected accordingly. Chapter 1 of the Ulozhe­nie, for example, specifies the severest penalties for blasphemy or for any kind of unruly behaviour in church.[210] Chapter 10 enforces the observance of Sundays and the principal religious holidays, and restricts trade during reli­gious processions.[211] And chapter 19 forbids foreign churches from locating in central Moscow - they were to be located beyond the Earth Town 'in places distant from God's churches'.[212] In a similar spirit of spatial exclusiveness and religious purity, legislation forced Europeans to sell their property in Moscow and move to a new suburb north-east of the city (1652), and also forbade uncon­verted foreigners to wear Russian dress, enter Orthodox churches or employ Orthodox servants.[213] Whilst foreigners might be tolerated, the Russian town was meant to radiate values which were at one and the same time Russian and Orthodox. Those towns which served as episcopal centres, moreover, were charged with the task of upholding those values in their surrounding regions.

Numerous social thinkers, among them Elman Service and Paul Wheat- ley,[214] have argued for the close relationship between political power and sacred authority in traditional complex societies, and Wheatley in particular has noted how cities in such societies were frequently structured to reflect pre­vailing notions of cosmic order. The claim by the Russian tsars to divine sanction for their rule has been noted by many writers, and in particular the quest by the sixteenth-century tsars to have Moscow recognised as the 'Third Rome', successor to Rome itself and to Constantinople as the centre of world Christendom.[215] The location of the palace of the patriarch, or head of the Russian Orthodox Church, in the seventeenth-century Moscow Kremlin next to the palace of the tsar himself may be taken to symbolise the 'symphony' between Church and state which supposedly reigned under Orthodoxy. The life of the seventeenth-century tsars and of their court was saturated with religious symbolism, observances and practices, as noted by many foreign visitors who were generally hard put to understand the significance of what they saw. The tsars, for example, partook of numerous religious pilgrimages and on particular feast days, notably on Palm Sunday and at Epiphany, the city itself formed the setting for the acting out of the elaborate ceremonials which were performed.[216] How far such ceremonials derived some of their meaning from a symbolism which was enshrined within the actual fabric of the city - in the orientation of certain of its streets, for example, or in the religious imagery associated with certain buildings (for example, the imagery of the 'new Jerusalem' associated by some writers with St Basil's Cathedral in Red Square or with Boris Godunov's plans to reconstruct the Kremlin) - is a matter which deserves further research.[217] What seems quite clear is that Russian towns were, to use Wheatley's phrase, 'generators of sacred space' and as such helped underpin the prevailing political and religious order. That being so, it is hardly surprising that the founding of a new town, as of Archangel in 1583-4, or Tsarev Borisov in 1599, was an act invariably inaugurated in religious ceremonial.[218]

But that, of course, cannot be the full story, for what has been said above in a sense reflects the outlook of the state and of its rulers, rather than that of ordinary people. It is by no means certain, for example, that Christianity had in fact entirely managed to eradicate the remnants of paganism, even by the seventeenth century.[219] Moreover, the seventeenth century was itself a time of change and that fact was bound to be reflected in the heterogeneous life of towns, especially the biggest ones. The mixing of foreigners with Russians in Moscow and other towns meant the mixing of Orthodoxy with new ideas and perhaps with 'heresy', no matter how much the latter might be resisted by religious conservatives. The period was one of growing controversy. The deposition of the Patriarch Nikon, and the schism in the Orthodox Church, split society asunder. But such events were mere harbingers of the much greater challenges to traditional religious authority and to the religious unity of Russia which would follow from the time of Peter the Great. The religious symbolism of the town, in other words, no longer reflected the beliefs of all Russians. It seems likely that it had never done so.

The physical form of towns

The great majority of Russian towns in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were fortified. Not until the end of the latter century did fortification begin to lose its significance.[220] This fact tells us much about the nature of life in Russia at the time - a realm which was open to the threat of invasion from many directions and within which the tsar's writ was constantly frustrated. Nowhere was such frustration liable to be felt more keenly than towards the frontiers. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, for example, a series of northern centres, including Archangel, Kargopol', Kholmogory and Sol'vychegodsk, began to be fortified.[221] They were felt to be vulnerable from the west and also, in the case of those close to the White Sea, from the northern coast. The two centuries also witnessed considerable efforts to fortify towns close to the western frontier.[222] And the energy which was expended upon the defence of the southern frontier and on the building of fortified towns as an integral component of that defence was particularly intense. It was in these regions in particular where the military role of towns became dominant as every effort was made to make all aspects of life subservient to it.[223]

The tendency to fortify particular parts of the town as it expanded - first, perhaps, the gorod, then the nearby posad, then perhaps individual slobody, or newer parts of the posad as the latter expanded beyond the old walls - gave rise to the characteristic 'cellular' structure of towns which has been alluded to by many writers.[224] Moscow provides a characteristic example. From 1485 the Kremlin began to be fortified in brick thanks to the efforts of Italian architects. These walls replaced earlier ones. Some years later in 1535 what is now the Kitai gorod (then known as the 'Great Posad') was also walled in stone. What is now known as the Boulevard Ring was guarded by an earthen rampart. This was rebuilt in brick in 1586-93, the space within it gradually becoming known as the 'White Town'. After the 1591 raid by the Crimean Tatars, a fourth fortification line in earth with a wooden wall was built along what is now the Garden Ring.[225] The area within this final rampart became known as the 'Earth Town'. Thus arose the ring and radial pattern which is still a feature of Moscow's plan today. In other towns, however, the cells were less concentric or regular. And in many cases, especially in the south, the fortifications were wooden rather than of stone.

From a distance Russian towns typically made a great impression on foreign­ers. Thus, encountering Plesko (Pskov) in I66I, the Scottish mercenary Patrick Gordon noted that it 'had a glorious show, being environed with a stone wall, with many towers. Here are many churches and monasteries, some whereof have three, some five steeples or towers, whereon are round globes of six, eight or ten fathoms circumference, which - make a great and pleasant show.' On closer acquaintance, however, Gordon was much less impressed. 'Having lodged in the town', he noted that it 'stunk with nastiness, and was no wise answerable to the glorious show it hath afar off, and our expectations -'.[226]To foreigners Russia's towns seemed dirty, unplanned, badly maintained and primitive. Only the churches called forth praise, but even they were vitiated by superstition and their strange architecture. Other buildings were predom­inantly wooden and seemed quite unimpressive when compared to those common in the West.

The towns, of course, suffered from severe disadvantages. Most of the build­ing, as noted already, was in wood, which had the great advantage of being cheap and readily available but the supreme disadvantage of being vulnerable to fire. In fact so frequent and so devastating did urban fires tend to be that rebuilding had to be done as quickly as possible and at minimum expense, paying little attention to aesthetics or to style. No wonder the results failed to inspire admiration. But the towns were not in fact quite as disordered as they often appeared to foreign observers, particularly in the case of Moscow. From the time of Ivan III, for example, measures were taken to provide fire patrols and also to uphold law and order through forms of policing and controls over traffic, especially at night. From the sixteenth century the tsars gave encour­agement to building in stone. Some attention was paid to drainage and to the planking of unpaved and often barely passable streets. From the early seven­teenth century concerted efforts were made to widen and straighten certain important streets, especially in the city centre, and to prevent infringements of the building line. This was partly as a fire protection measure.[227] Wells were constructed to give easy access to water in cases of fire. The security and well- being of the capital, where the tsar himself resided, was naturally of crucial importance to the government. Much less seems to have been done in other towns.

Moscow and other towns remained quite 'medieval' in appearance down to the end of the century. The typical house or 'court' (dvor), for example, consisted of a wooden structure, perhaps accompanied by outbuildings, and the whole surrounded by a high wooden fence. A gate gave access to the street. But Moscow had begun to change its appearance to some degree by the mid-century when new stone and brick homes and mansions of some of the wealthier were noted by the visiting Paul of Aleppo.[228] According to some scholars, the stone and brick houses and mansions which began to appear in the latter part of the century reflected evidence of an interest in new architectural forms and a departure from those based on traditional wooden construction.[229] By European standards Russian towns spread over enormous areas, necessitating the construction of very lengthy walls in order to encompass them. Towns typically included considerable areas of open space between their built-up areas, used for growing food and pasturing livestock. They also tended to sprawl beyond their walls into the countryside beyond and many activities, especially some of those involving fire, were confined to those regions.

There has been considerable debate among scholars over the extent to which Russian towns were subject to planning. L. M. Tverskoi, for example, argued for a degree of regularity in street patterns and suggested that towns were generally planned even when their street patterns seemed irregular.[230]Regularity is particularly noticeable in the layout of some of the southern military towns. Other scholars have spoken of the 'spontaneous' develop­ment of towns.[231] A somewhat original argument has been advanced by G. V Alferova.[232] According to her, towns were planned, but the planning took a different form from the regular, geometrically based system of much West­ern planning from medieval times onwards which ultimately derived from the Greek conceptions of Hippodamus. Alferova believed that Russian ideas on planning took their origin from Byzantine laws and practices which were translated and appeared in Russian legal anthologies and similar texts from an early period. The latter were used in princely law courts, but it is unclear how far the laws applying to urban affairs were applied, at least before the seventeenth century (there is a faint echo of Byzantine urban conceptions in the Ulozhenie).[233] The argument is that the Byzantine tradition paid less heed to regularity of form than to such matters as heights of and distances between buildings (views, ventilation, effects of shadow), the width of streets, prop­erty boundaries, hygiene, vegetation, drainage and water supply. There was, according to Alferova, overall concern with the profile of the townscape. After about the fourteenth century, she avers, towns were founded and developed according to a well-regulated procedure which included proper documenta­tion and adherence to ritual practice. The problem is that there appears to be only limited documentary evidence to support some of these assertions. What may or may not have appeared in legal texts may tell us little or nothing about actual practice. Moreover, some of Alferova's claims almost amount to a belief in a sophisticated form of landscape architecture long before such a thing was possible. Clearly this is an area which demands more research. It may be that Alferova's study points the way to a deeper understanding of the symbolism enshrined in townscape than has been usual to date. But whether what she writes about is 'planning' is quite a different matter.

Conclusion

Whereas a traditional approach to the study of Russian towns has emphasised their sluggish development and particularly their backwardness relative to European towns of the period, this chapter has emphasised another angle, following the thought of Jan de Vries.[234] This is to view towns as elements in a network and to consider their role as co-ordinators of a growing series of activities across the state. By the seventeenth century most Russian towns were multifunctional and acted as important nodes (albeit varying in their individual importance) for the organisation of commercial, administrative, military, cultural and sacred space. This process of growing nodal significance is termed by de Vries 'structural urbanisation'.[235] To view the towns only in terms of their commercial role, in other words, is to miss one of the most important things about them. And it is to overlook the vital role they played in the building of the Russian state.

26

Popular revolts

MAUREEN PERRIE

The election of Michael Romanov as tsar in 1613 is conventionally seen as marking the end of the Time of Troubles, but social unrest continued for some time. The cossack leader Ivan Zarutskii based himself in Astrakhan' in 1613-14 with his mistress Marina Mniszech, the widow of the First and Second False Dmitriis, and promoted the claim to the throne of her infant son, 'Tsarevich' Ivan Dmitrievich. Zarutskii and the little pretender were executed in the summer of 1614 and, although the cossacks continued to create problems for the government in 1614-15, subsequent protests against the new regime were only sporadic. The conclusion of peace with Sweden in 1617 and with Poland in 1618 brought an end to foreign intervention, and the next decade and a half was a period of relative stability for Russia, both internally and externally.

In 1632 Tsar Michael's government took advantage of the interregnum in Poland-Lithuania which followed the death of King Sigismund III. An army led by the boyar M. B. Shein was dispatched to the western frontier in a bid to regain Smolensk, which had been ceded to the Poles in the Treaty of Deulino of 1618. Thereafter Russia was to be involved almost continuously in warfare (see Chapter 21); the economic and social strains created by these wars contributed in large part to the series of popular revolts which caused the period to be described as 'the rebellious century'. The principal urban uprisings occurred in Moscow and other towns in 1648-50, and in the capital in 1662 and 1682; the most extensive revolt was the great cossack-peasant uprising led by Sten'ka Razin, in 1670-1. The first part of this chapter will provide a chronological overview of the revolts; the second will examine the social composition of their participants; and the third will consider the aims and demands they embodied, within the common framework of 'rebellions in the name of the tsar'.

The sequence of revolts

The first symptoms of unrest occurred against the background of the unsuc­cessful Smolensk war of 1632-4. The government called for volunteers to supplement the regular army, and many peasants and bondsmen rallied to the appeal, calling themselves 'free cossacks' and acting semi-independently as partisans in the vicinity of the front, sometimes in association with bands of Don cossacks. Their actions were often directed against the property of local Russian landowners rather than against the Poles, and their ranks were swollen by deserters from Shein's army. Soviet historians called this movement the 'Balashovshchina' after one of its early leaders, Ivan Balash, an enserfed monastery peasant from Dorogobuzh uezd who died in captivity in 1633. The rural unrest soon subsided, and its remnants were suppressed by government troops after the conclusion of the Peace of Polianovka with Poland in June 1634. The episode had echoes in the capital. When the irregular 'cossack' leaders Anisim Chertoprud and Ivan Teslev came to Moscow for negotiations with the government, many discontented slaves and other members of the lower orders took advantage of the opportunity to escape from the city by volunteer­ing to join their bands.[236] The Russians' failure to capture Smolensk provoked allegations that the army commanders had turned traitor; according to the Holstein envoy Adam Olearius, the government was obliged to execute Shein under pressure from the Moscow mob, who threatened a popular uprising.[237]Two years later, a fire in the central Kitai-gorod district of the capital in March 1636 was followed by extensive looting of merchants' property; but this seems to have been primarily a case ofcriminal opportunism rather than a significant episode of social or political conflict.[238]

The events of 1648-50 were much more serious. The uprising which began in Moscow in June 1648 is often known as the 'salt riot'. In fact the unpopular tax on salt, introduced in 1646, had been abolished at the end of 1647, but other direct taxes were tripled to compensate for the loss ofrevenue, and resentment of the tax burden was an important underlying cause of the subsequent unrest. On 1 June the young Tsar Alexis was returning from a pilgrimage when he was met on the outskirts of the capital by a crowd who attempted to present him with a petition. The citizens were complaining about abuses committed by L. S. Pleshcheev, the head of the Zemskii prikaz, the chancellery which had primary responsibility for the administration of Moscow. The fact that the tsar - in defiance of the traditionally paternalistic relationship between ruler and subject in Muscovy - not only refused to accept the petition, but also ordered the arrest of some of the petitioners, angered the crowd. The next day Alexis again found himself surrounded by indignant Muscovites, who heckled and jostled the boyars and officials who were sent out to nego­tiate with them. On 2 and 3 June the crowds, now joined by many of the strel'tsy (musketeers) stationed in the capital, began to attack the homes and property of the most unpopular members of the ruling elite. These included not only Pleshcheev, but also the tsar's brother-in-law B. I. Morozov, and P. T. Trakhaniotov, the head of the Pushkarskii prikaz (Artillery Chancellery). Nazarii Chistyi, who was held responsible for the hated salt tax, was lynched by the mob - he was cut to pieces and his body was dumped on a dung heap. On 3 June Alexis sent a new delegation of boyars, including his kinsman N. I. Romanov, to speak to the people. The boyars agreed to hand Pleshcheev over, and he was butchered by the crowd. On 5 June, in response to the insur­gents' demands, Trakhaniotov was executed. Fires broke out in various parts of Moscow - leading to predictably contradictory accusations of arson - and much of the city was burned to the ground. The disturbances continued, and a week later Morozov was exiled to the Kirillo-Belozerskii monastery, after the intervention of some nobles and merchants who persuaded the govern­ment to convene an Assembly of the Land. A broadly representative assem­bly met in September, and in January 1649 it approved the new Law Code known as the Ulozhenie, which finally enserfed the peasantry and abolished the tax-immune 'white quarters' in the towns. By a judicious combination of concessions and repressions, the government gradually restored its authority; Morozov was allowed to return from his northerly place of exile in October 1648, and by the beginning of the following year he had regained the reins of

power.[239]

Uprisings also occurred in various provincial towns in 1648-9: in Kozlov, Kursk, Voronezh, Novosil' and others in the south; in Sol'vychegodsk and Ustiug Velikii in the north; and in several parts of Siberia.[240] The Siberian town of Tomsk remained in the hands of insurgents for a particularly long period: a revolt against the governor, Prince O. I. Shcherbatyi, which had begun in April 1648 (even before the uprising in Moscow) continued until August 1649.[241]

In some cases the revolts in provincial towns were triggered by news of the events in Moscow. In Kozlov the local servicemen had been complaining to the Moscow authorities about abuses by the town governor and other officials since i647.On 11 June 1648, when a group of petitioners returned from Moscow with news of the uprising in the capital, attacks were launched on the 'best people' (the wealthy and privileged), and the governor and many of the gentry fled from the town.[242] In Kursk the conflict arose over the government's right to search for runaway strel'tsy and cossacks who had found refuge in the town as monastery peasants. The musketeer captain Konstantin Teglev was murdered on 5 July when he tried to enforce the search, and an indignant crowd threatened the lives and property of other representatives of the local authorities. The townspeople cited the killing of 'traitors' in Moscow as a precedent for the lynching of Teglev: 'Better men than he are being killed in Moscow,' affirmed the monastery peasant Kuz'ma Vedenitsyn, who had just returned from the capital.[243] In Voronezh, Novosil', Sol'vychegodsk and Ustiug Velikii, too, there is evidence that the disturbances were stimulated by the arrival of news that boyars and officials were being attacked in Moscow. Reports that the insurgents in the capital had not been punished, and that concessions had been made to their demands, produced a strong impression in the provinces, and led to 'copy­cat' actions in some towns.[244] In parts ofthe south-west, urban disturbances may have been influenced not only by news ofthe events in Moscow, but also by the cossack rising led by Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi, which broke out in i648 in the neighbouring Ukrainian and Belarusian territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.[245]

The risings of 1650 in Pskov and Novgorod, in the north-west of Russia, had a specific context of their own. In i649 a Russian embassy to Stockholm agreed to pay compensation to the Swedes for fugitives who had settled in Muscovy from territory ceded to Sweden in the Peace of Stolbovo of 1617. Part of the payment was to be made in the form of rye, and the Pskov merchant Fedor Emel'ianov was entrusted by the Moscow government with the task of buying up this grain. As a result of Emel'ianov's transactions the price of rye soared, creating severe hardship and subsequent discontent in both Pskov and Novgorod. The unrest in Pskov came to a head when the Swedish agent Login Nummens arrived in the town on 28 February to collect the grain; the appearance in Novgorod on 15 March of the Danish envoy Evert Krabbe, who was suspected of being a Swedish agent, triggered a similar reaction. In both towns the homes of rich merchants were raided and the city gov­ernors were placed under house arrest. The Moscow authorities dispatched the militarycommander Prince I. N. Khovanskii against the rebellious cities. Novgorod surrendered on 13 April, but Pskov remained defiant and with­stood a siege from Khovanskii's troops until a settlement was negotiated in August.[246]

The next major uprising in the capital, the 'copper riot' of 1662, occurred against the background of the protracted war with Poland (which had been under way since 1654), exacerbated by a conflict with Sweden in 1656-8. In its search for revenue to fund its military operations, the government resorted not only to increased taxation, but also to a currency reform which sub­stituted copper coinage for silver. Counterfeit coins also came into circula­tion, adding to price inflation. Measures taken by the government against the forgers, many of whom occupied prominent positions in the chancel­leries, did little to appease the citizens; rather, they simply fuelled suspi­cion of treason in high places. On 25 July the musketeer Kuz'ma Nagaev summoned the citizens to assemble on Red Square. A large contingent marched to the village of Kolomenskoe, on the outskirts of Moscow, where the tsar and his court were in residence. Alexis managed to persuade the protestors that their allegations would be fully investigated, and they returned to Moscow. In the capital, meanwhile, attacks had already begun on the homes of the wealthy merchants Vasilii Shorin and Semen Zadorin. The tsar sent Prince I. A. Khovanskii to calm the situation in the city centre, but his mission was unsuccessful and another crowd of insurgent Muscovites headed for Kolomenskoe. Alexis again tried to appease them with promises, but when words failed he used loyal troops to disperse and bloodily repress the rebels.[247]

The 'copper riot' lasted for only a single day, and was confined to Moscow; but the next major upheaval - the Razin revolt - was much more protracted and extensive.[248] After the legal enserfment of the peasantry in 1649 the gov­ernment took active measures to prevent peasants from fleeing to the south­ern and eastern frontier regions, where they had traditionally found refuge with the cossack bands who frequented the basins of the rivers Don, Volga, Terek and Iaik. Pressure was exerted on the Don cossacks, in particular, to return peasant fugitives to the centre. The government cut its supplies of food, money and weaponry to the Don host. This policy resulted in consid­erable hardship for the poorer cossacks, and symptoms of their distress soon appeared. In 1666 a detachment of several hundred Don cossacks, led by Vasilii Us, rode northwards; from their encampment near Tula they sent a delegation to Moscow with a request that they be taken into state service. While they awaited the tsar's response, their ranks were swollen by runaway peasants and bondsmen from the Tula and Voronezh regions, and even from Moscow itself. In order to obtain provisions, they raided and looted landowners' estates. The government mustered regular troops against them, and the cossacks retreated to the Don, accompanied by significant numbers of their new recruits from the central districts. Many ofthem, including Vasilii Us himself, were to participate in the Razin revolt which broke out soon afterwards.

In 1667, on the conclusion of the prolonged war with Poland, the situation on the Don deteriorated further, as cossacks returned from fighting in the Ukraine, and there was a further influx of refugees. It was in this context that the ataman (chieftain) Stepan Timofeevich (Sten'ka) Razin organised a piratical expedition in which several hundred cossacks crossed to the Volga above Tsaritsyn and sailed downstream to the Caspian Sea, where their raids went north to Iaitsk at the mouth of the Iaik River, and then south into Persian waters. In the late summer of i669 Razin left the Caspian and returned to the Don by the Volga route, having been allowed to pass through Astrakhan' and Tsaritsyn unmolested by the tsarist authorities. He wintered on an island in the Don near Kagal'nik, where he attracted a host of impoverished and discontented followers.

In the spring of 1670 Razin decided on a much bolder enterprise than his primarily piratical expedition of 1667-9: an attack on the Russian heartland to eradicate the 'traitor-boyars' in Moscow. In May Razin and his cossacks crossed again from the Don to the Volga, and captured Tsaritsyn. But instead ofheading up the Volga towards Moscow, they decidedto consolidate their rear, and moved downriver to take Astrakhan'. The cossacks' capture of the fortress was facilitated by a popular uprising in the city. There ensued a massacre of the privileged elites of Astrakhan': the governor, Prince I. S. Prozorovskii, was thrown to his death from the top of a tower, and his two young sons were tortured. In July Razin again headed upstream, the mid-Volga towns of Saratov and Samara surrendering to him without resistance. As the cossacks moved up the Volga, they distributed 'seditious letters' in the surrounding villages, provoking a widespread peasant revolt. Estates were looted, manor houses burned and landowners murdered. Some of the non-Russian peoples of the Volga were also drawn into the rising, especially the Mordva, the Mari and the Chuvash. The rebels' triumphant advance was eventually arrested at Simbirsk. The town's garrison held out against the rebel siege for more than a month, before being relieved by fresh troops from Kazan', who defeated Razin at the beginning of October. At about the same time Sten'ka's brother Frol, who was sailing up the Don in a parallel enterprise, was halted south of Voronezh by government troops. By the winter of 1670-1, although the rebellion continued to spread in some regions, its back had been broken, and the government was on the offensive. Punitive expeditions were sent down the Volga and the Don, brutally repressing the revolt. Razin himself was captured on the Don by service cossacks in April 1671 and executed in Moscow in June.

A major uprising, often known as the 'Khovanshchina' (and depicted in Musorgskii's opera of that name) occurred in the capital in 1682.[249] Although the eponymous Khovanskii princes played an important part in the events, the main role in the revolt belonged to the strel'tsy, nearly 15,000 of whom were stationed in Moscow at the beginning of the year. The musketeers had complained about harsh treatment by their officers in the winter of 1681-2, but they failed to obtain satisfactory redress from the authorities. The situation was exacerbated by a dynastic crisis. On 27 April Tsar Fedor died childless, creating a problem for the succession to the throne. The choice lay between Ivan, Fedor's only surviving full brother (from their father's first marriage to Mariia Miloslavskaia), and Peter, the only son of Tsar Alexis's second wife, Natal'ia Naryshkina. Ivan was sixteen, but physically and mentally handicapped; Peter was intelligent and healthy, but not yet ten years old. On the day of Fedor's death, a hastily convened Assembly of the Land chose the younger brother as tsar; custom therefore dictated that his mother should be regent. This resolu­tion of the succession issue was controversial, however, and the grievances of the strel'tsy against their commanders were soon extended to the Naryshkins and their supporters, who had - it was claimed - usurped the throne from Ivan, the rightful heir, in order to establish boyar rule during Peter's minority.

On30 April, in response to a petition from the rank-and-file strel'tsy, Tsaritsa Natal'ia ordered that some of their most corrupt officers should be flogged. This did not satisfy the strel'tsy, and on 15-17 May they rioted, bursting into the Kremlin and brutally murdering members of the Naryshkin clan and their allies. A compromise solution to the dynastic crisis was provided by the novel arrangement that Ivan and Peter should rule jointly, but with Ivan as the 'first' tsar and his full sister Sophia as de facto regent. The strel'tsy continued to influence events throughout the summer. They insisted on being renamed 'court infantry', and on 6 June they erected a large column on Red Square on which they listed the victims of the uprising of 15-17 May and justified their 'execution' as traitors. Prince I. A. Khovanskii, who had become head of the Musketeer Chancellery (Streletskii prikaz) after the uprising, tried to use the situation to promote his own interests. In July he organised a debate between a deputation of Old Believers (who enjoyed considerable support among the strel'tsy) and representatives of the official Church, in the presence of Tsarevna Sophia and her sisters. Sophia, however, soon gained the upper hand. Khovanskii and his son Andrei were accused of treason and executed in September. In October the regent was able to muster regular troops to protect her, the strel'tsy submitted to her authority and she established control over the capital.

Unrest continued for some time on the Don and in other parts ofthe south. This had begun before the Moscow events, when the Peace of Bakhchisarai of 1681 with Turkey and the Crimea blocked the cossacks' access to the Black Sea. In the spring of 1682 some Don cossacks planned to follow Razin's example and attack the Russian heartland; news of the unrest in the capital subse­quently encouraged them to go to the aid of the strel'tsy against the boyars.

The initiative was nipped in the bud by government troops, but sporadic dis­turbances occurred in a number of south-western districts in 1682-3.[250]

The social composition of the rebels

What was the nature of these revolts, and how much did they have in common? Soviet historians drew a distinction between the Razin revolt, on the one hand, which was characterised as a 'peasant war' (more specifically, as the 'second peasant war', following that of Bolotnikov in 1606-7), and the urban revolts, such as those of 1648-50, on the other. In practice this distinction is somewhat artificial. The term 'peasant war' is just as problematic in its application to the Razin revolt as it is to the Bolotnikov episode.[251] Not only was the main leadership provided by cossacks, but the rebellion also involved uprisings in the lower Volga towns, from Astrakhan' to Tsaritsyn, whose participants were similar to those of the urban revolts in 1648-50, 1662 and 1682. But if the 'peasant war' of 1669-71 included urban participants, some of the urban risings of 1648-50 spilled over into the surrounding countryside and involved peasants in neighbouring villages.

