Throughout the Middle Ages, European Russia had been invaded
time and again by hordes that swept across the Asiatic plains,
over the low Ural Mountains that separate the two continents,
and onto the fiat plains north of the Black Sea, where they spread
in all directions. At the same time, the excellent network of
rivers flowing northward into the Baltic Sea and southward into
the Black Sea provided highways through which invaders from the
north and cultural influences from the south penetrated into the
center of the country. The western borders were equally indefensible,
and several times during the early seventeenth century Russian
independence was threatened by the Poles and Swedes. Thus, Russia
lay in the heartland of the Eurasian continent on a crossroads
of north.south and east-west movements that prevented the country
from belonging wholly to either the East or the west.
A relatively advanced state began to develop along the Dnieper
River in the ninth century. Its capital, Kiev, became an important
trading city. Cultural contacts were established with the Byzantine
empire, and the in- habitants became converts of the Greek Orthodox
Church.
This promising beginning was cut short by the Mongol invasion
in 1240. The various principalities into which Kievan Russia had
become divided were overrun, and contacts with the Byzantine civilization
were sharply reduced. The Russians were thus isolated from the
more advanced culture to the south, while the intellectual manifestations
of the Renaissance failed to reach them.
For a time it seemed possible that the future of Russia might
lie with the city-state of Novgorod, situated in the northwest,
far from the center of Mongol power. Novgorod had trading connections
with the West, but its relatively exposed position made it subject
to repeated attacks by the Scandinavians, Germans, and Lithuanians.
Although the inhabitants man- aged to repel these assaults, they
were seriously weakened by the constant wars. The southwestern
portion of the former Kievan state was less fortunate, for after
a long struggle the region was conquered by Lithuania.
After Lithuania joined Poland in a dynastic union in 1386, Polish
influence became strong. The result was that linguistic and ethnic
divisions that had already begun to appear among the Russian people
were solidified. European Russia became divided into White Russia
and the Ukraine, which fell to Poland-Lithuania, and Great Russia
to the north and east, which remained under Mongol control. In
the end, it was the principality of Muscovy located in the Great
Russian part of the former Kievan state that succeeded in providing
the nucleus for the future Russian empire.
Around the middle of the fourteenth century, Muscovy consisted
of only six hundred square miles, but under a series of able princes
the little state managed to expand its territory. The most important
of these rulers was Ivan III (1462-1505), called the Great, who
occupies a place in Russian history comparable to that occupied
by the Renaissance monarchs in the West. He threw of what remained
of the Mongol yoke and, through purchase, inheritance, and especially
conquest, won the surrounding states, the most important of which
was once-mighty Novgorod itself. In 1472, be married the niece
of the last Byzantine emperor. This marriage led the Muscovite
rulers to adopt the title of tsar or caesar and to imitate the
coronation ceremony and court ritual of the Byzantines. More important,
it provided a theoretical and moral claim to justify the emergence
of a monarchy that was actually based on military force.
Once Muscovy became stronger than its neighbors, the very network
of north-south rivers and east-west plains that had made invasion
so easy facilitated rapid expansion in every direction except
the west. Here, for a century, strong Polish and Swedish states
checked the Muscovite advance. Ivan III's grandson, Ivan IV (1533-1584),
called the Terrible, won control of the entire Course of the Volga
River by conquering several Mongol states, and the penetration
into Siberia was begun. Turning to the west, he won an outlet
on the Baltic Sea only to lose it to the Swedes some years later.
The latter part of his reign was marred by attacks of insanity.
The mad king murdered all who opposed him; the great nobles received
most of his wrath, but even his son and heir fell by his own hand.
The death of Ivan IV's weak and childless son in 1598 brought
the dynasty to an end. There followed a confused fifteen-year
period known as the Time of Troubles. The Zemsky Sobor or estates-general
elected Boris Godunov, one of the great nobles, tsar, but he died
a few years later. First one and then another pretender laid claim
to the throne, each claiming to be a tsar's son. Both received
foreign help, and one even managed to seize and hold the throne
for a brief period. For a time, it looked as though a Polish prince
would become king and form a dynastic union of the two Slavic
kingdoms. Finally, the wars and murders led to a reaction, and
in 1613, the Zemsky Sobor elected a young noble, Michael Romanov,
tsar. Michael (1613-1645), unlike Sobieski, was able to establish
his dynasty on the throne where it remained until the Revolution
of 1917. During his reign, an expedition crossed Siberia reaching
the Pacific in 1637, and during that of his son, Alexis I (1645-1676),
part of the Ukraine, including Kiev, was won back from Poland.
