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yf AN HISTORY
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SONIA E.HOWE
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
RIVERSIDE
Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN
A THOUSAND YEARS
OF
RUSSIAN HISTORY
The Patriarch Nikox and His Ci,ergy. (Middle 17TH Century).
Frontispiece
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A THOUSAND YEARS
OF
RUSSIAN HISTORY
BY
SONIA E. HOWE
WITH COLOURED FRONTISPIECE, TWELVE PHOTOGRAVURE PLATES, NUMEROUS OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS, %ND EIGHT MAPS
LONDON WILLIAMS AND N ORG ATE
14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 1915
Hb9
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
TO THE BRIGHT HOPE
OF A CLOSER ALLIANCE BASED ON BETTER
MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING
BETWEEN TWO MIGHTY NATIONS
TO BOTH OF WHICH I BELONG
THE ONE BY BIRTH, THE OTHER, NO LESS, BY MARRIAGE
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
There are few people in England, probably, who have not read some book or article on Russia, and some aspects of the life of that country are well known to EngUsh people ; yet it is not too much to say that great ignorance prevails about Russia as a whole.
The thing lacking is a knowledge of history, for history alone explains the present by the past, and offers the right vantage ground from which to view the great drama in action at this time. History alone will explain, for example, why Russia is so irresistibly drawn towards Constantinople, and why so much blood has been shed in vain attempts to gain possession of the " latchkey " to her own front door which the Western Powers have prevented her again and again from getting into her hands.
The ancient story of Oleg the Wise hanging his shield on the gate of Byzantium in 911 is a symbol of Russia's poUcy.
A knowledge of history will also enable the reader to understand the living bond which exists between Russians and Balkan Slavs, who are all members of the same race and of the same Church, and how this bond has always reasserted itself when the weaker brothers had reason to call upon the stronger for help against Turkish Moslems.
There are also other vital points which have to be ex- plained before Russia's political position can be rightly understood ; for the mighty Russian Empire has not been built in a day — from a small beginning and by a number of different processes it has grown to its present dimensions.
For centuries it grew by immigration and colonisation, and it is only since the sixteenth century that expansion has
vi A TlKn'SAXD YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
come by means of conquest. In the course of the ten and a hiilf centuries of lier existence, Russia's poUtical centre has shift<Hl three times : from Kiev to Vladimir, from Vladimir to Moscow, and from Moscow to St Petersburg. Each of thest» four names represents distinct phases of development and periods with very definite characteristics.
This develo})ment has not been one of continuous growth : it was interrupted by a great calamity, the Mongol invasion, wliich darivcned the thirteenth century, and from which it has taken centuries to recover. Again, the Russian nation is not a homogeneous whole, a nation of one blood ; nor are her peoples all on the same level of culture. Unless these facts are grasped, and the causes underlying the complexity of Russian history come to be understood, there can be no exact comprehension or balanced judgment of her problems and difficulties, and the part she has to play among the nations.
It is because the history of Russia's expansion in the past is terra incognita to the average Englishman, that the present political conditions, bringing with them great expecta- tions to Poles and Finns for the future, cannot be rightly appreciated.
The object of this book is to supply in some measure information regarding certain historical and economic facts on matters which puzzle the man in the street ; not merely to recount stories, however picturesque.
The aim in A Thousand Years of Russian History is to convey general impressions of the various stages passed through by Russia in the course of her evolution, and to give sketches of the lives of those of her rulers who have stamped their era ^vith the mark of their personality.
The title indicates the wide limits of time and fact wliich have to be brought within the necessary limits of the book. In Chapters XXII. to XXVI. I have given concise monographs of those countries which by annexation or conquest have become an integral part of the Empire, but which cause political and administrative difficulties to the central Government.
The nursery rhyme about " the old woman who lived in a shoe," etc., is an illustration of the Tsar's position ; only,
AUTHOR'S PREFACE vu
in this case the children want their own shoes, while the " Little Father " prefers to keep them in his.
People of all classes have so frequently asked me for facts and explanations about Russia, that I have been enabled perhaps to reahse the points on which knowledge is most needed ; and I trust that the information offered to the pubUc will help to disperse the mists of ignorance and prejudice which have too long enveloped the vast Russian Empire and its peoples, distorting the proportions of good and evil in its history.
I cannot better express my hope of seeing closer and ever more friendly relations between the two great peoples now so happily allied, than by quoting the reply of Captain Chan- cellor, the first Enghshman who, in 1553, visited Russia, when asked the object of his coming : " That they were EngUshmen sent into those costs, from the most excellent King Edward the sixt, having from him in commandement certain things to deliver to their King, and seeking nothing else but his amnetie and friendship, and traffique with his people, whereby they doubted not, but that great commoditie and profit would grow to the subjects of both kingdoms."
The maps have been adapted from Freeman's Historical Geography to suit the text. They illustrate the gradual shifting of power from Kiev to Vladimir, from Vladimir to Moscow, and from Moscow to St Petersburg, as well as Russia's territorial expansion in Europe.
The stippling encircling certain parts designates terri- tories which in early days have formed part of the original " Russian Land," and those countries which later on have been joined to the Empire yet without being absorbed into it, such as Poland and Finland.
In case this book should find Russian as well. as English readers, I may explain to the former that I have throughout employed the form of proper names which is traditional in England ; and as there is no universally accepted rule for spelling Russian names in English, I have transliterated them as simply as possible.
I embrace this opportunity to express my very grateful thanks to those English friends who have so kindly helped
viii A TIlolSWl) \ KAKS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
iii«« hy iiMiling niy .MS. aiul |)iiiitir"s proof and by tracing maps and illustrations.
1 sIhniUi lik(» also to express my indobtediiess to a Russian friend ft>r kindly showing me sliort-cuts to knowledge by iiuidinc nu' to the right sources of information, and for verify- iiii: niv fai'ts.
SONIA E. HOWE.
St LrKK's Vicarac.k, Finchlky, 5th May I 'J 16.
so UTH - W KSTEH N K US8I A
I. I'KKIOD: KIKV. Town r»oviNrE8: — Novt)ouoi>. I'skdv, Kir.v, Smoi.knsk, Polotsk. KrpuMics.
Kuiik : builds Ladoga : first Ruler, 862. ^
Olc^' (879-912) : first to make, KIEV the capital, 882.
Vladimir (980-1015) : iutroduces Christianity.
Yaroslav (1015-1054) : first Law-givor.
Vladimir Monomaoh (1113-1128) : last Ruler of undivided Russia.
HISTORIC/^
Kiev loses the supremacy, 1157 : is attacked in 1169 g by Andrei Bogolyubski. pa
Kiev destroyed by Mongols, 1240.
Kiev taken by Gedemin of Lithuania 1320.
Little Russia under Lithuanian rule.
Novgorod conquered by Muscovy, 1471-1495.
Pskov conquered by Muscovy, 1510.
Kiev comes under Polish rule, 1569.
W
Kiev comes under Muscovite rule, 1667.
o £ Sc5
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CHART
NORTH-EASTEEN RUSSIA.
II. PERIOD : SUZDAL and VLADIMIR, Etc.
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Invasion, Pi
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^Yuri Vladimirovitch-Dolgorouki(1155-1157) : founds^
Moscow. Andrei Bogolyubski (1157-1174) : VLADIMIR
becomes the capital. Alexander Nevski (1255-1263) : first GRAND DUKE
of Russia, Dmitri Donskoi (1363-1389) : wins great victory over
the Tatars.
in. PERIOD: MUSCOVY.
Ivan III., the Great (1462-1505): ^TstRULER of All-\ Russia : marries Greek Princess : claims to be heir to Byzantine Emperors : doubled-headed eagle : makes MOSCOW the capital.
Vassili III. (1505-1533): first visit by foreign am- bassador (Austrian).
Ivan IV., the Terrible (1533-1584): first TSAR of All the Russias : first Englishman to visit Muscovy, 1553. 'Boris Godounov (1598-1605): introduces serfdom: usurps the throne.
Pseudo-Dmitri (1605-1606) : Polish influence para- mount.
Period of anarchy (1606-1612): Russia delivered by Minin and Pojarsky. /-Mikhail Romanoff (1612-1645): first of the new^ dynasty is elected : his father, the Patriarch Philaret, co-Tsar.
Alexei Mikhailovitch (1645-1676) : Great Schism : Uliraina comes to Muscovy.
Feodor Alexeievitch (1676-1682) : Western culture favoured : destroys Rodoslovie of the Boyars.
Regency of the Tsarevna Sophia (1682-1689): Streltzi Risings.
Chapter
in.
IV.
V.
VI.
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IV. PERIOD : THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE.