Let us look first at the uprisings in the capital. The initial impulse for the revolt in Moscow in 1648 was provided by the ordinary townspeople (arti­sans and tradesmen) whose petition was rejected by the tsar; the strel'tsy also became involved at an early stage. The gentry took advantage of the unrest to present their own petitions, and they ended up as the main beneficiaries when the government made a major concession to them (the convening of the Assembly of the Land which approved the Ulozhenie of 1649) in order to split the opposition. The social composition of the revolt was therefore fairly heterogeneous, including representatives of relatively privileged groups, such as the gentry and merchants. The main participants in the 1662 'copper riot' were artisans and tradesmen, and petty military servitors; the strel'tsy played only a minor role. The 1682 uprising, by contrast, was largely dominated by the strel'tsy. For both the 1648 and 1682 revolts, there is some evidence that these were not purely spontaneous outbursts of protest by the lower classes, but that various individuals from the ruling elites incited or influenced the course of events. In 1648 the popular protests about Morozov benefited his enemies, N. I. Romanov and Prince Ia. K. Cherkasskii; in 1682 Tsarevich Ivan's kins­men, the Miloslavskiis, were thought to have encouraged the protests of the strel'tsy against Peter's election as tsar, while the subsequent conflict between Tsarevna Sophia and Prince I. A. Khovanskii affected the outcome of the affair.[252]

The role of the bond-slaves in the Moscow revolts was a somewhat ambigu­ous one. In terms of their social position, the bondsmen themselves ranged from impoverished domestic servants to the relatively privileged military slaves. The latter were likely to support their masters against the insurgents, while the house-slaves, even if they sympathised with the poorer sections of the townspeople, were often too dependent on their lords to risk participating in any challenges to their authority. Nevertheless, there is some evidence of the involvement of slaves in the revolts. One source indicates that runaway slaves participated in the looting which followed the fires in Moscow in early June 1648, and another claims that on 27 June the boyars' slaves in the capi­tal demanded their freedom, as a result of which six of them were executed and seventy-two were imprisoned.[253] In 1662 there were relatively few slaves among the insurgents, while some actively participated in the suppression of the revolt.[254] In 1682 the 'boyars' people' (slaves) presented a petition to the two tsars on 26 May, asking for freedom, but they received little support from the strel'tsy, whose grievances had been largely assuaged by the election of Ivan as 'first tsar'.[255]

The composition of the participants in the urban revolts in the provinces in 1648-50 reflected the varied social structures of the towns affected. The frontier towns in the south and in Siberia were primarily fortresses, and here the main role in the uprisings was played by the petty servicemen 'by con­tract', such as the strel'tsy and urban cossacks. Many of these servicemen were engaged in crafts and trades, and even in peasant-style agriculture, in order to supplement the inadequate monetary payments they received from the state. Their interests and grievances were therefore very similar to those of the taxpaying townspeople in other regions. The northern towns of Ustiug and Sol'vychegodsk, where unrest occurred in 1648, were important manu­facturing and trading centres. Here the main participants in the disturbances were the poorer townspeople, such as artisans and traders, and their actions were directed primarily against local officials responsible for tax collection, and against those merchants who were regarded as the closest allies of the town authorities. Pskov and Novgorod were the two largest commercial cities of the north-west. In both cases in 1650 the townspeople as a whole, together with the musketeers from the garrison, rose up against the city governors and rich merchants who were implicated in the sale of grain to Sweden. In Pskov, where the uprising continued for six months, sharp divisions developed between the richer merchants and hereditary servicemen, on the one hand, and the poorer townspeople and strel'tsy, on the other, concerning the terms on which they would surrender to the besieging government forces. During the siege of Pskov the peasants in some neighbouring villages joined raiding parties of insurgent townspeople in attacking Khovanskii's troops and looting landlords' estates.[256]

The Razin revolt was the most heterogeneous of all the later seventeenth- century uprisings. Its main leadership was provided by cossacks. For Soviet historians, this was not inconsistent with their designation of the rebellion as a 'peasant war', since many cossacks were of peasant origin. But, as other scholars have recognised, cossacks had a very different identity from peas­ants. The Don cossacks who spearheaded the Razin revolt were independent mercenary cavalrymen who voluntarily offered their services to the tsar in return for the supplies they received from his government. Razin himself belonged to the more prosperous section of the cossacks, but most of his followers came from the poorer strata. Many of these destitute cossacks had only recently come to the Don, and settled in its upper reaches. In the sum­mer of 1670, as Razin conquered the lower Volga, his cossacks were joined by strel'tsy, soldiers and other petty servicemen from the garrisons of the occupied towns, together with some sailors from the ports, and townspeo­ple who had taken part in the urban uprisings which were triggered by the rebels' approach. Non-Russians from the mid-Volga - Chuvash, Mordva, Mari and Tatars - gave the rebellion a distinctively multi-ethnic character. Russian peasants played a part only in the latter stages of the insurrection, as the rebels moved into the mid-Volga region with its gentry estates farmed by serf labour. One of the few recorded examples of female involvement in these seventeenth-century revolts is the case of Alena, a nun of peasant origin from the town of Arzamas, who commanded a detachment of 7,000 men before being captured and burned alive on the orders of the tsar's general, Prince Iu. A. Dolgorukii.[257]

Soviet historians sometimes defined 'peasant wars' as 'civil wars of the feudal period',[258] but in comparison to the Time of Troubles (and even to the Bolotnikov episode within it) the geographical scope of the Razin revolt was relatively limited, focusing on the river basins of the Volga and Don. Thus it is more appropriate to describe it as a 'frontier rebellion' rather than a 'civil war': in that respect - and in its social composition - it is more similar to the Pugachev revolt of 1773-5 than to the Time of Troubles. Like Pugachev's, Razin's uprising had professional military leadership, provided by the cossacks, and the insurgents formed large armies which engaged in open conflict with government troops. To that extent it constituted a more significant threat to political stability than the urban insurrections; and it was met with a much harsher and less conciliatory response from the authorities.

Finally, it is worth noting that religious issues played a part in some revolts. The non-Russian peoples of the mid-Volga who supported Razin were mostly Muslims, and their grievances against the Russian government's policy of forcibly converting them to Christianity had fuelled the constant series of rebellions which they had staged since Muscovy's annexation of the Volga khanates in the mid-sixteenth century. Razin made a bid for their support, and one of his appeals to the Kazan' Tatars invoked the Prophet Mohammed.[259]After the schism in the Orthodox Church, Old Beliefbecame an issue in some ofthe uprisings. There is evidence that Razin had contacts in the Old-Believer stronghold of Solovki, the island monastery in the White Sea which held out against a siege by government forces for eight years, from 1668 to 1676. But Razin's religious appeal was somewhat inconsistent: not only did he invoke the Prophet, but he also presented himself as a champion of Nikon, who had been deposed as patriarch in 1666 and imprisoned in the Ferapontov monastery. The rebels claimed that Nikon accompanied them on their voyage up the Volga. The cossacks believed that Nikon, whom they described as their 'father', had been removed from office by the boyars. They cursed his successor Ioasaf, and planned to restore Nikon to the patriarchate.[260] In 1682 Khovanskii appealed to Old-Believer sympathies among the strel'tsy when he organised the debate with the schismatics; and Old Belief among the Don cossacks was an influence on their unrest in 1682-3.

'Rebellions in the name of the tsar'

All of these revolts, to a greater or lesser extent, assumed the form of'rebellions in the name of the tsar': that is, they were directed primarily against the 'traitor-boyars' rather than against the reigningtsar. In this respect they differed significantly from most ofthe rebellions during the Time of Troubles, which were aimed against rulers, such as Boris Godunov or Vasilii Shuiskii, who were identified as usurpers; the insurgents sought to replace them with pretenders whom they claimed to be the 'true' tsar, treacherously removed from the throne or from the succession (the first two False Dmitriis).

In the revolts which took place under the first Romanovs, the rebels com­monly described their main targets as 'traitor-boyars'. These were not exclu­sively 'boyars' in the narrow sense of the tsar's highest-ranking counsellors; rather, they belonged to a category sometimes identified as 'the strong men'. In addition to boyars and okol'nichie, this group included high chancellery officials, rich merchants and provincial governors. In Moscow in 1648 the chief 'traitors' whose deaths the crowds demanded were the boyar Boris Morozov, the okol'nichie Petr Trakhaniotov, the conciliar secretary (dumnyi d'iak) Nazarii Chistyi and the judge Leontii Pleshcheev.[261] In 1662 the eight 'traitors' listed in the insurgents' proclamation were the boyars I. D. and I. M. Miloslavskii, the okol'nichie F. M. Rtishchev and B. M. Khitrovo, the secretary D. M. Bashmakov and the merchants V. G. and B. V. Shorin and S. Zadorin.[262] Sten'ka Razin called on his cossacks 'to go to Rus' against the sovereign's enemies and traitors and to eradicate the traitor boyars and counsel­lors from the Muscovite state, and the governors and officials in the towns'.[263]The seventeen victims of the revolt of 15-17 May 1682 included five boyars (the Princes Iu. A. and M. Iu. Dolgorukii, Prince G. G. Romodanovskii, A. S. Matveev and I. K. Naryshkin); and the conciliar secretaries L. I. Ivanov and A. S. Kirillov.[264]

Not allboyars were regarded as traitors, however. On3 June 1648 the Moscow crowd cried out that N. I. Romanov should rule them alongside the tsar, in place of B. I. Morozov; and in Pskov, in 1650, Romanov was identified as a boyar who 'cared about the land'.[265] Prince I. A. Khovanskii was described as a 'good' person by the Moscow insurgents of 1662; and in 1682 the strel'tsy referred to him as their 'father'.[266] In his address to the cossack circle at Panshin Gorodok in May 1670, Razin described some boyars as 'good', because they provided the cossacks with food and drink when they visited Moscow.[267]

The insurgents therefore distinguished between 'good' and 'bad' members of the ruling elite, so that the revolts were not simply indiscriminate attacks on all 'feudal' lords, as some of the cruder Soviet Marxist class-struggle interpre­tations implied, but were directed only against those who were most detested by the ordinary people. In some cases the rebels invited the crowd to pass judgement on their proposed victims. Razin asked the people of Astrakhan' to decide who should be put to death; and in Moscow in 1682 the strel'tsy called for the crowd's approval before killing their enemies.[268]

The cruelty of the insurgents' punishment and killing of their victims is a common theme in contemporary accounts of these revolts. The 'traitors' were sometimes literally torn apart in an explosion of mob violence; after death their bodies were frequently defiled and abused. The looting of the victims' property may be seen as a crude form of redistribution of wealth; its burning and destruction was a more symbolic form of popular rejection of privilege. For all the understandable indignation expressed in elite sources about the violence involved in the rebels' reprisals against their victims, the forms assumed by popular retribution often resembled those of official pun­ishments, especially the torturing and execution of'traitor-boyars' during Ivan the Terrible's oprichnina.[269] And it should be borne in mind that the tsarist gov­ernment's repression of the revolts - especially the Razin uprising - involved much greater and more extensive cruelty than that practised by the rebels themselves.

In order to legitimise their attacks on their chosen victims, the rebels reg­ularly accused them of treason. They commonly alleged that the 'traitor- boyars' exploited and oppressed the peasants and townsfolk. The com­plaints of the insurgents in Moscow in 1648, for example, focused on abuses and maladministration by the power holders.[270] Exploitation of the ordi­nary people was frequently associated with harm to the interests of the state, as the Russian historian N. N. Pokrovskii has noted in his detailed study of the uprising of i648-9 in Tomsk, where the petitioners accused the town governor, Prince O. I. Shcherbatyi, of reducing the tsar's revenue through his impoverishment of the peasants and indigenous peoples of the district.[271]

Other types of treason were also alleged - although often these allegations had little or no foundation. Claims of plots against the life of the tsar and other members of the royal family were very common. In 1648-50 rumours spread to provincial towns that the boyars had tried to kill Tsar Alexis. Razin blamed the boyars for the recent deaths of Tsaritsa Mariia Il'inichna and the tsareviches Aleksei and Simeon Alekseevich. In 1682 the rebel Muscovites accused the 'traitors' of having murdered Tsar Fedor and Tsarevich Ivan, in order to clear the way for Peter's succession to the throne.[272]

Finally, the insurgents' adversaries were regularly accused of 'external' trea­son, that is, of secret dealings with Russia's foreign enemies. In Pskov and Novgorod in i650 the dispatch of grain and money to Sweden led to suspi­cions that the city governors and local merchants were Swedish agents, and that the conspiracy also involved some of the boyars in Moscow, including B. I. Morozov. In 1662 the boyars were accused of corresponding with the Polish king and planning to surrender Muscovy to the Poles; and rumours circulated that officials in the Musketeer Chancellery had substituted sand for gunpowder in supplies of ammunition sent to the army at the front. In 1682 the boyar Prince G. G. Romodanovskii was said to have sympathised with the Turkish sultan and the Crimean khan in the recent Chyhyryn campaign.[273] In their choice of allegations against their enemies, as well as in the forms of cruel punishment they inflicted upon them, the seventeenth-century insur­gents may have modelled themselves on state terror directed against 'traitors': in the period of the oprichnina, Tsar Ivan IV had made accusations of both 'internal' and 'external' treason against the boyars, and their 'internal' treason was said to have involved oppression of the people as well as harm to the prosperity of the state.[274] More broadly, protestors often made use of the same type of rhetoric against corruption as was employed in official statements by the Moscow government.

In most popular revolts, the 'evil' traitor-boyars were contrasted with the 'good' tsar. In 1648-50, however, there is some evidence that the rebels criticised the ruler himself. In Moscow, Alexis was described as 'young and foolish', and even as a 'traitor'; similar 'unseemly words' were recorded in Pskov and Novgorod. Rumours had circulated in Tsar Michael's reign that Alexis and his younger brother, Tsarevich Ivan, were changelings, non-royal boys substituted for baby daughters born to Tsaritsa Evdokiia. But the tsar's critics in 1648-50 do not appear to have questioned his legitimacy as ruler, or to have rejected the monarchy as an institution: rather, Alexis was depicted as a tool of the traitor- boyars, and pressure was exerted on him to replace them with 'wise advisers'.[275]Young and inexperienced tsars were evidently seen as particularly susceptible to the influence of'wicked counsellors': in 1682 the strel'tsy expressed fears that the nine-year-old Peter's election as tsar would mean that unjust and corrupt boyars would be the real rulers.[276]

Doubts about the legitimacy of the new dynasty had been expressed in the reign of Tsar Michael, when the authorities reported numerous cases of 'sovereign's word and deed' (slovo i delo gosudarevy, lese-majeste) allega­tions criticising the Romanovs. Rumours even spread that 'Tsar Dmitrii' was still alive. In spite of these concerns, royal impostors (samozvantsy), who had played such a prominent part in the Time of Troubles, were much less evident in Russia in subsequent decades. Pretenders claiming to be Tsarevich Ivan Dmitrievich, Marina Mniszech's son by the Second False Dmitrii, were reported in Poland and the Crimea in the 1640s; and false Shuiskiis (including the notorious Timoshka Ankudinov, who claimed vari­ous royal identities) appeared in Poland and Moldavia - but none of these had any connection with the popular revolts within Muscovy itself.[277] Some cases were recorded of Russians calling themselves tsars or tsareviches; but, according to a recent study, this 'popular pretence' was more of a cul­tural than a political phenomenon: a reflection of the notion that to be a tsar meant the possession of exceptional superiority over ordinary peo­ple.[278] The apparently non-political nature of many of these claims to royal status did not, however, mean that the tsarist government considered them to be innocuous: on the contrary, they were rigorously prosecuted as political crimes.

The first evidence ofpretence associated with popular revolt is found in the Razin uprising. Although the revolt had begun in May 1670 as a classic 'rebellion in the name of the tsar' against the 'traitor-boyars', by the late summer, as the cossacks moved up the Volga, Razin was spreading rumours that they were accompanied by Tsarevich Aleksei Alekseevich (who had died in 1670) as well as by the deposed patriarch Nikon. It is not clear whether there was an actual pretender-tsarevich in Razin's flotilla, or whether the cossacks were simply using his name in order to justify their actions. Certainly there is no evidence that the rebels planned to overthrow Tsar Alexis and replace him with his 'son' - rather, it seems that they were claiming that the tsarevich would lead them to Moscow to attack the 'traitor-boyars' who had supposedly plotted to kill him. In 1673 a false Tsarevich Simeon Alekseevich appeared in Zaporozh'e (the real Simeon had died in 1669 at the age of four): he too seemed to be hostile to the boyars rather than to his 'father', Tsar Alexis. These pretender-tsareviches were not counterposed to the reigning tsar, but served to provide legitimacy for popular revolts against the 'traitor-boyars'.[279]

Other forms of 'popular monarchism' in this period involved rumours about official documents. The disturbances in Voronezh and Ustiug Velikii in 1648 were triggered by (unfounded) reports that official letters had been received calling on the townspeople to follow the example of the Muscovites and attack rich merchants: the alleged existence of such documents served to legitimise attacks on the local elites. In other cases, for example in Tomsk in 1649 and in Novgorod and Pskov in 1650, when real documents condemning the revolts arrived from Moscow, the rebels maintained that they had been falsified by the boyars or officials: these claims rationalised the insurgents' refusal to obey orders instructing them to surrender to the authorities. Such rumours reflected the popular belief that true justice would be sanctioned by

the tsar, and that letters in his name must embody such justice.[280]

***

The evidence which we have considered in this chapter suggests that these seventeenth-century revolts were directed primarily against individuals rather than against institutions, and that their participants were mainly concerned with the redress of specific grievances rather than with the advocacy of any coherent programme of reform, let alone revolution. Only in the case of the Razin revolt do we find an indication of broader aims. In his speech to the cossacks at Panshin Gorodok, Razin called on them all 'to drive the traitors out of the Muscovite state and to give the common people freedom'.[281] Accord­ing to a contemporary English account of his Volga campaign: 'Every where he promised Liberty, and a redemption from the Yoak (so he call'd it) of the Bojars or Nobles; which he said were the oppressors of the Countrey . . . '.[282]The aim of 'liberty' and freedom from oppression is rather vague; but some indication of what it meant in practice is provided by accounts of the rebels' sojourn in Astrakhan', indicating that they destroyed the documents which reg­istered slaves, thereby granting the bondsmen their freedom. Similar actions are recorded in the Moscow risings of 1648 and 1682.[283] In some towns which were under the insurgents' control, cossack-style 'circles' replaced the existing authorities.[284] But it would be rash to conclude on the basis of this kind of evidence that the rebels aimed to abolish slavery and serfdom as institutions, or to introduce some type of grass-roots democracy.

In so far as there was a common factor in the very diverse popular revolts which occurred under the first Romanovs, it may be identified as protest against the expansion of the state, against its infringement of the traditional rights and freedoms of townspeople, peasants and cossacks, and against the increased burden of taxation which it imposed upon them. These protests took place in the name of good tsars with wise advisers, who would protect their people against traitor-boyars and corrupt officials (an idealised version of the paternalistic monarchy of the sixteenth century); but they did little to prevent the further growth ofthe bureaucratic state under Peter the Great and his successors.

The Orthodox Church and the schism

ROBERT O. CRUMMEY

The seventeenth century was a time of bitter conflict and wrenching change in the Orthodox Church of Russia and its relationship with the tsars' govern­ment and society. In this respect, the Church reflected the fissures in Muscovite society and culture of which it was an integral part. After the successful build­ing of a 'national' Church in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, described in an earlier chapter, its leaders faced grave challenges. Critics from within demanded liturgical purity and moral reform and representatives of other branches of Eastern Orthodoxy challenged the legitimacy of Russian national tradition. At critical moments - especially in the pivotal years, 1649-67 - the clashing interests of the tsars' government and Church's leaders disrupted the 'symphony' that, in Orthodox tradition, ideally characterises the relations of Church and state. And laymen and women increasingly rebelled against the Church's claims and its economic power and social privilege. By the first decades of the eighteenth century, the results of these conflicts included a radical redefinition ofthe relationship between Church and state and a schism among the faithful.

The legacy of the past

Several of the most important themes in the history of the Russian Church after 1613 can be traced to pivotal events at the end of the sixteenth century and beginning of the seventeenth. First, in 1589, while visiting the Russian capital in search of financial support, Patriarch Jeremiah of Constantinople agreed, under extreme pressure, to the creation of the Patriarchate ofMoscow and, in 1590 and 1593, the other Orthodox patriarchs accepted the fait accompli. This act both culminated and symbolised the changing relationship between the Greek and Russian branches of Orthodoxy Even after 1589, the Greeks who came to Moscow for alms remained convinced that the Greek 'mother Church' was still the ultimate arbiter of Eastern Orthodox belief and practice.

For their part, the leaders of the Muscovite government and Church were acutely aware of the fact that, after the fall of Byzantium in 1453, the tsardom was the only major Orthodox state left on earth and thus primary guardian of true Christianity.

Second, in the late sixteenth century, the Orthodox Church in the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth faced many threats. The Roman Catholic hier­archy and missionary orders, in alliance with the government of Sigismund III, worked energetically to convert Orthodox believers as did various Protes­tant groups. The Orthodox response took two forms. Lay leaders established centres of Orthodox scholarship and publishing and founded schools. The Ostrih Bible of 1581, the first published translation of the Old and New Testa­ments into Church Slavonic, is the best-known result of these early initiatives. In 1596, however, all but two members of the Orthodox hierarchy of the Commonwealth accepted the Union of Brest under which they recognised the supremacy of the Pope in return for the right to retain the Orthodox liturgy in Slavonic.

From the outset, many Orthodox believers, particularly the leaders of the laity, rejected the union. A network of confraternities spread to all the main urban centres in the Orthodox regions of the Commonwealth and every­where founded schools modelled on the best pedagogical practices of Roman Catholic Europe. By 1633, moreover, the revitalised Orthodox hierarchy had won legal recognition from the crown. In short, the Orthodox Church in Ukraine successfully rebuilt itself as an institution and developed networks of schools and scholars fit to defend Eastern Orthodoxy against its enemies, especially post-Tridentine Roman Catholicism. For the rest of the century, the Orthodox Church in Muscovite Russia had the opportunity to draw upon these experiences and cultural resources.

Third and last, the experience of the Time of Troubles (1598-1613) shaped the later history of the Muscovite Church in two important ways. First, Russia's sufferings undermined the conviction that, as the last Orthodox realm on earth, Muscovy enjoyed God's special blessing. Again and again, contem­poraries asked why God had allowed His people to suffer such devastation. Second, the Troubles emphasised the potential role of the Russian patriarch as leader in revitalising the community. However accurately, tradition holds that Patriarch Hermogen (Germogen) (1606-12) sent out pastoral appeals urging Russians to hold fast to the native tradition of Orthodoxy, reject all com­promise with foreigners and their ways, and give their lives to restore the tsardom. Hermogen's three most powerful seventeenth-century successors - Filaret (1619-34), Nikon (1652-8 or 1666) and Ioakim (1674-90) - all followed his lead, attempting to use their office to impose their convictions and agendas on the Church.

Patriarch Filaret

The election in 1613 of Michael Romanov, teenage scion of a powerful boyar clan related by marriage to the old Riurikid dynasty, traditionally marks the end of the Time of Troubles. The new tsar's father, Filaret, would have been a far stronger candidate for the throne but for the fact that in 1600 he had been tonsured against his will on Boris Godunov's orders - vows that were irrevocable by Eastern Orthodox tradition even though made under duress. Thereafter, although by origin a lay politician and courtier, he could hold only ecclesiastical office. Filaret's career as a prince of the Church was both meteoric and confusing: the First False Dmitrii appointed him Metropolitan of Rostov, and both Vasilii Shuiskii and the Second Pretender recognised him as patriarch, at least temporarily.

In 1619, on his return to Moscow, Filaret ascended the vacant patriarchal throne and, in practice, also acted as effective head of his son's government. Historians have usually characterised him as a forceful, but unimaginative conservative and, after years of imprisonment in Poland, a staunch defender of Muscovite Orthodoxy against Roman Catholic influence.

Filaret strove to strengthen the Church in three ways. First, beginning with his consecration by Patriarch Theophanes ofJerusalem, he systematically built up the power and prestige of the Moscow Patriarchate. He adopted the title Velikii Gosudar' (Great Sovereign), normally applied only to tsars, and, on many occasions, used it in decrees issued jointly with his son. In light of Filaret's position as head of the ruling family, this practice made sense, but set a dan­gerous precedent. He also took practical steps to make the patriarch the most powerful and richest man in Muscovy other than the tsar himself. Through royal grants, he built up an impressive portfolio of estates in all parts of Rus­sia from which he collected revenue and in which he had judicial authority over all but the most serious crimes. To administer these territories and col­lect revenue from the clergy, Filaret created separate patriarchal chancelleries for administration, finances and judicial affairs, parallel to the offices of the state bureaucracy, and a corps of servitors - laymen as well as clergy - to manage them and also to serve as his retinue. In short, as patriarch, he virtu­ally made himself ruler of a separate principality within the realm, a precedent that the more ambitious of his successors eagerly followed.

Second, he adopted practical and symbolic measures to preserve the purity of Muscovite Orthodoxy. Rebuking his immediate predecessor, Metropolitan Iona of Krutitsy, locum tenens in his absence, he insisted, for example, that only Orthodox baptism by triple immersion was valid and therefore that all for­eigners - even Eastern Orthodox believers from the Polish Commonwealth - had to be baptised again in order to be received into the Russian Church. In 1620, a Church Council in Moscow adopted his policy. The driving force behind this exceptionally rigorous stance was probably fear of the corrupt­ing influence of the Uniate movement in the Commonwealth: the anti-Union Orthodox in Ukraine took the same position.

Although Filaret saw Roman Catholicism as Orthodoxy's most danger­ous foe, he also tried to shelter his flock from the pernicious influence of freethinkers and Protestants. As is well known, he had two intellectuals from prominent aristocratic families, S. I. Shakhovskoi and I. A. Khvoros- tinin, imprisoned temporarily in monasteries for disrespect to Orthodoxy or immoral conduct. As for Protestants, many of whom had come to Moscow as mercenary soldiers, he ordered them in 1633 to live exclusively in their own settlement - a foreign, non-Orthodox enclave within the city, later nick­named 'The German Quarter' (nemetskaia sloboda). Military exigencies, how­ever, ruled out any additional limitations on their freedom to work and worship in Moscow.[285]

Third, the 'Gutenberg revolution' belatedly took root in Muscovite Russia at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Printing presented the Church with both an opportunity and a challenge. Well aware of the dangers of open public discussion in print, tsars and patriarchs maintained a virtual monopoly over this revolutionary technology: the official Printing Office (Pechatnyi dvor) published the overwhelming majority of books that appeared in Russia during the seventeenth century. Printing made it possible to provide parishes and monasteries with reliable copies of the service books that the Orthodox liturgy requires. Even so, there were perils, for publishing uniform editions of liturgical books requires the editors to establish authoritative texts. Given centuries of evolving liturgical practice within the Orthodox Commonwealth, leading to different practices in different communities, and the inevitable variations in hand-copied manuscripts, how were editors to decide which variant was truly Orthodox?

