4
THE NEW-MODEL ARMY AND SOME
\
QUESTIONS OF COST\THE presence of Polish soldiers in Moscow's sacred Kremijn in 1611-12 was
humiliating evidence that the traditional armed forces were inadequate for the
country's defence. Already under Ivan IV these troops had failed to measure
up to the technically more proficient armies of neighbouring European
powers. In the seventeenth century the balance tilted further to Moscow's
disadvantage. Yet the idea of reform made slow headway, at least until the
1650s. Under Michael Fyodorovich ( 1613-45), the first Romanov ruler, caution
was the watchword. The country's sorry economic condition did not permit
any major innovations and the prime concern of its unimaginative leaders was
to restore the system as it had existed before the Troubles. Even by mid-
century, when the situation had improved, the government shied away from
comprehensive measures-partly from inertia, partly for fear of trespassing on
vested interests, and partly because a thorough-going 'Westernization' of the
military establishment seemed to threaten Orthodox cultural values. Thus the
gentry levy, the stre/'tsy and other traditional forces continued to coexist
alongside the more modern 'new-model' or 'new-formation' infantry and
cavalry regiments (po/ki novogo stroya) that had since come into being.
This term needs some explanation. Earlier historians generally referred to
them as 'regiments of foreign (inozemskogo) formation'. This was actually an
eighteenth-century neologism' and has the defect, to which present-day Soviet
writers are particularly sensitive, of emphasizing the role played in these new
units by senior officers of foreign extraction, drawn mainly from northern and
western Europe. Although these forces were indeed structured on contem-
porary Western lines, and their nomenclature was German, they need not for
that reason be regarded as foreign. The rank-and-file soldiers were of course
overwhelmingly Russian, and by the 1660s this was true of the junior officers
as well; some Russians were also appointed to positions of command.^2
Moreover, the reform was not just a matter of replacing amateurs by profes-
sionals, trained personnel who could teach the men how to handle flintlock
muskets and to perform the complicated manreuvres required by the new
1 Kalinychev, Pravovye voprosy, p. 44; cf. Hellie, Enserfment, p. 350.
2 Chcrnov. Voor. sily, p. 150. By 1696 they numbered 954, or whom 244 held the rank or
lieutenant-colonel or above: Myshlayevsky, 'Ofitserskiy vopros', p. 295. The role of foreign
military personnel in Russia cannot be considered in detail here.