Peter I., the Great (1689-1725) : first Eli/I PEROR of\
Russia : joins Baltic Provinces to Russia : founds '
the new capital, ST PETERSBURG. Catherine I., Regents, Favourites (1725-1741) : palace
revolutions. Elizabeth Petrovna (1741-1762) : carries on her
father's ideas : Prussian War : last of the dynasty
of Romanoff. /'Peter III. (1762) : first of the dynasty of Holstein- \
Gottorp, grandson of Peter I. : is mui'dered. J
Catherine II., the Great (1762-1796): wars against "j
Turkey : partition of Poland : annexed Crimea, j Paull. (1796-1801): reverses all his mother has done:'*
Georgia comes to Russia : is murdered. r
Alexander I. (1801-1825): Napoleonic War: re- generation of Russia : Holy Alliance : reaction
Finland comes to Russia. Nicholas I. (1825-1855): Decembrist conspiracy:^
Polish revolution : campaigns : conquest of C.
Caucasus : Crimean War. \
Alexander II. (1855-1881) : liberates serfs in 1861 : \
in 1862 a thousand years since Rurik. j
\
VII., VIII.
IX.
X.
XL, XII
xin.
XIV., XV.
XVI.,XVIL,XVI1I.
XIX., XX.
CONTENTS
PAOK
AUTHOR'S PREFACE . . . v
HISTORICAL CHART
CHAP.
1. INTRODUCTORY : THE UNVEILING OF RUSSIA .
2. FROM RURIK TO ANDREI BOGOLYUBSKI (862-1157)
3. THE PERIOD OF MINOR PRINCIPALITIES OR APPAN
AGES AND THE MONGOL DOMINATION (1157-1462)
4. THE MUSCOVITE EMPIRE (1462-1598)
5. THE PERIOD OF TROUBLE (1598-1612)
6. THE ROMANOFFS (1612-1689) ....
7. PETER THE GREAT, THE EUROPEANISER OF RUSSIA
(1689-1725) ......
8. THE REFORMS OF PETER THE GREAT
9. EMPRESSES, REGENTS, AND FAVOURITES (1725-1762)
10. PETER III. AND HIS CONSORT
11. CATHERINE II. AND RUSSIA'S TERRITORIAL EXPAN
SIGN (1762-1796)
12. THE ERA OF CATHERINE THE GREAT
13. PAUL I. (1796-1801)
14. ALEXANDER, NAPOLEON, AND EUROPE (1801-1825)
15. THE FIRST QUARTER OF THE NINETEENTH CEN
TURY : THE REGENERATION OF RUSSIA
1
7
15 33 56 65
84 106 124 135
145 162 189 197
220
A rilorSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
16. TIIK INTKRUKiJNUM AND TUK DECEMBRIST CON-
SIM HACY ....... 251
17. THE RULE UK NICHOLAS I. (1825-1855) .259
18. CAMPAI(}NS, REVOLUTIONS, AND WARS (1825-1855) 279
19. ALE.XANDKR II. AND RUSSIA ON THE EVE OF GREAT
REFORMS (1855-1862) 295
20. THE LIBERATION OF THE SERFS . .314
21. A LINK (1862-1915) 322
22. THE UKRAINA : THE COSSACKS OF THE DNIEPER,
OR THE KNIGHTS OF THE ZAPOROGIAN SETCHA. 327
23. DON COSSACKS AND OTHERS 348
24. THE BALTIC PROVINCES OF RUSSIA . . .354
25. POLAND 369
26. FINLAND AND HER RELATIONS TO THE TSARS . 402
AUTHORITIES .423
INDEX ....... 426
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Patriarch Nikon and his Clergy (middle of the 17th
century) ......... Coloured frontispiece
FULL-PAGE PLATES
TO PACE PAGE
Vladimir, Grand Duke of Kiev (980-1015). (From an ancient banner) 10
Svyatoslav Yaroslavovitch, Grand Duke of Kiev, and his Family, 1073 32 Vladimir Monomach, Grand Duke of Kiev (1113-1128), in Council with
his Advisers . .......... 76
Warriors sent by Andrei Bogolyubski, Prince of Suzdal (1157-1174),
against Novgorod .......... 94
Tatars of the Mongol Period 130
The Patriarch PhUaret, Father of Mikhail Romanoff, the first Tsar of
the New Dynasty (17th century) 172
Peter the Great in his costume as a skipper in place of the flowing Tatar
robes worn up to the time of his reforms ..... 214
Costume of the Boyars in the 17th century ...... 230
Plan of the Kremlin in the reign of Boris Godounov, a.d. 1600 . . 264
View of the Kremlin. (From a water-colour drawing, a.d. 1786) . 302
View of the destroyed Tower of Nicholas, the Arsenal, etc., in the
Kremlin, a.d. 1812 342
View of the Kremlin and the Foimdling House. (From a drawing,
A.D. 1825) 368
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
PAGE
St George and the Dragon (silver coin, 10th century) .... I
Design of a Cross in the Cathedral of St Sophia in I^ev (first half of
the 11th century) .......... 5
Cap of Vladimir Monomach, with which the Tsars of Russia have been
crowned from the time of Ivan the Terrible .... 41
Jewelled Saddle of Boris Godounov (1598-1605) . . . . 57
Double Crown of the Co-Tsars, Ivan and Peter 69
XVI
A rilOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
PAQB
rUuj of tho I'^tiKiiy of tho Nova (1698), showing the islands on which
lVt«T tht> (irt'Ht built liis Capital 101
Thi' ■■ iJnviulfathcr of tlio Ru»sian NaN'j'," tho little EngUsh boat which
iiispiriHi IVtor tho Great to build his navy . . . .113
Tho Original House of Petor the Groat m 8t Petersburg . . 123
Church of the 12th Century 137
Churtjh of the 12th Contury . . 141
St George and St Dmitri 157
Mongol Mask-Visor 185
Church of tho 13th Century 193
Double-headed Eagle 209
Medal struck by Alexander I. in 1812 in commemoration of the deliver- ance of Russia from the hosts of Napoleon ..... 219
Metropolitan of Moscow 241
Tsar, holding in his hand the four Sceptres representing the four Tsardoms of which Muscovy consisted after the conquest of
Siberia, Kazan, and Astrakhan ....... 253
One of the Streltzi — the professional armed men of Muscovy . . 269
Design from a Goblet .......... 281
Hatchet (17th century) 293
Bowl of the Tsar Alexei Mikhailovitch 309
Imperial Bowl used by the Tsar (17th century) 317
Plan of part of the Zaporogian Settlement on the Dnieper Islands . 333
Cossack Boat 337
Cossack Camp 337
Cross on the Grave of Cossack Leader 353
Battle-axe (17th century) 381
Halbert (17th century) 389
MAPS
I. Russia in the 9th Century
II. Russia under the Hegemony of the Principality of Kiev
III. Russia during the Period of the Minor Principalities
IV. The Principality of Muscovy V. The Tsardom of Muscovy .
VI. The Empire of Russia ....
VII. Russia at the Close of the 18th Century
VIII. Russia after the Congress of Vienna .
9
13
23
35
54
105
161
217
A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY : THE UNVEILING OF RUSSIA
The ignorance of English people as regards Russia is no modern peculiarity, but now, in the light of the present-day opportunities, it is less justifiable.
It can hardly be expected of a nation like the EngHsh, which has always had free inter- course with the outer world, that it should realise the possibiUty and extent of such an isolation as Russia suffered from during the thirteenth to the sixteenth century while under the Tatar yoke.
For a nation whose political development has been normal and continuous, it is difficult fully to appreciate the effects on Russia of such a calamity as the Mongol in- vasion, which completely cut her off from Western Europe.
When in 1375 a map of Europe was made for the King of France, Kiev was not even marked on it, only Riga, Cracow, Lemberg, and the town of Bolgary on the Volga ; the remainder was a blank on which was printed the one word " Russia," and this in spite of the fact that in very early days there had been frequent inter-
1
St George and the Dragon. (Silver coin, 10th century.)
■2 A rilorSAM) VKAKS OK RUSSIAN HISTORY
i-oiirsr hclwoon that country and tJio nortli-west of Europe, for tlio groat trade route to Byzantium passed through south-western Russia. When, however, in 1450 a map was made for Venice, the original of wJiich is still in the archives of that town, Moscow appeared on it.
So far as England was concerned, Russia was re- discovered in 1 ")53 by '* The Mystery, Company, and Fellowship of Mer- chants and Adventurers for the discovery of unknown lands," which sent an expedition to the Far North, with the object of finding a north-eastern route to China and India.
Three ships left London under the command of Sir Hugh Willougliby, but being unpro\dded with the necessaries for an Arctic expedition the gallant explorers succumbed to frost, hunger, and disease on the inhospitable shores of Russia. Fortunately, the crew of the third ship escaped these dangers, but instead of finding a passage to Cliina its captain, Richard Chancellor, accidentally discovered Russia. The friendly inhabitants of the place, where thirty years later the town of Archangel was founded, informed the astonished Englishmen that the land was called " Russia," and that it was ruled over b}' the Grand Duke of Muscovy.
True to the British instinct not to let a chance for com- merce or colonisation go by, the undaunted explorers went on to Moscow, which they described afterwards as equal in size to London, but they added that its wooden houses could not be compared with those of the English capital. The enterprising EngUshmen did not lose an opportunity for entering into business relations with this newly discovered State. Captain Chancellor presented to the Tsar a document which, in the same vague manner as an English passport of to-day, recommended the traveller to the kindly favour of foreign Governments.
