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Muscovy (Moscow principality (княжество Московское) to Grand Duchy of Moscow (Великое Княжество Московское) to Russian Tsardom (Царство Русское)) is a traditional Western name for the Russian state that existed from the 14th century to the late 17th century. The Great Princedom of Moscow, as the state is known in Russian records, was the predecessor of the Russian Empire and the successor of Kievan Rus' in its northern and eastern lands. The reign of the tsars started officially with Ivan IV of Russia (Ivan the Terrible), the first monarch to be crowned Tsar of Russia, but in practice it started with the first to use the title of tsar, Ivan III of Russia (Ivan the Great), who completed centralisation of the state (traditionally known as the gathering of the Russian lands) at the same time as Louis XI did the same in France. The development of the Russian state can be traced from Vladimir-Suzdal' through Muscovy to Russia, and then, the Russian Empire. Muscovy drew people and wealth to the northeastern part of Kievan Rus'; established trade links to the Baltic Sea, the White Sea, and the Caspian Sea and to Siberia; and created a highly centralized and autocratic political system. Muscovite political traditions, therefore, exerted a powerful influence on Russian society. Rise of Muscovy
Evolution of the Russian autocracy Internal consolidation accompanied outward expansion of the state. By the 15th century, the rulers of Muscovy considered the entire Russian territory their collective property. Various semi-independent princes of Rurikid stock still claimed specific territories, but Ivan III forced the lesser princes to acknowledge the grand prince of Muscovy and his descendants as unquestioned rulers with control over military, judicial, and foreign affairs. Gradually, the Muscovite ruler emerged as a powerful, autocratic ruler, a tsar. By assuming that title, the Muscovite prince underscored that he was a major ruler or emperor on a par with the Greek emperor or the Mongol khan. Indeed, after Ivan III's marriage to Sophia Paleologue, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, the Muscovite court adopted Byzantine terms, rituals, titles, and emblems such as the double-headed eagle. At first, the Byzantine term autocrat connoted only the literal meaning of an independent ruler, but in the reign of Ivan IV (r. 1533-1584) it came to mean unlimited rule. Ivan IV was crowned tsar and thus was recognized, at least by the Orthodox Church, as emperor. An Orthodox monk had claimed that, once Constantinople had fallen to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, the Muscovite tsar was the only legitimate Orthodox ruler and that Moscow was the Third Rome because it was the final successor to Rome and Constantinople, the centers of Christianity in earlier periods. That concept was to resonate in the self-image of Russians in future centuries. Evolution of the Russian aristocracy Boyars were hereditary nobles of three categories: 1) Rurikid princes of Upper Oka towns, Suzdal, Rostov, Yaroslavl, etc. that lived in Moscow after their hereditary principalities had been incorporated into Muscovy (e.g., Shuisky, Vorotynsky, Repnin, Romodanovsky); 2) foreign princes from Lithuania and Golden Horde, claiming descent either from Grand Duke Gediminas or from Genghis Khan (e.g., Belsky, Mstislavsky, Galitzine, Trubetskoy); 3) ancient families of Muscovite nobility that have been recorded in the service of Grand Dukes from the 14th century (e.g., Romanov, Godunov, Sheremetev). Rurikid and Gediminid boyars, whose fathers and grandfathers were independent princelings, felt that they were kin to the tsar and hence almost equal to him. During the times of dynastic troubles (such as the years of Ivan IV's minority), boyardom constituted an internal force which was a permanent threat to the throne. An early form of Tsar's conflict with boyarstvo was the oprichnina policy of Ivan the Terrible. During such conflicts, Ivan the Terrible, Boris Godunov, and some later tsars felt the necessity to counterbalance the boyardom by creating a new kind of nobility, based on personal devotion to tsar and merits earned by faithful service, rather than by heredity. Later these new nobles were called dvoryans (singular: dvoryanin). The name comes from the Russian word dvor in the meaning of tsar's dvor, i.e., The Court. Hence the expression pozhalovat ko dvoru, i.e., to be called to (serve) The Court. Ivan IV
Time of Troubles