As soon as he returned to Moscow, Filaret faced a crisis over this issue. In his absence, Tsar Michael had turned to the leaders of the Holy Trinity monastery, the only important centre of learning in a devastated cultural landscape, and commissioned Abbot Dionysii to prepare new editions of fundamental litur­gical texts beginning with the Sluzhebnik (Missal). He and his collaborators, Arsenii Glukhoi and Ivan Nasedka, compared recent Muscovite editions with a selection of earlier Slavonic and Greek texts and found a number of passages that, in their eyes, were illogical or tinged with heresy. Their work elicited a violent reaction. In 1618, led by Metropolitan Iona, an ecclesiastical council attacked their editions, particularly for small changes in the ceremony of bless­ing the waters at Epiphany, condemned Dionysii and the others as heretics and defrocked them.

Filaret immediately made clear that the Printing House would continue to publish new editions of the liturgical books prepared by the best native scholars. Accordingly, at the urging of Patriarch Theophanes, he pardoned the disgraced editors and sent them back to work. At the same time, he remained vigilant for signs of heresy, particularly Latin influence. He refused to publish the catechism of the Ruthenian monk, Lavrentii Zyzanii; condemned the Evangelie uchitel'noe (Gospels with commentary) of another Ruthenian, Kyryl Tranquillon Stavrovetsky; and attempted to prohibit the importation of all books from the Polish Commonwealth. The patriarch's caution meant that the Pechatnyi dvor published a very modest number of books in his lifetime. But, by setting the programme in motion and assembling the scholars, he laid the groundwork for the flowering of ecclesiastical publishing under his unimposing successors, Ioasaf I (1634-40) and Iosif (1642-52).[286]

The Church in the seventeenth century

At this point, let us pause for a very brief survey of the institutional struc­ture and economic position of the Russian Orthodox Church in the seven­teenth century. This is no easy task: historians have given remarkably little systematic attention to these subjects. We can therefore present only general impressions, supported by fragmentary or anecdotal information. One thing is clear, however. Like the secular administration, the seventeenth-century

Church appeared to be an imposing institutional structure, but, in practice, the patriarch and the metropolitans, archbishops and bishops who served under him had very little effective control over monastic communities or the parish clergy and their flocks to say nothing of the many self-appointed priests, monks and nuns who reported to no human authority. The crises that shook the seventeenth-century Church arose, in considerable measure, from the attempts of the hierarchy to exercise more effective control over the body of Christ.[287]

The enormous size of Russian eparchies (dioceses) - compared, for exam­ple, with those of the Greek Church - is one obvious reason why the hierarchy had so little impact on the day-to-day life of its flock. The leaders ofthe Church had long recognised the problem, but, over the course of the seventeenth cen­tury, Church Councils consistently resisted proposals to create new dioceses by subdividing existing jurisdictions, presumably because bishops feared the loss of revenue and power that reform would inevitably entail. In 1619, for exam­ple, the Russian hierarchy consisted of Patriarch Filaret, four metropolitans, six archbishops and one bishop.[288] Obvious pastoral needs, created by the ter­ritorial expansion of the Russian state and the challenge of religious dissent, however, led to the creation of some new jurisdictions, Tobol'sk in Siberia (1620), Viatka (1656), Belgorod (1667), Nizhnii Novgorod (1672) and four in 1682 - Ustiug Velikii, Kholmogory, Voronezh and Tambov. By 1700, the size of the hierarchy had risen to twenty-four - the patriarch, fourteen metropolitans, seven archbishops and two bishops.

By and large, seventeenth-century parish priests, like their predecessors, lived far from their bishops both geographically and socially. Anecdotal evi­dence indicates that the parish priesthood was usually an ascribed occupation, handed down from father to son with the approval of the local community. At best, its members' education consisted of the customary instruction in read­ing and writing, using familiar religious texts, and hands-on training in the liturgy. The parish clergy were intimately interconnected with local society. As a married man - unlike his celibate bishop - a priest had to provide for his family through farming and collecting the customary fees for his services. He was vulnerable to pressure from officials of the crown, at the mercy of the nobles who owned land nearby, and could easily become the enemy of his parishioners if he attempted to challenge the syncretism of Christian and traditional folk beliefs and practices that shaped their lives.

In the second half of the century, however, these conditions began to change. Patriarchs and bishops began to insist that all candidates for priestly office be literate and receive formal ordination charters from them. Moreover, having installed new priests, the hierarchy attempted to make sure that they followed the official policies of the Church.[289] The success of these initiatives naturally varied widely from place to place depending on the energy of the bishop and the responsiveness or resistance of the parish priests involved. In addition, as Daniel Kaiser's studies show, diocesan courts conscientiously investigated alleged breaches of canon law on marriage, the family and sexual mores and, in most cases, strictly upheld the Church's traditional teachings.[290]

In the seventeenth century, monasteries remained a vital force in Russian Orthodoxy: at the same time, the emergence of competing centres of author­ity, especially the patriarchate, probably reduced their relative power within the Church as compared with earlier centuries. Monasteries such as the Holy Trinity, the Kirillo-Belozerskii and the Solovetskii were still very wealthy and influential, each one a complex hierarchical organisation of monks and lay dependents that functioned largely independently of outside control. Foun­dations like these stood out as exceptional, however: the vast majority of the 494 men's and women's communities which owned populated land in 1653 were very small.[291] All, large and small, depended heavily on the patronage of laymen and women of all stations, from the imperial family to peasants and townspeople.

In the seventeenth century, monastic estates continued to grow in spite of repeated legal prohibitions on new acquisitions of land. The pace of acquisition through bequests, however, slowed to a trickle after mid-century.[292] In addition, all members ofthe hierarchy, above all the patriarch, likewise controlled exten­sive tracts and the revenues they produced.[293] A summary of the landholdings of the hierarchy, the monasteries and the lay elite in 1678 provides a rough indication of the relative wealth of the leaders of the Church. At that time, the patriarch owned lands with 7,128 peasant households, the six metropolitans a total of 7,167 - of which the Metropolitan of Rostov owned 3,909 - and six arch­bishops a total of 4,494. Monasteries and churches owned lands with almost 100,000 peasant households, led by the Holy Trinity with close to 17,000. To be sure, the overwhelming majority of monasteries on the list had fewer than 200 households. By comparison, the members of the boyar council, the tsar's most prominent officials and courtiers, controlled a total of 46,771 households. The richest layman on the list, I. M. Vorotynskii, owned 4,609. Thus the data from 1678, however flawed they may be, show the great wealth, in laymen's terms, of the hierarchy and the largest monasteries. No wonder the provincial gentry and townspeople considered them 'strong people' against whose power and privileges they complained so bitterly in the 1630s and 1640s!

Liturgy and public ceremony also brought the leaders of the Church and the secular elite together. In the most dramatic example, tsar and patriarch acted out the 'symphony' of Church and state in the public rituals of Epiphany and Palm Sunday, commemorating Christ's baptism and entry into Jerusalem. These ceremonies, created by sixteenth-century Muscovite churchmen from the repertoire of ecumenical Christian symbolism, underwent some alter­ations in detail and emphasis during the seventeenth century. Their central message did not change. Moscow, capital ofthe only powerful Eastern Ortho­dox monarchy, was the centre of the Christian world and its ruler, consecrated and supported by the Church, justified his authority by defending the true faith. The ceremonies' symbolic complexity, however, left the issue of the rel­ative importance of tsar and patriarch in the economy of salvation open to differing interpretations.[294]

These great festivals formed only a small part of the ritual tapestry that shaped the life ofthe hierarchy and the imperial court. As Orthodox Christians, the tsars and their families and attendants took part in all the main services of the liturgical calendar, celebrating the most solemn feasts such as Easter in the cathedrals of the Moscow Kremlin with full magnificence. And the imperial family continued the tradition of regular pilgrimages to the Holy Trinity and other monasteries to venerate their saintly founders.[295]

Pressure for reform

After the relatively uneventful tenure of Patriarch Filaret, the Muscovite Church began to feel pressure for change from within and from without. Like their counterparts in Roman Catholic and Protestant Europe, would-be reformers among the clergy strove for consistency and good order in the cel­ebration of the liturgy and attempted to raise the moral tone of parish life. Many of their complaints were not new. In 1636, for example, Ivan Neronov and other parish priests in Nizhnii Novgorod sent a petition to Patriarch Ioasaf, asking for his support in restoring order and dignity to services of worship. The petitioners recited a litany of long-standing abuses - mnogoglasie (the practice of chanting up to 'five or six' different parts of the service simultaneously) and other liturgical short-cuts. They also complained at length about rowdy behaviour during services.[296] In a series ofpastoral instructions, Patriarch Ioasaf strongly supported their demands for pious behaviour during the liturgy. Ten years later, his successor, Iosif, issued a general decree that all priests, deacons and 'all Orthodox Christians fast. . . and refrain from drunkenness, injustice and all kinds of sin'. Worshippers 'should stand in God's church with fear and trembling . . . silently . . .' and pray 'over their sins with tears, humble sighs and contrite hearts ...'

The Nizhnii Novgorod petitioners also attacked the laity's boisterous celebration of non- or pre-Christian festivals such as Rusalii and Koliada at the most solemn times of the liturgical year. Folk minstrels (skomorokhi) drew their particular ire (for depictions of skomorokhi and other popular entertain­ers, see Plate 23). On this issue too, the hierarchy agreed but could see no way to uproot these ancient practices.[297]

Attacking mnogoglasie was more controversial. Liturgical short-cuts had crept into Russian Orthodoxy for good reason. Over the centuries, monastic services had become the norm in parishes, putting severe demands on the patience and stamina of even the most devout laypeople.[298] When the first attempts to set some limits to these traditional practices encountered vig­orous opposition, Iosif retreated and, in 1649, to the reformers' chagrin, an ecclesiastical council chose to maintain the status quo.[299]

Paradoxically, the reformers' desire for an orderly and consistent liturgy opened the Muscovite Church to books and scholars from Ukraine - precisely what Filaret had feared. From the late i630s to the early i650s, the Pechatnyi dvor published new editions of the most important service books, a number of saints' lives and classics of Eastern Christian spirituality such as writings of St John Chrysostom, St Efrem the Syrian and St John Climacus, works in which the editors avoided offending Muscovite sensibilities. In the i640s, however, the Pechatnyi dvor also published a number of works from Ukraine including Petr Mohyla's catechism, the Nomokanon of Zakhariia Kopystenskii and the pioneering Slavonic grammar of Meletii Smotritskii. Moreover, since the Printing Office desperately needed more editors who knew Greek and Latin, three scholars from Ukraine joined its staffin i649. Finally, from Ukraine came a book that stimulated apocalyptic reflection among the cultural elite of Moscow, Hegumen Nafanail's compilation of apocalyptic writings, the Book of Faith, an Orthodox interpretation of the Union of Brest as a prelude to the End Time. The Muscovite miscellany, the Kirillova kniga, and the writings of St Efrem also contributed to the climate of apocalyptic speculation.[300]

In 1645, Aleksei (Alexis) Mikhailovich became tsar. His decisive role in the stormy events of the following decades demonstrates the extent to which, long before Peter I, the attitudes and choices of the secular ruler ultimately determined the fate of the Russian Orthodox Church. Strong supporters of reform, the young ruler and his confessor, Stefan Vonifat'ev, gathered like- minded men, traditionally known as the Zealots of Piety, including parish priests such as Neronov and his protege Avvakum, and in time the future patriarch Nikon. Everyone in this diverse group agreed that parish life must be revitalised through effective preaching, the full and orderly celebration of the liturgy, and strict enforcement of the Church's moral teachings.

Before long, Alexis and his allies in the Church made several of the reform­ers' demands official policy. The tsar, already known for his personal antipathy towards folk entertainment, issued a series of decrees, beginning in December 1648, ordering local governors to ban skomorokhi and suppress the folk cus­toms associated with them in every village and hamlet in their jurisdictions.[301]Issuing decrees, however, was much easier than changing deep-rooted pat­terns of behaviour: scattered evidence suggests that the skomorokhi continued to practise their ancient trade in the remote countryside into the eighteenth century and many of the agrarian rites and folk festivals survived long enough for modern ethnographers to record them.[302]

The reformers also won their battle for edinoglasie (celebrating the liturgy with no overlapping or short-cuts). Reversing the decision of 1649, another ecclesiastical council, in February 1651, made the practice obligatory in parish churches as well as in monasteries.[303]

Not surprisingly, the implementation of the Zealots' programme aroused violent opposition among the laity. Avvakum's hagiographic autobiography, written roughly twenty years after the events, describes his clashes with a prominent aristocrat, other local notables, and ordinary parishioners while parish priest of Lopatitsy. Twice, in 1648 and 1652, in fear for his life, he fled his parish for the safety of Moscow. The second time, he received a major promotion to become dean ofthe cathedral in Iurevets on the Volga, but could serve only eight weeks until'... the priests, peasants and their women.. .'beat him and drove him out of town. As he recalled them, Avvakum's methods of enforcing liturgical and moral order and rebuking sinners were hardly subtle.[304]Moreover, his clashes with his parishioners took place at a time of extreme unrest in many urban centres of Russia. Nevertheless, his problems with his parishioners ultimately arose from his commitment to radical change. Other reformist priests suffered through similar tribulations. As foot soldiers in a campaign ofreform from above, they took the brunt ofparishioners' anger at the demand that they abruptly change their traditional way of life.

Legal and economic issues also threatened the reformers' campaign. The Law Code of 1649 significantly changed the legal relationship of Church and state. It created a Monastery Chancellery (Monastyrskii prikaz) and gave it authority to try criminal and civil cases involving clergymen and inhabitants of Church lands except the patriarchal domain.[305] Moreover, under pressure from urban taxpayers, the government confiscated the tax-exempt urban set­tlements in which the Church's dependents conducted trade. Although neither the judgement of churchmen by the secular government nor the confiscation of ecclesiastical property was unprecedented - the Great Court Chancellery had previously handled legal cases involving the clergy - the sweeping provi­sions of the Code made clear that neither the Church's judicial privileges nor its lands were sacrosanct.

Patriarch Nikon

When Nikon became patriarch in 1652, many of the latent tensions within the Russian Church erupted into open conflict. Nikon aroused enormous controversy in his own day and still fascinates and perplexes us. Born into a peasant family in the Nizhnii Novgorod area, he served briefly as a parish priest before taking monastic vows in the Anzerskii Skit on an island in the White Sea. In this small idiorrhythmic community, he followed a severely ascetic rule of life. He also displayed great energy and administrative talent, qualities that ultimately brought him to the position of abbot of the Kozheozerskii monastery on the coast ofthe mainland. In this capacity, he travelled to Moscow in 1646 and was introduced to Tsar Alexis.

From that moment, Nikon became a favourite of the tsar and an ally of the Church reformers at his court. Although his long-term relationship with Alexis was very complex, his meteoric rise to the patriarchal throne unques­tionably required the unconditional support of the tsar and his advisers. Alexis immediately appointed him archimandrite of the Novospasskii monastery in Moscow, a favourite foundation of the Romanov family. In 1649, he was con­secrated Metropolitan of Novgorod, the second most powerful position in the hierarchy. In both of these capacities, he carried out the programme of the reformers with characteristic determination. In 1650, he also displayed great physical courage and political astuteness in quelling an uprising in Novgorod with minimal bloodshed.

During his tenure in Novgorod, Nikon made it clear that, in his opinion, the ecclesiastical hierarchy was the natural leader in the campaign to revi­talise Russian Orthodoxy. He did everything he could to increase his own effective power and ceremonial dignity as metropolitan and to emphasise that the ultimate responsibility for the spiritual well-being of Russia lay with the Church's leaders, not the secular ruler. For example, in 1652, as part of a cam­paign to canonise martyred leaders of the Russian Church, he brought the relics of Metropolitan Filipp, already recognised as a saint, from the Solovet- skii monastery to Moscow. While in Solovki, he publicly read Tsar Alexis's statement of contrition for the sin of his predecessor, Ivan IV in ordering Fil- ipp's murder. At the same time, it is difficult to be sure how accurately Nikon's fullest statements of his theories on the relations of Church and state reflect his views during his active ministry since he wrote them years later while in self-imposed exile. For example, in his Refutation, he repeatedly attacked the Ulozhenie of 1649 for usurping the Church's legal autonomy and property rights.[306] In 1649, however, he had signed the new law code - under duress, he later insisted - and his scruples had not prevented him from accepting the patriarchal dignity in the hope, he subsequently claimed, of reversing the policies to which he expressed such strong aversion.

Once enthroned as patriarch with the enthusiastic support of the tsar and the rest of the reformers, Nikon immediately took steps to assert his authority. According to his later testimony, at his consecration he made the tsar, the boyars and the bishops swear to obey him as their pastor. In his capacity as patriarch, Nikon evidently saw himself as the personification of the Church. He strove to transform its organisational structure into an effective hierarchi­cal administration with the patriarch at the top: he reacted with particular ruthlessness to any sign of opposition from other members of the hierarchy. Like Filaret, he added extensive lands to the patriarch's own domain and, in addition to building or repairing other churches, maintained three important monasteries -the Iverskii, the Kretnyi and the Voskresenskii (also known as the New Jerusalem) - as his own foundations. A man of imposing appearance, he impressed visiting clergymen with his magnificent vestments, his long sermons and his dramatic manner of celebrating the liturgy. Moreover, beginning in 1653, with the tsar's consent, he began to use the epithet, Velikii gosudar' (Great

Sovereign), previously used by only one patriarch - Filaret, father of a tsar and effective head of state.

He also continued the reformers' campaign to purify Russian Orthodoxy. Within weeks of his consecration, to protect the faithful from temptation, decrees prohibited the sale of vodka on holy days and required all non- Orthodox foreigners in Moscow to move to a new 'German Quarter' on the Iauza River further from the centre of the city.[307]

The long-standing campaign to publish accurate liturgical books and dis­tribute them throughout Russia, however, quickly took a fateful turn. The tsar, the new patriarch and some of their collaborators decided that the best way to revitalise Russian Orthodoxy was to forge closer ties with ecumenical Eastern Orthodoxy, especially the Greek mother Church. In 1649, the latest of a long line of Greek visitors, Patriarch Paisios of Jerusalem and a scholar of dubious background, known as Arsenius the Greek, appeared in Moscow and tried to convince the tsar and Nikon that, in so far as they differed, Greek liturgical practices were faithful to the Orthodox tradition and Russian cus­toms were erroneous local innovations. To test this claim, a Russian monk, Arsenii Sukhanov, made two journeys in 1649-50 and 1651-3 to investigate the condition of the Greek Church. His findings included a report that monks on Mount Athos had burned Russian liturgical books as heretical and his experi­ences led him to conduct a bitter debate with visiting Greeks in Moscow in 1650 on the orthodoxy of Russian practices.[308] Following the advice of the Greeks took the tsar and Nikon down a dangerous path, for, as their contemporaries were well aware, it was the Greeks' apostasy at the Council of Florence that had thrust Orthodox Russia into the centre of world history. Moreover, in the mid-seventeenth century, the main centres of Greek Orthodox learning and publishing were in the Roman Catholic world, especially Venice.

Against this background, on 11 February 1653, the Printing Office published a new edition of the Psalter which omitted the customary article instructing worshippers on the correct way to cross themselves. Then, within days, Nikon filled the gap with an instruction (pamiat') to the faithful to use the so-called three-finger sign of the cross, holding their thumb, index and middle fingers together. Muscovite tradition, embodied in the protocols ofthe Stoglav Council of 1551, held to the two-finger sign with only the index and middle fingers extended. Then, in early 1654, a council of the Russian Church approved the principle of revising Russian liturgical books 'according to ancient parchment and Greek texts (po starym kharateinym i grecheskim knigam)'. New editions followed one another in rapid succession - missals (Sluzhebniki) in 1654 and 1655 and, in 1654, the Skrizhal, a treatise on the nature of liturgy along with Nikon's justification of his reforms.

In addition to the sign of the cross, the most controversial changes in the details of the liturgy included the four-pointed instead of eight-pointed cross on the sacred wafer and on church buildings; the triple rather than double Alleluia after the Psalms and the Cherubic hymn; the number of prostrations and bows in Lent; a new transliteration of 'Jesus' into Slavonic (Iisus instead of 'Isus'); and small, but significant alterations in the wording of the Nicene Creed.

As Nikon's contemporary opponents and the best modern scholars have argued, the new editions of the service books were based, not on ancient manuscripts, but on very recent Greek editions and mandated the substitu­tion of contemporary Greek practices for traditional Russian usages.[309] The standardisation of Russian and Greek liturgies arose from the desire, shared by Tsar Alexis's government and Nikon, to build a more united Orthodox com­monwealth with Russia at its head. The Orthodox hierarchy in Ukraine had made similar changes decades earlier without significant opposition. Recently, scholars have also argued that Nikon's liturgical reforms arose from a new understanding of the nature and function of liturgy as a commemoration of Christ's life, death and resurrection in which words, gestures and ritual objects may legitimately have several different levels of meaning simultaneously.[310]

Whatever their deeper meaning, the new service books altered some of the most frequently repeated words, gestures and visible symbols in the liturgy. Even more jarring was the autocratic manner in which Nikon introduced the new editions: against the advice of the Patriarch of Constantinople and his royal protector, he insisted that only the reformed usage was acceptable. In 1656, he repeatedly branded the two-finger sign of the cross and other traditional Russian practices as heretical.[311]

Resistance to Nikon's reforms

The reforms and the patriarch's intransigence in enforcing them split the reform coalition. In a series of increasingly agitated letters written in late 1653 and early 1654 to the tsar and Vonifat'ev, Ivan Neronov severely criticised Nikon's abandonment of Russia's heritage and the arrogance with which he was treating his former friends. The three-finger sign of the cross and the altered number of deep bows (poklony) in services were specific examples of these destructive policies. In one letter to Vonifat'ev, he told of hearing a voice from an icon urging him to resist Nikon's reforms, a story later retold in his friend Avvakum's autobiography.[312] For their outspoken protests, the author­ities excommunicated Neronov and imprisoned him in a remote northern monastery and exiled Avvakum to Siberia. According to tradition, the one bishop who in 1654 openly questioned the reforms, Pavel of Kolomna, lost his see and his life for his stand.[313]

As these examples indicate, resistance to the liturgical reforms began with individuals and small, scattered groups. Beginning with Spiridon Potemkin in 1658, a few prominent clergymen, members of the ecclesiastical elite, wrote detailed critiques of Nikon's reforms. They received valuable support from Bishop Aleksandr of Viatka who, although he did not write any polemics of his own, encouraged those who did and collected a library of texts to sup­port the anti-reform position. Despite some differences in details, the works of Potemkin, Nikita Dobrynin 'Pustosviat', the priest Lazar' and others all attacked the internal inconsistencies in the new service books and raised fun­damental questions about the legitimacy of Russian Orthodoxy. For if tradi­tional Russian usages wereheretical, were all previous generations of Russian Christians - saints and sinners alike - damned as heretics? Although these manuscripts had very limited circulation, they served as a valuable resource for later generations of polemicists against the reformed Church.

Nikon's critics faced formidable polemical opponents armed with the two weapons they lacked - the resources of the Printing Office and the support of the hierarchy and government. In addition to the Skrizhal, Simeon Polotskii, resident court poet and tutor to the tsar's children, published Zhezl pravleniia in 1668. Afanasii of Kholmogory's Uvet dukhovnyi of 1682 was to be the next in a long succession of attacks on critics of the reformed Church.[314]

Small numbers of uneducated laypeople also expressed opposition to the reforms. In 1657, the ecclesiastical and governmental authorities imprisoned the Rostov weaver, Sila Bogdanov, and two companions for publicly condemning the new service books.[315]

More radical still were the small groups that made up the Kapiton move­ment. Beginning in the 1620s or 1630s, Kapiton and his followers rejected the Orthodox Church and its clergy as corrupt and practised extreme forms of asceticism, such as rigorous fasting in all seasons and, if official accusations can be believed, some even starved themselves to death. In 1665 and 1666, the authorities investigated several informal monastic communities that followed his fundamental teachings. And although not their central concern, these later followers of Kapiton included the new liturgical books in their list of grievances against the Church.

In the short run, isolated objections to the new liturgical texts did nothing to shake Nikon's overwhelming power over the Church and influence at court. The only threat to his position lay in his dependence on his royal patron, Tsar Alexis. Historians have advanced many hypotheses, none completely convincing, to explain the deterioration of their relationship. Many of the tsar's courtiers, much of the hierarchy - and perhaps Alexis himself - had probably become weary of the patriarch's imperious manner and jealous of his influence and wealth. Be that as it may, Alexis and Nikon abruptly parted ways in 1658. After the tsar refused to settle several seemingly trifling conflicts to Nikon's satisfaction, on 10 June, the patriarch withdrew from Moscow to the New Jerusalem monastery and left the day-to-day business of the Church in the hands of the usual second-in-command, the Metropolitan of Krutitsy. At the same time, Nikon still thought of himself as the patriarch. For example, in 1659, he attempted to anathematise Metropolitan Pitirim of Krutitsy for replacing him in the role of Christ in the annual Palm Sunday procession.

Nikon's self-imposed exile without abdicating from the patriarchal office created an extremely awkward situation. As messages and emissaries shuttled back and forthbetween Moscow and New Jerusalem, it became clearthat there was no hope of reconciliation, for, in addition to intense personal animosity, Nikon and Alexis's government had radically different ideas about the relations of Church and state in a Christian monarchy. In his lengthy Refutation of 1664 Nikon insisted in the strongest possible terms on the superiority of the spiritual power to the secular arm.[316] Therefore, in matters of principle such as, for example, the complete judicial independence of the Church from lay justice, the Church and its primate should prevail. Was Nikon, as he claimed, simply restating fundamental Orthodox principles? Many of his arguments and examples do indeed come from classic Orthodox texts. Nevertheless, the vehemence with which he made his case stretched the elastic notion of 'symphony' beyond the breaking point. And, as many scholars have noted, Nikon borrowed some of his most telling images - for example, likening the Church to the sun and secular government to the moon - from Papal polemics of the high Middle Ages.[317] Finally, Nikon's attitudes ran counter to the tendency of governments and ecclesiastical leaders all across sixteenth- and seventeenth- century Europe to collaborate in making the Church a force for maintaining political cohesion and social order.

In this situation, Alexis had no choice but to replace Nikon. But with what procedures and on what grounds could a patriarch be deposed? It is a measure of the tsar's desperation that his most valuable agent in arrang­ing Nikon's deposition was Paisios Ligarides, a former apostate to Roman Catholicism who styled himself Metropolitan of Gaza, an office from which he had been deposed. After a local ecclesiastical council in 1666 was unable to reach a compromise whereby Nikon would abdicate the patriarchate, but maintain his episcopal dignity and administrative control of his favourite monasteries, the government chose a more radical solution, an 'ecumeni­cal' council of Eastern Orthodoxy with the participation of the other patri­archs, only two of whom actually appeared. Its decisions were a foregone conclusion. On 12 December 1666, the council deposed Nikon for derelic­tion of duty, insulting the tsar and mistreating the clergy, reduced him to the rank of an ordinary monk, and imprisoned him in the remote Ferapontov monastery.

Old Belief and the official Church after 1666

The government and its ecclesiastical allies dealt with the critics of the reformed liturgy in a similar fashion. Taking a reconciliatory position, the local council of i666 had proclaimed that the new rites were correct, but avoided condemning traditional Russian practices. Several of the leaders of the opposition, partic­ularly Ivan Neronov and Aleksandr of Viatka, reconciled themselves with the new dispensation in order not to divide the body of Christ. Others resisted to the bitter end.