From that date, 1553, began English trade and inter- course with Russia, about which many books were written. In 1558 Russia was visited by Jenkinson, the tourist par excellence of those days, who crossed Russia and entered Persia to find a new route to India, and who on his return journey was commissioned by the Tsar to convey a special message to Queen Elizabeth, " that the Queen's Majestic and he
THE UNVEILING OF RUSSIA 3
might be to all their enemies joined as one, and that England and Russland might be in all manners as one."
A century later, Milton's Brief History of Moscovio, and of other less known Countries lying eastward of Russia proved that even in his day Russia was still an unknown country and quite outside the sphere of European interests. The European States simply did not trouble themselves about her : she was ignored or looked upon as aHen and unattractive. She was considered hardly fit to participate in poHtical transactions, and no Power desired her as an ally. From neither a military nor a diplomatic point of view was there anything to gain. Russia was useful merely on account of her products — chiefly grain — or as a market for other nations' wares, or else as an overland route to China and India. Even Turkey was far better known than Russia, for she represented a perpetual menace to Europe, while Muscovy was only de- scribed in historical treatises or in grotesque anecdotes. Later on she became of interest for the student of ethnography or of language.
As late as the seventeenth century a Russian diplomatic agent who was trying to get French doctors for Russia com- plained that France thought Russia to be at the other end of the world, with India as its next-door neighbour. What a prophetic vision !
But, on the other hand, Russia was equally ignorant about Western Europe ; it was as if she lived behind the Great Wall of China. Nor did she show any desire to come into vital touch with the rest of Europe ; cut off from the West, her face was turned to the East, and the great historical events which stirred, uplifted, or convulsed Europe were ignored by her.
The Shah of Persia was a personage of importance to whom in the year 1663 presents worth 100,000 and even 200,000 roubles were sent, while the goodwill of the Emperor of Austria was not considered worth more than 1000 roubles. The Oriental despotism, as personified in the Sultan and in the Shah of Persia, greatly impressed the Tsar, while Ivan the Terrible's estimate of Queen Elizabeth was very low when he wrote to her : " We had thought that thou wert a ruler,
I A riKUSANI) VKAHS OV RUSSIAN HISTORY
posM'ssing <^ro;it power, ami that tlum didst \i|)lu)ld the honour of thy position. Imt noic wv understand that in thy State otlu>r pooplo rulo ind('p(>ndi'ntly of thoo, and what class of peopU' ' .lust common uuMihants !
As to th(> Kini: of Sweden, the Tsar wiote to liim that "' As the heaven is liigh above the earth, so niueli higher am I tlian thou."
Russia's uncompromising attitude of aloofness towards all things \Vest«Mn is amusingly illustrated by the opposition evinced by a Russian when, at the instigation of Holland, a postal service was introduced in 1663. He writes : " The foreigners have made a hole into our country and through it they })ry into all our concerns. The post may bring financial benefit to the Tsar, but for the country it is bad. Whatever happens to us, the foreigners know it at once. I suggest that this hole be quickly and securely closed up ; also that all travellers should be carefully examined on leaving the countrj^ lest they should carry away important information."
Her political isolation was very convenient to some of Russia's neighbours ; it was to their interest to keep her on a low level of culture, and, geographically, Poland, Lithuania, and the Baltic provinces formed a barrier between Russia and the other nations.
Until 1686 no Russians w^ere permitted to pass through Poland ; therefore Archangel was the only outlet, which made foreign travel an arduous and dangerous task. To reach Italy 7000 miles had to be traversed — that is, a distance equal to that between Lisbon and the Great Wall of China. About the middle of the sixteenth century, however, the Tsar Ivan IV. decided to bring into his country foreigners — pro- fessional men, mechanics, and artisans from Germany ; but, unfortunately his scheme w^as frustrated and the men pre- vented from reaching his dominions. Some of the Western Powers began to reaUse the danger of a civihsed Russia, and put obstacles in the way of her procuring the necessary means for economic progress. The Emperor of Germany, Maximihan I., wrote early in the sixteenth century to the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights who ruled over Prussia : " Russia's vastness is a danger to us."
THE UNVEILING OF RUSSIA
That Russia might really awake one day and take her place as a great Power was deemed hardly possible ; yet there lurked an uncomfortable feeling in the consciousness of her neighbours that should Russia once begin to learn from Western Europe she might become a dangerous factor in European politics.
It was only as a military Power which could be usefully employed against Turkey that Russia gradually became of importance to those of her Western neighbours who suffered from the wars and invasions of the Moslem Power. In a letter sent to the Tsar by the Patriarch of Con- stantinople these words occur : " Russia slumbers while everyone else is in arms against Antichrist. All the pious Chris- tians, Bulgars, Moldavians, and WaUachs are awaiting thy help. Sleep no longer ; arise and deliver us ! "
In 1676 a Venetian diplomatist calls attention to the fact that the Sultan had every reason to fear the Tsar of Muscovy, as the inhabitants of Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, and Morea were of the same faith design of a Cross in
as the Russians, and might at any moment ™^„ Cathedral of 1 1 1 «• 1 r^ 1 • 1 1 St Sophia in Kiev.
be ready to throw off the Turkish yoke (First half of the nth and go over to the Russian Tsar. century.)
The orthodox Slavs of the Balkans did send a cry for help to the orthodox Russians, but in those days Russia was unable either as a military Power or by diplomacy to fulfil their expectations. Yet ten years later the siege of Vienna by the Turks caused the allied Powers — the Pope, the Emperor of Germany, the King of Poland, and the RepubHc of Venice — to invite aU other potentates, " especially the two Tsars of Moscow," to join this Christian coaUtion against the Moslems.
In certain quarters the hope was expressed " that Russia would pit her unexhausted strength against the Crescent and deUver Europe from the ' terrible Turk.' " Russia was unable to accomplish this in the eighteenth
.1 A ril()l-8ANl) VEAK8 OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
ciMiturv. but it is not improbable that she will succeed in the twentieth.
One of the Tsars mentioned in this official communique was Peter (afterwards " The Great "), who a few years later broke asunder the shackles wliicli had held Russia in bondage.
He first, however, went to learn from the West how to prepare the tools for this liberation — how to utilise and improve the lumbering macliinery which his predecessors had gradually built up and accumulated. When he founded his capital on the Neva, he not only " opened a window towards the West," but broke down the wall which had so long separated his country from the rest of Europe ; and suddenly Western Europe came to realise that Russia had awakened, that the weak principality of Muscovy had entered the arena of history as a strong monarchy, claiming equality with the rest of the European Powers and the right to make her voice heard in the din of European politics.
CHAPTER II
FROM RURIK TO ANDREI BOGOLYUBSKI ; OR, KIEV AND SUZDAL
(862-1157)
To the sympathetic EngUshman whose knowledge of history is limited, there is always a puzzhng incongruity between the backwardness of the Russian Government and the pro- gressive attitude of individual Russians.
That Russia has been behind the other great Powers in very many matters of political and administrative import- ance cannot be disputed, but the study of Russian history offers a very simple solution to this problem.
No one will deny the fact that it is impossible to under- stand rightly the development of England without taking into consideration the Latin colonisation and the intro- duction of Christianity from Rome. That England came at so early a date into touch with the very centre of European culture, and that her rehgious life was influenced by the Western Church, had as far-reaching results as had, at a later date, the mixing of races and the introduction of another civilisation. Nor can the consequences of the Norman Con- quest be overlooked — the blending of various nationalities, each of which contributed its own genius and thus produced the English nation.
It is quite as impossible to understand Russia and to value rightly the place she occupies in the scale of civiUsation without first apprehending the fact that Byzantium and not ft.ome was the first foreign Power to influence her materially, and that civilisation reached the eastern Slavs from the near East and not from the West. And secondly, it is imperative
7
S A THOrSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
to realise fully the vital importanoo of the Mongol invasion, with its destriu'tive, arresting, and retarding inliuence on the country's progress and civilisation.
If it is England's geographical position as an island which has caused her to become a world empire by means of oversea colonisation, it is just as much the geographical position of Russia which has forced her to expand by means of extension, by penetration into and b}^ the absorption of those lesser States which stood in the way of her irre- sistible progress towards natural boundaries — towards the sea and the mountains, or until she comes up against racial frontiers.
If Russia has for so long been an unkno^^^l land, and if her liistory has for centuries been independent of that of other nations, it is again due to her geographical position. Her isolation seems natural enough when one realises that impenetrable primeval forests and immense stretches of marshland separated her from her Western neighbours : that, scattered all over those vast lands which now form European Russia, tribes of Slavs founded their first settlements.
From earhest days a settled mode of living was character- istic of the Slavs. In this they differed from their neighbours, the nomadic Petchenegs, Polovtsi, etc., who roamed over the Steppes east of the Dnieper. These eastern Slavs, eastern in contrast to the southern Slavs (Serbs, Slovacs, etc.) and to the western (Prussians, Wends, etc.), gradually inter- married \Adth the nomads, even though perpetually at war with them.