Meanwhile, Russian society had been changing. In its early
days, Muscovy, like the other little states into which European
Russia was divided during the period of Mongol suzerainty, was
ruled by a prince in conjunction with a council of boyars, a class
of nobles who held land with no obligation to serve the prince.
The prince, the boyars, and the Church owned nearly all the land.
Local administration and justice were in the hands of these landowners
or their agents. The peasants who worked in the fields during
this period were usually freemen, but wars, famines, plagues,
and other catastrophes gradually increased their dependence on
the landlord. In return for a loan of money, food, or tools, they
promised to pay dues and perform labor services. Once in debt,
they were not permitted to leave the soil until after the autumn
harvest, and then only if their obligations had been fulfilled.
As the Muscovite state expanded, the conquered lands became the
property of the tsar, who assigned them to his principal assistants
in return for their support. Thus, a service gentry came into
being that, as the state grew, became the most powerful class
in the kingdom, just as a reconstituted aristocracy in the West
became the most powerful class in the Renaissance monarchy.
The triumph of the service gentry spelled disaster for the peasants
who worked the land. Their right to leave the soil even if their
debts had been paid was removed around 1600. Many fled to the
vast unoccupied stretches along the ever-expanding frontier, where
they established free democratic, warlike societies. Such fugitive
peasants became known as cossacks. Their departure, added to the
wars and famines during the Time of Troubles, led to a scarcity
of labor in central Russia. The gentry redoubled its efforts to
keep the remaining peasants on the soil. For a time, if a peasant
escaped and eluded capture for a specified number of years, he
became legally free, but in 1649 this time limit was abolished
and the peasants on the land of the service gentry became perpetual
serfs.
No limits were placed on the services rendered by the serfs, and
since the landowners were charged with justice and law enforcement
on their estates, the serfs were at their mercy. By the close
of the seventeenth century, they could even be bought and sold.
Their position was far worse than the serfs in the medieval West;
they were little better than slaves. Only the peasants on the
estates kept by the tsar for his own support enjoyed a more favorable
position. These estates were located for the most part to the
north and east of Moscow, where there had been less need to grant
estates to a service gentry to facilitate the expansion or defense
of the empire.
By the middle of the seventeenth century, Russian society had
become stratified. There was an aristocracy consisting of the
boyars and the service gentry and an agricultural population consisting
of crown peasants and serfs. Stratification had also developed
in the towns, where the artisans were sharply separated from the
merchants. Even among the boyars, the existence of a rigid hierarchy
compelled the tsar to make his important appointments in accordance
with the standing of each individual family rather than on merit.
As a result, social mobility was reduced during the seventeenth
century crisis in Russia just as it had been in the West.
The Muscovite rulers claimed to be divinely ordained, absolute
monarchs. Moscow, they argued, was a third Rome, the now-conquered
Constantinople having been the second. In assuming the title of
tsar, they claimed to be the successors of the caesars. But with
all their imperial titles and ceremonies, their government was
popular and consultative like the Renaissance monarchies in the
West. Important decisions had to be consented to by a council
of boyars known as the Duma. The need to reach other influential
classes was also recognized, and in 1550 Ivan IV summoned the
first full meeting of the Zemsky Sobor to give its approval to
some projected reforms. This institution, which in many ways resembled
the estates-generals in the West, consisted initially of appointed
members of the clergy, boyars, and service gentry, but townsmen
were later added, and on at least one occasion the crown peasants
participated.
Ivan IV had seen in the Zemsky Sobor an instrument for learning
the grievances of the people and persuading the influential elements
of the population to support his program, for no ruler in this
age had the army or the bureaucracy to make innovations that the
bulk of his more vocal subjects opposed. After the disappearance
of the old reigning dynasty, however, it became necessary for
the Zemsky Sobor to elect a new tsar on several occasions. The
Romanovs themselves owed their throne to a choice made by this
institution. As a result, Michael Romanov consulted it frequently
when he was tsar and invariably won its consent for the taxes
he levied. In this manner, the tsar and the Zemsky Sobor came
to share in the government of the empire as the king and the estates
had in the West during the Renaissance.