The ecumenical council of 1666-7 settled the issue simply and radically. It declared that only the reformed liturgy was true Orthodox usage and con­demned traditional Russian practices and the Stoglav which sanctioned them as heretical. Simultaneously, its representatives exerted intense pressure on the recalcitrant critics of the new liturgy to recant. One, Nikita Dobrynin, yielded - temporarily as it turned out. Five others - Avvakum, Lazar', Epifanii, Nikifor and deacon Fedor - held out. All were defrocked, two had their tongues cut out for insulting the tsar, and all were sent to prison in Pustozersk on the Arctic coast.

The councils of 1666-7 had far-reaching implications for the future of the Russian Church. They made clear that Tsar Alexis and his advisers - the secular government and its ecclesiastical allies - had decisive power over the Church. Thereafter any religious dissenters understood correctly that the state was also their enemy. Moreover, for better or worse, in exercising its leadership of ecumenical Orthodoxy, Alexis's government chose to make scholars from Ukraine and the Greek world and their local disciples the intellectual leaders of the Russian Church.

The decisions of 1666-7 appeared to have restored peace and uniformity to the Russian Church. Reality soon proved to be far more complicated. Even in disgrace and prison, Nikon retained the allegiance ofmany ofthe faithful who revered him as the true patriarch and turned to him for spiritual counsel. He remained intransigent in his belief that the state - the agent of the Antichrist - had trampled on the rights of the Church. Nevertheless, in 1681, Alexis's son, Fedor, gave him permission to return to his beloved New Jerusalem although he died before reaching it.

The enforcement of the reformed liturgy seemed to proceed successfully. As Michels has shown, the Printing Office quickly sold each printing of the new service books and, by 1700, the new liturgical texts had spread to even the most remote parts of the realm.[318] Once again, however, matters were not so simple.

The determined defenders of traditional Russian practices - the Old Believ­ers - understood full well that, after 1667, there could be no compromise with the official Church or the state. Avvakum and his fellow prisoners smuggled virulent attacks on the new order to small groups of supporters in Moscow and elsewhere. Their execution at the stake in 1681 only added the authority of martyrdom to their teachings. Ironically, they agreed with Nikon, their old enemy, that the reign of the Antichrist, precursor of the End Time, had begun. During the 1670s, persecution and intimidation - or widespread indifference to the liturgical reforms, as Michels argues - limited the number of open adherents of the Old Belief.

Yet the decisions of 1666-7 had brought not peace but the sword. Outbursts of violent resistance to the state and the Church became a regular feature of the Russian landscape in the last decades of the seventeenth century. Local grievances fuelled each uprising: opposition to the reformed Church and its new liturgy also played a prominent part in the rebels' demands. In the most dramatic instance, the Solovetskii monastery, long a law unto itself, rebelled against the imposition of the new liturgy and held out against besieging gov­ernment troops from 1668 until 1676. Even though its surviving defenders were massacred, its example strengthened the determination of other opponents of the new order in state and Church. For example, Old Belief was a significant element in the resistance of the Don cossacks to Moscow's administrative control.

The bloody uprising in Moscow in 1682, in which Old Believers led by Nikita Dobrynin joined forces with the mutinous garrison, made the explosive mix­ture of political and religious opposition unmistakably clear. When Sophia emerged from the crisis as regent for her two brothers, her government issued the decree of December 1684 which mandated death at the stake for all unre­pentant Old Believers and severe penalties for anyone who sheltered them. Her government sent troops to enforce the law even in the most remote areas of the country.[319]

The government's intransigence elicited equally militant responses. Scat­tered groups of religious radicals had already demonstrated the ultimate form of protest against the powers of this world - suicide by fire. Following their lead, in the 1680s and 1690s, groups of militants seized isolated monasteries and vil­lages - notoriously the Paleostrovskii monastery in 1687 and 1689 and Pudozh in 1693 - and, when government forces attacked them, burned themselves alive rather than surrender. These episodes of mass suicide which combined social banditry and religious fanaticism profoundly shocked the government, the Church and more moderate Old Believers, one of whom, Evfrosin, in 1691 wrote a denunciation of the practice as a violation of the traditional Christian prohibition of suicide.[320]

The second response of the opponents of the reformed Church was less spectacular but ultimately more successful. Many fled to remote corners of the realm or beyond the borders of the empire, founded unofficial communi­ties, and began to adapt Orthodox liturgical observances to their new circum­stances. Some fugitive groups soon fell victim to governmental persecution; others, such as the Vyg community, managed to survive and became the prin­cipal centres of the Old Belief in the first decades of the eighteenth century.

The official Church after 1667

In the last years of the century, Patriarch Ioakim (1674-90) set the agendas for the official Church. By background a member of the service nobility, he proved to be a strong-willed leader who, like Nikon, saw the patriarch as the personification of the Church. At the same time, he understood the necessity of collaboration with the governments that followed one another in rapid succession during his tenure and recognised the practical limitations of his position. For example, when Tsar Fedor insisted on pardoning Nikon, he acquiesced in spite of grave personal misgivings. In the crises of 1682 and 1689, he supported the claims of Peter I to the throne.

Within the ecclesiastical administration, he strove for a disciplined, clearly organised hierarchy free from the routine interference of the state. Following the recommendation ofthe councils of 1666-7 and the decision of a local council in 1675, Ioakim abolished the Monastyrskii prikaz in 1677 and replaced it with a system under which members of the clergy conducted trials of churchmen and supervised the administration of Church lands. The elaborate plan of Tsar Fedor's government to address the enormous size of Russian dioceses achieved very limited success, however, thanks to the resistance of the episcopate, led by Ioakim, who feared a system in which bishops would report to archbishops and not directly to the patriarch. In the end, the Church created eleven new dioceses by dividing the territory of existing jurisdictions and, in 1682, succeeded in filling only four.

Ioakim's greatest achievement, however, may well be the agreement, con­cluded with the support of Hetman Samoilovych in 1686, that the new Metropolitan of Kiev, Gedeon, would recognise the ultimate jurisdiction of the Patriarch ofMoscow, not of Constantinople as previously. Since then, the fates of the Orthodox Churches in Ukraine and Russia have been inextricably linked, with profound consequences for both.[321]

Ioakim's understanding of the Church required that the hierarchy, under the patriarch's leadership, control devotional life and ecclesiastical culture. In dealing with popular religion, as part of his crusade against the Old Believers and other dissidents, Ioakim and his supporters sponsored miracle cults that gave divine sanction to the three-finger sign of the cross, but suppressed unoffi­cial and unverifiable saints' cults, notably the veneration of Anna of Kashin. He also believed that, since an embattled Church required educated priests, it was vital to found a theological academy in Moscow. The first two attempts, how­ever, collapsed because of the theological and political controversies between the so-called Latinophile and Grecophile parties within the ecclesiastical elite - both of which, in reality, adapted international Latin scholarship to Orthodox uses.

In 1700 when Ioakim's successor, Adrian, died, Peter I chose to leave the patriarchal throne vacant, a harbinger of radical changes to come. Looking back over a century of dramatic events, many of the Church's fundamental characteristics had changed little. In spite of attempts to strengthen the office ofpatriarch and the role ofChurch Councils, the tsars' government repeatedly took the initiative in establishing ecclesiastical policy and intervened to settle disputes among the faithful. At their best, the clergy provided the population with spiritual guidance and social and cultural leadership. Yet attempts to create an orderly hierarchical system ofadministration and to respond to the cultural changes in other branches of Eastern Orthodoxy had only limited success. As a wealthy landowner, moreover, the Church attracted popular discontent and was an inviting target for a cash-starved state. And, most dangerously, the Russian Orthodox community had fallen into schism. In competition with the state-supported official Church, the Old Believers had begun to build their own organisations, select their own cadre of leaders and create their own religious culture. Thus, for all its apparent strength, the Russian Orthodox Church soon had to bend before the onslaught of a wilful reforming autocrat.

Cultural and intellectual life

LINDSEY HUGHES

Culture 'in transition'

Modern historians have categorised Russia's seventeenth century as a 'transi­tional period' (perekhodnyi vek), when tradition vied with innovation, indige­nous culture with imported trends. The conceptual framework ofbinary oppo­sitions has proved particularly fruitful.[322] High culture in particular underwent changes that have been explained with reference to Westernisation, moderni­sation and secularisation. Some scholars have argued that developments in art, architecture and literature constituted a Muscovite version of the Baroque,[323]others, adopting Dmitrii Likhachev's formula, that they represented some­thing 'close to the significance of the Renaissance in the cultural history of Western Europe'.[324] Such phenomena as the illusionistic use of light, shade and perspective in icons, portrait-painting from life, elements of a modified classi­cal order system in architecture and new genres and subjects in literature are treated as curtain-raisers to the eighteenth century, when Russia would begin to fulfil its destiny by catching up with Western Europe with the assistance of Peter the Great.

If we accept the view that Russia had to 'catch up' with the West, with preconceptions about what Russia ought to have been, we may well conclude that, culturally speaking, here was a 'blank sheet' waiting to be filled. By the start of the seventeenth century the Renaissance had made little impact on Muscovy. In the figurative arts there was no free-standing portraiture, still life, landscapes or urban scenes, history painting or domestic genre. There were icons, wood prints and illuminated manuscripts, but no painting in oil on canvas. Sculpture deep chiselled in stone or cast in metal (bell-making excepted) was unknown. Printing (introduced in 1564) was in its infancy. Muscovy had no theatres or universities. It had produced no poets, dramatists, philosophers, scholars or even theologians. It lacked both theoretical concepts of 'the arts' and political theory. Historians who prioritise written records will search in vain for a scholarly rationale of autocracy, for example. If we go on to play the 'great names' game, Muscovy will not figure in the world pantheon. The special emphases and prohibitions of Orthodoxy, a dependent nobility, weak urbanisation and economic backwardness created a climate that distinguished Russian elite culture sharply from that of Protestant and Catholic Europe.

To understand Muscovite high culture (peasant culture and its regional variations are beyond the scope of our survey) we must initially abandon the search for the genres, activities and practitioners defined by Western expe­rience. Political ideology, for example, was expressed first and foremost not in erudite tracts but in images and rituals. The combined efforts of artists and craftsmen created and embellished 'sacred landscapes' in a complex inter­action of architecture, iconography, fabrics and vestments, choreography (of processions), and sacred chant. This culture was conservative, but it was not impervious to the contemporary events described elsewhere in this volume. Indeed, in the seventeenth century 'a transformation of cultural consciousness' was to occur.4

Culture after the Time of Troubles

The resolution ofthe Time of Troubles was, on the face ofit, backward-looking. Official rhetoric emphasised the restoration of God's favour and of old values through a universally acclaimed new ruling dynasty with strong links with the old. The violation of the sacred Kremlin by Poles (bearers of demonic culture) was interpreted as punishment for sins. The visible evidence of repentance were rituals that mirrored the harmonious realm with the restored tsar at its divinely ordered centre, enhanced by new churches, icons and religious artefacts.

4 Viktor Zhivov, 'Religious Reform and the Emergence of the Individual in Seventeenth- Century Russian Literature', in Samuel H. Baron and Nancy Shields Kollmann (eds.), Religion and Culture in Early Modern Russia and Ukraine (DeKalb: Northern Illinois Uni­versity Press, 1997), pp. 184-98.

Muscovite ceremonial customs were revived, for ritual continuity was more necessary than ever as a buttress of royal authority. Michael was crowned in 1613 according to the Byzantine-influenced rite of 1547. Courtly pomp was particularly impressive during the reign of Tsar Alexis (1645-76). Among the annual highlights was the Palm Sunday parade to St Basil's cathedral, when the tsar on foot and the patriarch seated on a colt enacted the 'symphony' of tsardom and priesthood, and the feast of Epiphany on 6 January, when the patriarch blessed the waters of the Moskva River at a sacred spot desig­nated 'the Jordan'.[325] On such occasions the skills of craftsmen were displayed in all their brilliance in icons, crosses, vessels and vestments, banners, cer­emonial saddles, harnesses and weapons. Family events were also treated with great solemnity. For example, the name-days of Alexis's numerous rel­atives were celebrated by processions and liturgies for the feasts of patron saints.[326]

The meticulous records of the tsars' progresses (vykhody) do not dwell on secular diversions. Since women were excluded from most public occasions, the masques and balls of Western court life were out of the question.[327] We should not draw a rigid line between sacred and profane activities, however. After name-day liturgies special pastries were distributed to courtiers and churchmen. Weddings and royal births were marked by lavish banquets with singing and games. Alexis maintained country palaces for summer recreations, for example at Kolomenskoe (seebelow) and Izmailovo, whichboasted gardens with hothouses and a menagerie. He was particularly devoted to hunting and devised a ceremonial book of rules for the 'glorious sport' of falconry.[328]

Michael instituted a programme of building in the historic centre. In the 1630s Russian masters constructed the Kremlin's Terem palace. Not only its numerous chapels but also the royal living quarters were decorated with religious frescos that drewparallels between Moscow's rulers and their biblical predecessors. There was no clear boundary between sacred and secular space.

In the same period the cathedral of the Icon of Our Lady of Kazan' on Red Square was built to commemorate the national resistance of 1612.[329] Processions for the feasts of this and other wonder-working icons were staged several times a year throughout the century In 1625 Muscovites celebrated the acquisition of a fragment of Christ's garment. The feast of the Deposition of the Robe of Our Lord (10 July) was one of several added to the liturgical calendar that formed the basis of cultural life at court.[330] In 1642-3 teams of artists from all over Russia repainted the murals in the Kremlin Dormition cathedral, following the outlines of older images. Frescos depicting the princes and tsars of Rus' in the Archangel cathedral were similarly renovated, beginning in 1652.[331] But we have no authentic likeness of Tsar Michael, although there are records of his image (obraz, suggesting a Byzantine-style effigy) being made in the Kremlin workshops for presentation abroad.[332]

The Romanov succession was backward-looking but it also drove innova­tion. National recovery and independence required armies, alliances, trade and foreign expertise. The primary need was for military specialists, but oth­ers came too. In the 1620s the Scottish engineer Christopher Galloway added ornate upper portions with Gothic and Renaissance features to the Kremlin's Saviour tower and installed a clock. The Swede Johann Kristler designed a never-completed bridge over the Moskva River.[333] The first Western painter to arrive, in 1643, was Hans Deters (Deterson) from the Netherlands. Among the elite a taste grew for foreign 'novelties' and cunning technical devices (khitrosti). At the same time, Patriarch Filaret banned books published in Lithuania to combat the 'Latin' influences that had proliferated during the Time of Troubles. Tension between opening access to new ideas and protect­ing Orthodoxy from heresy was a defining characteristic of the seventeenth century.

Architecture and sculpture

The first masonry churches to be built after the Troubles continued sixteenth- century trends, displaying tiers of kokoshnik gables beneath the elongated drums of their cupolas or capped with tent (shater) roofs. (In the 1650s Patri­arch Nikon banned 'tent' churches as uncanonical.) A sort of compendium of seventeenth-century ecclesiastical architecture is provided by the five-domed church of the Holy Trinity in Nikitniki (1631-53), built for a wealthy mer­chant not far from Red Square (see Plate 24).[334] The architect's imaginative flair was expended on picturesque annexes (a bell-tower and porch surmounted by tents) and on the exterior decoration. Kokoshnik gables and ornamental brickworkjostle with modified elements of the Western-order system, such as recessed half-columns and classically profiled window surrounds, pediments and cornices. The interior, constructed without internal piers, was covered in frescos. Similar churches were built all over Russia in towns, villages and monasteries, visible evidence of economic recovery In the commercial city of Iaroslavl' on the Volga merchants built dozens of churches, richly decorated outside with a veritable 'encrustation' of carved brickwork and polychrome ceramics, inside with brilliantly coloured frescos.[335] Impressive architectural projects were carried out in Rostov Velikii and in the new monasteries founded by Patriarch Nikon.

Soviet scholars associated such architecture with 'secularisation' (obmir- shchenie). By reducing domes to mere decorative appendages, they argued, and articulating facades with carved window frames, builders made their churches look like palaces and hence undermined their sacredness. But clearly neither builders nor congregations thought in such terms. Their distinctive silhou­ettes and lavish decorativeness made these churches highly visible landmarks in praise of God.

The culmination of the 'ornamental' style came with the 'Moscow Baroque' (a late nineteenth-century term) that flourished in and around the capital from the late 1670s and in the provinces into the 1700s.[336] Builders demonstrated a refined sense of symmetry and regularity in their ordering of both structural and decorative elements, replacing Russian ornament almost entirely with motifs derived from the classical orders: half-columns with pediments and bases, window surrounds and portals with broken pediments, volutes, fluted and twisted columns and shell gables. A particularly impressive concentration of such buildings was commissioned from unknown Russian craftsmen in the 1680s by Tsarevna Sophia for the Moscow Novodevichii convent. Civic buildings were constructed on similar principles, for example Prince Vasilii Golitsyn's Moscow mansion (1680s) and the Pharmacy on Red Square (1690s).

Structural innovation appeared in the so-called 'octagon on cube' churches in Moscow Baroque style. One of the finest examples, the church of the Inter­cession at Fili, built in 1690-3 by unknown architects for Peter I's uncle Lev Naryshkin, has a tower of receding octagons flanked by four annexes, each capped with a cupola and decorated with intricately carved limestone details (see Plate 25). Inside an ornate gilded iconostasis holds round and octagonal, as well as 'standard' rectangular icons, all painted in a distinctly 'Italianate' style far removed from traditional Russo-Byzantine painting.[337] This and other tower churches such as the Trinity at Troitse-Lykovo and the Saviour at Ubory (by Iakov Bukhvostov, the leading exponent of the style) may owe something to prototypes in Russian wooden architecture, as well as to 'Ruthenian' influ­ence. Craftsmen from Belorussia and Ukraine introduced Polish Baroque and Renaissance architectural elements through the medium of wood-carving and decorative ceramics. The theory of the cultural interaction of the 'fraternal' nations fitted comfortably into the Soviet ideological framework, but Russia's 'elder brother' status limited the extent to which such borrowing could be acknowledged, as did its mainly religious character.[338] The topic requires fuller investigation.

Western architectural ideas emanated from the Armoury (see below) and Foreign Office workshops, where craftsmen had access to prints, maps and illustrated books.[339] Tsar Alexis owned a book of 'the stone buildings of all German states' and works by Vignola, Palladio and other theoreticians of the Renaissance and Baroque eras. Russian builders (zodchie)[340] were unacquainted with the theoretical underpinnings of the five orders of architecture and none, as far as we know, had first-hand experience of Western buildings, although some had been to Ukraine. But a few potential patrons picked up ideas abroad, not least Alexis himself, whose encounters with city architecture and magnates' estates while on military campaigns in Lithuania and the Baltic in the 1650s inspired him, according to his English doctor Samuel Collins, to remodel his residences.[341] Some Russians may even have ventured into Moscow's Foreign Quarter (nemetskaia sloboda) and gazed at its Protestant churches, shops and taverns, although restrictions on access limited the Quarter's impact.[342]

The hybrid nature of seventeenth-century Russian architecture is demon­strated by Tsar Alexis's wooden palace at Kolomenskoe (1660s-1670s) (see Plate 26). Simon Petrov, the director of works, was not an architect, but a master carpenter. He and his men employed traditional timber construction, but also added broken pediments and twisting columns. Ceilings were painted with signs of the Zodiac and the Seasons and Ruthenian craftsmen made such 'curiosities' as automata in the shape of lions. The tsar's wooden palace was an idiosyncratic example of the carpenters' skills that dominated both urban and rural landscapes in seventeenth-century Russia. Because so few timber buildings survive intact from the period and because there were no Russian Canalettos to record them, we can only reconstruct the urban scene from stylised images in miniatures and icons and foreigners' sketches.[343]

Woodwork, especially iconostases, survives mostly from interiors. Away from Moscow craftsmen made not just carvings but also three-dimensional reli­gious images, rather like high-relief icons. Popular subjects were St Nicholas of Mozhaisk and St Paraskeva.[344] The first known examples of free-standing stone sculpture in Russia are the statues of saints outside the tower church of the Sign at Dubrovitsy (1690-1704). The church's design also departed radically from traditional Orthodox conventions by dispensing with cupolas in favour of an open-work crown. Inside there were Latin inscriptions.[345] The Westernised tastes of its owner, Peter I's tutor Prince Boris Golitsyn, who knew Latin and had access to Italian craftsmen, place the church at Dubrovitsy at the very limits of 'transitional' culture. There would be strong resistance to 'graven images' well into the eighteenth century.

The Armoury: icons, portraits, applied art

The Kremlin Armoury Chamber (Oruzheinaiapalata), established at the begin­ning of the sixteenth century, comprised a complex of studios making, storing and repairing high-quality items for the tsars' ceremonial and everyday use. Under the directorship of the boyar Bogdan Khitrovo from 1654 to 1680 it emerged as a virtual 'academy of arts'.[346]

The royal churches and residences swallowed up icons by the dozen and the Armoury's studios employed some of the best icon painters (ikonopistsy) in the land. The most famous was Simon Ushakov (1629-86), who is regarded as the very embodiment of 'transition', a pioneer of new effects in icon-painting, but never a fully-fledged easel painter.[347] In particular, he was known for his ability to apply chiaroscuro effects, especially to faces in such traditional com­positions as Christ Not Made by Hands. Ushakov was acquainted with Western art. The classical arch in the background of his icon The Old Testament Trinity (1671), for example, was copied from a print of a painting by the Italian Paolo Veronese. In his epistle to Ushakov, written some time between i656 and i666, fellow icon painter Iosif Vladimirov asked: 'How can people possibly claim that only Russians are allowed to paint icons and only Russian icon-painting may be revered, while that of other lands should neither be kept nor honoured?' In the reply attributed to him, Ushakov wrote of the usefulness of image- making for commemorating the past and recording the present, comparing the painter's skill with the properties of a mirror.[348] But he remained firmly within an Orthodox context.

His icon The Planting of the Tree of the Muscovite Realm (i668) demonstrates several aspects of his art. It includes images of Tsar Alexis, his first wife Mariia and two of their sons, the only surviving 'portrait' of the tsar known for sure to have been produced during his lifetime and signed by the artist. (The signing of icons, hitherto anonymous, is itself evidence ofthe growth of artistic autonomy.) The icon also contains accurate representations of the walls of the Kremlin and the Spasskii (Saviour) tower. But far from being a vehicle for 'realism' that 'undermines the religious-symbolic basis of early Russian art',[349]the iconography conventionally ignoresthe laws oftime, space andperspective, bringing together heaven and earth and architecture and holy men of different epochs, presided over by an image of the twelfth-century Vladimir Mother of God.[350] Notional likenesses of rulers and their families in poses of supplication or prayer, as here, were in the Byzantine tradition. Another example is the icon Honouring the Life-Giving Cross (1677-8), by another Armoury painter, Ivan Saltanov, in which Constantine the Great and St Helena venerate the cross together with Alexis, Mariia and Patriarch Nikon.[351]

Clearly neither Ushakov nor Saltanov had any intention of depicting the 'struggle between the secular and the religious' detected by some modern historians.[352] More recently Russian scholars have shifted the emphasis from the novelty of Ushakov's work to its traditional elements - Byzantine, Kievan and Muscovite - categorising it as 'late medieval'.[353] The painter Fedor Zubov (d. 1689) copied some of his icons directly from foreign religious paintings, for example, his Crucifixion of 1685, in which blood, usually omitted from the Orthodox iconography of this subject, drips from Christ's hands and sides. But he also worked in a strictly Orthodox idiom. Icons such as Nativity of the Mother of God (1688) are remarkable for their stylised ornamentation, intricate details of architecture and landscapes and the application of highlights to fabrics.[354]Other leading painters of the era, such as Karp Zolotarev, Ivan Bezmin and Kirill Ulanov, remained true to Orthodox iconography, while adopting certain 'Italianate' stylistic features.[355] But subjects such as landscapes and still life that in Western art had long been treated independently in a secular context, in Russia remained within the framework of icons and frescos.

Soviet scholars attempted to identify distinct 'schools' of icon-painting beyond Moscow, for example, in the Kostroma workshops of Gurii Nikitin,[356]but their studies were compromised by the ideologically motivated quest for 'progressive' features in 'democratic' art away from the oppressiveness of the tsar's court. Fine-quality icons were produced in Iaroslavl', Ustiug, Vologda and other regional centres. Small icons rich in miniaturised detail are often attributed to the Stroganov school. The intricately decorative effects, lavish application of gold and glowing colours that are hallmarks of seventeenth- century icons had analogies in applied art. Coloured enamelling on gilded silver (a speciality of Sol'vychegodsk), decorative leather work and fabrics sown with gold and silver thread and seed pearls displayed a mixture of traditional floral and Western motifs.[357]

The most 'democratic' form of religious art were the single-sheet wood block prints (lubki) of icon subjects, often with decorative borders of flowers and geometric patterns, that circulated widely among all classes of the popula­tion. A whole collection of such prints makes up Vasilii Koren's illustrated Bible and Apocalypse (1692-6), fusing folk and Baroque motifs. Some served liturgi­cal purposes, for example, printed antiminsy for use at the altar, others featured non-devotional topics, for example The Feast of the Pious and Impious and The Mice Bury the Cat (see Plate 27).[358] The most sophisticated prints came from Ukraine, where artists produced illustrations from wood and metal blocks for religious books and also allegorical conclusiones, engraved programmes for debates in the Kiev Academy.[359] In the 1680s these spread to Moscow. One of the most ambitious official graphic projects was Karion Istomin's illustrated Alphabet (Bukvar'), which was first made in manuscript for the royal children, then printed in 1694. Many of the illustrations for each letter of the Cyrillic alphabet were copied from Western sources.

In the Armoury and other studios Russian artists worked alongside foreign painters, including the Pole Stanislaw Loputskii and the Germans (or Dutch?) Daniel Wuchters (in Russia 1663-7) and 'master of perspective' Peter Engels (i670-80s).[360] Western artists introduced oil painting on canvas and new bib­lical and historical subjects, including scenes from classical history, for the interiors of secular buildings. Unfortunately, too little of their work survives to pass judgement on their skills or to define precisely their influence. Russian artists' receptiveness to the outside world and ability to work in a fully-fledged Western style were limited by Orthodox artistic conventions, lack of travel opportunities, inadequate technical knowledge and ignorance of classical his­tory and mythology. As far as we know, there were no master works for them to copy. Where the use of foreign models is well documented, for example, simplified imitations of plates from Piscator's illustrated Bible, they worked mainly in a religious context.[361]

In 1683 a separate Armoury workshop for non-religious art (zhivopisnaia palata) was established under Ushakov's directorship.[362] Armoury employment rolls for 1687-8 record twenty-seven ikonopistsy and forty zhivopistsy, the latter making maps and charts, prints, banners, theatrical scenery (for Tsar Alexis's short-lived theatre: see below) and decorating such items as furniture, Easter eggs, chess sets and children's toys. Icon painters diversified their skills. In a petition of 1681, for example, Vasilii Poznanskii announced that he was adept at both ikonopis' and zhivopis' and could do historical subjects, 'perspective' studies and portraits.[363]

The introduction of the secular portrait (parsuna or persona, the term bor­rowed from Latin via Polish) was a significant innovation.[364] The earliest known examples, posthumous images of Prince Mikhail Skopin-Shuiskii and Tsar Fedor Ivanovich (1630s?), were icon-like studies in tempera on wood.[365] Free­standing likenesses of Russians painted in oils on canvas depicting persons detached from an iconic composition or a dynastic cycle are extremely rare before the 1680s. Although there is documentary evidence of parsuny being painted in the i650s-i660s, extant examples are elusive. Not one of Ushakov's portraits survives, for example. The first written reference to a Russian artist doing a portrait from life is Fedor Iur'ev's non-extant study of Tsar Alexis of 1671.[366] The largest surviving collection of portraits are the Russian and foreign rulers in the Book of Titled Heads (Tituliarnik), a sort of dynastic reference work produced for the Foreign Office by Armoury artists in 1672-3. The images are highly stylised, identifying individuals by inscriptions and appropriate regalia.