The French authority on Russia, Leroy-Beaulieu, con- tends that of all Indo-European people the Russians are the least Aryan, and that this is due to the admixture of Turkish and Finnish elements. Though tliis may be true ethnographically, the Slavs, in spite of intermarriage wdth these semi-Oriental tribes, became a separate and distinct people — the Russians. They absorbed into themelves these tribes of other races, but were never absorbed by them. The most dominant and virile tribe of the eastern Slavs was that of the warrior-like Polyans, who settled on the land
FROM RURIK TO ANDREI BOGOLYUBSKI 9
west of the Dnieper, where the forest-land ended and the Steppes began.
Wherever the Slavs settled they lived in clans or com- munities, which in course of time developed into cities. These always retained their primitive democratic basis, and later on developed into republics. Novgorod and Kiev were founded on this principle. Through these two cities,
tJsrtholomev.tdin'.
Russia in the Ninth Century.
Scandinavian and Norman merchants and warriors passed on their way south, more especially in travelling to Byzantium. Tradition records that the Russians sent a message to the Varangians, whom they had come to know when the latter passed from the North to Byzantium : " Come, rule over us, for our country is vast and without any order in it," but it is much more likely that they either made a virtue of necessity or that these peaceable cities were forced to adopt military ohiefs as protectors against external foes.
10 A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
In 851 Askold and Dir, two bold Scandinavian warriors, had made thtMiiselves niasttirs of Kiev on the Dnieper, whence thev made a successful raid on Byzantium. The chief of tliese Varangians was Rurik, who had settled in 862 on Lake Ladoija. from whence he gradually extended his rule over various cities, chief among them Novgorod. After the death of his two brothers, who had come with him, and who had held sway at Byelo-osero and on the shores of Lake Peipus, all Russia came under the rule of his house, and his descend- ants were the chiefs of the " town-provinces " of which the *■ Ru.>^sian "" lands consisted during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. With their " Drujina," or band of warriors, their comrades-in-arms, these military chiefs pro- tected the cities against the attacks of the nomad hordes, Petchenegs, Polo\i;si, and others, with whom the}^ were evidently frequently at variance ; and they made military expeditions against Bulgars and Greeks in the name of these cities, never in their own.
The republic of Novgorod was for a long time the principal centre, forming a link between the north-west of Europe and " Russia," which by the twelfth century had come to represent a political unit, the " Russkaya Zemlya " or "Russian Land."
It was Kiev, however, taken from Askold and Dir by Oleg, which gradually gained the ascendancy over all the other " town-provinces," and to which was accorded the name of " mother of Russian towns." Here the first phases of Russian political development were passed through.
Four of the princes of Kiev left their mark on south- western Russia during the first four centuries of Russian liistory. The first of these was the valorous Oleg, a true hero, of whom the bards sang, whose rule is said to have extended from Ladoga to Kiev, and who became renowned for his expeditions against Byzantium, on the gates of which he is supposed to have hung his shield as a sign of his achievement.
The second was " Sunny " Vladimir (980-1015), whose reign is immortalised in the epics and legends of that heroic time. Having accepted Christianity in 988, Vladimir decided to make it the national religion, and caused all his people to be baptised en masse in the rivers. His choice of the
FROM RURIK TO ANDREI BOGOLYUBSKI 11
Greek form of Christianity was the natural result of trade intercourse with Byzantium. The prince having thus adopted the Eastern form of worship, Kiev became spiritually and intellectually a colony of that great city, and in her turn came to occupy a leading position in Russia as a centre of culture, in addition to exercising poUtical supremacy over other Russian cities.
During the tenth and eleventh centuries the importance of Kiev increased in more than one direction, but it was especially as a trading centre that she attracted merchants, who came from afar to attend the eight fairs held there annually. Greeks, Germans, and Arabs visited her, and in their writings give glowing accounts of her twelve market- places, her numerous churches, her riches and glory.
It was during the reign of Yaroslav the Wise (1015-1054) that Kiev had her " golden age," when she reached the zenith of her power and culture, when her princes attained a higher intellectual level than the Russian princes who lived after the Mongols had ruined her city in 1240, and, with it, her civilisa- tion. It is reported that Yaroslav himself made translations from the Greek, and that one of his sons spoke five languages. Intercourse with other Powers was uninterrupted and normal : Russian princes were mentioned in foreign chronicles as having visited Emperors of Germany at Quedhnburg and Mainz, and once even the Pope at Rome. Intermarriage also brought Kiev into touch with the rest of Europe. Yaroslav's four daughters married respectively the Kings of Poland and Hungary, Prince Harold of Norway, and Henri I. of France, and his grandson, Vladimir Monomach, married Gytha, daughter of Harold, the last Saxon King of England. Under Yaroslav Russian law was codified and the " Russkaya Pravda " compiled, and such interest was taken in literature that a public library even was founded.
It was chiefly by means of the Church that education was introduced and fostered, and monasteries became centres of learning. Various princes also founded secular schools in which the children of the nobles were educated, but always according to Byzantian methods.
This was a period of church-building ; still, one may doubt
12 A THOUSAND YEARS OF RTTSSFAN HISTORY
the accuracy i)f a chronicler who states that in llu> ureal tir(> of Kiev ill 1071 seven hundred churches wwv dtvstroycd. The great Cathedral of St Sophia, nioilelled upon tiie famous church of Byzantium, stood in Kiev as a symbol of the fai- reaching fact that the Greek faith had become an imjjortaul power in deciding the trend of Russia's spiritual, social, and political development. Some years before Yaroslav died, Kiev escaped destruction at the hands of tlie licrce l*ctcJu>ti(>gs who had laid siege to liis capital. In honour of tliis deliveraiKui, the Grand Duke dedicated the day of the victory, November 26th, to his Patron Saint, St George ; and about tliree hundred and fifty years later, Dmitri DonsUoi madc^ this warrior- martyr the Patron Saint of Moscow.
The death of Yaroslav inaugurates the dreariest period of Russian history (1054-12158): from it dates the d(!cline of Kiev's supremacy. In accordance with an ancient Slavonic custom, Yaroslav divided his dominiotis amongst, his many sons ; but this ill-advised act resulted in the splitting up of Russia into a number of minor principalities. As ho to whom Kiev was allotted took precedence of all the oth(vr princes, the desire to possess that principality 1(h1 to con- tinual feuds. Another Slavonic tradition, according to wjiich the ruler was succeeded by the eldest male member of his family, which might be either his son or his brother, gave rise to still further complications.
The last prince of Kiev whoso influence was paramount, and who stands head and shoulders above his contem})orarieH, is Vladimir Monomach (1113-1125), a strong and wise ruler, whose " Po-outchenie " or " instruction " to his sons is an interesting document, giving a vivid impression of his person- ality, and contributing valuable information as to ideas, conditions, and customs of his day. After his death Kiev ceased to play the leading part among Russian cities.
Dissensions and quarrels among the princes had become the rule : there was no harmony, no cohesion, no solidarity among the descendants of the house of Rurik. Every now and then the idea of securing continuity of government by reforming the system of succession was suggestfjd, but it was never carried into practice.
FROM RURIK TO ANDRKF ROCOLYUHSKI i:{
lifJHSIA IJNDICU TIIK, IflCrjICMON Y (IV TIIK I'lll NOJ I'A 1,11 V OK K I KV,
I. PI^:RI0D (802 1155)
KIKVI'I'K RUSSIA RURIK (862-879). OLEO (87!) 912) rnakoH Kiev tho capital. Kirai oxpodiiion agairiHt
Byzantium. \in)T Rurikovitch (012-945). Olga, If^or's widow (94.5 O.'S.'i). Svyatoslav I. Igorovitch (95.5-97.'J). Varopolk I. SvyatoHlavitoh (97.*} 980). VLADJMIIi I. SVYATOSLAVI'I'CH (St Vladimir) (980 lOir,). P,;/,ptiH<;d 988.
DividoH hiH realm betw.'-n liia twelve hohh and one. n<;plie,w. YAROSLAV I. VLADIMIROVrrCH (The Wine) (101.5 10.54). fJivideH his
realm among hIx HonH and one grandHon. Izyaskv I. YaroHlaviteh (10.54-1008). Great Prince of Kiev and Novgorod, VHCHlav VHCvolodovitch (1008- J 009). Izyaslav II. YaroHlaviteh (J 009 107:i). Svyatoslav II. YaroHlavitch (I07:i-I077). Vscvolod I. YaroaLavitch (1078-1093). Married to the (laughter of Henry I V.,
Emperor of the Gcrroans.