The usual departments of government were established in Moscow,
and governors were appointed to administer the individual provinces.
These governors quickly escaped from the control of the central
bureaucracy and acted as they pleased. A degree of local self-government
also developed during the sixteenth century. Positions in the
judiciary, police, and municipalities were often elective, and
local assemblies called zemstvos were organized to deal with judicial,
financial, and administrative matters. Thus, some of the popular
and decentralized aspects of the Renaissance monarchies had parallel
developments in Russia.
There was one important exception to this rule. The Western state
was created by dynastic marriages and the reverting of great feudal
duchies to the crown. Under these circumstances, each former kingdom
and duchy kept its own laws, institutions, and special privileges.
The Russian state, on the other hand, was created primarily by
military conquest, and the laws and institutions of Muscovy were
imposed on the entire empire. Local variations disappeared, and
a common legal and institutional structure emerged. Only England,
thanks to the Norman conquest, could boast equal uniformity in
these respects.
The contrast between Russia and the West was more striking
in the areas of religion and culture. Byzantine culture had penetrated
into the region during the Kievan period, and the inhabitants
had been converted to the Greek Orthodox religion. During the
Mongol period, contact with Constantinople had been reduced, leaving
native elements free to re-emerge. By the sixteenth century, culture
and social life reflected both native Russian and Greek-Byzantine
characteristics. Men wore beards, and gentlewomen were veiled
and secluded. Drunkenness and coarse humor were accepted without
question. Education was rare, and the art of cultivated conversation
unappreciated. There was no national literature comparable to
that found in the West and little art outside the churches. Able
craftsmen were scarce, and science was in a primitive state. Neither
Arabic numerals nor the Western calendar had been adopted, and
church ritual and literature had been corrupted. In short, Russia
was centuries behind both the Western and the Greek Orthodox worlds
in nearly every aspect of civilization.
The defeat of the Mongols and the rapid expansion of the Muscovite
state made possible renewed contacts with Constantinople and the
West. Western ideas began to creep in through neighboring Poland
and were carried to Moscow itself by English merchants during
the reign of Ivan IV. Germans and other foreigners began to settle
in Moscow, where they were restricted to a quarter in the city.
of more immediate importance, con- tacts with the better-educated
Greek orthodox clergy in the Ottoman Empire were increased, and
the head of the Muscovite Church was recognized as a patriarch
by the orthodox prelates in other parts of the world. This enabled
him to strengthen his hold over the clergy in his own country
and led to an attempt to bring Russian ritual into line with the
Orthodox ceremony elsewhere. A large part of the lower clergy
resisted these foreign innovations, but the tsar and the ecclesiastical
hierarchy attempted to impose them by force. The struggle began
in the reign of Alexis (1645 1676), the second Romanov monarch.
Alexis was more cultivated than most of his predecessors, but
he was too weak and kindly to compel his subjects to adopt the
ways of the West. It is surprising that he permitted his desire
to reform the Greek Orthodox Church to be pushed to the point
that it led to schism. Many errors had crept into Russian religious
books; poor translations and editing had even led the name of
Jesus to be misspelled. Time had caused the Russian ritual to
vary from the Greek Orthodox. under the leadership of the patriarch
and with Alexis, approval, orders were issued to print correct
editions of the Bible and other religious works and to adopt the
Greek ritual.
To the Old Believers, as the fundamentalists were called, these
innovations altered the basis of their religion. They had accepted
the old throughout their lives without question and lacked the
education to recognize the reasons for change. They resisted,
and the quarrel between the state and ecclesiastical hierarchy
on one hand and the Old Believers on the other continued for years.
No amount of persecution could make the Old Believers abandon
their beliefs, but in the end their lack of ecclesiastical organization
caused them to break up into sects, some of which still exist
today.
Happily for Alexis, the old Believers did not become deeply involved
in the social uprisings during his reign, and neither the religious
nor the social rebels used the Zemsky Sobor as an institution
around which to rally discontent. Russia had had its Reformation
that ended in schism, but unlike that of the West, it had taken
place in response to the demands of the ecclesiastical hierarchy,
rather than demands from segments of the lower clergy and the
people.