Romanovs The immediate task of the new dynasty was to restore order. Fortunately for Russia, its major enemies, Poland and Sweden, were engaged in a bitter conflict with each other, which provided Russia the opportunity to make peace with Sweden in 1617 and to sign a truce with Poland in 1619. After an unsuccessful attempt to regain the city of Smolensk (the Smolensk War) from Poland in 1632, Russia made peace with Poland in 1634. Polish king Wladyslaw IV, whose father and predecessor Sigismund III Vasa had been elected by Russian boyars as tsar of Russia during the Time of Troubles, renounced all claims to the title as a condition of the peace treaty. The early Romanovs were weak rulers. Under Mikhail, state affairs were in the hands of the tsar's father, Filaret, who in 1619 became patriarch of the Orthodox Church. Later, Mikhail's son Aleksey (r. 1645-1676) relied on a boyarin, Boris Morozov, to run his government. Morozov abused his position by exploiting the populace, and in 1648 Aleksey dismissed him in the wake of the Salt Riot in Moscow. The autocracy survived the Time of Troubles and the rule of weak or corrupt tsars because of the strength of the government's central bureaucracy. Government functionaries continued to serve, regardless of the ruler's legitimacy or the boyar faction controlling the throne. In the 17th century, the bureaucracy expanded dramatically. The number of government departments (prikazy sing., prikaz ) increased from twenty-two in 1613 to eighty by mid-century. Although the departments often had overlapping and conflicting jurisdictions, the central government, through provincial governors, was able to control and regulate all social groups, as well as trade, manufacturing, and even the Orthodox Church. The comprehensive legal code introduced in 1649 illustrates the extent of state control over Russian society. By that time, the boyars had largely merged with the new elite, who were obligatory servitors of the state, to form a new nobility, the dvoryanstvo. The state required service from both the old and the new nobility, primarily in the military because of permanent warfare on southern and western borders and attacks of nomads. In return, the nobility received land and peasants. In the preceding century, the state had gradually curtailed peasants' rights to move from one landlord to another; the 1649 code officially attached peasants to their domicile. The state fully sanctioned serfdom, and runaway peasants became state fugitives. Landlords had complete power over their peasants . Peasants living on state-owned land, however, were not considered serfs. They were organized into communes, which were responsible for taxes and other obligations. Like serfs, however, state peasants were attached to the land they farmed. Middle-class urban tradesmen and craftsmen were assessed taxes, and, like the serfs, they were forbidden to change residence. All segments of the population were subject to military levy and to special taxes. By chaining much of Muscovite society to specific domiciles, the legal code of 1649 curtailed movement and subordinated the people to the interests of the state. Under this code, increased state taxes and regulations exacerbated the social discontent that had been simmering since the Time of Troubles. In the 1650s and 1660s, the number of peasant escapes increased dramatically. A favorite refuge was the Don River region, domain of the Don Cossacks. A major uprising occurred in the Volga region in 1670 and 1671. Stenka Razin, a Cossack who was from the Don River region, led a revolt that drew together wealthy Cossacks who were well established in the region and escaped serfs seeking free land. The unexpected uprising swept up the Volga River valley and even threatened Moscow. Tsarist troops finally defeated the rebels after they had occupied major cities along the Volga in an operation whose panache captured the imaginations of later generations of Russians. Razin was publicly tortured and executed. Expansion Russia continued its territorial growth through the 17th century. In the south-west, it acquired eastern Ukraine, which had been under Polish rule. The Ukrainian Cossacks, warriors organized in military formations, lived in the frontier areas bordering Poland, the Crimean Tatar lands, and Russia. Although they had served in the Polish army as mercenaries, the Cossacks of the Zaporozhian Host remained fiercely independent and staged a number of rebellions against the Poles. In 1648, the peasants of Ukraine joined the Cossacks in rebellion during the Khmelnytsky Uprising, because of the social and religious oppression they suffered under Polish rule. Initially, Ukrainians were allied with Crimean Tatars, which had helped them to throw off Polish rule. Once the Poles convinced the Tartars to switch sides, the Ukrainians needed military help to maintain their position. In 1654 the Ukrainian