II A rilOrSANl) YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
Svvatopolk 11. Izv.uslavitoh ( 1093-111:5).
vf.ADlMlH 11. VSEVOLODOVl rCH (MONOMACH) (1113-1 12-)). Divide;
liis ix'iilm bt'twtvii hi.'^ spven sous. MstLsbv I. Vladimirovitch (1125-1132). YjiTDpoIk II. Vladimirovitch (1132-1139). Vsevolod II. Ologovitch (1139-1146). Igor II. C)li>govitch(lU6). Iryiwsliiv II. M.stislavovitch (1146-1154). Rostislav Mstislavovitch (1154-1155),
CHAPTER III
THE PERIOD OF THE MINOR PRINCIPALITIES OR APPANAGES (1157-1462) AND THE MONGOL DOMINATION
While internal dissensions were thus disintegrating Kievite Russia in the south-west, another Russia was gradually developing in the region of the upper Volga. The vast lands lying to the north-east of the Dnieper were only sparsely populated by Finnish tribes. Love of emigrating and desire for pastures new were potent factors in the development of this new Russia, and in course of time the " Great Russians " as contrasted with the " Little Russians " of the South-west were evolved.
As to the princes who left Kiev to strike out a line for themselves, they were prompted to do so not merely from love of adventure, but more especially from a desire of freeing them- selves from the irksome fetters of the democratic traditions of the ancient cities — the rule by " Vetche " or popular council.
They travelled eastward, traversed the forest, and opened up new lands for themselves where they were free to start a different regime from that of the old. In this course they were supported by the Boyars, the descendants of the warriors, who had in earlier days formed the Drujina or warrior band which helped the chief to protect the republican cities. These knights had, in course of time, grown rich by the spoils of war and by trade. Many followed enterprising princes into the new countries, or else, later, accepted their invitation to join them. The princes had also offered land to peasants, and in this way the population of new Russia increased.
In the earhest days of Russian history the lakes of the north-west — Ladoga, Byelo-osero, Peipus, and Ilmen — had played an important part, and then the river Dnieper ; it
15
It. A I'llOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
was now tlie turn of the Volga to come into prominence. Kiev and Novgorod had become commercial centres owing to their position on the great " East^^rn Way," the trade route between the Baltic Sea and the Euxine (Black Sea). Their colonies in the north-east, however, developed perforce into agricultural settlements because the estuaries of all the great rivers wliich flowed through Russia's immense lands were in possession of her enemies, the Turks and the Tatars. In fact, the greater part of Russia was so shut ofif from natural maritime outlets, and thus separated from the maritime markets, that from the twelfth to the eighteenth century she could only develop as a purely inland Power.
The princes who had estabUshed their rule in the upper Volga region fully reahsed the importance of the mighty river, which vdih its tributaries formed a geographical entity, and it was here that new principahties and new towns de- veloped, such as Murom, Ryazan, and Suzdal in the twelfth century, of which Suzdal, with the town of Vladimir as capital, was the most important.
Vladimir was the favourite place of residence of Andrei Bogolj^ubski, Prince of Suzdal (1157-1174), who was also, by virtue of seniority. Grand Duke of Kiev ; he, however, preferred the city in which he had spent his early days. Here he dwelt apart from the strivings and intrigues of his relations, and it was during the uneventful years of quiet passed at \ladimir that the thought of creating a new State on an entirely different basis from that of the old Kievite order matured in his mind. It was to be organised on monarchical and not on republican lines ; the supreme authority was to be vested in the prince alone, and not to be shared by the citizens as represented in the Vetche, or council of the people. He argued that the land over which he ruled, having been colonised through his father's enterprise and his own, ought to belong to him, to have and to hold and to leave to whom- soever he pleased. He therefore decided to break away from the old Slavonic conception of the land as an indi^'isible whole, belonging to the whole community, and to the ruler only by virtue of his official position ; it was to be his by occupation and his successors' by hereditary right.
PERIOD OF THE MINOR PRINCIPALITIES 17
Andrei realised that continuity of rule could never be secured by succession in order of seniority, as was the custom hitherto followed in Kiev, but only by direct inheritance ; consequently he refused to subdivide his territory among his brothers and nephews in the traditional manner. He was supported in his decision by the Boyars and by the Greek Orthodox clergy, who had introduced into Russia the Byzan- tine conception of rule — that of autocratic authority.
Andrei Bogolyubski's wisdom in thus departing from the old tradition soon become apparent, and Vladimir, his favourite city, began to vie with Kiev in importance. It was his ambition to secure for her the supremacy hitherto accorded to Kiev ; hence his attack on " the ancient mother of Russian towns," his robbery of her sacerdotal treasures, which he transferred to the cathedral and other churches built by him in Vladimir, until his capital rivalled Kiev, the City of Churches. The unique position finally held by Vladimir amongst other towns her prince occupied among his con- temporaries. He pursued a deliberate policy of coercing the other principaUties into recognising his assumption of authority to accord or refuse recognition of their rulers. During his reign many towns were built : amongst others, Nijni-Novgorod on the Volga, with which he intended to supplant the old city of Novgorod on the Lake Ilmen.
His enterprising policy attracted colonists, and in the end he could say with pride that Suzdal had become a populous principality. It was this very success which confirmed him in his autocratic proclivities : " I have made it — it is mine," was his motto. He is the one strong personality of this period : prudent and far-seeing as an organiser, he did great credit to the monarchical form of government ; possessed of great physical courage, he was vaHant in war. But unfortu- nately he was lacking in self-control. He tried to crush the princes who refused to recognise him as their sovereign lord ; and his arbitrary behaviour towards the Boyars, several of whom he banished, and finally his iU-advised action in having one of them kiUed, led to his murder by the incensed relatives.
Andrei was the first of a new type of ruler, but it seemed
2
IS A TMOrSAND YEARS OF RUSSrAN HISTORY
as if ho \Mnilcl also bo tho last, for his imniodiate successors relapsed into the old ways, and a period of dissension and bitter fond followed upon liis death. Gradually the balance of ])o\vor booanio equally divided between the princes of Kiev and those of Suzdal, but by the thirteenth century, \'ladiniir, which had become a principality, had usurped the })osition of Kiev, now one of the least important of the principalities.
Russia was weakened by being cut up into minor princi- palities or appanages. The conception of Russia as a whole and of the integrity of her land was for the moment lost sight of ; patriotism died out and particularism took its place. The rule of these appanage princes was individualistic, each man for himself, personal interest playing a more important role than national welfare.
This period presents the sad spectacle of a whole country at variance, rent by intestine strife for some three hundred years. Not only were there feuds among the rulers, between uncles and nephews, but wars between the older towns and the new ones, and bitter strife between class and class, every man's hand being against his neighbour's. During these centuries Russia consisted of sixty-four principalities, over which two hundred and ninety-three princes ruled. The land was divided and subdivided ; it was either given away in grants or bequeathed in legacies. All this tended to break up the greater principalities, to dissipate their power, and to accentuate the individualism of the princes, many of whom were gradually reduced from the position of territorial lords to that of mere landowners.
The chronicler of this distressful period saw in it a struggle between the old and new Russia, and between the old and new conceptions of government with regard to the position of the prince. In Kiev the authority of the prince had rested on the fact that he was first and foremost the guardian of the town-provinces against their external foes ; his role was that of the servant of the people, while the princes of the new Russia worked for their own personal aggrandisement. It is to this altered attitude of the ruler that the chronicler attributes the decUne of national prosperity ; he writes :
PERIOD OF THE MINOR PRINCIPALITIES 19
" The men of Novgorod, Smolensk, Kiev, Polotsk, and all the other chief towns of the provinces are wont to assemble themselves to take counsel in their Vetche, and by that which the chief towns decide the lesser towns abide ; but here in our chief towns of Rostov and Suzdal the Boyars have attempted to establish their own law rather than fulfil the law of God, sajdng : ' As it shall please us, so will we do, seeing that Vladimir is our subject town,' "
Three methods of land tenure, common to the new Russia, formed the basis on which the social structure was built. First there were the princely domains, worked for the sole benefit of the prince and his household by slaves — captives of war — and in some cases by free peasants, who paid tithes in produce. Secondly there was leasehold land, let out to individual peasants or peasant communities, who paid rent to the prince or the city which owned the land. In the case of such a city as Novgorod the Great, whose sway extended practically over all northern Russia right up to the White Sea and as far as the Ural Mountains, the whole of the country was simply spoken of as Peasant-land. Last, but not least, there was the Boyar land, which was under private ownership , either lay or clerical. In the early days of colonisa- tion, adventurous and enterprising Boyars had penetrated into the country and made it their own, and so had the Church, whose lands were rich and extensive ; but when these regions became principaUties, the original colonisers, or their de- scendants, were still left in possession of the land they had previously acquired.
From the twelfth to the fifteenth century there were only two kinds of free people. The first were the Boyars, or nobility, who, although they stood in a kind of feudal relationship to the prince, were nevertheless not his vassals, but could take service under whomsoever they pleased. It was not until the fifteenth century that the Muscovite Tsars made a definite attempt to introduce vassalage, being supported by the Church, which admonished the Boyars to remain in the service of their territorial prince. The second class of free people were tenants, both rural and urban, who paid rent but were not tied by any contract, and who were therefore free
•_•(• A TllolSAM) YEARS oV RUSSIAN HISTORY
to iiuno a\\ay at any time. In the agreement made with the ruler this was spocilically stated m the following terms : " Tho Rovars and the servitors who dwell among us shall be at liberty to come and go." Tims gradually social conditions were regulated : the aristocracy consisted of Boyars and princely retainers ; next in rank came the upper strata of the civic population of the great towns.