Little distinguishes Tsar Alexis from twelfth-century Prince Vladimir Mono- makh.47

A key period in the evolution of the parsuna portrait was the short reign of Tsar Fedor Alekseevich (i676-82), which saw the further spread of Polish cultural influences. In i677 Fedor ordered portraits for the tombs of Tsars Michael and Alexis from Fedor Zubov and in 1682 two half-length portraits of his father from Ivan Saltanov. Rare 'naive' equestrian studies of Michael and Alexis, painted in tempera on canvas but with gold icon-like backgrounds, also date from Fedor's reign.48 In 1678 Ivan Bezmin went to the palace to paint the tsar (pisal gosudarskuiu personu).49

The best-known surviving oil painting of Tsar Alexis may date from this time. This stiff and stylised Byzantine image of the tsar in his regalia suggests some development towards three-dimensionality in the background and in the moulding of the face. Both it and a posthumous portrait on a wooden panel of Fedor himself, made for placing by his tomb, are reminiscent of similarly static and decorative panel portraits of Tudor kings and queens painted in England more than a century earlier, with attention devoted to sumptuous fabrics, gems and regalia.50

From the 1680s boyars, too, appear in easel portraits modelled on the stiffly formal 'Sarmatian' portraits of nobles in Poland-Lithuania and Ukraine.51 An image engraved from a painting of Prince Vasilii Vasil'evich Golitsyn (c. 1687), attributed to the Ukrainian Leontii Tarasevich, with its coat of arms and heraldic verses, is wholly in this Polish-Ukrainian manner.52 Golitsyn, one of the few Russians to know Latin, also owned 'German' prints, maps, musi­cal instruments, foreign books, clocks, furniture and mirrors. He amassed a portrait gallery, as did another boyar, Artamon Matveev. Matveev, who had a Scottish wife, also staged home theatricals and hired a foreign tutor to teach his son Latin and Greek.53

47 See V Kostsova, 'Tituliarnik sobraniia Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha', Trudy Gosu- darstvennogo Ermitazha 3 (1959): 16-40; Cracraft, Imagery, pp. 68-70; Kostotchkina, 'Baroque', pp. 82-4.

48 Ovchinnikova, Portret, pp. 27-8; Danilova and Mneva, 'Zhivopis'', p. 457.

49 A. E. Viktorov, Opisanie zapisnykh knigibumagstarinnykh dvortsovykhprikazov, 1584-1725 g., 2 vols. (Moscow: Arkhipov, 1883), vol. 11, p. 446.

50 Hughes, 'Images', 177; Kampfer, Herrscherbild, pp. 214, 242; Briusova, Russkaiazhivopis', plate 36.

51 See L. I. Tananaeva, 'Portretnye formy v Pol'she i v Rossii v XVII v. Nekotorye sviazi i paralleli', Sovetskoe iskusstvoznanie '81 (1982), pp. 85-125; Cracraft, Imagery, pp. 190-1; Hughes, 'Images', i72-3.

52 Lindsey Hughes, Sophia Regent of Russia 1657-1704 (New Haven: Yale University Press,

i990), pp. i44-5.

53 On Golitsyn: Lindsey Hughes, Russia and the West, the Life of a Seventeenth-Century West- ernizer, Prince V. V. Golitsyn (1643-1714) (Newtonville, Mass.: ORP, 1984); A. Smith, 'The

Both these men were exceptional. Even allowing for high rates of destruc­tion of noble property overthe centuries, the meagre evidence ofportraits from the seventeenth century undermines attempts to demonstrate their 'wide dis­tribution ... not only in the capital but also in the provinces'.54 James Cracraft describes Muscovite parsuny as 'exceedingly provincial and even regressive by contemporary Western European standards'.55 We should add, however, that 'Western European standards' were by no means uniformly professional and that 'naive' portraits painted by semi-trained or untaught provincial artists remained the norm outside court circles all over Europe. The point is that in Russia portraits were still a novelty whereas in much of Western Europe they were commonplace.

The gap between Russia and the West was at its widest in respect of female portraits. Recent studies argue that Muscovite royal women were empowered by religious symbolism and rhetoric; for example, the murals in their reception chamber in the Kremlin featured images ofstrong female rulers from the Bible and Byzantium.56 But likenesses of living women remained a rarity as long as elite women were kept in semi-seclusion. The first known free-standing female portraits in Muscovy depict the exceptional figure of Tsarevna Sophia, regent 1682-9. A version engraved in Amsterdam was even surrounded by seven allegorical Virtues and verses in Latin (see Plate 28). All Sophia's portraits emphasised traditional attributes of rulership, as symbolised by regalia in the setting of a double eagle.57 Celebrations of female beauty and sexuality were out of the question in Russia and remained so for some time. While late seventeenth-century England enjoyed the 'age of the pin-up', with prints of royal mistresses and assorted actresses (sometimes nude) widely available for sale, most Muscovite women remained faceless.58 The few known oil

Brilliant Career of Prince Golitsyn', HUS 19 (1995): 639-54; Richard Hellie, The Economy and Materia Culture of Russia 1600-1725 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 571-627. Robert O. Crummey writes: 'Only one boyar . . . Golitsyn, could claim to be a whole-hearted devotee ofthe new cultural standards': Aristocrats and Servitors: The Boyar Elite in Russia, 1613-1689 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 161. On Matveev, Paul Bushkovitch, Peter the Great. The Struggle for Power, 1671-1725 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 43-79.

54 Ovchinnikova, Portret, p. 101.

55 Cracraft, Imagery, p. 192.

56 See Thyreet, Between God and Tsar; Lindsey Hughes, 'Women and the Arts at the Russian Court from the 16th to the 18th Century', in J. Pomeroy and R. Gray (eds.), An Imperial Collection. Women Artists from the State Hermitage (Washington, DC: National Museum of Women in the Arts, 2003), pp. 19-49.

57 See Hughes, Sophia, pp. 139-44, and her 'Sophia, "Autocrat of All the Russias": Titles, Ritual and Eulogy in the Regency of Sophia Alekseevna (i682-89)', Canadian Slavonic Papers 28 (i986): 266-86.

58 David Piper, The English Face (London: National Gallery, i978), pp. i03-4.

paintings of seventeenth-century women, for example, Tsar Fedor's widow Martha, in modest Muscovite robe and headdress, and Peter I's mother Natalia Naryshkina, her hair hidden by a severe black scarf like a nun's veil, date from the 1690s.[367]

Theatre and music

In October 1672 Alexis sat down at Preobrazhenskoe outside Moscow to watch a company of German amateur actors directed by a Lutheran pastor perform the 'Play of Ahasuerus and Esther', the first such spectacle to be staged at court. The tsar was aware of fellow monarchs' enthusiasm for theatre and a decade earlier had instructed the agent John Hebdon to bring players to Moscow. He was persuaded to revive this unfulfilled plan by Artamon Matveev, a pio­neer of amateur dramatics, who staged a production of the ballet Orpheo at Shrovetide 1672.[368] The repertoire of Alexis's theatre was largely religious and moralising, with biblical stories providing the plots; but contemporary refer­ences and slapstick humour were built in. All plays, regardless of content, had spectacular lighting effects, 'perspective' scenery and colourful costumes. The Comedy ofBacchus even featured drunkards, maidens and performing bears.[369]Staged within the confines of royal palaces before restricted audiences, these performances were extensions of courtly spectacle. The theatre was in opera­tion only until the tsar's death, after which it was closed under pressure from the patriarch. There is no basis for the legend that Tsarevna Sophia wrote and performed plays.[370] The first public theatre in Russia opened in Moscow in 1701, but was not a great success.

The tsar's theatre accelerated the importation of Western instruments and musical scores, previously virtually unknown. It also featured traditional vocal music, which in the course of the century assimilated a number of 'novel­ties' via Ukraine, including linear (five-line) notation and the increased use of polyphonic (part-singing) compositions. The two most prestigious church choirs belonged to the tsar and the patriarch. They and smaller ensembles maintained by monasteries and private individuals performed not only litur­gical music, but also 'interludes' (kontserty) in church and spiritual chants (dukhovnye kanty), which could be sung at home. One of the most prolific composers in the medium of sacred music was the singer Vasilii Titov, who set Simeon Polotskii's rhymed Psalter to music.[371] Another composer, Nikolai Diletskii, a Ukrainian who studied in Vilna, produced Ideia grammatiki musiki- iskoi, the first treatise on music to be translated into Russian. Many vocal scores from the period await analysis and publication.

Instrumental music was restricted by the Church, which permitted only vocal music during the liturgy. A campaign spearheaded early in Alexis's reign by the Zealots of Piety prompted an edict of 1645: 'Take great care that nowhere should there be shameful spectacles and games, and no wander­ing minstrels with tambourines and flutes either in the town or the villages.' Tambourines, flutes and horns were to be smashed 'without exception'. A foreign witness reported that about five cartloads of instruments were confis­cated and burnt.[372] The Zealots' targets were pagan entertainers, but 'seemly' musical entertainments were permissible at court functions and diplomatic receptions. In 1664, for example, musicians from the suite ofthe English ambas­sador Charles Howard gave some private performances. Tsar Alexis employed a Polish organist, Simeon Gutkovskii. Organs, pipes and drums were played at the tsar's wedding to Natalia Naryshkina in 1671.[373] Even so, Alexis was at first hesitant about permitting instrumental music in his new theatre 'as being new and in some ways pagan, but when the players pleaded with him that without music it was impossible to put together a chorus, just as it was impossible for dancers to dance without legs, then he, a little unwillingly, left everything to the discretion of the actors themselves'. Foreign musicians supplied the accompaniment, some specially hired from abroad.[374] The entry of the Dutch embassy of Konraad van Klenk into Moscow in 1676 was greeted by 'the con­tinual and unceasing sounds of trumpets and percussion', as well as pipes and flutes.[375] Such music was to become a regular feature of Peter I's parades and entertainments.

Literary and intellectual life: publishing and printing

Anthologies and surveys generally include the seventeenth century and the first decades of the eighteenth as the last chapter of Early Russian literature. There was indeed much continuity from the sixteenth century. Russian tra­ditional literature - lives of saints, miracle stories of the Virgin Mary, folk tales - was enjoyed by most classes. Increasingly, however, these were supple­mented by new 'high' genres - poetry, drama, sermons - for selected readers. The separation of elite from popular literature continued, as the concept of belles lettres emerged.[376] Little of this was reflected in print, however. In the whole of the seventeenth century the Moscow Press (Pechatnyi dvor), for most of the period the only one in Russia, published fewer than ten books that were not wholly religious in content. These included the 1649 Law Code, Meletii Smotritskii's Grammar and a manual for training infantry regiments. The Press's best-sellers were alphabet primers forteachingbasicliteracy, closely followed by the Psalter. Its total output between 1601 and 1700 amounted to only 483 editions, of which more than 80 per cent were for liturgical use.[377]In other words, the medium of print was virtually reserved for sacred texts, mostly heavy tomes for use in church, while profane or secular works were confined to manuscripts or oral transmission.

Historians who measure Russia with a Western yardstick generally link low achievements in 'book culture' with lack of learning. The idea runs like a refrain through accounts written by Western travellers, many of whom had some form of higher education. The absence of Russian names among the luminaries of the so-called 'scientific revolution' is hardly surprising when we consider that not only did Muscovy have no universities or academies, but also apparently lacked even elementary schools. Some Orthodox churchmen magnified the negative impression by equating foreign learning with 'guile' and 'deception'. At the same time, we should not exaggerate the gap. Even Isaac Newton, a devout Christian, studied topics such as astrology and alchemy that today would be regarded as 'unscientific'. For the mass of people all over Europe the world was explained by divine providence, not the laws of physics. Everywhere book learning, an urban phenomenon, was for the few. Even noblemen often had a minimal grasp of classical languages and Latin

humanism. [378]

Books printed in Cyrillic in foreign centres of Orthodox learning reached Russia, as well as secular books in foreign languages. Translations on secular topics such as medicine and mathematics were commissioned in government departments and works in manuscript on diverse subjects circulated among lit­erate people, while a flourishing oral tradition brought a variety oftexts even to the remote countryside. After the Time of Troubles many historical narratives appeared that retold real-life events and showed an interest in personalities, for example Avraamii Palitsyn's Skazanie of the Troubles and Katyrev-Rostovskii's Book of Chronicles. Such works circulated alongside fictional tales of adventure and mystery. Particularly popular were translations via the Polish from the Great Mirror (Magnum speculum exemplorum) and Deeds of the Romans. Nobles and townspeople read chivalric romances, picaresque tales and parodic works like Liturgy to the Ale House and Shemiaka's Judgement. A new genre was the 'literature of roguery' in which characters constantly transform themselves and adopt new identities.[379] Tales in this category include Savva Grudtsyn and Frol Skobeev, the latter remarkable for its lack of a moral message. Soviet histo­rians exaggerated the significance of such tales, treating them as 'democratic satires' that criticised the status quo. A more nuanced reading is now pos­sible, revealing a mixture of hagiographic framing, foreign borrowings and local embellishments. Redating has pushed these stories to the very end of the century and to the 'margins' of the literary scene.[380]

Traditional forms could accommodate new content, for example the 'Life' of the pious laywoman Iuliania Lazarevskaia written by her son, who stressed her humility and charity rather than her asceticism or devotion to the liturgy.[381]The autobiographical 'Life' of Archpriest Avvakum, composed in the 1670s, contained earthy scenes of family life written in a robust vernacular alongside rhetorical passages underlining the theme of personal struggle.[382]

The emergence ofliterature as an activity with distinct aesthetic and formal requirements carried out by named authors is reflected in the work of the so- called 'chancellery' or Printing Office poets of the first half of the century, who specialised in didactic verse, epistles and appeals in syllabic metre derived from Ruthenian models.[383] The first translated treatise on rhetoric in Russian dates from 1623. The assimilation of new literary forms and a genre system was accelerated by the Church's programme for correcting service books. A major pioneer of sermons, for example, was the Ukrainian scholar and corrector Epifanii Slavinetskii.

The career of Simeon Polotskii (Samuil Gavrilovich Petrovskii-Sinianovich, 1629-80) exemplifies new trends in Latin/Slavonic literary culture.[384] This Kiev- educated monk came to Moscow in i664 to serve as tutor to Tsar Alexis's children. He left a massive legacy ofsacred and secular writings in manuscript, while his published works make him one of the rare authors active in Muscovy whose name appeared in print during his lifetime or very shortly after his death.[385] Most of his publications were produced in the Palace Typography (Verkhniaia tipografiia), which in the 1670s to early 1680s operated alongside the Moscow Press. His Psalter in Verse (1680) was a best-seller. Writings preserved in manuscript include Vertograd mnogotsvetnyi, a massive anthology of 2,763 didactic poems written in syllabic verse, the content borrowed from Latin originals by Jesuit writers, and the Rifmologion of occasional verses for royal events. Polotskii makes frequent reference to classical authors and tales from antiquity. The title page to his History ofBarlaam andJosaphat (1681), designed by Ushakov, has been hailed as 'the first example ofthe use of Classical symbolism by a Russian artist'.[386] In general, poetry was still regarded as a higher form of spiritual activity. Even secular poems concentrated on moral improvement, especially the curbing of pride and avarice.

Along with acceptance of poetry came some sponsorship of education. Some boyars learned Latin and Polish from foreign tutors.[387] The young Tsar Alexis's early lessons were from primers and biblical texts, but later he read cos­mographies, astronomy and mechanics, ancient history and travel accounts. A few schools sprang up, attached to monasteries (Miracles (Chudovskii), St Andrew's and Zaikonospasskii), to the Moscow Printing House and gov­ernment departments, although information about them is fragmentary.[388]Tsar Alexis's son Alexis, instructed by Polotskii, in 1667 was able to deliver a speech in Latin and Polish to a delegation from Poland. In 1682 another son, Tsar Fedor, approved a charter of privileges for an academy in Moscow to teach grammar, poetics, rhetoric, dialectics, rational, natural and legal philos­ophy and the 'free sciences'. The prototype was the Mohyla academy in Kiev, founded in the 1630s on the Jesuit model. Fedor's plan was implemented under Sophia in 1685-7 when the Slavonic-Greek-Latin academy opened its doors. All its classes were conducted in Latin. The teachers were churchmen. The curriculum included Aristotelian cosmology in the context of Jesuit natural philosophy in an attempt to harmonise secular learning with faith.[389]

Conclusion: secularisation revisited

Our knowledge of seventeenth-century Russian culture is far from complete. Attributions and dating are often imprecise, especially in the case of icons. Surviving monuments may be too few to allow generalisations - wooden buildings, for example - or there may be no examples left at all, as in the case of 'history' paintings executed on the walls of royal palaces. New literary texts in manuscript continue to be discovered and scholars constantly revise the dating of the known ones. Provincial culture in particular requires further study.[390] We may conclude that, by and large, 'high' Russo-Byzantine Ortho­dox models and 'low' folk culture met most of the needs of the sort of society that Muscovy was in the seventeenth century and reflected the sort of view of the world that most Muscovites still held. Hence, tsars in their portraits, including the young Peter the Great, looked more like Byzantine emperors than French or English kings; Orthodox church design remained distinct from

Catholic or Protestant; you could buy an icon or an edition of the Psalter in most towns, but not an oil painting or a book of poetry. At the same time, there is compelling evidence of growing receptiveness to selected aspects of Western culture, for example, in the desire of the boyar elite to acquire portraits with coats of arms. Patterns of borrowing and receptiveness suggest a timid but growing attachment to 'the West' as a desirable source of new ideas, filtered through 'fraternal' cultures (notably Ukraine), contradicted by discourses of the dangers of alien customs and limited by economic and social realities. Hence seventeenth-century Muscovites failed to assimilate many things that were commonplace for members of the European elites, including statues, classical mansions and pictures of their wives and daughters. Boyars still had to adhere to the royal calendar and independent, participatory cultural life outside the tsar's household was extremely restricted. Unlike many of his Western contemporaries, the average Russian boyar did not compose or play music, read or write poetry or philosophy, speak foreign languages, travel abroad or take an interest in architecture (as opposed to building), horticul­ture or science. There were exceptions, such as Matveev and Golitsyn, but by and large in their accomplishments and culture Muscovite nobles were closer to the rest of the population than to their European counterparts. A consis­tently 'Westernising' programme for the arts was patently absent during the reigns ofthe seventeenth-century tsars. Foreign 'novelties' belonged to 'closed' society; they were not intended for and still less imposed upon a wider public as later were Peter I's dress reforms, for example. Religion dominated high culture.

Soviet historians, obliged to demonstrate an atheistic world-view, dealt with the awkward fact of the prolonged control of established religion over seventeenth-century Russian culture by emphasising the 'discovery of the value of the human personality' (lichnost') behind religious facades. They min­imised or denied the religiosity of religious art, underlining instead its humane (gumanitarnye), popular (narodnye) and 'life-enhancing' (zhizneradostnye) qual­ities.[391] Icons and frescos were scrutinised for evidence of realism, naturalistic landscapes, peasant physiognomies and everyday (bytovye) details. Soviet archi­tectural historians detected 'progress' in an increase in the number of domes­tic and civic buildings constructed of stone and brick rather than wood. Cult architecture could be the bearer of advanced features, too. Churches, for exam­ple, were said to have 'drawn closer' to civic buildings in their design. Soviet scholars, particularly during the Stalin period, played down foreign borrowing

and exaggerated the indigenous roots of new ideas, especially 'democratic'

ones.[392]

The evidence presented above shows that traditional religious culture remained strong and that Western, secular trends operated within limits. Tsar Alexis conducted experiments in horticulture with the help of foreign experts, but he also had holy water sprinkled to form signs of the cross on fields. He employed foreign medics, but carried around a tooth of St Sabbas to cure toothache. Simeon Polotskii wrote his works explicitly 'for the spiritual benefit of Orthodox Christians' (polzy radi dushevnyia pravoslavnykh khristian). Literature and art were firmly rooted in the acceptance of well-defined hier­archies and in a world of opposites in which a constant struggle is waged between good and evil and where ultimately people must renounce worldly things.

There was fierce opposition to what were perceived as 'Latin and Lutheran' innovations in religious art. In 1674, for example, Patriarch Ioakim banned the sale of paper prints 'made by German heretics, Lutherans and Calvin- ists, according to their own damned persuasion, crudely and wrongly'. He and his predecessors denounced icons that 'depict everything after the man­ner of earthly things'.[393] Their Old Believer opponents agreed with them in this respect. The most frequently quoted pronouncement on the subject is Archpriest Avvakum's complaint that some icon painters made Christ 'look like a German, big-bellied and fat, except that no sword is painted on his hip'.[394] Henceforth Old Believers strove to preserve ancient artistic tradi­tions. Warnings were aimed at both non-canonical compositions and non- traditional, three-dimensional depictions that added improper 'worldliness' to images which, according to Orthodox tradition, should intimate the divine world beyond the icon, not imitate the flesh and blood of the here and now. The Church had no quarrel with secular painting as such. Indeed, Patriarch Nikon had his portrait painted several times.[395] In general, seventeenth-century debates demonstrate a new awareness of the shifting boundaries between the sacred and profane and an attempt to establish what was permissible for the devout Orthodox. There was an increased concern with individual morality as opposed to asceticism.[396]

In 1690 Patriarch Ioakim was still appealingto Tsars Ivan and Peter to 'resist new Latin and alien customs and not to introduce the wearing of foreign dress'.[397] The culture of the 1690s, still inadequately studied, bears witness to the proliferation of Western influences. Among the royal family's orders from the Armoury we find images of patron saints not on wooden panels but in oils on canvas,[398] battle paintings 'after the German model' and pictures on canvas depicting 'troops travelling by sea' copied from German engravings.[399]Armoury artists found themselves making regimental banners and decorating the new ships that Tsar Peter built at Voronezh. The victory parade held in Moscow in 1696 to celebrate the capture of Azov from the Turks took place against a backdrop of classical architectural devices, allegorical paintings and wooden sculptures set on triumphal gates inscribed with the words of Julius Caesar: 'I came. I saw. I conquered.'[400]

Peter's Great Embassy to Western Europe (1697-8) consolidated his view of what constituted 'civilised' art and architecture. In January 1698 he became the subject of the first portrait of a Russian ruler wholly in the Western manner, painted in London by Sir Godfrey Kneller.[401] By 1701 only two icon painters remained on the Armoury payroll and by 1711 nearly all Armoury personnel were transferred to the new capital of St Petersburg.[402] Yet we are still far from the 'liberal' atmosphere that Western thinkers such as David Hume regarded as essential for the flourishing of the arts.[403] There was still no sign of an independent public sphere. The arts in Russia remained firmly harnessed to higher authority, even though power shifted from the Church to the state.

From the early eighteenth century most things 'pre-Petrine' were regarded as a blank. Russia must achieve cultural salvation by imitating and assimilating

Western culture. The idea that Russian art began with Peter held sway for the next century and a half, roughly coinciding with the period that classi­cism dominated the arts in Russia and most of Europe. Only from the mid- nineteenth century did Russia's seventeenth century begin to be rehabilitated and recreated in the Russian imagination. Its buildings were widely imitated in the Neo- or Pseudo-Russian style. Artists, illustrators and designers - Ivan Bilibin, Apolinarii Vasnetsov, Andrei Riabushkin, Viacheslav Shvarz - tried to capture the century's spirit. Faberge and Ovchinnikov recreated the shapes and colours of seventeenth-century objets de vertu for elite clients.96 A roman­ticised seventeenth-century style became the fashion preference at the court of Nicholas II, who liked to see himself as a latter-day Tsar Alexis. This imag­ined seventeenth century is a fairy-tale world of turrets and cupolas, exotic fabrics, elaborate carvings and jewel-like surfaces that awakes nostalgia for a pre-Western, pre-classical world. In this vision, far from being the period that prepared the ground for Westernisation, the seventeenth century remains the last bastion of true Russian culture.

96 See E. I. Kirichenko, The Russian Style (London: L. King, 1991), ch. 3.

i8 V N. Tatishchev, Istoriia rossiiskaia, vol. vii (Moscow and Leningrad: Nauka, i968), p. 296.

Примечания

1

The best general history of seventeenth-century Russia remains V O. Kliuchevskii, A Course in Russian History: The Seventeenth Century (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968). For a survey of primary and secondary sources, see S. A. Kristensen [Christensen], Istoriia rossii XVII v. Obzor issledovanii i istochnikov (Moscow: Progress, 1989). On high politics, see Robert O. Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors: The Boyar Elite in Russia, 1613-1689 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), and Paul Bushkovitch, Peter the Great: The Struggle for Power, 1671-1725 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

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2

For an overview of governmental institutions, see N. P. Eroshkin, Ocherki istorii gosu- darstvennykh uchrezhdenii dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Uchebno- Pedagogicheskoe izdatel'stvo Ministerstva prosveshcheniia RSFSR, i960).

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3

For an extended discussion of the Russian ruling class and its interests, see Marshall T. Poe, The Russian Moment in World History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).

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4

On these dicta, see Marshall T. Poe, A People Born to Slavery'-.Russia inEarly Modern European Ethnography, 1476-1748 (Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 2000), appendix 1.

On pretenderism, see Chester Dunning, Russia's First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001) and Maureen Perrie, Pretenders andPopularMonarchism in Early ModernRussia: The False Tsars of the Time of Troubles (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

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5

On the Romanovs' campaign to stamp out pretenderism, see Mark C. Lapman, 'Political Denunciations in Muscovy 1600 to 1649: The Sovereign's Word and Deed', unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard, University, 1982; N. I. Novombergskii, Slovo i delogosudarevy: Protsessy do izdaniia Ulozheniia Alekseia Mikhailovicha 1649 g. (Moscow: A. I. Snegireva, 1911), and G. G. Tel'berg, Ocherki politicheskogo suda i politicheskikh prestuplenii (Moscow: Tipografiia Imperatorskogo Moskovskogo Universiteta, 1912).

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6

See Daniel Rowland, 'The Problem of Advice in Muscovite Tales about the Time of Troubles', RH 6 (1979): 259-83, and his 'Did Muscovite Literary Ideology Place Limits on the Power of the Tsar (i540s-i660s)?', RR 49 (1990): 125-56.

For a bibliography of works on the gosudarev dvor, see O. Kosheleva andM. A. Strucheva, Gosudarev dvor v Rossii: konets XV-nachalo XVIII vv.: katalog knizhnoi vystavki (Moscow: Gosudarstvennaia publichnaia istoricheskaia biblioteka Rossii, 1997).

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7

On this distinction, see N. P. Pavlov-Sil'vanskii, Gosudarevy sluzhilye liudi. Liudi kabal'nye i dokladnye, 2nd edn (St Petersburg: Tipografiia M. M. Stasiulevicha, 1909), pp. 128-208.

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8

This system is described in Crummey Aristocrats and Servitors, pp. 23-4, as well as in Marshall T. Poe, The Russian Elite in the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols. (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2003), vol. 11, passim.

