Prologue
The Chronological Arc
This work takes a thematic approach in general chronological order, with more
detailed event-based history left to the background. In some cases, it is built into
the chapters: Chapters 7 and 13 concerning imperial ideology, for example, pause
to recount the vagaries of dynastic succession behind confident claims of seamless
God-given power. In other cases events and institutions are mentioned for which
the reader might wish prior knowledge. This prologue therefore provides a quick
chronological overview of early modern Russian history, focusing on political
events:first domestic chronicle, then foreign policy.
DOMESTIC EVENTS
The Grand Principality of Moscow—modern English-language scholarship often
uses the term“Muscovy”to refer to Russia before 1700, drawing on sixteenth-
century English nomenclature—rose to regional power in the fourteenth century in
the wake of the weakening of the Mongol empire, dominant in modern-day
European Russia from the 1240s. Its westernmost subdivision ruled East Slavic
principalities from Sarai on the lower Volga and is properly called the Qipchaq
khanate, more familiarly the“Golden Horde.”From the earlyfifteenth century
Moscow’s grand prince and his men consolidated power and conquered neighbor-
ing principalities (the grand principality of Tver’, the trade center of Novgorod), as
detailed in Chapter 2. Because they had to supplement their paltry tax income from
the sparsely settled peasant population with that from transit trade along major
river highways, territorial expansion was constant. Conquest in the direction of
major trade depots, river routes, and territories rich in resources such as furs, mines,
and more fertile soil was a constant imperative; in the sixteenth century Moscow
expanded down the Volga and into Siberia, in the seventeenth century across
Siberia to the Pacific and into the Black Sea and Caspian steppe; in the eighteenth
century, Russia won the Black Sea littoral, Crimea, northern Caucasus, modern day
Ukrainian, Belarus’an and Lithuanian lands to the west, and even North American
lands across the Pacific (see Maps 2–5).
Moscow’s grand princes (who took the title of“tsar”in 1547) ruled over a land
always short on manpower for army and bureaucracy, let alone for productive
taxpaying labor. The state single-mindedly focused on mobilizing its scarce