There was a great deal of variety and complexity in the judicial and administrative organisation of the various prin- cipalities. The old cities had their own firmly established liberties and privileges, while the newer towns became directly dependent on the princes. The appanage sj^stem, Avith its parcelUng-out process, ultimately resulted in the impover- ishment of many princes, who found it difficult to keep up their estabhshments, and were thus forced to spend their hves at the court of their more influential relations, the rulers of large principahties. Later on, however, many came to reaUse the economic value of land, which, if it was to be systematically cultivated, required a settled rural population ; and in order to obtain this, the liberty of movement hitherto enjoyed by the peasants was curtailed. Owing to these conditions, land -ownership came to play an important part, not only in the economic, but also in the political develop- ment of Russia.
The higher clergy found it to their interest to support the princes of Vladimir, and although Andrei Bogolyubski failed in his attempt to transfer the MetropoHtan See from Kiev to his own capital, this was ultimately accompUshed some fifty years later.
One of Andrei's successors, Vsevolod III., though Grand Prince of Kiev, chose hke him to reside in Vladimir and not in the city of which he was suzeram : he had a strong objec- tion to the independent attitude of the Kievite people, who resented being treated as heirlooms ; and while this once famous city was losing its influence and power, Vladimir was gaining in ascendancy. A period of progress and prosperity followed : more churches and monasteries were built, educa- tion furthered and spread, the population increased, and colonisation penetrated further east, where the scattered
PERIOD OF THE MINOR PRINCIPALITIES 21
native tribes, unable to resist the advancing Russians, either withdrew across the Volga or became absorbed by the new- comers.
In the thirteenth century the development of Russia was arrested and her civihsation in the south-west completely extinguished by the pressure brought to bear upon it by the Mongol invasion. Were it not for the recent destruction wrought in Belgium by the German army, it might be difficult to imagine a whole country utterly devastated, cities sacked and burnt, and the surviving population fleeing in terror before the approaching enemy.
Wliat Germany has done to Belgium in 1914, the hordes of Ghenghiz Khan, Emperor of Moguls and Tatars, did to Russia in the thirteenth century. It was said that he de- stroyed five milhon human beings on his march through Asia. His army consisted of barbaric shepherd warriors, who, under the leadership of his son, Juji Khan, invaded Russia and destroyed many cities, thus conquering the Caucasus. Like a spring tide the Tatar hordes flowed over Russia. The Russians first fought in 1238 with these bar- barians near Lake Azov, whence the great wave of in- vasion receded. The terror-stricken people asked in utter amazement, " Whence came these terrible strangers and whither have they gone ? God only knows — and those who can read books." But all even the erudite knew was that the Mongols came from the Amur, conquered China, and overran Persia, Bokhara, and Samarkand.
Two years after the first invasion they returned and penetrated as far as the Dnieper. Then followed a lull of thirteen years until once again, like a hurricane, the Mongol hordes swept over Russia.
The first invasion may have been merely a predatory expedition, but the second was destined to result in complete conquest. Terror and devastation followed in the wake of the invading hordes : ravaged cities, tortured people, skulls and skeletons, marked their passage through the land. Nothing could withstand their huge army, mounted on horses and camels ; before their irresistible battering-rams towns fell after only a few days' resistance — some even at once.
'2-2 A rilorSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
Fourtoon cities were thus destroj'ed on the westward route. Tho ^roat Khan had allowed himself eighteen years for tile eonijuest of all Europe, but at the battle of Liegnitz in 1271 liis armies were beaten and the tide of con(}uest j^temmed, Poland acting as a breakwater for Western Europe which was thus saved all the misery, desolation, and de- i^radation which Russia had to endure for the next two
IT*
centuries.
There were various reasons, internal as well as external, to account for Russia's falling a prey to the Mongols. To begin with, from the ninth to the thirteenth century Kievite Russia suffered from the close proximity of the Asiatic tribes wlio swarmed over the vast steppes east of the Dnieper. Vladimir Monomach (1114-1125) mentions in his last will that he had made peace nineteen times with the princes of the Polovtsi, one of these tribes. The Christian Russians did not often attack them — when they did, the war was of the nature of a crusade — usually they had to be on the defensive. At times, however, the Russian princes even used them as allies against their own kith and kin. Perpetual feuds existed between the various descendants of Rurik, and, although occasionally some individual prince suggested combining against the invaders, such advice was never followed. This lack of unity in resisting the onslaught of the Mongol hordes proved the undoing of Russia. Calls for help from en- dangered princes were not heeded by the others, and gradu- ally, one by one, the Russian principalities were either devastated like Kiev or else became tributary to the Mongol Khans.
Added to this lack of unity and cohesion, there was the isolation in which Russia found herself. She had not kept pace ^\ith Occidental nations built on the Roman model and under Roman influence ; also the level of Russian civilisation was lower than that of her Western neighbours, from whom she was separated by tracts of impenetrable forests or marshland.
Consequently, when the great catastrophe happened, inward dissension and political isolation caused Russia to succumb, and she became simply a vassal of the Mongol ruler.
PERIOD OF THE MINOR PRINCIPALITIES 23
The European States took no notice of the terrible calamity which befell her in the thirteenth century. Only the Popes of Rome occasionally showed some interest — perhaps less from a genuine wish to rescue a Christian State from Moslem rule, than from a desire to spread Roman CathoHcism.
In 1240 Kiev, the " mother of Russian towns," was utterly destroyed, and for fifty years history is silent con-
RUSSIA DURING THK PERIOD OF THE MiNOR PRINCIPALITIES.
cerning the fate of this once famous city. Novgorod escaped the Tatar invasion, but a few years later she too had to pay tribute to the Mongol Khan. Having subdued and ruined certain parts of Russia, and having made other parts tributary, the Khan Batu returned eastwards as far as the Volga, where he founded his capital, Sarai, from which city the Golden Horde, as this new power called itself, managed the affairs of Russia.
After the destruction of Kiev this unhappy principality
2\ A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
was totally lut dlT from tiie west of Europe and its civilising intlueneos. and the corrupting influences of the Orient began to permeate every sphere of life. All that had been built up during past centuries was destroyed, and under the iron 3'oke of the Oriental Power progress was arrested and further development retarded.
Russia was almost depopulated by the victorious Khans, and of those who escaped death hundreds and thousands were led away into captivity. Such vast numbers of Russian slaves were sold in all parts of Asia and Turkey that a Russian was scoffingly asked by a Turk " whether there were any people left in Russia ? "
During those dreary years of the thirteenth century the strong personahty of Alexander Nevski, Prince of Novgorod, and later on also of Moscow (1240-1263), stands out vividly from amongst the nonentities who had been subjugated by the Khan. His memory is still cherished by the nation on account of his success in stemming the tide of an invasion which was threatening Russia on the north and west : on the north by the Swedes, who had extended their dominions to the very shores of Lake Ladoga and to the borders of Novgorod ; and on the west by the Teutonic Knights and the Knights of the Sword. The former were conquering the western Slavs and were penetrating eastward, and the latter had already subdued the Livonians on the shores of the Baltic. Alexander Nevski defeated first the Swedes in the battle of the Neva in 1240, and then, two years later, the German Knights, who had taken possession of Pskov, in a battle known as " The Blood Bath on the Ice." These two victories had a far-reaching influence on the history of Russia, one result being that from this time forward the Popes of Rome no longer encouraged the Knights to make crusades against the Greek Orthodox Russians, but, on the contrary, Pope Gregory IX. did his best to win the allegiance of Alexander to the Roman See by making him an offer of secular benefits, which was not accepted.
Although Alexander was so successful against the Euro- pean foe, he perceived the futiUty of offering armed re- sistance to the Asiatic hordes, realising that voluntary
PERIOD OF THE MINOR PRINCIPALITIES 25
subjection was the only way of escaping annihilation. By this policy he saved the new Russia from the fate which had befallen the Principality of Kiev. Seeing that the Tatars ruthlessly crushed opposition but showed clemency towards those who submitted unconditionally, he aimed at establishing such peaceful relations with the Khan as would secure him recognition. Consequently, when the Khan sent him a message to say that, if he wished to retain possession of his patrimony, he was to appear before him, Alexander wisely obeyed.
The Khan, to whom his fame was not unknown, soon perceived that this Russian prince was in every way, intel- lectually as well as politically, the superior of his contem- poraries. As, however, Alexander's loyalty had not yet been proved, the Khan did not bestow upon him the suzer- ainty of Vladimir, which at that time held the first place amongst Russian principalities, but gave him instead the ruined Kiev. Two years later, after his second visit to the Khan, Alexander was, however, also accorded the dignity of Grand Duke of Vladimir. His visits to the Golden Horde gave him an insight into the mind and manners of the Mongol conquerors. He felt that the only thing to do was to study their methods and ideals, i.e. absolute surrender to the leader, a losing of the individual in the whole, and stoical power of endurance. In all this the Tatars differed from the Russians, whose love of liberty and individualism had degen- erated into anarchy, and had thus led to the splitting up of the nation into separate political units. If they wished to maintain their national existence, the Russians obviously had to learn how to adapt themselves to the new conditions, and this they did until the princes became past masters in the art of serviUty.