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9

On the administrative class, see N. F. Demidova, Sluzhilaia biurokratiia v Rossii XVII v. i ee rol' v formirovanii absoliutizma (Moskva: Nauka, 1987).

On consensus among the elite, see: Edward L. Keenan, 'Muscovite Political Folkways', RR 45 (1986), 115-81; Nancy Shields Kollmann, Kinship and Politics: The Making of the Muscovite Political System, 1345-1547 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 2, 7-8, 18, 44, 149-52, 184. The degree ofconsensus is the subject ofsome debate. See the exchange between Valerie Kivelson and Marshall Poe in Kritika 3 (2002): 473-99.

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10

This is not to say that these were the only political actorsin Muscovy Certainly there were others (the Church, elite women etc.). These three, however, are the most significant for our limited purposes. On the Church in politics, see: Georg Bernhard Michels, At War with the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Russia (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999). On elite women in politics, see: Isolde Thyret, Between God and Tsar: Religious Symbolism and the Royal Women of Muscovite Russia (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001).

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11

There are a number of well-known examples: Michael and his father, Patriarch Filaret; the young Alexis and Boris Ivanovich Morozov; Sophia and Prince Vasilii Vasil'evich Golitsyn; Peter and his assembly of friends.

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12

GrigorijKotosixin [G. K. Kotoshikhin], O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajlovica. Text andcommentary, ed. A. E. Pennington (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1980), fos. 34-36v. On Kotoshikhin's understanding of governmental institutions, see Benjamin P. Uroff,'GrigoriiKarpovich Kotoshikhin, "On Russiain the Reign of Alexis Mikhailovich": An Annotated Translation', unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Illinois, 1970, and Fritz T. Epstein, 'Die Hof- und Zentralverwaltung im Moskauer Staat und die Bedeutung von G.K. Kotosichins zeitgenoessischem Werk "Uber Russland unter der Herrschaft des Zaren AleksejMichajlovic" fur die russische Verwaltungsgeschichte', Hamburger Historische Studien 7 (1978): 1-228.

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13

On them, see Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors, passim.

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14

The literature on mestnichestvo is large. For a recent treatment, see Nancy Shields Koll- mann, By Honor Bound: State and Society in Early ModernRussia (Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 1999), pp. 131-68.

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15

Philip Longworth, Alexis, Tsar of all the Russias (London: Secker and Warburg, 1984), pp. 38-45.

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16

Longworth, Alexis, TsarofalltheRussias,pp. 136-7. Muscovy was under significant military pressure in the seventeenth century, and Alexis initiated a number of important military reforms. See Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy, pp. 181-201.

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17

The following paragraphs are adapted from Marshall T. Poe, 'Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich and the Demise of the Romanov Political Settlement', RR 62 (2004): 537-64; Marshall T. Poe, 'Absolutism and the New Men of Seventeenth-Century Russia', in J. Kotilaine and M. Poe (eds.), Modernizing Muscovy: Reform and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century Russia (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), pp. 97-ii5; and Marshall T. Poe, The Russian Elite in the Seventeenth Century, vol. 11, passim.

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18

I. P. Matiushkin, A. O. Pronchishcheev I. F. Eropkin, P. K. Elizarov, I. I. Baklanovskii, V M. Eropkin, A. L. Ordin-Nashchokin, I. A. Pronchishchev Z. F. Leont'ev, 1.1. Chaadaev, G. B. Nashchokin, D. M. Bashmakov Ia. T. Khitrovo, G. S. Karaulov L. T. Golosov.

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19

Datain this table was drawn from S. K. Bogoiavlenskii, Prikaznyesud'iXVIIveka (Moscow and Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1946). The abbreviations DD, DDv Ok and B refer to the positions of dumnyi d'iak, dumnyi dvorianin, okol'nichii and boyar respectively.

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20

Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors, p. 28.

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21

A. I. Markevich, Istoriiamestnichestvav Moskovskomgosudarstve v XV-XVIIvekakh(Odessa: Tipografiia Odesskogo Vestnika, 1888), pp. 572ff.; V K. Nikol'skii, 'Boiarskaia popytka 1681 g.', Istoricheskie izvestiia izdavaemye Istoricheskim obshchestvom pri Moskovskom uni- versitete 2 (1917): 57-87; G. Ostrogorsky 'Das Projekt einer Rangtabelle aus der Zeit des Tsaren Fedor Alekseevich', Jahrbiicher fiir Kultur und Geschichte der Slaven 9 (1933): 86­138; M. Ia. Volkov, 'Ob otmene mestnichestva v Rossii', Istoriia SSSR, 1977, no. 2: 53-67; P. V Sedov, 'O boiarskoi popytke uchrezhdeniia namestnichestvav Rossii v 1681-82 gg.', Vestnik LGU 9 (1985): 25-9; Kollmann, By Honor Bound, pp. 226-31; and Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, pp. 118-19.

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22

Kotosixin, O Rossii, fo. 35v.

This development is discussed in S. I. Nikolaev, 'Poeziia i diplomatiia (iz literaturnoi deiatel'nosti Posol'skogo prikaza v 1670-kh gg.)', TODRL 42 (1989): 143-73, and Edward L. Keenan, The Kurbskii-Groznyi Apocrypha: The Seventeenth-Century Genesis of the 'Corre­spondence' Attributed to Prince A. M. Kurbskiiand Tsar Ivan IV (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 84-9.

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23

On the chancellery personnel and their growth in the seventeenth century, see Demi- dova, Sluzhilaia biurokratiia; N. F. Demidova, 'Gosudarstvennyi apparat Rossii v XVII veke', IZ 108 (1982): 109-54; N. F. Demidova, 'Biurokratizatsiia gosudarstvennogo appa- rata absoliutizma v XVII-XVIII vv.', in N. M. Druzhinin (ed.), AbsoliutizmvRossii (XVII- XVIII vv.). Sbornik statei k semidesiatiletiiu so dnia rozhdeniia i sorokapiatiletiiu nauchnoi i pedagogicheskoi deiatel'nosti B. B. Kafengauza (Moscow: Nauka, 1964), pp. 206-42; and N. F. Demidova, 'Prikaznye liudi XVII v. (Sotsial'nyi sostav i istochniki formirovaniia)', IZ 90 (i972): 332-54.

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24

Demidova, Sluzhilaia biurokratiia, p. 23.

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25

On the membership of the duma (or at least the identity of those holding duma ranks) in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see: S. B. Veselovskii, Issledovaniiapo istorii klassa sluzhilykh zemlevladel'tsev (Moscow: Nauka, 1969); A. A. Zimin, Formirovanie boiarskoi aristokratii v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XV-pervoi treti XVI v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1988); Koll- mann, Kinship and Politics; A. P. Pavlov, Gosudarev dvor i politicheskaia bor'ba pri Borise Godunove (Moscow: Nauka, 1992); M. E. Bychkova, Sostav klassa feodalov Rossii v XVI v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1986).

Poe, A People Born to Slavery', pp. 66-7, 103-4.

(обратно)

26

Giles Fletcher, Of the Russe Commonwealth, ed. John V A. Fine and Richard Pipes (Cam­bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966), pp. 34-6.

(обратно)

27

Poe, A People Born to Slavery', pp. 63-6,101-3, 203.

(обратно)

28

Ibid., fos. 35v-36.

(обратно)

29

Ibid., fos. I85v-i86.

(обратно)

30

Ibid., fos. 36-36v.

(обратно)

31

On the historiography of the zemskii sobor, see L. V Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory russkogo gosudarstva v XVI-XVII vv. (Moscow: Nauka, 1978), pp. 5-47, and Peter B. Brown, 'The Zemskii Sobor in Recent Soviet Historiography', RH10 (1983): 77-90.

(обратно)

32

K. S. Aksakov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii K. S. Aksakova, 3 vols. (Moscow: P. Bakhmetev, 1861-80), vol. 1, p. 11.

(обратно)

33

The following is drawn from: Ellerd Hulbert, 'Sixteenth-Century Russian Assemblies of the Land: Their Composition, Organization, and Competence', unpublished Ph.D. dis­sertation, University of Chicago, 1970; Hans-Joachim Torke, Die staatsbedingte Gesellschaft im moskauer Reich: Zar und Zemlja in der altrussischen Herrschaftsverfassung 1613-1689 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974); Cherepnin, Zemskiesobory; Ira L. Campbell, 'The Composition, Character and Competence ofthe Assembly ofthe Landin Seventeenth-Century Russia', unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, 1984, and Donald Ostrowski, 'The Assembly of the Land as a Representative Institution', in J. Kotilaine and M. Poe (eds.), Modernizing Muscovy: Reform and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century Russia (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), pp. 117-42.

(обратно)

34

Ostrowski, 'The Assembly of the Land', pp. 135-6.

(обратно)

35

P. Ivanov, Opisanie gosudarstvennogo razriadnogo arkhiva (Moscow: Tipografiia S. Silivan- skogo, 1842), pp. 156, 209.

(обратно)

36

N. F. Demidova, Sluzhilaia biurokratiia v Rossii XVII v. i ee rol' vformirovanii absoliutizma (Moscow: Nauka, 1987), p. 31.

(обратно)

37

V N. Glaz'ev Vlast' i ohshchestvo naiugeRossii XVII v.: Protivodeistvie ugolovnoi prestupnosti (Voronezh: Voronezhskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2001), p. 141.

(обратно)

38

On record-keeping in the governors' offices, see: N. N. Ogloblin, 'Provintsial'nye arkhivy v XVII veke', Vestnik arkheologii i istorii izdavaemyi Arkheologicheskim institutom 6 (1886): 74-206; D. Ia. Samokvasov, Russkie arkhivy i tsarskii kontrol' prikaznoi sluzhby v XVII veke (Moscow, 1902); N. N. Ogloblin, 'Obozrenie stolbtsovi knig Sibirskogo prikaza', 4 parts, ChOIDR 2 (1895): i-viii and 1-422; 1 (1898): 1-162; 3 (1900): i-iv and 1-394; 1 (1902): 1-288.

(обратно)

39

Demidova, Sluzhilaia biurokratiia, p. 37.

(обратно)

40

V A. Arakcheev, Pskovskii krai v XV-XVII vekakh: Obshchestvo i gosudarstvo (St Petersburg: Russko-Baltiiskii informatsionnyi tsentr BLITs, 2003), p. 310.

(обратно)

41

As there were no universities or academies to train clerks, all clerical training had to be obtained through apprenticeship within the chancellery or governor's office.

(обратно)

42

J. L. H. Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar: Army and Society in Russia, 1462-1874 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p. 91.

(обратно)

43

Max Weber, Economy and Society, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, 2 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), vol. ii, p. 974.

(обратно)

44

For petitions seeking the governor's post at Pereiaslavl'-Riazan' see A. A. Kabanov, 'Akty o naznacheniii smene voevod vPereiaslavle Riazanskom', 2 pts., Trudy Riazanskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi kommissii 25, 2 (1912), 1-28, and 26,1 (1914), 15-35.

In someinstances notables appointed to hard postings-governorshipsin underdeveloped regions far off in Siberia - did receive special maintenance subsidies out of the treasury, usually in grain or spirits, but these were only in supplement to their regular service bounties.

(обратно)

45

P. P. Smirnov, Posadskie liudi i ikh klassovaia bor'ba do serediny XVII veka, 2 vols. (Moscow and Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1947-8), vol. ii, pp. 37-8.

(обратно)

46

Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii. Sobranie pervoe, 45 vols. (St Petersburg: Tipografiia II Otdeleniia S.I.V Kantseliarii, 1830-43), vol. iii, no. 1670; AI, vol. iii (St Petersburg: Tipografiia II Otdeleniia Sobstvennoi E. I. V Kantseliarii, 1841), nos. 134,154.

(обратно)

47

S. V Bakhrushin, 'Ocherki po istorii krasnoiarskogo uezda v XVII v.', in his Nauchnye trudy, 4 vols. (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1952-9), vol. IY (1959), pp. 167-9.

(обратно)

48

S. I. Porfir'ev, Neskol'ko dannykh o prikaznom upravlenii v Kazani v 1627 g. (Kazan', 1911),

p. 4.

(обратно)

49

B. N. Chicherin, Oblastnye uchrezhdeniiaRossiivXVIIveke (Moscow: Tipografiia Aleksan- dra Semena, 1856), pp. 577-9.

(обратно)

50

Zakonodatel'nye akty Russkogo gosudarstva vtoroi poloviny XVI - pervoi poloviny XVII veka.

Teksty (Leningrad: Nauka, 1986), no. 68.

(обратно)

51

Demidova, Sluzhilaiahiurokratiia, pp. 141-2.

(обратно)

52

Ia. E. Vodarskii, Naselenie Rossii za 400 let (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1973), pp. 27-8: Richard Hellie, Slavery in Russia, 1450-1725 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 1-2.

(обратно)

53

G. A. Sanin et al. (eds.), Istoriia vneshnei politiki Rossii: Konets XV-XVII vek (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1999), pp. 218-19.

(обратно)

54

Ibid., p. 220.

(обратно)

55

B. F. Porshnev, Muscovy and Sweden in the Thirty Years War, 163 0-1635, ed. Paul Dukes and trans. Brian Pearce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 28-35.

(обратно)

56

A. V Chernov Vooruzhennye sily Russkogo gosudarstva (Moscow: Ministerstvo oborony SSSR, 1954), pp. 114-15, 157-8; Richard Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), pp. 168-72.

(обратно)

57

For accounts of the Smolensk war see E. D. Stashevskii, Smolenskaia voina 1632-1634. Organizatsiia i sostoianie moskovskoi armii (Kiev, 1919), and William C. Fuller, Jr., Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600-1914 (New York: Free Press, 1992), pp. 7-14.

(обратно)

58

Mykhailo Hrushevsky History of Ukraine-Rus'. Vol. viii: The Cossack Age, 1626-1650 (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 2002), pp. 179-80; A. A. Novosel'skii, Bor'ba Moskovskogo gosudarstva s tatarami v pervoi polovine XVII veka (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1948), pp. 245-8.

(обратно)

59

A. I. Iakovlev, ZasechnaiachertaMoskovskogogosudarstva vXVII veke (Moscow: Tipografiia G. Lissnera i D. Sobko, 1916), pp. 45-6, 57, 62-3.

(обратно)

60

VP. Zagorovskii, Belgorodskaia cherta (Voronezh: Voronezhskii gosudarstvennyi univer- sitet, 1969), pp. 93-4.

(обратно)

61

S. I. Riabov, Voisko Donskoe i rossiiskoe samoderzhavie (Volgograd: Peremena, 1993), p. 24.

(обратно)

62

Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus', vol. yiii, pp. 264-8.

(обратно)

63

Brian Davies, 'Village Into Garrison: The Militarized Peasant Communities of Southern Muscovy', RR 51 (1992): 481-501.

(обратно)

64

Hellie, Enserfment, p. 193.

(обратно)

65

On the Don expeditions, see V P. Zagorovskii, 'Sudostroenie na Donu i ispol'zovanie Rossieiu parusnogo-grebnogo flota vbor'be protivKrymskogo khanstvai Turtsii', Kan- didatskaia dissertatsiia, Voronezhskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet, 1961. On the Razin Rebellion, see E. V Chistiakova and V M. Solov'ev, Stepan Razin i ego soratniki (Moscow: Mysl', 1988), and Michael Khodarkovsky, 'The Stepan Razin Uprising: Was it a "Peasant War"?', JGO 42 (1994): 1-19.

(обратно)

66

Ibid., pp. 26-37.

(обратно)

67

N. I. Kostomarov, 'Getmanstvo Vygovskogo', in his Kazaki (Moscow: Charli, 1995), pp. 49-50, 59, 74, 101.

(обратно)

68

N. I. Kostomarov 'Getmanstvo Iuriia Khmel'nitskogo', in his Kazaki, pp. 176-80.

(обратно)

69

Hellie, Enserfment, pp. 175,194-6, 200-10, 269; Carol Belkin Stevens, Soldiers on the Steppe: Army Reform and Social Change in Early Modern Russia (De Kalb: Northern Illinois Uni­versity Press, 1995), pp. 33, 56.

(обратно)

70

Robert I. Frost, The Northern Wars, 1558-1721 (London, New York: Longman, 2000), pp. 216-17.

(обратно)

71

V Gorobets, 'Ukrainsko-rossiiskie otnosheniia v politiko-pravovoi status getman- shchiny', in A. I. Miller et al. (eds.), Rossiia-Ukraina: istoriia vzaimootnoshenii (Moscow: Iazykimirovoikul'tury, 1997), p. 9;N. I. Kostomarov Ruina. Mazepa. Mazepintsy (Moscow: Charli, 1995), pp. 158-65.

(обратно)

72

Ibid., p. 267.

(обратно)

73

Hellie, Enserfment, p. 271.

(обратно)

74

A. N. Popov 'Turetskaia voina v tsarstvovanie Fedora Alekseevicha', Russkii vestnik 6 (March 1857): 167-70; V N. Zaruba, Ukrainskoekazatskoevoisko vbor'be s turetskoi-tatarskoi agressiei (Kharkov: Osnova, 1993), pp. 46-50.

(обратно)

75

Brian Davies, 'The Second Chigirin Campaign (1678): Late Muscovite Military Power in Transition', in Eric Lohr and Marshall Poe (eds.), The Military and Society in Russia, 1450-1917 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2002), pp. 101-2, 104-5.

(обратно)

76

Ibid., pp. 115-19.

(обратно)

77

AndrzejSulima Kaminski, Republic vs. Autocracy. Poland-Lithuania and Russia, 1686-1697 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1993), p. 12.

(обратно)

78

Chernov Vooruzhennye sily, pp. 187-9.

(обратно)

79

Stevens, Soldiers on the Steppe, pp. 113-16, 120.

(обратно)

80

Davies, 'The Second Chigirin Campaign', pp. 108-11.

(обратно)

81

Stevens, Soldiers on the Steppe, pp. 77-84.

(обратно)

82

Akty vremeni Lzhedmitriia 1-go (1603-1606), Nogaiskie dela', ed. N. V Rozhdestvenskii, ChOIDR (Moscow, 1845-1918), vol. 264, pt.i (1918): 105-9,136,139-42.

(обратно)

83

Grigorii Kotoshikhin, O Rossii v tsarstvovanie Alekseia Mikhailovicha (St Petersburg: Tipografiia Glavnogo upravleniia udelov, 1906), p. 135.

(обратно)

84

On the evolution of the fortification lines see A. I. Iakovlev, Zasechnaia chertaMoskovskogo gosudarstva v XVII veke (Moscow: TipografiiaI. Lisnera, 1916); V P. Zagorovskii, Belgorod- skaia cherta (Voronezh: Voronezhskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet, 1969); A. V. Nikitin, 'Oboronitel'nye sooruzheniia zasechnoi cherty XVI-XVII vv.', in Materialy i issledovaniia po arkheologii SSSR, vol. 44 (1955): 116-213; Novosel'skii, Bor'ba, pp. 293-6. For works in English which discuss the situation and fortifications in the south see Brian Davies, 'The Role of the Town Governors in the Defense and Military Colonization of Muscovy's Southern Frontier: The Case of Kozlov, 1635-38', 2 vols., unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1983; Richard Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), pp. 174-80; Carol Belkin Stevens, Soldiers on the Steppe: Army Reform and Social Change in Early Modern Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1995), pp. 19-36.

(обратно)

85

Michael Khodarkovsky, Where Two Worlds Met: The Russian State and the Kalmyk Nomads, 1600-1771 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992), pp. 105-33.

(обратно)

86

AI, 5 vols. (St Petersburg: various publishers, 1841-2), vol. iv (Tipografiia II Otdeleniia Sobstvennoi E. I. V Kantseliarii, 1842), no. 219, pp. 473-4.

(обратно)

87

George Lantzeff and Richard Pierce, Eastward to Empire: Exploration and Conquest on the Russian Open Frontier, to 1750 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1973), pp. 127­83; James Forsyth, A History of the Peoples of Siberia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 48-109; Mark Bassin, Imperial Visions, Nationalist Imagination and Geo­graphical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840-1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 19-24.

(обратно)

88

Kabardino-russkie otnosheniia v XVI-XVIII vv. Dokumenty i materialy, 2 vols. (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1957), vol. i, nos. 21 (pp. 34-5), 41 (pp. 67-8), 43 (p. 69).

(обратно)

89

Ibid., p. 402, n. 165; Istoriianarodov Severnogo Kavkazas drevneishikh vremen do kontsaXVIII v., ed. B. B. Piotrovskii (Moscow: Nauka, 1988), pp. 330-1.

(обратно)

90

Kabardino-russkie otnosheniia v XVI-XVIII vv., vol. 1, nos. 28 (pp. 50-1), 52 (pp. 84-5), 208 (pp. 325-6), 232 (pp. 360-1), 236 (pp. 364-5); Khodarkovsky, Where Two Worlds Met, pp. 95, 113-18.

(обратно)

91

AI, vol. iv, no. 141, p. 285.

(обратно)

92

Materialy po istorii Bashkirskoi ASSR, vol. i: Bashkirskie vosstaniia v XVII i pervoi polovine XVIII vekov (Moscow and Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1936), pp. 26-40, 150-212.

(обратно)

93

Ocherkipo istorii Bashkirskoi ASSR, vol. i, pt.1 (Ufa: Bashkirskoe izdatel'stvo, 1956), p. 97.

(обратно)

94

Ibid., pp. 132-4; Materialy po istorii Bashkirskoi ASSR, vol. iii: Ekonomicheskie i sotsialnye otnosheniia v Bashkirii v pervoi polovine XVIII veka (Moscow and Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1949), pp. 9-25.

(обратно)

95

Kazakhsko-russkie otnosheniia v XVI-XVIII vekakh. Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Alma- Ata: AN Kazakhskoi SSR, 1961), no. 210, p. 539.

(обратно)

96

Kotoshikhin, O Rossii v tsarstvovanie AlekseiaMikhailovicha, pp. 39, 40, 87.

(обратно)

97

AI, vol. i (Tipografiia EkspeditsiizagotovleniiaGosudarstvennykhbumag, 1841), no. 209, p. 449; vol. iii (Tipografiia II Otdeleniia Sobstvennoi E. I. V Kantseliarii, 1841), no. 1542, pp. 236, 244-5; no. 1594, pp. 355-6; Michael Khodarkovsky, Russia's Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500-1800 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), pp. 201-10.

(обратно)

98

Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi imperii (Moscow), f.119, op. 5, Kalmytskie dela, 1755 g., d. 17, ll. 17-20.

(обратно)

99

This is evident for the most common commodity, rye, but holds for nearly everything else as well. See Richard Hellie, The Economy and Material Culture of Russia 1600-1725 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 14 (see Fig. 2.1) et passim.

(обратно)

100

Richard Hellie, 'Russia, 1200-1815', in Richard Bonney (ed.), The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c.1200-1815 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 494 et passim.

(обратно)

101

Arcadius Kahan, The Plow, the Hammer, and the Knout. An Economic History of Eighteenth- Century Russia, ed. Richard Hellie (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 311-18.

(обратно)

102

See 'Agapetos', in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. A. P. Kazhdan, 3 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), vol. I, p. 34.

(обратно)

103

Hellie, Economy, pp. 80-1.

(обратно)

104

Richard Hellie, Slavery inRussia 1450-1725 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 63.

(обратно)

105

There was one exception: as noted in Chapter 16 above, the Sudebnik of 1550 had placed a price cap of 15 roubles on military slaves.

(обратно)

106

So far, no one has produced any Muscovite land transaction between non-relatives with both the units of lands and the prices paid - presumably the definition of a market. This is most evident in the work of Valerie Kivelson: see her Autocracy in the Provinces: The Muscovite Gentry and Political Culture in the Seventeenth Century (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996). This makes comparison between the prices of farm land in Muscovy and elsewhere impossible. See also Hellie, Economy, pp. 392, 631.

(обратно)

107

Richard Hellie, 'The Costs of Muscovite Military Defense and Expansion', in Eric Lohr and Marshall Poe (eds.), The Military and Society in Russia 1450-1917 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), p. 49.

(обратно)

108

Ibid., p. 66 .

(обратно)

109

E. I. Kolycheva, Agrarnyi stroi Rossii XVI veka (Moscow: Nauka, 1987), p. 117.

(обратно)

110

Richard Hellie (trans. and ed.), The Muscovite Law Code (Ulozhenie) of1649 (Irvine, Calif.: Charles Schlacks, 1988), ch. 20, art. 39. (Cited henceforth as Hellie, Ulozhenie.)

(обратно)

111

Richard Hellie, 'Russian Law from Oleg to Peter the Great', in Daniel H. Kaiser (trans. and ed.), The Laws ofRus' -Tenth to Fifteenth Century (Salt Lake City, Ut.: Charles Schlacks, 1992), pp. xi-xl.

(обратно)

112

Hellie, Ulozhenie, preamble, ch. 13, art. 1; ch. 19, art. 34.

(обратно)

113

Ibid., ch. 19.

(обратно)

114

Richard Hellie, 'The Stratification of Muscovite Society: The Townsmen', RH 5 (1978): 119-75.

(обратно)

115

Richard Hellie (ed. and trans.), Muscovite Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

i967, i970), pp. 63-9i.

(обратно)

116

Maria Fusaro, 'Commercial Networks of Cooperation in the Venetian Mediterranean: The English and the Greeks, a Case Study', unpublished paper, October 2001.

(обратно)

117

Richard Hellie, 'Le Commerce russe dans la deuxieme moitie du XVIIIe siecle (1740­1810)', inL'Influencefranx;aiseenRussieauXVIIIsiecle, ed. Jean-Pierre Poussou et al. (Paris: Presses de l'Universitee de Paris-Sorbonne, 2004), pp. 73-82.

(обратно)

118

Hellie, Economy, ch. 18.

(обратно)

119

Hellie, Economy, ch. 20; pp. 388, 404-5.

(обратно)

120

Ia. E.Vodarskii reckons the 1678 population at ten million, ofwhom 92 per cent were peas­ants (V A. Aleksandrov et al., Krest'ianstvo perioda pozdnego feodalizma (seredina XVIIv. - 1861 g.) (Istoriia krest'ianstva Rossii s drevneishikh vremen do 1917 g., vol. iii) (Moscow: Nauka, 1993), p.18). This seems to minimise excessively the slave population, which was not counted in the censuses because slaves paid no taxes. See my Slavery volume for my calculations of the numbers of slaves.

(обратно)

121

Hellie, Enserfment, chs. 6 and 7.

(обратно)

122

Hellie, Muscovite Society, pp. 33-47.

(обратно)

123

P. P. Smirnov, Posadskie liudi i ikh klassovaia bor'ba do serediny XVII veka, 2 vols. (Moscow and Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1947-8).

(обратно)

124

Ibid.; Hellie, 'Stratification'.

(обратно)

125

Hellie, Muscovite Society, pp. 144-56, A. E. Vorms et al. (eds.), Pamiatniki istorii krest'ian XlV-XIXvv. (Moscow: N. N. Klochkov, 1910), pp. 50-2.

(обратно)

126

N. A. Gorskaia et al., Krest'iamtvo v periody rannego i razvitogo feodalizma (Istoriia krest'ianstva SSSR s drevneishikh vremen do velikoi oktiabr'skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii, vol. ii) (Moscow: Nauka, 1990), pp. 379-80.

(обратно)

127

Hellie, Muscovite Society, pp. 167-76.

(обратно)

128

Ibid., pp. 178-91.

(обратно)

129

Ibid., pp. 191-6.

(обратно)

130

Hellie, Enserfment, pp. 133-8,188-9.