The issues at stake had been primarily ritualistic rather than
dogmatic, and the support of the old Believers had come from the
small merchants and surviving peasantry rather than the gentry.
The resistance to established authority had therefore been less
dangerous than in the Protestant movement, which had won many
noble converts, and the Russian state survived with relative ease.
The Zemsky Sobor was rarely convoked after 1653, and the Russian
Church itself was so weakened by the loss of many of its most
devout members that it succumbed to state control before the end
of the century.
Under Alexis, the Russian Church had reintegrated with the Greek
orthodox and the penetration of Western ideas into a few circles
had continued, but it remained for his son, Peter the Great (1689-1725),
to bring Russia into the mainstream of European politics.
Peter was only four when his father died, and in the tumultuous
years that followed, his life was in danger several times. Once,
drunken soldiers spent three days in the royal palace murdering
officials whom they opposed; at another time, he fled the palace
in his nightshirt to escape assassination. Such an atmosphere
was hardly conducive to a normal academic education, but Peter
did manage to frequent the foreign quarter of Moscow. There he
became acquainted with the West-with its tobacco, its mechanical
gadgets, and its free association of men and women. There he found
his first mistress, Anna Mons, and his lifetime love, the ship.
There he came to realize that Russia must modernize or risk losing
its independence.
At seventeen, Peter seized control of the government from his
older sister who had ruled during his minority, but he was still
an overgrown boy more interested in playing soldier or sailor
than in governing. Already, some of his later characteristics
were plainly in evidence-his great size, his tremendous energy,
his love for doing things with his hands, and his utter ruthlessness.
He always insisted on beginning at the bottom and working his
way up through the ranks. He served as an able seaman, a common
soldier, a carpenter, a mechanic, a barber, a dentist. Promotion
was rapid, but it was granted only after he had mastered a vocation.
In 1697, when he dispatched an embassy of 250 to learn about the
West and to form an alliance against the Turks, Peter joined the
group incognito. He worked as a carpenter in Holland; in England,
he is reported to have ruined his landlord's prize holly hedge
"by trundling his wheelbarrow through it." He returned
to Moscow in 1698, firmly determined to Westernize his own mammoth
kingdom.
Some of Peter's reform smacked of the ridiculous. Westerners wore
no beards; therefore, Russian beards must be removed. He personally
shaved his courtiers, but many of his subjects resisted; to shave,
they felt, was to deface the image of God, for had not man been
created in His likeness? The religious taboo was so strong that
the practical tsar had to content himself with levying a tax on
beards. He encouraged smoking, but taxed tobacco. He practiced
the art of dentistry, to the discomfiture of his courtiers and
did not hesitate to direct a choir. When he ordered the extermination
of the rebellious Moscow guard, it was said that this furious
man personally assumed the role of,executioner.
Yet it was all done for a purpose. He was determined that blind
adherence to the past must cease and that every member of the
gentry must learn to serve the state. He insisted that they start
at the bottom, in either the army, navy, or administration, and
work their way up just as he himself had done. Birth and family
influence meant nothing. Ability was the only criterion. He also
insisted that the gentry receive an elementary school education.
When many failed to observe the edict, Peter decreed that a diploma
must be produced before a member of the gentry could marry. Russians
were sent to the West to be educated. Skilled workers and military,
naval, and administrative experts were imported from abroad.
When Charles XII of Sweden completely defeated the numerically
superior Russian army at Narva, Peter instigated military reforms.
Peasant and burgher were subjected to conscription for twenty-five
years. They were given flintlocks and bayonets in place of the
outmoded muskets and pikes. Artillery was improved, discipline
enforced, and the army enlarged. By the time of his death, Peter
had a force of 210,000 men without counting the irregulars, a
substantial army for a nation of only 13,000,000 inhabitants.
He was equally the father of the Russian navy.
Perhaps Peter's most remarkable achievement was that he effected
these improvements without foreign loans, or even loans from local
capitalists, who were nonexistent. The ruthless, energetic tsar
extracted the necessary money from his subjects in the form of
higher taxes and greater services. Governmental income was five
and a half times as high in 1724 as it had been in 1680. Just
as the Russian Communists have in this century built a mighty
industrial power through oppressive measures, so Peter built a
mighty military force and laid the foundations for future industrial
growth by driving his subjects ruthlessly.
