(^72) Muscovite Roots, 1462-1689
Nevertheless Peter suspected the entire corps of disloyalty. Their chief, F. L.
Shaklovitiy, like Khovansky in 1682, was put to death after a secret investi-
gation. (Unlike Khov:rn~l<y, hi:-was tortured.} There is no re!iabk.cvidence that
he was responsible for any offensive move against the Naryshkin (action, but
his fate was inescapably bound up with that of the regent, who w~ deposed
and confined in a nunnery. A number of musketeer units were sent to the pro-
vinces, and in 1695-6 the bulk of the corps was sent to fight the Turks at
Azov.^69
While these actions were doubtless resented, it would be wrong to see the
strertsy as harbouring a grudge against Peter personally or favouring his
opponents: they had no such political commitments.^70 Their mutinous out-
bursts in 1682 and again in 1698 (see ch. 5) were motivated primarily by
dissatisfaction at their service conditions, which were onerous. There is no
truth to the view, assiduously spread by historians sympathetic to Peter, that
they were 'spoiled' or 'cosseted'. Although there was a chiliastic strain in their
thinking that was peculiarly Russian, in general their actions are comparable
to those of military mutineers elsewhere in Europe at this time, who were often
able to mount well-organized protest movements and to defy authority for a
considerable length of time.^71 Some contemporary writers drew an analogy
between the stre/'tsy in Muscovy and the janissaries in the Ottoman empire.^72
Peter's official chronicler was one of those who made this allusion, in an
attempt to justify the tsar's brutal actions against them.^73 Eventually this
became something of a cliche. The parallels have yet to be examined, but it is
clear that the st rel ·1sy never acquired or sought the political influence of their
Ottoman counterparts. If they were feared and hated by partisans of Petrine
absolutism this was because, of all the emergent interest groups within the
armed forces, they were the most civilianized and rooted in the populace. They
had close ties with other urban groups who had good reason to resent the
government's policies, particularly in the fiscal domain; as an armed and
disciplined body, the musketeers could turn their passive opposition into active
protest. These urban revolts, although easily suppressed, were damaging to the
monarchy's self-image and prestige. Apart from the internal security con-
siderations, the musketeers exemplified a flexible, permissive type of relation-
ship between the state and elements of the service class-one for which there
could be no place in the homogenized, rationally ordered society that Peter the
Great would seek to introduce.
69 On the crisis of 1689 see R. Wittram, Peter/: Czar und Kaiser, GOttingen, 1964, i. 96-9;
Bogoslovsky. Materia/y, i. 37-47; Kurakin, 'Gistoriya', pp. 58-60; Belov, 'Mosk. smuty',
pp. 328-33..
10 According to the well-informed J. G. Vockerodt, the charges levelled against Sofia were
widely believed by 1he musketeers, of whom many declared for Peter in the hope of rewards: Herr-
mann, Russ/and, pp. 25-6.^71 Corvisier, Armees et societb, pp. 191-2.
(^72) Foy de la Neuville, who visiled Russia during Sofia'~ regency, calls them 'un cspke de milice
comme les janissaires de la Porte': Rel<11ion, p. 39; cf. Korb, Dnevnik, p. 24S. Hellie, Enserfment,
p. 348, offers some other references.
(^73) Golikova, Astr. vosstaniye, p. 12; cf. Buganov, in Shunkov et al. (eds.), VoplOf)I, p. 46.
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