The precedent created by Alexander Nevski when he visited the Court at Sarai became established : every senior prince had to appear in person before the Khan in order to obtain recognition, and even then he had to bribe and to curry favour. It seemed as though all pride and manliness had been exterminated for ever ; no one appeared to resent the humiliating dependence upon the Tatar Khan, and his
2r. A IHOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSTAN HISTORY
claim of power over life and death was never even called in question. Anion*; tlie Russian princes who had to appear before his tribunal, more than one lost his life under tlie axe of the Tatar executioner. The new Russia of the north- east, split up into a multiplicity of minor principalities, proved herself excellent material for the process of Tatarisa- tion which was begun by the first Khan and carried on too successfully for the next two centuries by later rulers of the Golden Horde.
The Rulers of Muscovy, which had sunk into the position of a mere vassal State of the Mongol Empire, gradually raised themselves to a supremacy over the other Russian princes, making use of the feuds and the corresponding loss of power entailed by the appanage system. That such a situation was possible is explained bj^ the fact that the Muscovite princes were specially favoured by the Mongol Khans.
Certain of the Rulers of Muscovy, whose aim it had been to consolidate disunited Russia under one central power — their own — found poAverful supporters in the High Eccle- siastics. Owing to their greater culture, and also to the fact that in those days Russians of noble birth became priests, the influence of the clergy increased. When in 1326 the MetropoUtan eventually transferred his See from Vladimir to Moscow, the interests of the State and the Church became identical. Musco\ate princes and Metropolitans co-operated in their efiforts to create internal order out of the prevailing anarchy due to the system of appanages, and to mitigate the evils which arose from the Tatar domination.
Strange to say, although Russia was treated as a Tatar province, the invaders did not in any way interfere with the religious life of its people. The Khan even favoured the Church, granting it many privileges ; monasteries were exempted from taxation, and consequently flourished — indeed, many Russians became monks in order to avoid financial pressure. The clergy enjoyed special protection ; to attack or rob a priest, or even to use abusive language to him, was declared a capital offence. Some high ecclesiastics were held in great esteem among the Golden Horde, and
PERIOD OF THE MINOR PRINCIPALITIES 27
were at times able to intercede for their flocks and to mitigate their sufferings. In this course, tolerance was blended with indifference, an attitude kept up later, even after the Tatars had become Mohammedans. Christians might live in the close entourage of the Khan, carrying on their religious life freely. There is a faint suspicion that policy dictated this benevolent attitude towards the Church as a method of keeping the princes in subjection and promoting a docile attitude, for jealousies and intrigues between State and Church were of advantage to the alien rulers.
Russia thus became merely a province of the great Mongol Empire and under the direct rule of the Khan whose administration was a strange admixture of political calculation and financial organisation. Side by side with de- struction, robbery, and spoil there was a well-regulated system of taxation with all its network of agents. The worst phases of this rule were during the second half of the thirteenth century and during the fourteenth, when the people suffered terribly from the exactions of ruthless and barbaric tax- collectors. If unable to pay the taxes, which were levied in kind on the products of the country (especially furs), the people were made slaves.
At last, after many risings against the cruel oppressor, a new system was introduced. The taxes were farmed out to the Russian princes, who thus received a recognised position and also came into direct administrative relation with the Khans ; although, as intermediaries between the supreme ruler at Sarai and the populace, the princes were occasionally able to stay the hand of the Khan, and thus to reheve the misery of their people.
There is a great difference in character between the princes of the old Russia in the south-west and those in the north-east of the new Russia : while the former, chivalrous and courteous, joyous and adventurous, were certainly more attractive personahties from the human point of view, the latter, cool and calculating, were decidedly greater statesmen, consistent in carrying through a mapped-out policy which aimed at a more independent, more autocratic rule. If the great princes of the early Kievite period were knights,
2S A TIIorSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
thoso of Suzdal and Moscow were business iiioii with eminent financial capacity, who made profit out of the feuds of their rivals, and who quietly annexed lands or bought up the t<?rritories of impecunious princes. They are known to Russian history as " collectors," and it was by means of this very " collecting " that their power and possessions increased to such an extent. They also enriched themselves by collect- ing even as much as double the amount of taxes due to the Khan in order to feather their own nests. The most noted of these princes was Ivan, nicknamed " Kalita " or " Purse " (1328-1340), a ruler notorious for his greed and utter lack of principle.
It is impossible for a foreign Power, such as the Tatars, to rule over a country for centuries without leaving a deep impression on the life and conditions of the subject race, and the corrupt rule of the Mongols has unfortunately left an indelible mark on Russia. The Muscovite princes learned their lesson only too well in that Eastern school : morahty sank to a low level, and the brutality, administrative corrup- tion, spying in vogue amongst their Oriental masters w^ere faithfully copied by the Russian princes, who, forced to cringe before the Khans, made their own people in their turn cringe before them.
Perhaps the most typical example of this degrading dependence on the part of the Muscovite princes is Simeon the Proud (1340-1353), who travelled five times to Sarai, each time returning laden with rich presents. Bribery became the acknowledged means of gaining recognition ; those princes who were most subservient to the Golden Horde, and who knew best how to curry favour, increased in power over their rivals. Intercourse with the Golden Horde became so intimate that there were even cases of intermarriage. Some few princes, it is true, resented this humiliation, but they were helpless against their oppres- sors. They were always at variance with one another, and, worst of all, actually employed Tatars as soldiers when fight- ing each other. The chronicles tell this unhappy tale with painful monotony : Tatar attacks take place, no organised resistance is offered, jealousy and quarrels between the princes
PERIOD OF THE MINOR PRINCIPALITIES 29
are rife, the decision as to supremacy among them falls into the hands of the Khans.
Acquiescence in the degrading conditions imposed by the conquerors was utterly demoralising. There was great danger of the Mongol yoke being accepted as inevitable and final. The Russians were not only likely to remain at the low level to which they had sunk, but to sink even deeper.
The Church was helpless to change the moral conditions : the entire life of social Russia had become Tatarised and was full of brutality and licentiousness. The Hberty enjoyed by women in former days was transformed into a state of Oriental dependence with all its degradation. Women of the upper classes had to spend their hves in the seclusion of the " terem," the Russian equivalent of the harem, thus being deprived of all opportunities for mental development and healthy intercourse with the opposite sex.
The brutahsation of the common people found its typical expression in the development of the system of servitude and in the inhuman manner in which taxes were collected, causing suffering to the whole nation. In true Oriental fashion, insolvent taxpayers were even subjected to torture, and methods still practised remind one of this evil period of Russian history.
The Mongol domination was perhaps felt least acutely in Muscovy, yet it was here that the first attempts to overthrow it were made, and at last, in the fourteenth century, a prince arose who showed invincible determination to shake off the Tatar yoke. This was Dmitri, the Grand Duke of Muscovy. He realised the advantage which Russia might reap from the weakening and disintegration that were gradually breaking up the Golden Horde in consequence of internal divisions — the whole gigantic empire of the Mongols was crumbhng away — and the possibility of independence for Russia thus came within the range of practical politics.
The rivals of Muscovy in the principalities of Ryazan and Tver, whose princes resented the rise and increase of her power, were laying plans to crush her ambitious princes with the aid of the Tatars. Dmitri was aware of this, and when he further heard a rumour of the Khan's intention to exter-
•M) A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
minate Christianity in Russia he realised that for Muscovy it was " now or never." He knew that he could rely upon the assistance of the clergy, who were preaching a crusade against tlie intidel Tatar, and also upon the support of all the other Russian princes except those of Ryazan and Tver. With these supporters at his back he was able to face the Tatars, and at the battle of the Kulikovo Field on the Don, in 1380, a terrible conflict took place — more terrible, says the chronicler, than any Russia had ever witnessed. The battle line extended for nearly ten miles, and the field was covered with a seething mass of fighting men. When some of the Russians, who had never fought before, fled panic- stricken before their enemies, the Russian cause — the cause of liberty — seemed lost, but help arrived. Just at the moment when things seemed at their worst, some of the picked regiments which had not 3^et taken part in the fight were sent into action, attacking the pursuing Tatars in the rear. Finding themselves caught in a trap, it was then the turn of the Tatars to flee, and after a general rout of the enemy the Russians were able to claim the greatest victory of their history.
