20 Muscovite Roots, 1462-1689
the Tatars attacked from the south. Servitors with land in the region hurried
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Over the previous twenty years the border defences had been neglected and
undermanned.^19 In 1638 a major new effort was undertaken with the
rebuilding of the disaffected fortified line (zasechnaya cherta) which ran for
some^600 versts from Shatsk to Belev by way of Tula. In sections it was doubled
or even tripled; ditches were dug and earthen ramparts erected; the twenty-one
most vulnerable points ('gates', as they were called) received particularly
thorough protection.^20 Some 10,000 men were engaged as artisans (de/ovtsy)
while another 20,000 labourers were mobilized to perform the most onerous
physical tasks: taken by force from their communities, they had to toil in mud
and water for a modest remuneration, of which s~me were subsequently
cheated.^21 At the same time a beginning was made on the Belgorod line further
south; a second phase of construction followed in 1646-51 and a third in
1654-8. This impressive building programme and the continued expansion of
settlement in the border region considerably reduced the threat of Tatar
raiding. The main danger in this quarter now came from the tsar's own poten-
tially insubordinate subjects, notably the Cossacks of the Dnieper and Don.
In the historic region around Kiev, in south-eastern Poland, the population
had grown rapidly. It consisted mainly of Ukrainians ('Cherkassians', as the
Muscovites called them), who were becoming more aware of their religious,
social, and national identity. By 1653 Tsar Alexis Mikhaylovich (1645-76) felt
strong enough to risk a major new confrontation with the Commonwealth in
order to bring the area under his sovereignty. The Thirteen Years War
(1654-67) that followed was as costly in blood and treasure as the Livonian
War had been a hundred years earlier; but the results were less disappointing-
the Ukraine was partitioned between the belligerents-and security in the south
was vastly improved. Moscow contained a major Cossack-peasant rebellion
on the Don, led by the colourful chieftain Sten' ka Razin (1670-1), and skilfully
exploited to its own advantage the continuous feuding among the Cossacks on
either bank of the Dnieper. By the late 1670s Russian forces had at last come to
grips with the Turks, and although 3,000 captives were still taken in^168022 the
Tatar menace could be said to be under control. In the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries several other defence lines were built on the empire's Caucasian
and Asiatic borders, but they were of less significance than their forerunners in
the Muscovite era, both strategically and in terms of social mobilization for
military ends.
The heart and brain of the Muscovite political and military order was the tsar's
court (dvor). During the late fifteenth and. early sixteenth centuries it under-
19 Ibid., pp. 36, 41-2; Yakovlev, Zasechnaya cherta, p. 14; A. A. Novosel' sky, Bor'ba mosk.
gosudarstva s tatarami v 1-oy pol. XVII v., Moscow, 1948, p. 205.
20 Yakovlev, Zasechnaya cherta, pp. 38-9.
21 Ibid., p. 280.
22 Vazhinsky, Zemlevladen(ve, p. 46.