The Russian Empire 1450–1801

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1618 established a fourteen-year armistice, the Commonwealth not yielding on
territory (Smolensk, the Seversk lands) or on Crown Prince Władysław’s claim to
the Russian throne. After fourteen years, around the 1630s, Russia tried to forge an
ambitious alliance against the Commonwealth with Sweden, the Crimea, and even
the Ottoman empire. That effort failed, as did the subsequent war Russia launched
for Smolensk in 1632; its peace treaty in 1634 won for Russia only the agreement of
Władysław (now King of Poland) to drop his claim to the throne, while the
Commonwealth won affirmation of the territorial gains of 1618.
For the next two decades the Romanovs tried to maintain neutral relations with
the Swedes and the Commonwealth, focusing on building a steppe defensive frontier
against the Crimeans and keeping their vassals, the Don Cossacks, from overly
antagonizing the Ottoman empire. When Don Cossacks captured the Ottoman
fortress of Azov (1637), Russia ordered them to abandon it (1642), and through the
rest of the century worked to limit Don Cossack raids against the Ottomans, in part
by increasing Russian cash and food subventions and military control.
The second half of the seventeenth century, as noted in Chapter 3, was marked
by wars catalyzed by the Cossack rebellion led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky in
Ukrainian-speaking “Rus’”lands of the Commonwealth in 1648. It set off a
conflagration of invasion: Russia invaded the Grand Duchy in 1654, Sweden
invaded the Kingdom of Poland and Baltic coast in 1655, and Russia in turn
declared war on Sweden in 1656 to seek land on the Baltic. The Russo-Swedish
conflict was settled relatively quickly: by the Treaty of Cardis in 1661 Russia ceded
to Sweden the Livonian territories that it had won (Dünaburg, Iur’ev/Dorpat). The
Ottoman empire also got into the fray caused by Khmelnytsky, eager to retain its
vassal states of Moldova and Wallachia and its new acquisition of Podolia. Russia
was drawn into war with the Ottoman empire (1676–81) that ended in stalemate in
the armistice of Bakhchisarai in 1681. Khmelnytsky’s Cossack Hetmanate, occupy-
ing the Left Bank of the Dnieper River and Kyiv, became subject to Russian control
but retained significant autonomies; Russia also accepted the move of a different
group of Cossacks, the Zaporozhian Cossacks, to vassalage to the Ottomans.
Russia’s major engagement in these wars was with the Commonwealth of
Poland-Lithuania, and here it achieved decided success. In the armistice of Andru-
sovo of 1667 the Commonwealth recognized the loss of the Hetmanate on the Left
Bank and ceded a large strip of territory in the Grand Duchy (Belarus’an speaking
areas), including Smolensk, Seversk, and Chernigov. Thus, Russia regained what
had been lost in the Time of Troubles. This wasfinalized in an“Eternal Peace”in
1686, agreed to by Polish King Jan Sobieski when he was eager to draw Russia into
a Holy Alliance against the Turks. Because it now considered the Ottoman empire
and the Crimeans vulnerable, Russia agreed to such a move after two centuries of
rejecting such requests. The resultant alliance joined the Commonwealth, Austria,
Venice, and Russia; Russia played its part by attacking the Crimea in 1687 and
1689, each of which campaigns was a debacle. Peter I’s campaign against Azov in
1694 (held by Russia until 1711) was a further attempt to pursue Russia’s
traditional goal of expansion across the steppe towards the Black Sea while honor-
ing the alliance.


14 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801

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