(обратно)

131

Hellie, Muscovite Society, pp. 198-205.

(обратно)

132

Richard Hellie, 'Patterns of Instability in Russian and Soviet History', Chicago Review of International Affairs i (i989): 3-34.

(обратно)

133

Hellie, Enserfment, pp. 134-45, et passim; Richard Hellie, 'Zemskii sobor', in MERSH, vol. xlv (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International Press, 1987), pp. 226-34.

(обратно)

134

Richard Hellie, 'Migration in Early Modern Russia, I480s-i780s', in David Eltis (ed.), Coerced and Free Migration. Global Perspectives (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002), pp. 292-323.

(обратно)

135

This practice continued for years thereafter, for without continuing enforcement the legal stratification of society would have been a farce. The distinguished Leningrad/St Petersburg historian A. G. Man'kov claimed that the fifty-two article decree of 2 March 1683 to the state's fugitive serf and slave hunters was the most important legislative document of the second half of the seventeenth century (RZ, vol. iv, p. 79).

(обратно)

136

Bruce Lenman and Geoffrey Parker, 'The State, the Community and the Criminal Law in Early Modern Europe', in V A. C. Gatrell, Bruce Lenman and Geoffrey Parker (eds.), Crime and the Law. The SocialHistory of Crime in Western Europe since 1500 (London: Europa Publications, 1980), pp. 11-48.

(обратно)

137

Hieromonach Nikolai Iarushevich, Tserkovnyi sudvRossii do izdaniia sobornogo ulozheniia Alekseia Mikhailovicha (1649 g.) . . . Istoriko-kanonicheskoe issledovanie (Petrograd: Sinodal'naia tipografiia, 1917); F. Dmitriev, Istoriia sudebnykh instantsii i grazhdanskogo appelliatsionnogo sudoproizvodstva ot sudebnika do uchrezhdeniia o guberniiakh (Moscow: Universitetskaia tipografiia, 1859), pp. 93-100, 324-33.

(обратно)

138

Richard Hellie (trans. and ed.), The Muscovite Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649, pt. 1: Text and Translation (Irvine, Calif.: Charles Schlacks, 1988).

(обратно)

139

A. P. Dobroklonskii, 'Solotchinskiimonastyr', ego slugiikrest'iane vXVII veke', ChOIDR, 1888, no. 144, kn. 1, ch. 5.

(обратно)

140

For discussion of bishops' authority, see Georg B. Michels, 'Ruling without Mercy: Seventeenth-Century Russian Bishops and their Officials', Kritika 4 (2003): 515-42.

(обратно)

141

George G. Weickhardt, 'Pre-Petrine Law and Western Law: The Influence of Roman and Canon Law', HUS 19 (1995): 756-83.

(обратно)

142

Richard Hellie, Slavery in Russia, 1450-1725 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 679-89.

(обратно)

143

See the extensive correspondence ofboyar B. I. Morozov with his bailiffs in A. I. Iakovlev (ed.), Akty khoziaistva boiarina B. I. Morozova, 2 vols. (Moscow and Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1940-5).

(обратно)

144

Although dated, this Stalinist-era collective work has good coverage of middle Volga and Siberia: Ocherki istorii SSSR. Period feodalizma. XVII vek (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1955), pp. 787-869.

(обратно)

145

V A. Aleksandrov and N. N. Pokrovskii, Vlast' i obshchestvo. Sibir' v XVII v. (Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1991), and George V Lantzeff Siberia in the Seventeenth Century (Berkeley: Uni­versity of California Press, 1943).

(обратно)

146

A. I. Pashuk, Sud i sudnichestvo na Livoberezhnii Ukraini v XVII-XVIII st. (L'viv, 1967), chs. 2-3.

(обратно)

147

Two classic surveys oflocal government and the guba administration are: Boris Chicherin, OblastnyeuchrezhdeniiaRossiivXVIIveke (Moscow: Tipografiia AleksandraSemena, 1856); and Hans-Joachim Torke, Die staatsbedingte Gesellschaft im moskauerReich. Zar und Zemlja in der altrussischen Herschaftsverfassung, 1613-1689 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974).

(обратно)

148

Hereafter references to chapters and articles in the Ulozhenie will be provided in the text, and abbreviated, e.g. '13:3'.

(обратно)

149

V N. Glaz'ev, Vlast' i obshchestvo na iugeRossii vXVIIveke: Protivodeistvie ugolovnoiprestup- nosti (Voronezh: Voronezhskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2001).

(обратно)

150

Dmitriev, Istoriiasudebnykh instantsii, p. 348.

(обратно)

151

A classic study ofgovernment in the north: M. M. Bogoslovskii, Zemskoe samoupravlenie na russkom severe v XVII veke, in ChOIDR 1910, no. 232, kn. 1, pp. i-viii, 321 pp. and 105 pp. of addenda; and 1912, no. 214, 2, pp. i-iv, 311 pp.

(обратно)

152

Good surveys include A. G. Man'kov, Zakonodatel'stvo i pravo Rossii vtoroi poloviny XVII v. (St Petersburg: Nauka, 1998); V S. Nersesiants (ed.), Razvitie russkogo prava v XV-pervoi polovine XVII v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1986), and E. A. Skripilev (ed.), Razvitie russkogo prava vtoroi poloviny XVII-XVIII vv. (Moscow: Nauka, 1992).

(обратно)

153

N. F. Demidova, Sluzhilaia biurokratiia v Rossii XVII v. i ee rol' v formirovanii absoliutizma (Moscow: Nauka, 1987).

(обратно)

154

Brian L. Davies, 'The Politics of Give and Take: Kormlenie as Service Remuneration and Generalized Exchange, 1488-1726', in Ann M. Kleimola and Gail Lenhoff (eds.), Culture and Identity in Muscovy, 1359-1584, UCLA Slavic Studies, n.s. 3 (Moscow: ITZ-Garant, 1997), pp. 39-67, and P V Sedov, 'Podnosheniia v moskovskikh prikazakh XVII veka', Otechestvennaia istoriia, 1996, no. 1:139-50. See also Chapter 20 in the present volume.

(обратно)

155

Christoph Shmidt, Sozialkontrolle in Moskau :Justiz, Kriminalitat und Leibeigenschaft, 1649­1785 (Stuttgart: F. Steiner Verlag, 1996), pp. 76-92.

(обратно)

156

George G. Weickhardt, 'Due Process and Equal Justice in the Muscovite Codes', RR 51 (1992): 463-80.

(обратно)

157

For more detail on trial procedures, see my By Honor Bound: State and Society in Early Modern Russia (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), ch. 3.

(обратно)

158

Nancy S. Kollmann, 'The Extremes of Patriarchy: Spousal Abuse and Murder in Early Modern Russia', RH25 (1998): 133-40.

(обратно)

159

Three sudebniki: PRP, 8 vols. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo iuridicheskoi lit- eratury, 1952-63), vyp. iv: Pamiatniki prava perioda ukrepleniia russkogo tsentralizovannogo gosudarstvaXV-XVIIvv., ed. L. V Cherepnin (1956), pp. 229-350, 409-570.

(обратно)

160

I. I. Lappo (ed.), Litovskii statut v moskovskom perevode-redaktsii (Iur'ev: Tipografiia K. Mattisena, 1916).

(обратно)

161

PRP, vyp. iv, pp. 353-405 and PRP, vyp. v: Pamiatniki pravaperiodasoslovno-predstavitel'noi monarkhii. PervaiapolovinaXVII v., ed. L. V Cherepnin (1959), pp. 185-532.

(обратно)

162

1669 criminal law and land decrees: PRP, vyp. vii: Pamiatnikipravaperiodasozdaniiaabsoli- utnoi monarkhii. Vtoraiapolovina XVII v., ed. L. V Cherepnin (1963), pp. 57-100, 396-434.

(обратно)

163

Richard Hellie, 'Muscovite Law and Society: The Ulozhenie of 1649 as a Reflection of the Political and Social Development of Russia since the Sudebnik of 1589', unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1965.

(обратно)

164

Valerie A. Kivelson, 'The Effects of Partible Inheritance: Gentry Families and the State in Muscovy', RR 53 (1994): 197-212.

(обратно)

165

1667 Trade Regulations: PRP, vyp. vii, pp. 303-28.

(обратно)

166

Pieter Spierenburg, The Spectacle of Suffering. Executions and the Evolution ofRepression:From a Preindustrial Metropolis to the European Experience (Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press, 1984).

(обратно)

167

That is, a tax-bearing population attached to a legal commercial suburb. Conversely, other towns had a legal posad but lacked commercial activity

(обратно)

168

VP. Zagorovskii, Belgorodskaia cherta (Voronezh: Izdatel'stvo Voronezhskogo univer- siteta, 1969), pp. 211, 227-9.

(обратно)

169

R. A. French, 'The Early and Medieval Russian Town', in J. H. Bater and R. A. French (eds.), Studies in Russian Historical Geography (London: Academic Press, 1983), pp. 249-77; R. A. French, 'The Urban Network of Later Medieval Russia', in Geographical Studies on the Soviet Union: Essays in Honor of Chauncy D. Harris (Chicago: University of Chicago, Department of Geography Research Paper no. 211,1984), pp. 29-51.

(обратно)

170

Ia. E. Vodarskii, Naselenie Rossii v kontse XVII v-nachale XVIII v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1977), p. 133.

(обратно)

171

Ibid., p. 127; Ia. E. Vodarskii, 'Chislennost' i razmeshchenieposadskogo naseleniiavRossii vo vtoroi polovine XVII v.', in Gorodafeodal'noi Rossii (Moscow: Nauka, 1966), p. 290.

(обратно)

172

D.J. B. Shaw, 'Southern Frontiers of Muscovy, 1550-1700', in Bater and French, Studies, pp. 117-42.

(обратно)

173

P. P. Smirnov, GorodaMoskovskogo gosudarstvav pervoi polovine XVII veke, vol. I, pt. 2 (Kiev: A. I. Grossman, 1919); Vodarskii, 'Chislennost' '; Henry L. Eaton, 'Decline and Recovery of the Russian Cities from 1500 to 1700', CASS 11 (1977): 220-52.

(обратно)

174

'White places' were parts of towns which were free of the normal tax and service obligations.

(обратно)

175

DopAI, vol. ix (St Petersburg: Tipografiia II Otdeleniia Sobstvennoi E. I. V Kantseliarii, 1875), no. 106, pp. 219-314.

(обратно)

176

Vodarskii, 'Chislennost'', pp. 282-90; Smirnov, Goroda, pp. 32ft

(обратно)

177

Eaton, 'Decline and Recovery', pp. 235-46.

(обратно)

178

Ibid., pp. 250-i.

Key: i. Posad households, C.1550-1590S; 2. Posad households, 1646; 3. Servitorhouseholds, 1650 (figures in parentheses - 1632); 4. Other households, 1646; 5. Posad households, 1652; 6. Posad households, 1678; 7. Servitor households, 1670s (partial data); 8. Other households, 1678 (partial data).

a. Data for i6i0s

b. Data for 1638

c. Data for i700

Sources: Henry L. Eaton, 'Decline and recovery of the Russian cities from 1500 to 1700', Canadian-American Slavic Studies 11 no. 2 (1977): 220-52; Ia. E. Vodarskii, 'Chislennost' i razmeshchenie posadskogo naseleniia v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XVIIv.', in Goroda feodal'noi Rossii (Moscow, 1966), pp. 271-97.

Figure 25.1. Urban household totals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (towns with 500 or more households in the posad in the seventeenth century)

(обратно)

179

PaulBushkovitch, The Merchants ofMoscow, 1580-1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 87-91.

(обратно)

180

J. Pallot and D. J. B. Shaw, Landscape and Settlement inRomanovRussia, 1613-1917 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 241-64, esp. 242-4, and also 308-9.

(обратно)

181

Vodarskii, 'Chislennost'', p. 279.

(обратно)

182

Ibid., pp. 282-90.

(обратно)

183

J. de Vries, European Urbanization, 1500-1800 (London: Methuen, 1984), pp. 254-8.

(обратно)

184

Ibid., p. 12.

(обратно)

185

Pallot and Shaw, Landscape, pp. 23-4.

(обратно)

186

Ibid., p. 246.

(обратно)

187

P. P. Smirnov, Posadskie liudi i ikh klassovaiabor'ba do seredinyXVIIv., 2 vols. (Moscow and Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1947-8), vol. ii, pp. 701-18.

(обратно)

188

R. Hellie (ed. and trans.), The Muscovite Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649, pt. 1: Text and Translation (Irvine, Calif.: Charles Schlacks, 1988), ch. 19, art. 9, 13, pp. 154-5 (hereafter Hellie, Ulozhenie).

(обратно)

189

Ibid., p. 153.

(обратно)

190

Ibid., p. 155.

(обратно)

191

Ibid.

(обратно)

192

E. V Chistiakova, 'Remeslo i torgovlia na Voronezhskom posade v seredine XVII v.', Izvestiia Voronezhskogo Gosudarstvennogo universiteta 25 (1954): 46-63; V A. Aleksandrov, 'Streletskoe naselenie iuzhnykh gorodov Rossii vXVIIv.', in Novoe o proshlom nashei strany (Moscow: Nauka, 1967), pp. 235-50.

(обратно)

193

Hellie, Ulozhenie, p. 157. See also art. 15, p. 156; art. 9, p. 155.

(обратно)

194

IstoriiaMoskvy, vol. i: Periodfeodalizma, XII-XVIIvv. (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1952), p. 446; see P. V Sytin, Istoriiaplanirovki i zastroiki Moskvy. Materialy i issledovaniia, vol. i: 1147-1762 (Moscow: Trudy Muzeia Istorii i Rekonstruktsii Moskvy, vyp. 1, 1950), p. 121.

(обратно)

195

Eaton, 'Decline and Recovery', pp. 250-1.

(обратно)

196

IstoriiaMoskvy, p. 453; Eaton, 'Decline and Recovery', p. 250.

(обратно)

197

Bushkovitch, The Merchants ofMoscow, pp. 69, 83-4, 101,125-6, 168-9.

(обратно)

198

V Snegirev, Moskovskie slobody (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1947), p. 18.

(обратно)

199

Ibid., pp. 19-20.

(обратно)

200

Istoriia Moskvy, pp. 373, 462-3.

(обратно)

201

Ibid., p. 450.

(обратно)

202

For the location of the Earth Town, see below.

(обратно)

203

For the location of the White Town, see below.

(обратно)

204

Istoriia Moskvy, p. 373.

(обратно)

205

Ibid., pp. 386-8.

(обратно)

206

Adam Olearius, The Travels of Olearius in Seventeenth-Century Russia, ed. and trans. Samuel H. Baron (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1967), p. 114.

(обратно)

207

Ibid., p. 114.

(обратно)

208

See e.g. B. N. Mironov, Vnutrennii rynok Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XVIII-pervoi polovine XIX v. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1981).

(обратно)

209

Mertsalov, Ocherki, pp. I2ff.

(обратно)

210

Hellie, Ulozhenie, ch. 1, pp. 3-4.

(обратно)

211

Ibid., ch. 10, art. 25-6, pp. 28-9.

(обратно)

212

Ibid., ch. 19, art. 40, p. 161.

(обратно)

213

Olearius, Travels, pp. 29,51,73,129,263,281 etc.; S. H. Baron, 'The Origins of Seventeenth- Century Moscow's Nemeckaja sloboda', California Slavic Studies 5 (1970): 1-17.

(обратно)

214

E. Service, Origins of the State and Civilization: the Process of Cultural Evolution (New York: Norton, 1975), p. 51; Paul Wheatley, The Pivot of the Four Quarters: A Preliminary Enquiry into the Origins and Character of the Ancient Chinese City (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1971).

(обратно)

215

G. Hosking, Russia: People and Empire (London: HarperCollins, 1997), pp. 4-8; D. B. Rowland, 'Moscow - the Third Rome or the New Israel?', RR 55 (1996): 591-614.

(обратно)

216

Ivan Zabelin, Domashnii bytrusskikh tsarei, vol. i (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul'tury, 2000),

pp. 393-453.

(обратно)

217

Robin Milner-Gulland, The Russians (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 212-20; A. L. Batalov and T. N. Viatchanina, 'Ob ideinom znachenii i interpretatsii Ierusalimskogo obraza v russkoi arkhitekture XVI-XVII vv.', Arkhitekturnoe nasledstvo 36 (1988): 22-42.

(обратно)

218

G. V Alferova, Russkii gorod XVI-XVII vekov (Moscow: Stroiizdat, 1989), pp. 56-61; D. I. Bagalei, Materialy dlia istorii kolonizatsii i byta stepnoi okrainy Moskovskogo gosudarstva v XVI-XVII vekakh, vol. I (Khar'kov, 1886), p. 9; Barashkov, Arkhangel'sk, p. 17.

(обратно)

219

G. P. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, vol. I (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966), pp. 344-62; Milner-Gulland, The Russians, pp. 96-103; W F. Ryan, The Bath­house at Midnight: An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, i999), p. i4.

(обратно)

220

Alferova, Russkiigorod, p. 180.

(обратно)

221

O. V Ovsiannikov, 'Oboronitel'nye sooruzheniia severorusskikh gorodov XVI-XVII vekov', in Letopis' Severa, vi (Moscow, 1972), pp. 211-23.

(обратно)

222

See e.g. G. V Alferova and V A. Kharlamov, KievvovtoroipolovineXVIIveke (Kiev: Naukova Dumka, 1982).

(обратно)

223

Pallot and Shaw, Landscape, pp. 23-4.

(обратно)

224

French, 'The Early and Medieval', pp. 268-74.

(обратно)

225

Sytin, Istoriiaplanirovki, pp. 42, 52, 58-9.

(обратно)

226

Passages from the Diary of Patrick Gordon ofAuchleuchries in the Years 1635-1699 (London: Frank Cass, I968), pp. 43-4.

(обратно)

227

Sytin, Istoriiaplanirovki, pp. 84-90,162ff.

(обратно)

228

IstoriiaMoskvy, p. 509; Olearius, Travels, p. 154.

(обратно)

229

A. V Ikonnikov Tysiachialet russkoi arkhitektury (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1990), pp. 182-95.

(обратно)

230

L. N. Tverskoi, Russkoe gradostroitel'stvo dokontsaXVIIveka: planirovkai zastroikarusskikh gorodov (Moscow and Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1953).

(обратно)

231

V A. Shkvarikov, Ocherk istorii planirovki i zastroiki russkikh gorodov (Moscow: Gosu- darstvennoe Izdatel'stvo Literatury po Stroitel'stvu i Arkhitekture, 1954).

(обратно)

232

Alferova, Russkii gorod.

(обратно)

233

Hellie, Ulozhenie, ch. 10, arts. 278, 279.

(обратно)

234

de Vries, European Urbanization.

(обратно)

235

Ibid., p. 12.

(обратно)

236

B. F. Porshnev, 'Sotsial'no-politicheskaia obstanovka v Rossii vo vremia Smolenskoi voiny', Istoriia SSSR, 1957, no.5: pp. 112-40; B. F. Porshnev 'Razvitie "Balashovskogo" dvizheniia v fevrale-marte 1634 g.', in Problemy obshchestvenno-politicheskoi istorii Rossii i slavianskikh stran. Sbornik statei k 70-letiiu akademika M. N. Tikhomirova (Moscow: Izda- tel'stvo vostochnoi literatury, 1963), pp. 225-35.

(обратно)

237

Adam Olearius, The Travels of Olearius in Seventeenth-Century Russia, ed. and trans. Samuel H. Baron (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1967), p. 153.

(обратно)

238

E. V Chistiakova, Gorodskie vosstaniia v Rossii v pervoi polovine XVII veka (30-40-e gody) (Voronezh: Izdatel'stvo Voronezhskogo universiteta, 1975), pp. 59-61.

(обратно)

239

Gorodskie vosstaniiav Moskovskom gosudarstve XVII v. Sbornik dokumentov, ed. K. V Bazile- vich (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoesotsial'no-ekonomicheskoeizdatel'stvo, 1936), pp. 35-92; P. P. Smirnov, Posadskie liudi i ikh klassovaia bor'ba do serediny XVII veka, 2 vols. (Moscow and Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1947-8), vol. ii, pp. 158-248; S. V Bakhrushin, 'Moskovskoe vosstanie 1648 g.', in his Nauchnye trudy, 4 vols. (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1952-9), vol. ii (1954), pp. 46-91; Chistiakova, Gorodskie vosstaniia, pp. 62-106; Valerie A. Kivelson, 'The Devil Stole his Mind: The Tsar and the 1648 Moscow Uprising', American Historical Review 98 (1993): 733-56.

(обратно)

240

Chistiakova, Gorodskie vosstaniia, pp. 107-234.

(обратно)

241

N. N. Pokrovskii, Tomsk. 1648-1649 gg. Voevodskaia vlast' i zemskie miry (Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1989).

(обратно)

242

Gorodskievosstaniia,pp. 93-108; BrianL. Davies, StatePowerandCommunityinEarlyModern Russia: the Case of Kozlov, 1635-1649 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 225-42.

(обратно)

243

Gorodskie vosstaniia,p. 113.

(обратно)

244

Ibid., pp. 29-30.

(обратно)

245

Chistiakova, Gorodskie vosstaniia, pp. 156-64.

(обратно)

246

M. N. Tikhomirov, Klassovaiahor'hav Rossii XVII v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1969), pp. 23-169, 234-396; 'Miatezhnoe vremia'. Sledstvennoe delo o Novgorodskom vosstanii 1650 goda, comp. G. M. Kovalenko, T. A. Lapteva, T. B. Solov'eva (St Petersburg and Kishinev: Nestor- Historia, 2001).

(обратно)

247

V I. Buganov, Moskovskoe vosstanie 1662 g. (Moscow: Nauka, 1964); Vosstanie 1662 g. v Moskve. Sbornik dokumentov, comp. V I. Buganov (Moscow: Nauka, 1964).

(обратно)

248

Krest'ianskaiavoinapodpredvoditel'stvom StepanaRazina. Sbornik dokumentov, 4 vols. (in 5) (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1954-76); I. V Stepanov Krest'ianskaia voina v Rossii v 1670-1671 gg. Vosstanie Stepana Razina, 2 vols. (Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo Leningradskogo universiteta, 1966-72); Michael Khodarkovsky, 'The Stepan Razin Uprising: Was it a "Peasant War"?', JGO 42 (1994): 1-19.

(обратно)

249

VI. Buganov Moskovskie vosstaniia kontsa XVII veka (Moscow: Nauka, 1969), pp. 87-318; Vosstanie vMoskve 1682 goda. Sbornik dokumentov, comp. N. G. Savich (Moscow: Nauka, 1976); Lindsey Hughes, Sophia, Regent of Russia, 1657-1704 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 52-88.

(обратно)

250

Buganov, Moskovskie vosstaniia, pp. 318-47.

(обратно)

251

Khodarkovsky 'The Stepan Razin Uprising'.

(обратно)

252

Robert O. Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors. The Boyar Elite in Russia, 1613-1689 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 82-97.

(обратно)

253

Chistiakova, Gorodskie vosstaniia, pp. 88-90.

(обратно)

254

Buganov, Moskovskoe vosstanie 1662 g., pp. 41-2.

(обратно)

255

Buganov, Moskovskie vosstaniia, pp. 198-9.

(обратно)

256

Tikhomirov Klassovaiabor'ba, pp. 93-8.

(обратно)

257

Zapiski inostrantsev o vosstanii Stepana Razina, ed. A. G. Man'kov (Leningrad: Nauka,

i968), pp. 99, i24.

(обратно)

258

See e.g. V Nazarov, 'The Peasant Wars in Russia and their Place in the History of the Class Struggle in Europe', in The Comparative Historical Method in Soviet Mediaeval Studies (Problems of the Contemporary World, no. 79) (Moscow: USSR Academy of Sciences, 1979), pp. 115-16.

(обратно)

259

Khodarkovsky, 'The Stepan Razin Uprising', pp. 13, 15-16.

(обратно)

260

Krest'ianskaiavoina, vol. n.i, no. 22, p. 31; no. 29, p. 44.

(обратно)

261

Gorodskie vosstaniia, pp. 54, 56-7, 61, 75.

(обратно)

262

Buganov, Moskovskoe vosstanie 1662 g., pp. 44-7.

(обратно)

263

Krest'ianskaiavoina, vol. I, no. 171, p. 235.

(обратно)

264

Buganov, Moskovskie vosstaniia, p. 151.

(обратно)

265

Chistiakova, Gorodskie vosstaniia, pp. 69- 70; Tikhomirov Klassovaia bor'ba, p. 70.

(обратно)

266

GrigorijKotosixin, O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajlovica. Text and commentary, ed. A. E. Pennington (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 115; Buganov, Moskovskie vosstaniia, p. 251.

(href=#r266>обратно)

267

Krest'ianskaiavoina, vol. I, no. 171, pp. 235-6.

(обратно)

268

Stepanov Krest'ianskaiavoina, vol. Ii.i, p. 89; Buganov, Moskovskie vosstaniia, pp. 113,152-3.

(обратно)

269

S. K. Rosovetskii, 'Ustnaia proza XVI-XVII vv. ob Ivane Groznom - pravitele', Russkii fol'klor 20 (1981): 90-92.

(обратно)

270

Gorodskie vosstaniia, pp. 35, 46-7.

(обратно)

271

Pokrovskii, Tomsk,pp. 97-8,107-8. See also Davies, State Power and Community,pp. 215-16.

(обратно)

272

Bakhrushin, 'Moskovskoe vosstanie i648g.', p. 79; Tikhomirov, Klassovaia bor'ba, p. 379; Krest'ianskaia voina, vol. I, no. 171, p. 235; Buganov, Moskovskie vosstaniia, p. 156.

(обратно)

273

Tikhomirov Klassovaia bor'ba,pp. 254,362; Buganov, Moskovskoe vosstanie 1662 g.,pp. 44-6; Buganov Moskovskie vosstaniia, pp. 154-5.

(обратно)

274

M. Perri, 'V chem sostoiala "izmena" zhertv narodnykh vosstanii XVII veka?', in Rossiia XV-XVIII stoletii. Sbornik nauchnykh statei, ed. I. O. Tiumentsev (Volgograd and St Petersburg: Volgogradskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 200i), p. 2i7.

(обратно)

275

Maureen Perrie, 'Indecent, Unseemly and Inappropriate Words: Popular Criticisms of the Tsar, 1648-50', FOG 58 (2001): 143-9.

(обратно)

276

Sil'vestr Medvedev, Sozertsanie kratkoe let 7190-92 (Kiev: Tipografiia Imperatorskogo Universiteta Sv. Vladimira, 1895), p. 44.

(обратно)

277

Maureen Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism in Early ModernRussia: The False Tsars of the Time of Troubles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 229-36.

(обратно)

278

P. V Lukin, Narodnye predstavleniia o gosudarstvennoi vlasti v Rossii XVII veka (Moscow: Nauka, 2000), pp. 103-69.

(обратно)

279

C. S. Ingerflom, 'Entrelemythe et la parole: l'action. Naissancede la conception politique du pouvoir en Russie', Annales: histoire, sciences sociales 51 (1996): 733-57; Maureen Perrie, 'Pretenders in the Name of the Tsar: Cossack "Tsareviches" in Seventeenth-Century Russia', FOG 56 (2000): 249-53.

(обратно)

280

Maureen Perrie, 'Popular Monarchism in Mid-i7th-Century Russia: the Politics of the "Sovereign's gramoty"', in Gyula Szvak (ed.), Muscovy: Peculiarities of its Development (Budapest: Magyar Ruszisztikai Intezet, 2003), pp. 135-42.