leader, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, offered to place Ukraine under the protection of the Muscovite tsar, Aleksey I. Aleksey's acceptance of this offer, which was ratified in the Treaty of Pereyaslav, led to a protracted war between Poland and Russia. The Treaty of Andrusovo, which ended the war in 1667, split Ukraine along the river Dnieper, reuniting the western sector (or Right-bank Ukraine) with Poland and leaving the eastern sector (Left-bank Ukraine) as the Cossack Hetmanate, self-governing under the suzerainty of the tsar. In the east, Russia had obtained western Siberia in the sixteenth century. From this base, merchants, traders, and explorers pushed eastward from the Ob' River to the Yenisey River, then to the Lena River and to the Coast of Pacific. In 1648 Cossack Semyon Dezhnev opened the passage between America and Asia. By the middle of the 17th century, Muscovites had reached the Amur River and the outskirts of the Chinese Empire. After a period of conflict with the Manchu Dynasty, Russia made peace with China in 1689. By the Treaty of Nerchinsk, Russia ceded its claims to the Amur Valley, but it gained access to the region east of Lake Baikal and the trade route to Beijing. Peace with China consolidated the initial breakthrough to the Pacific that had been made in the middle of the century. Russia's southwestern expansion, particularly its incorporation of eastern Ukraine, had unintended consequences. Most Ukrainians were Orthodox, but their close contact with the Roman Catholic and the Polish Counter-Reformation also brought them Western intellectual currents. Through the Academy in Kiev, Russia gained links to Polish and Central European influences and to the wider Orthodox world. Although the Ukrainian link stimulated creativity in many areas, it also undermined traditional Russian religious practices and culture. The Russian Orthodox Church discovered that its isolation from Constantinople had caused variations to creep into its liturgical books and practices. The Russian Orthodox patriarch, Nikon, was determined to bring the Russian texts back into conformity with the Greek originals. But Nikon encountered fierce opposition among the many Russians who viewed the corrections as improper foreign intrusions, or perhaps the work of the devil. When the Orthodox Church forced Nikon's reforms, a schism resulted in 1667. Those who did not accept the reforms came to be called the Old Believers (starovery ); they were officially pronounced heretics and were persecuted by the church and the state. The chief opposition figure, the protopope Abbacum, was burned at the stake. The split subsequently became permanent, and many merchants and peasants joined the Old Believers. The tsar's court also felt the impact of Ukraine and the West. Kiev was a major transmitter of new ideas and insight through the famed scholarly academy that Metropolitan Mohyla founded there in 1631. Among the results of this infusion of ideas into Russia were baroque styles of architecture, literature, and icon painting. Other more direct channels to the West opened as international trade increased and more foreigners came to Russia. The tsar's court was interested in the West's more advanced technology, particularly when military applications were involved. By the end of the 17th century, Ukrainian, Polish, and West European penetration had undermined the Muscovite cultural synthesis--at least among the elite--and had prepared the way for an even more radical transformation. Western European knowledge of Muscovy
Early Imperial Russia Main article: Imperial Russia. The following article in the series describes how in the 18th century, Russia was transformed from a static, somewhat isolated, traditional state into the more dynamic, partially Westernized, and secularized Russian Empire. This transformation was in no small measure a result of the vision, energy, and determination of Peter the Great. Historians disagree about the extent to which Peter himself transformed Russia, but they generally concur that he laid the foundations for empire building over the next two centuries. The era that Peter initiated signaled the advent of Russia as a major European power. But, although the Russian Empire would play a leading political role in the next century, its retention of serfdom precluded economic progress of any significant degree. As West European economic growth accelerated during the Industrial Revolution, which had begun in the second half of the eighteenth century, Russia began to lag ever farther behind, creating new problems for the empire as a great power. See also List of Russian rulers Further reading Notes | |||||||||||||||
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