3
Assembling Empire
The First Centuries
Russia’sfirst centuries of empire, roughly from mid-sixteenth century through the
seventeenth, overwhelm the observer with their sheer energy and almost complete
lack of self-reflective ideology describing the imperial project. Muscovy’s rulers did
not define what they were doing; they simply expanded continuously. Sources such
as chronicles, decrees, and bureaucratic correspondence form the meager basis on
which historians intuit conceptual attitudes. A crusading ideology was not charac-
teristic of the Orthodox Church, although anti-Muslim rhetoric was a trope in
chronicle writing. Even if the Orthodox Church had wanted a more energetic
missionary role, the state did not support it. Decrees in the seventeenth century, for
example, forbade Siberian governors from forcibly converting or oppressing natives,
in order to keep tax collection stable. Neither did an ideology of cultural superiority
drive conquest. Non-Russian subjects were recognized as different in language,
religion, and culture, but were not systematically described or discriminated against
as inferior. Valerie Kivelson argues that the Muscovite state reveled in the abun-
dance of its subject peoples, regarding them as God’s bountiful creation and
evidence of divine favor on Russia.
Russia’s experience of“empire”is classically dated to the conquests of the
khanate of Kazan (1552) and the city of Astrakhan (1556), both major trading
centers with multi-ethnic and multi-religious populations, closely followed by
conquest of the khanate of western Siberia (1582) and movement across Siberia.
Expansion continued through the seventeenth century south into the steppe, east,
and, with greater difficulty, westward. Motives throughout were pragmatic: to
conquer important trade routes and depots for customs income and to capture
material resources (furs, taxes). So also was colonial policy: in these early centuries
of empire, Russia practiced a“politics of difference,”maintaining regional cultures
and institutions in exchange for loyalty and human andfiscal resources.
CONQUEST OF KAZAN
Although by 1550 Muscovy ruled East Slavic and Finno-Ugric populations, the
1552 conquest of the sovereign state of Kazan, with its Muslim and animist
populations and multiple ethnic groups, marked a decisive advance in diversity.
Taking advantage of dynastic instability and determined to stave off Crimean