The Russian Empire 1450–1801

Giorgio Agamben. They have theorized that“sacred violence”is the exclusive right of sovereigns (or sovereign states) to wield vi ...

ruler (no assassination attempts in Russian history until Peter I), since the elite rightly feared competition among themselves, ...

empire-wide institutions. From the power of an abstract imaginary we turn to the power of the knout, the army, and the bureaucra ...

On the interior decoration of Byzantine cathedrals, see Otto Demus,Byzantine Mosaic Decoration: Aspects of Monumental Art in Byz ...

nach St. Petersburg: Das russische Reich im 17. Jahrhundert,inForschungen zur osteuro- païschen Geschichte56 (2000): 167–85 and ...

Ukrainian Studies28 (2006): 521–42, and his“The Privy Domain of Ivan Vasil’evich,” in Dunning, Martin, and Rowland, eds.,Rude &a ...

7 The State Wields its Power Early modern Eurasian empires were capable offlexing their power across the realm. But in doing so, ...

necessary to pursue their goals. Despite the challenges of size and dearth of personnel, early modern empires deployed their pow ...

Volga and Bashkiria; when organized rebellion broke out, as in the Stepan Razin (1670–1) and Emelian Pugachev (1773–5) uprisings ...

Manning fortress lines and settling new frontier areas often required forcible population movement of servitors and of peasants ...

at the point of a gun; in the center, where peasants and townsmen had been paying taxes for centuries, the actual collection was ...

Ustiuzhna-Zheleznopol’skaia, Astrakhan, Nizhnii Novgorod, Kazan, and Kaluga. A river voyage from Moscow to Astrakhan could be do ...

forced to turn back. In the second campaign in 1689, better planning (leaving earlier in the season, strategic advance work) all ...

different on the forested steppe and steppe borderland, where the distance from the center and better farming conditions attract ...

through the rest of the century. These efforts, however, pale in comparison to the size of the empire. The problem of runaways a ...

relative status of the two clans according to official records of genealogy and military service. Since virtually no challenger ...

Muscovy’s legal infrastructure was rudimentary compared to the sophisticated courts, personnel, and jurisprudence of Byzantium a ...

towns such as Pustoozero, Kholmogory, Kol^0 skii ostrog; to the south, the northern Caucasus (the Terek). While in exile, crimin ...

condemned a few days for repentance (the 1649 Lawcode mandated six weeks, but that was rarely enforced) and to gather a crowd“to ...

Not surprisingly, offices to record the state’sfinances, human resources, and international relations accompanied Muscovy’s rise ...