He reorganized the central government along Western lines. What
remained of the consultative, self governing aspects of the old
monarchy disappeared. The Zemsky Sobor was not summoned, and the
boyar duma was ignored. Peter did not, however, follow Louis XIV's
practice of excluding the nobility from the government. Instead,
he insisted that they serve the state and what little distinction
remained between the old boyar families and the service gentry
was obliterated.
A senate was created to supervise administrative, financial, and
judicial affairs, and ministries were established for war, finance,
commerce, foreign affairs, and other branches of government. A
group of ministers, called a college, headed each of these agencies
rather than a single official because the restless monarch trusted
the wisdom of several men more than one alone. Peter divided the
country into forty-three provinces, each administered by a governor
responsible to him, and he sent out inspectors to see that he
was obeyed. Industry and mining were encouraged, and by the time
of his death, the Russians were probably producing more pig iron
than the English.
The Greek Orthodox Church was brought more directly under the
control of the state. Peter abolished the office of patriarch
and substituted a Holy Synod, or church council, composed of leading
ecclesiastics, and a lay chief procurator whom he appointed to
guide its work. No longer was there a patriarch to rival the tsar
in importance. The calendar was altered to conform to the Western
practice of beginning the new year on January 1 and of numbering
the years from the birth of Christ rather than from the creation
of the world, as had been the Russian practice.
Arabic numerals were introduced, and the alphabet was simplified.
A newspaper was established with, of course, the energetic tsar
editing the first issue. Peter corresponded with leading Western
scholars and laid plans for an academy of science, but death denied
him the glory of attending the first session. In November, 1724,
when he saw a shipwreck, he characteristically jumped into the
cold northern water to assist in the rescue. Sickness resulted,
and death followed several months later.
Peter had often been troubled about what might happen to his reforms
after his death, for a majority in every class resisted his innovations.
To ensure continual contact with the West, he had wrested the
eastern shores of the Baltic from the Swedes. Here he built St.
Petersburg, a new capital, that could be reached far more easily
from the West than landlocked Moscow. The cost in money and lives
was tremendous, but peter drove the work towards completion. He
organized the social life of the court along Western lines. Even
his own manners improved somewhat, and by 1712 a courtier could
report that at a private dinner with the Prussian royal family
Peter neither belched nor picked his teeth "at least as far
as l heard or saw."
Perhaps the most important step that Peter took to ensure the
continuation of Western influence in Russia was to introduce the
practice of marrying royal princes to Western princesses. Thereafter,
nearly every tsar had a German wife, and thus the German influence
became strong in upper-class circles. Peter himself had been married
to the daughter of a Russian nobleman in his youth in accordance
with the earlier practice, but he put her in a convent soon after
he began to govern personally. Perhaps realizing that under the
circumstances he could not hope to find a suitable Western princess
for himself, he eventually married his mistress, Catherine. Catherine
was a Lithuanian of low origin who had already given him three
children, but she proved a fit companion for the restless monarch.
The most immediate threat to continued Westernization came from
Peter's son, Alexis. Alexis was the direct opposite of his father.
He was cultivated, but lazy. Father and son soon quarreled, and
Alexis joined the enemies of Westernization. Matters became worse
and Alexis fled to Austria in 1716. Peter saw that if he permitted
Alexis to succeed him, his work would be undone. He coaxed Alexis
back to Russia with promises of forgiveness, but once he got his
hands on his son, he had him tortured to learn of his plans and
accomplices. Alexis was tried and condemned to death, but before
Peter announced his final decision, Alexis died; officially from
apoplexy, more probably from violence. Even Peter lacked the courage
to execute his son publicly.
It is difficult to evaluate Peter's work. By his energy and ruthlessness
he modernized Russia to the extent that it was strong enough to
escape the fate of Poland and the Ottoman Empire, but the deeper
aspects of Western culture never penetrated below the aristocracy,
and the masses of the Russian people were forced down lower than
ever. They remained in ignorance, now separated culturally as
well as economically and socially from their superiors.