(обратно)

281

Krest'ianskaia voina, vol. I, no. 171, p. 235.

(обратно)

282

Zapiski inostrantsev, p. 97.

(обратно)

283

Stepanov Krest'ianskaia voina, vol. ii.i, p. 102; Chistiakova, Gorodskie vosstaniia, pp. 72-3;

Buganov, Moskovskie vosstaniia, pp. 158-61.

(обратно)

284

Chistiakova, Gorodskie vosstaniia, p. 242.

(обратно)

285

Metropolitan Makarii, Istoriia russkoi tserkvi, 12 vols. (Dusseldorf:Brucken-Verlag, 1968­9), vol. xi, pp. 3-8, 23-33; A. V Kartashev, Ocherkipo istorii russkoi tserkvi, 2 vols. (Moscow: Nauka, 1991), vol. ii, pp. 96-9; Pierre Pascal, Avvakum et les debuts du raskol, 2nd edn (Paris, The Hague: Mouton, 1969), pp. 25-7; Serge A. Zenkovsky, Russkoe staroobriadchestvo; dukhovnyedvizheniiasemnadtsatogoveka (Forum Slavicum, Bd. 21) (Munich: W Fink, 1970), pp. 70-4; Paul Bushkovitch, Religion and Society in Russia:The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 52-3.

(обратно)

286

Pascal, Avvakum, pp. 8-14,21-4; Zenkovsky, Russkoe staroobriadchestvo, pp. 91-6; Kartashev, Ocherki, vol. 11, pp. 85-94.

(обратно)

287

A central theme in GeorgB. Michels, At War with the Church. Religious DissentinSeventeenth- Century Russia (Stanford,Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999).

(обратно)

288

P. M. Stroev, Spiski ierarkhov i nastoiatelei monastyrei rossiiskoi tserkvi (St Petersburg: Tipografiia V S. Balasheva, 1877).

(обратно)

289

Michels, War, pp. 31-2,163-70,187.

(обратно)

290

Most recently, Daniel H. Kaiser,' "Whose Wife Will She Be at the Resurrection?" Marriage and Remarriage in Early Modern Russia', SR 62 (2003): 302-23.

(обратно)

291

Ia. E. Vodarskii, 'Tserkovnye organizatsii i ikh krepostnye krest'iane vo vtoroi polovine XVII - nachale XVIII v.', in Istoricheskaia geografiia Rossii. XII - nachalo XX v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1975), p. 76.

(обратно)

292

S. V Nikolaeva, 'Vklady i vkladchiki v Troitse-Sergiev Monastyr' v XVI-XVII vekakh. (Po vkladnym knigam XVII veka)', in Tserkov' v istorii Rossii, 3 vols. (Moscow: Institut rossiiskoi istorii Rossiiskoi akademii nauk, 1997-9), vol. 11 (1998), pp. 81-107.

(обратно)

293

Vodarskii, 'Tserkovnye organizatsii'; Iu. V Got'e, Zamoskovnyi krai v XVII veke (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoe izdatel'stvo, 1937), pp. 230-53.

(обратно)

294

Robert O. Crummey, 'Court Spectacles in Seventeenth Century Russia: Illusion and Reality', in Daniel Clarke Waugh (ed.), Essays in Honor of A. A. Zimin (Columbus, Oh.: Slavica, 1985), pp. 130-58; Michael S. Flier, 'Breaking the Code: The Image ofthe Tsar in the Muscovite Palm Sunday Ritual', in Michael S. Flier and Daniel Rowland (eds.), Medieval Russian Culture, vol. ii (California Slavic Studies, 19) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 213-42; Michael S. Flier, 'Court Ceremony in an Age ofReform. Patriarch Nikon and the Palm Sunday Ritual', in Samuel H. Baron and Nancy Shields Kollmann (eds.), Religion and Culture in Early Modern Russia and Ukraine (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1997), pp. 74-95; Paul Bushkovitch, 'The Epiphany Ceremony of the Russian Court in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries', RR 49 (1990): 1-18.

(обратно)

295

I. Zabelin, Domashniibytrusskikh tsareivXVIiXVIIst. (Moscow: TipografiiaA. I. Mamon- tova, 1895), pp. 376-435; Nancy Shields Kollmann, 'Pilgrimage, Procession, and Symbolic Space in Sixteenth-Century Russian Politics', in Flier and Rowland (eds.), MedievalRus- sian Culture, vol. 11, pp. 163-81.

(обратно)

296

N. V Rozhdestvenskii, 'K istorii bor'by s tserkovnymi bezporiadkami, otgoloskami iazy- chestva i porokami v russkom bytu XVII v.', ChOIDR 201 (1902, kn. 2), pp. 19-23.

(обратно)

297

AAE, 4 vols. (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia II Otdeleniia Sobstvennoi E. I. V Kantseliarii, 1836), vol. iv, pp. 481-2 (no. 321).

(обратно)

298

Pascal, Avvakum, pp. 58-9.

(обратно)

299

'Deianiia Moskovskogo tserkovnogo sobora 1649 goda', ed. S. A. Belokurov, ChOIDR 171 (1894, kn. 4): 1-52.

(обратно)

300

A. S. Zernova, Knigi kirillovskoi pechati izdannye v Moskve v XVI-XVII vekakh (Moscow: Gosudarstvennaia Ordena Lenina biblioteka SSSRimeni V I. Lenina, 1958), pp. 46-77; Pascal, Avvakum, pp. 65-71,128-32; Zenkovsky, Russkoe staroobriadchestvo, pp. 91-101.

(обратно)

301

N. Kharuzin, 'K voprosu o bor'be moskovskogo pravitel'stva s narodnymi iazycheskimi obriadami i sueveriiami v polovine XVII v.', Etnograficheskoe Obozrenie, 1879, no. 1,143-51; AI, vol. iv (St Petersburg: Tipografiia II Otdeleniia Sobstvennoi E. I. V Kantseliarii, 1842), pp. 124-6.

(обратно)

302

Russell Zguta, Russian Minstrels: A History of the Skomorokhi (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), pp. 63-5; M. M. Gromyko, Mir russkoi derevni (Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 1991), pp. 325-9,345-60.

(обратно)

303

Pascal, Avvakum, pp. 156-8.

(обратно)

304

Archpriest Avvakum, Zhitie Protopopa Avvakuma im samim napisannoe i drugie ego sochi- neniia, ed. N. K. Gudzii (Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1960), pp. 61-4; Archpriest Avvakum, The Life Written by Himself: With the Study ofV. V. Vinogradov, trans. and ed. Kenneth N. Brostrom (Michigan Slavic translations, no. 4) (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1979), pp. 45-50.

(обратно)

305

Sobornoe ulozhenie 1649 goda: tekst, kommentarii, ed. L.I. Ivina, G.V Abramovich et al. (Leningrad: Nauka, Leningradskoe otdelenie, 1987), pp. 69-70, 242-6; M. I. Gorchakov Monastyrskii prikaz, 1649-1725 g. Opyt istoriko-iuridicheskogo issledovaniia (St. Petersburg: A. Transhel', 1868), pp. 40-90.

(обратно)

306

William Palmer, The Patriarch and the Tsar, 6 vols. (London: Trubner and Co., 1871-6), vol. i (1871), pp. 292-548; Patriarch Nikon, Patriarch Nikon on Church and State - Nikon's 'Refutation' (Vozrazhenie ili razorenie smirennogo Nikona, Bozhieiu milostiiu Patriarkha, pro- tivo voprosov boiarina Simeona Streshneva), ed. Valerie A. Tumins and George Vernadsky (Berlin, New York, Amsterdam: Mouton, 1982), pp. 351-601.

(обратно)

307

Zenkovsky, Russkoe staroobriadchestvo, pp. 193-5.

(обратно)

308

Kartashev, Ocherki, vol. 11, pp. 126-31.

(обратно)

309

On the reforms, N. F. Kapterev Patriarkh Nikon i Tsar'AlekseiMikhailovich, 2 vols. (Sergiev Posad: Tipografiia Sviato-Troitskoi Sergievoi Lavry, 1909-12); Paul Meyendorff,Russia, Ritual, and Reform: the Liturgical Reforms of Nikon in the 17 th Century (Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimir's Press, 1991).

(обратно)

310

Karl Christian Felmy, Die Deutung der Gottlichen Liturgie in der russischen Theologie: Wege und Wandlungen russischerLiturgie-Auslegung (Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte, 54) (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1984), pp. 80-111; Boris A. Uspensky 'The Schism and Cultural Conflict in the Seventeenth Century', in Stephen K. Batalden (ed.), Seeking God: The Recovery of Religious Identity in Orthodox Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1993), pp. 106-43.

(обратно)

311

Kapterev Patriarkh Nikon, vol. i, pp. 192-8; Meyendorff, Russia, pp. 61-2.

(обратно)

312

Materialy dlia istorii raskola zapervoe vremia ego sushchestvovaniia, ed. N. Subbotin, 9 vols. (Moscow: Redaktsiia 'Bratskoe slovo', 1874-90), vol. i,pp. 51-78,99-100; Avvakum, Zhitie, p. 65.

(обратно)

313

Materialy, vol. i, pp. 100-2.

(обратно)

314

Michels, War, pp. 112-15.

(обратно)

315

Dokumenty Razriadnogo, Posol'skogo, Novgorodskogo i Tainogo Prikazov o raskol'nikakh v gorodakh Rossii, 1654-1684 gg., ed. V S. Rumiantseva (Moscow: AN SSSR, Institut istorii SSSR, 1990), pp. 29-58; Michels, War, pp. 33-8.

(обратно)

316

Palmer, Patriarch and Tsar, vol. i; Nikon, Refutation.

(обратно)

317

Contrast M. V Zyzykin, Patriarkh Nikon. Ego gosudarstvennye i kanonicheskie idei, 3 vols. (Warsaw: Sinodal'naia Tipografiia, 1931-8) with Kapterev Patriarkh Nikon.

(обратно)

318

Michels, War, pp. 28-30,143-4.

(обратно)

319

Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, Sobranie pervoe, 45 vols. (St Petersburg: Tipografiia II Otdeleniia S.I.V Kantseliarii, 1830-43), vol. ii, pp. 647-50 (no. 1102).

(обратно)

320

Robert O. Crummey The Old Believers & the World of Antichrist. The Vyg Community and the Russian State, 1694-1855 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970), pp. 39-57; Georg B. Michels, 'The Violent Old Belief: An Examination ofReligious Dissent on the Karelian Frontier', RH 19 (1992): 203-29.

(обратно)

321

K. V Kharlampovich, Malorossiiskoe vliianie na velikorusskuiu tserkovnuiu zhizn', vol. i (Kazan': Izdanie knizhnogo magazina M. A. Golubeva, 1914), pp. 214-32.

(обратно)

322

See Iu. M. Lotman and B. A. Uspenskii, 'Binary Models in the Dynamics of Russian Culture to the End of the Eighteenth Century', in A. D. and A. S. Nakhimovsky (eds.), The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 30-66.

(обратно)

323

See A. I. Nekrasov (ed.), Barokko v Rossii (Moscow: GAKhN, 1926) and summaries of debates in James Cracraft, The Petrine Revolution in Russian Architecture (Chicago: Univer­sity of Chicago Press, 1988) and in his The Petrine Revolution in Russian Imagery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). Also Natalia Kostotchkina, 'The Baroque in 17th- Century Russian Art: Icon-Painting, Painting, Decorative and Applied Art', unpublished M.Phil. thesis, SSEES, University of London, 1994.

(обратно)

324

D. S. Likhachev, 'Barokko i ego russkii variant XVII veka', Russkaialiteratura, 1969, no. 2: 18-45, and his Razvitie russkoi literatury X-XVIIvekov (Leningrad: Nauka, 1973), p. 214.

(обратно)

325

See Robert O. Crummey 'Court Spectacles in Seventeenth-Century Russia: Illusion and Reality', in D. C. Waugh (ed.), Essays in Honor of A. A. Zimin (Columbus, Oh.: Slavica, 1985), pp. 130-46; Paul Bushkovitch, 'The Epiphany Ceremony of the Russian Court in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries', RR 49 (1990): 1-18.

(обратно)

326

See Philip Longworth, Alexis Tsar of All the Russia (London: Secker and Warburg, 1984); Lindsey Hughes, 'The Petrine Year: Anniversaries and Festivals in the Reign of Peter the Great (1682-1725)', in Karin Friedrich (ed.), Festive Culture in Germany and Europe from the 16th to the20th Century (Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen Press, 2000), pp. 148-68.

(обратно)

327

See Isolde Thyret, Between God and Tsar. Religious Symbolism and the Royal Women of Muscovite Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001).

(обратно)

328

Longworth, Alexis, pp. 118-20.

(обратно)

329

William C.Brumfield, AHistoryofRussian Architecture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 141-5.

(обратно)

330

See Hughes, 'Petrine Year' and her 'The Courts ofMoscow and St Petersburg. c. 1547­1725', in John Adamson (ed.), The Princely Courts of Europe 1500-1750 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999), pp. 294-313.

(обратно)

331

I. L. Buseva-Davydova, KhramyMoskovskogoKremlia: sviatynii drevnosti (Moscow: Nauka, 1997), pp. 42-3, 103-4.

(обратно)

332

B. N. Floria, 'Nekotorye dannye o nachale svetskogo portreta v Rossii', Arkhiv russkoi istorii 1 (1992): 137-9; FrankKampfer, DasrussischeHerrscherbildvondenAnfangenbiszuPeter dem Grossen. Studien zur Entwicklung politischer Ikonographie im byzantinischen Kulturkreis (Recklinghausen: A. Bongers, 1978), pp. 211-12.

(обратно)

333

Jeremy Howard, The ScottishKremlinBuilder: Christopher Galloway (Edinburgh: Manifesto, 1997); Lindsey Hughes, 'The West Comes to Russian Architecture', in Paul Dukes (ed.), Russia and Europe (London: Collins and Brown, 1991), pp. 24-47.

(обратно)

334

Brumfield, History, pp. 147-9.

(обратно)

335

Ibid., pp. 158-64.

(обратно)

336

See Cracraft, Architecture, pp. 85-109; Lindsey Hughes, 'Western European Graphic Material as a Source for Moscow Baroque Architecture', SEER 55 (1977): 433-43; and her 'Moscow Baroque - a Controversial Style', Transactions of the Association of Russian- American Scholars in USA 15 (1982): 69-93.

(обратно)

337

See N. Gordeeva and L. Tarasenko, Tserkov'PokrovavFiliakh (Moscow: 'Izobrazitel'noe iskusstvo', 1980); Brumfield, History, pp. 184-93.

(обратно)

338

See Lindsey Hughes, 'Byelorussian Craftsmen in Seventeenth-Century Russia and their Influence on Muscovite Architecture', Journal of Byelorussian Studies 3 (1976): 327-41. On wider issues, Max Okenfuss, The Rise and Fall of Latin Humanism in Early-Modern Russia: Pagan Authors, Ukrainians, and the Resiliency of Muscovy (Leiden and New York: Brill, 1995), and editors' introduction to Baron and Kollmann (eds.), Religion and Culture, pp. 3-16.

(обратно)

339

S. P. Luppov, KnigavRossii XVII veka (Leningrad: Nauka, 1970); Hughes, 'Western Euro­pean Graphic Material'.

(обратно)

340

The borrowed words arkhitektor and arkhitektura first appear in the late i690s-early 1700s.

(обратно)

341

Samuel Collins, The Present State of Russia (London, 1671), pp. 64-5.

(обратно)

342

See Lindsey Hughes, 'Attitudes towards Foreigners in Early Modern Russia', in Cathryn Brennan and Murray Frame (eds.), Russia and the Wider World in Historical Perspective: Essays for Paul Dukes (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 1-23.

(обратно)

343

Cracraft, Architecture, pp. 40-2.

(обратно)

344

See T. M. Kol'tsova (ed.), Reznye ikonostasy i dereviannaia skul'ptura Russkogo Severa. Kataogvystavki (Archangel and Moscow: MKRF, 1995).

(обратно)

345

Brumfield, History, pp. 189-90; T. A. Gatova, 'Iz istorii dekorativnoi skul'ptury Moskvy nachalaXVIIIv.',inT. V Alekseeva(ed.), RusskoeiskusstvoXVIIIveka (Moscow: 'Iskusstvo', 1968), pp. 40-1.

(обратно)

346

See Lindsey Hughes, 'The Moscow Armoury and Innovations in i7th-Century Muscovite Art', CASS 13 (1979): 204-23; Cracraft, Imagery, pp. 107-15.

(обратно)

347

For a popular Soviet view, see N. G. Bekeneva, Simon Ushakov 1626-1686 (Leningrad: Khudozhnik RSFSR, 1984). Also V G. Briusova, Russkaia zhivopis' XVII veka (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1984); Lindsey Hughes, 'The Age of Transition: Seventeenth-Century Russian Icon-Painting', in Sarah Smyth and Stanford Kingston (eds.), Icons 88 (Dublin: Veritas Publications, i988), pp. 63-74.

(обратно)

348

'Poslanie nekoego izografaIosifaktsarevaizografui mudreishemu zhivopistsu Simonu Ushakovu' and 'Slovo k liuboshchatel'nomu ikonnogo pisaniia' (c.1667), as cited in Cracraft, Imagery, pp. 82-8.

(обратно)

349

E. S. Ovchinnikova, Portret v russkom iskusstve XVII veka (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1955), p. 13. Also I. E. Danilova and N. E. Mneva, 'Zhivopis' XVII veka', in I. E. Grabar' (ed.), Istoriia russkogo iskusstva, 12 vols. (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1953-61), vol. iv (1959), p. 380.

(обратно)

350

Lindsey Hughes, 'Simon Ushakov's Icon "The Tree of the Muscovite State" Revisited', FOG 58 (2001): 223-34; Thyret, Between God and Tsar, pp. 70-8; Kampfer, Herrscherbild,

pp. 227-30.

(обратно)

351

Ibid., plate 138, and pp. 233-4.

(обратно)

352

Ovchinnikova, Portret, p. 22. See Cracraft, Imagery, p. 19, on the exaggeration of'the degree to which such painting was "secular" in either subject or style'.

(обратно)

353

E. S. Smirnova, 'Simon Ushakov—"Historicism" and "Byzantinism": On the Interpre­tation of Russian Painting from the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century', in Baron and Kollmann (eds.), Religion and Culture, pp. 170-83.

(обратно)

354

See V G. Briusova, Fedor Zubov (Moscow: 'Izobrazitel'noe iskusstvo', 1985), pp. 150-4.

(обратно)

355

A.A. Pavlenko, 'KarpZolotareviMoskovskiezhivopistsyposledneitretiXVIIv.',inPami- atniki kul'tury. Novye otkrytiia.1982 (Leningrad: Nauka, 1984), pp. 301-16; A.A. Pavlenko, 'Evoliutsiia russkoi ikonopisi i zhivopisnoe masterstvo kak iavlenie perekhodnogo peri- oda', in Russkaia kul'tura vperekhodnyiperiod ot Srednevekov'ia k novomu vremeni (Moscow: Institut rossiiskoi istorii RAN, 1992), pp. 103-8; Kostotchkina, 'Baroque', pp. 100-31.

(обратно)

356

V G. Briusova, Gurii Nikitin (Moscow: 'Izobrazitel'noe iskusstvo', 1982).

(обратно)

357

Anne Odom, Russian Enamels (Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery, i996); Kostotchkina, 'Baroque', pp. 191-266.

(обратно)

358

See E. A. Mishina, Russkaia graviura na dereve XVII-XVIII vv. (St Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2000 [?]).

(обратно)

359

M. A. Alekseeva, 'Zhanr konkliuzii v russkom iskusstve kontsaXVII - nachalaXVIII v.', in T. V Alekseeva (ed.), Russkoe iskusstvo barokko (Moscow: Nauka, 1977), pp. 7-29.

(обратно)

360

Cracraft, Imagery, pp. 115-19.

(обратно)

361

For example, the Theatrum Biblicum, first published Amsterdam, 1643. See Hughes, 'Moscow Armoury', p. 212; Cracraft, Imagery, pp. 94-6.

(обратно)

362

Hughes, 'Moscow Armoury', pp. 208-9.

(обратно)

363

Ovchinnikova, Portret, p. 29.

(обратно)

364

See Lindsey Hughes, 'Images of the Elite: A Reconsideration of the Portrait in Seventeenth-Century Russia', FOG 56 (2000): 167-85.

(обратно)

365

See Kampfer, Herrscherbild, pp. 174-6; illustrations in Ovchinnikova, Portret, p. 59.

(обратно)

366

Ibid., p. 27.

(обратно)

367

Cracraft, Imagery, pp. 206-8; Hughes, 'Women' and her 'Images of Greatness: Portraits of Peter I', in Peter the Great and the West: New Perspectives, ed. L. Hughes (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000), pp. 250-70.

(обратно)

368

Simon Karlinsky, Russian Drama from its Beginnings to the Age of Pushkin (Berkeley: Uni­versity of California Press, 1985). Documents on this topic were published in S. K. Bogoiavlenskii, Moskovskii teatr pri tsariakh Aleksee i Petre (Moscow: Russkaia starina, 1914).

(обратно)

369

For texts see O. A. Derzhavina et al. (eds.), Ranniaia russkaia dramaturgiia XVII - per- vaia polovina XVIII v., 5 vols. (Moscow: Nauka, 1972-6). Also L. A. Sofronova, Poetika slavianskogo teatra XVII - XVIII vv. (Moscow: Nauka, 1981).

(обратно)

370

Hughes, Sophia, pp. 173-5.

(обратно)

371

See Olga Dolskaya, 'Choral Music in the Petrine Era', in A. G. Cross (ed.), Russia in the Reign ofPeter the Great: OldandNewPerspectives (Cambridge: Study Group on 18th-century Russia, 1998), pp. 173-4; and her 'Vasilii Titov and the "Moscow Baroque"', Journal of the Royal Musical Association ii8 (i993): 203-22.

(обратно)

372

Adam Olearius, The Travels of Olearius in Seventeenth-Century Russia, ed. and trans. S. Baron (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1967), pp. 262-3.

(обратно)

373

See C. R.Jensen, 'Music for the Tsar: a Preliminary Study ofthe Music ofthe Muscovite Court Theatre', Musical Quarterly 79 (1995): 371-2.

(обратно)

374

Jacob Reutenfels, quoted ibid., 373.

(обратно)

375

Ibid., 375, 377, 382.

(обратно)

376

See E. K. Romodanovskaia, Russkaia literatura na poroge novogo vremeni (Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1994), esp. pp. 3-11.

(обратно)

377

Luppov, Kniga, p. 29.

(обратно)

378

See arguments in Paul Bushkovitch, 'Cultural Change among the Russian Boyars 1650­1680. New Sources and Old Problems', FOG 56 (2000): 89-111. On astrology and other pseudo-sciences in Muscovy W F. Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight. AnHistorical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, i999); W. F. Ryan, 'Aristotle and Pseudo-Aristotle in Kievan and Muscovite Russia', in J. Kraye et al. (eds.), Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages (London: Warburg Institute, 1986),

pp. 97-i09.

(обратно)

379

Marcia A. Morris, The Literature of Roguery in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Russia (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2000).

(обратно)

380

Zhivov, 'Religious Reform', pp. 188-9.

(обратно)

381

See discussion in Paul Bushkovitch, Religion and Society in Russia. The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, i992), pp. i40-7.

(обратно)

382

See N. S. Demkova (ed.), Sochineniia protopopa Avvakuma i publitsisticheskaia literatura rannego staroobriadchestva (St. Petersburg: Izdatel'stvo S.-Peterburgskogo universiteta,

i998).

(обратно)

383

See A. M. Panchenko (ed.), Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia XVII-XVIII vv. (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1970); A. M. Panchenko, Russkaia stikhotvornaia kul'tura XVII veka (Leningrad: Nauka, 1973); Bushkovitch, Religion, pp. 140-5; D. I. Luburkin, Russkaia novolatinskaiapoeziia:materialykistoriiXVII-pervaiapolovinaXVIIIveka (Moscow: RGGU, 2000).

(обратно)

384

Simeon Polotskii, Simeon Polockij. Vertograd mnogocvetnyj, ed. Anthony Hippisley and Lydia I. Sazonova, 3 vols. (Cologne: Bohlau, 1996-2000); L. I. Sazonova, Poeziia russkogo barokko (Moscow: Nauka, 1991).

(обратно)

385

Bushkovitch, Religion, pp. 150-1.

(обратно)

386

Cracraft, Imagery, pp. 127,155.

(обратно)

387

Bushkovitch, 'Cultural Change', 104-5.

(обратно)

388

A. Sakharov et al. (eds.), Ocherki po istorii russkoi kul'tury XVII veka, 2 vols. (Moscow: MGU, 1979), vol. ii, pp. 149-52.

(обратно)

389

See N. Chrissides, 'Creating the New Educational Elite. Learning and Faith in Moscow's Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy, 1685-1694', unpublished PhD thesis, Yale University, 2000.

(обратно)

390

See Valerie Kivelson, Autocracy in the Provinces. The Muscovite Gentry and Political Culture in the Seventeenth Century (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996).

(обратно)

391

See, for example, Grabar', Istoriia, vol. I (1953), p. 504.

(обратно)

392

For discussions of the problems of Soviet scholarship, see Cracraft, Architecture, pp. 9-18, and Cracraft, Imagery, pp. 95-106; also Lindsey Hughes, 'Restoring Religion to Russian Art', in G. Hosking and R. Service (eds.), Reinterpreting Russia (London: Arnold, 1999),

pp. 40-53.

(обратно)

393

D. A. Rovinskii, Russkiegravery i ikhproizvedenie s 15 64 do osnovaniiaAkademii Khudozhestv (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo grafa Uvarova, 1870), pp. 135-6.

(обратно)

394

See N. E. Andreyev, 'Nikon and Avvakum on Icon-Painting', in his Studies in Muscovy (London: Variorum, 1970), essay xiii, p. 43.

(обратно)

395

Ovchinnikova, Portret, p. 98. Discussion in Cracraft, Imagery, pp. 117-18.

(обратно)

396

Zhivov 'Religious Reform', p. 193.

(обратно)

397

Full text in N. Ustrialov, Istoriia tsarstvovaniia Petra Velikogo, 6 vols. (St Petersburg: Tipografiia II Otdeleniia S. I. V Kantseliarii, 1858-63), vol. 11 (1859), appendix 9, pp. 467-77. Also Hughes, 'Attitudes towards Foreigners'.

(обратно)

398

G. V Esipov (ed.), Sbornik vypisok iz arkhivnykh bumag o Petre Velikom, 2 vols. (Moscow: Universitetskaia tipografiia, 1872), vol. 1, p. 127. Lindsey Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (New Haven: Yale University Press, i998), pp. i2-20.

(обратно)

399

Esipov (ed.), Sbornik, vol. 1, pp. 143-4,161-2.

(обратно)

400

See Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power. Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995-2000), vol. 1, pp. 42-4.

(обратно)

401

Cracraft, Imagery, pp. 133-4; Hughes, 'Images of Greatness', pp. 253-4.

(обратно)

402

Esipov (ed.), Sbornik, vol. 1, p. 154.

(обратно)

403

Gianluigi Goggi, 'The Philosophes and the Debate over Russian Civilization', in Maria Di Salvo and Lindsey Hughes (eds.), A Window on Russia (Rome: La Fenice Edizioni,

i996), pp. 299-305.

(обратно)

Оглавление

  • *** Примечания ***