The Russian Empire 1450–1801

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

resources, resulting in the endurance over the early modern centuries of a very
simple social organization, discussed in Chapter 9. The army officer corps com-
prised the landed elite; the peasant economy was so autarkic and domestic and
export trade so controlled by the state that urban middle classes developed only
weakly. Starting with Ivan III (1462–1505), Muscovy supported the elite by
awarding to cavalrymen grants of land and peasant labor on condition of military
service; these grants were called“pomest’e.”Over the next centuries the peasants
were gradually enserfed to ensure a labor supply to the military elite, as discussed in
Chapter 10. The state established a strong but skeletal bureaucratic system across the
realm; the cavalry elite staffed not only the army but also local government,
supported by chancery bureaucrats. Every subject of the grand prince was obliged
to serve the state, whether by paying taxes and providing services (peasants and
townsmen) or rendering military or merchant service (landed elite, high merchants).
While thefifteenth century saw the expansion and consolidation of control over
neighbors and within the ruling family, the sixteenth century was one of admin-
istrative organization and conquest of important non-Slavic trade centers. Ivan IV,
ruled 1533–84, confounds historians with his“terribleness,”epitomized by the
Oprichnina (1564–72), a division of the realm, army, and elite that threw the state
into turmoil, exacerbated by the failure of the long Livonian War (1558–81).
When the dynasty died out with Ivan IV’s son, Tsar Fedor Ivanovich (1584–98),
the absence of customs of succession precipitated a political crisis that eventually
turned into social crisis and foreign invasion as the great men and families of the
realm (the“boyars”) took more than a decade to agree on a legitimate ruler.
Dubbed by historians“The Time of Troubles”(1598–1613, discussed herein
and in Chapter 6), this era saw quick and often violent succession: Tsar Boris
Godunov (a Muscovite boyar, 1598–1605), thefirst False Dmitrii (a pretender,
1605 – 6), Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii (a Muscovite boyar, 1606–10), Polish occupation of
the Kremlin and negotiations with the Polish king and his son, Sigismund Vasa and
Władysław (1610–13). When the boyars agreed upon the Romanov family as the
new dynasty, the state was soon able to restore stability.
Pursuing stability, the new Romanov dynasty maintained institutions of gov-
ernment (centralized bureaucracy, serfdom, tight control of resources), elites (boy-
ars and landed cavalry) and aims (imperial expansion). It also modernized the army
and economic growth and social change proceeded. The dominant culture and
ideology remained based in Russian Orthodoxy, and through the seventeenth
century cultural expression remained decidedly “medieval” in comparison to
many of Russia’s European neighbors. There was no production of secular art,
writing, or science; religious art, architecture, hagiography, and history writing
provided the modes of dominant cultural expression. Printing was rejected by
Church and state; Russia was untouched by the turmoil of the sixteenth-century
European Protestant Reformation, although echoes and influences of it did pene-
trate Russia by the late seventeenth century (as discussed in Chapter 13). But
behind the façade of tradition, change occurred. The empire became, in this
and the eighteenth century, increasingly multi-ethnic and multi-religious, with
Muslims, Buddhists, Catholics, Lutherans, and Jews, and speakers of myriad


10 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801

Free download pdf