dinated the Russian boyars (nobles) to his
will. He also established trade links with
western Europe.
Through this time, Russian contacts
with the innovations and scholarship of
the Renaissance was limited. By its ties to
the eastern church, Russia also took no
part in the struggle between the western
(Catholic) church and the Protestant Ref-
ormation. In the early seventeenth cen-
tury, after a lengthy civil conflict known as
the Time of Troubles, the Romanov dy-
nasty emerged. Under the Romanov tsar
Peter the Great, a new city was established
at Saint Petersburg, on an arm of the Bal-
tic Sea. Peter’s intention was to open his
state to trade and exchange with the west.
Through the seventeenth and eighteenth
century artists and architects arrived from
western Europe. The Romanov leaders had
enormous palaces and country mansions
built in imitation of the classically inspired
buildings of Renaissance Europe, and be-
gan collecting the works of western paint-
ers and sculptors.SEEALSO: Fall of ConstantinopleRussia