Two years later the Khan returned to the attack, and, by means of a ruse, took Moscow, which Dmitri had entrusted to the care of the Metropolitan, who, however, fled at the approach of the enemy. The Tatars entered the Kremlin, killed 24,000 people — in fact, everyone they found, — pillaged and sacked the town, and then withdrew. When Dmitri Donskoi came back he found his ruined city filled with corpses and not a man left to bury them ; but gradually the citizens of Moscow, who had fled at the approach of the enemy, returned. The prince passed a severe judgment on the Metropolitan for his cowardice ; he banished him and elected a candidate of his own choice, whom he sent to Byzantium for consecration. This was the first time in Russian history that a prince had assumed the right of interfering in ecclesiastical affairs. Dmitri Donskoi was also the first Grand Duke of Moscow to assume absolute superiority over the other princes.
In order to fill his empty coffers he attacked Novgorod,
PERIOD OF THE MINOR PRINCIPALITIES 31
upon which he levied a heavy war-tax, making that proud republic tributary to Moscow. Although he held his own people in awe, and terrorised enemies by aggressive display of power, yet contemporaries recognised and ungrudgingly admitted his political wisdom, which, however, did not avail to change permanently the political conditions. Still, it is from his time — from that great battle on the Don which gave him the name of " Donskoi " — that the Tatar rule began to slacken. Unfortunately, his reign coincided with a period of national calamity, during which ravages by the Tatars, internecine warfare, pestilence and plague, drought and famine, all had their share in depopulating north-eastern Russia.
During the reigns of Dmitri's successors the power of the Muscovite princes increased still more, until, finally, the direct descendants of Alexander Nevski became the recog- nised heads over all the others, and the centre of their dominion was Moscow, which two and a half centuries earher had been merely the summer residence of Prince Yuri Dolgorouki, around which he made a wooden enclosure which formed the nucleus of the future great KremHn. So smaU and insignificant were the beginnings of Moscow, that the power eventually attained caused amazement in later generations. This wonder and surprise are quaintly expressed in a Russian tale of the seventeenth century which begins : " What man could have thought or divined that Moscow would one day become a kingdom ? Or what man could ever have foreseen that Moscow would be accounted an Empire ? . . ."
:?2 A THOrSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
II. PERIOD (1155-14()2) NORTH-EASTERN RUSSIA
YURI VLADIMIROVITCH (1155-1157) of Suzdal.
Kiev U)sos the supremacy and Vladimir becomes tlic capital during the reign of
ANDREI YURIEVITCH (BOGOLYUBSia) (1157-1174).
Mikhail Yurievitch (1174-1176).
Vsevolod III. Yurievitch (1176-1212).
Yuri II. Vsevolodovitch (1212-1216).
(Constantin Vsevolodovitch (1216-1219)).
Yuri Vsevolodovitch (1219-1238).
Yaroslav II. Vsevolodovitch (1238-1246).
(Kiev sacked by Mongols, 1240.) (Vladimir sacked by Mongols, 1238.) Khan of the Golden Horde :
Svyatoslav III. Vsevolodovitch (1246-1248).
Andrei Yaroslavovitch (1248-1255).
ALEXANDER I. YAROSLAVOVITCH, Prince of Novgorod (St Alexander Nevski) (1255-1263). Recognised by Kian GRAND DUKE OF RUSSIA. Khan bestows upon him the Principalitjr of Kiev and later also of Vladimir.
Yaroslav III, Yaroslavovitch (1263-1272).
VassiU Yaroslavovitch (1272-1276).
Dmitri Alexandrovitch (1276-1294).
Andrei II. Alexandrovitch (1294-1304).
Mikhail II. Yaroslavovitch (St Michael) (1304-1319).
Yuri Danilovitch (1319-1322), Prince of Moscow.
Dmitri II. Mikhailovitch (1322-1326).
Alexander Mikhailovitch (1326-1328).
Ivan I. DanHovitch (Kalita) (1328-1340).
Simeon Ivano\ntch (The Proud) (1340-1353).
Ivan II. Ivanovitch (1353-1359).
Interregnum (1359-1361) : the Khan appoints the great-grand- son of Yaroslav the Wise, Dmitri Constantinovitch (1361-1363).
DMITRI IV. IVANOVITCH (Donskoi) (1363-1389).
Vassili I. Dmitrievitch (1389-1425).
Vassili II. VassiUevitch (The Blmd) (1425-1462).
Svyatoslav Yaroslavovitch, Grand Duke of Kiev, and his Family. A copy of the title page of a collection of Manuscripts, A.D. J 073.
CHAPTER IV
THE MUSCOVITE EMPIRE (1462-1598)
A WHOLE century lies between Dmitri Donskoi's victory over the Tatars and Russia's final liberation from their galHng yoke. Moscow had become the leading city and Muscovy a sovereign principaUty. She stood right in the centre of the Russian lands, with a powerful enemy on either side, each claiming authority over one-half of Russia. In the west it was Lithuania, and in the east it was the Tatar, The rule of the Golden Horde was nearing its doom. Tamer- lane, with his hordes, swept down to chastise the Khans for their attempts to make themselves independent of the central power in Asia. According to the chronicler, " Tamer- lane gave them to the winds of desolation," and, incidentally, the Russians might have shared their fate.
In the year 1380 Tamerlane marched against Moscow, where the uttermost despair prevailed, the Lithuanian army also threatening on the west. However, like Novgorod a century and a half earlier, the city was spared destruction by the Mongols. The believing Russians regarded Tamer- lane's sudden decision to return to Asia as a direct answer to prayer. The dehverance was complete ; for the two in- vading armies of Muscovy's enemies fought each other and Tamerlane was victorious, weakening Lithuania so that she was unable for some time to renew her attacks upon Russia.
Those who suffered most from Tamerlane's invasion were the Tatars of the Golden Horde ; their cities were devastated and they themselves robbed of their dearly bought riches. The empire they had established by means of the sword was now crumbling away. It is true that the Russian
33 3
34 A riloiSWI) VKAKS i)V RUSSIAN HFSTORY
priiu'os still cDntiiiuod for another sixty years to receive recognition of their status as rulers from the Khan at Sarai, hut oiH'asion;il ;itt<Mii])ts were made to evade the conditions imposed by the Tatar overlord.
In course of time the principle of hereditary succession liad come to be firmly established. The hegemony of Muscovy and the sovereignt}' of lier princes were not dis- puted by the people, and only in a very few instances by the other princes and republics ; amongst the princes it was the Ruler of the Tver who stood out longest, and amongst the cities Novgorod and Pskov. Their turn for absorption came in the sixteenth century.
With Ivan III. (1462-1505) a new era of rule was in- augurated— the era of despotism and the rise of autocracy. Clever, calculating, cautious, unscrupulous, hiding his real intentions under a mask of plausibility and legahty, he gradually caught all the flies in his web, and succeeded in turning his subjects into slavish dependants. He waged bitter warfare against his rival at Tver, and also against Novgorod and Pskov. Novgorod, the once famous and prosperous city, was devastated and ruined, 27,000 of her inhabitants were killed and three hundred of her leading citizens transported to Moscow and obliged to settle there. Ivan closed the warehouses and offices of the Hanseatic merchants, and put forty-nine of these German merchants into prison, where they were incarcerated for three years, during which time deputations from German}?^ and Livonia appealed in vain to the Muscovite ruler on their behalf.
This important trading centre — the commercial link with Western Europe — was thus ruined and destroyed, and Muscovy deprived of the valuable commercial asset and the invaluable civihsing influence of the city. Novgorod the Great, robbed of her treasures, her splendid buildings de- stroyed, her inhabitants killed or carried away, sank to the level of an insignificant provincial town, from which she has never again risen.
Ivan's most powerful enemy, however, was Lithuania, ^ under whose jurisdiction Kiev, Smolensk, and other ancient 1 See Chapter XXV., " Poland."
THE MUSCOVITE EMPIRE
35
Russian provinces had developed upon normal lines. These had gained by their union with Lithuania, for Western culture was made accessible to them through Poland, with which kingdom Lithuania had amalgamated, and which stood on the same cultural level as the rest of Western Europe.
Aiter Ivan had, by fair means and foul, gathered into
B{irtholom«w. £clin
Thk Principality of Mu.scovy,
his own hand all Russian lands, a new political situation arose. So long as Muscovy had been separated by independ- ent Russian principahties from Lithuania, Sweden, and the Baltic provinces, there had been no necessity for diplomatic relations with foreign Powers. For the rest of Europe, Muscovy did not exist ; all that was dimly known of her was, that east of Lithuania lay a country ruled over by Tatars, though inhabited by a Slavonic people ; and it was not until the time of Ivan III, that an Austrian embassj' — which.
.{(•. A THOrSAXD YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
howt'vor. eanie to naught — was sent to Russia to arrange a marriage between the Emperor's nephew and a daughter of the Tsar.
For political reasons Ivan married one of his daughters to Alexander, Prince of Lithuania, who later on became King of Poland. Ivan's interference on behalf of liis daughter, on the plea that the promises made with regard to her liberty of faith were not being fulfilled, caused perpetual friction between him and his son-in-law. There exist pathetic letters from the unhappy Queen of Poland to her father, the Tsar of jMuscovy, in which she bitterly complains of his actions and of his unpaternal behaviour. She accuses him of sacrificing her happiness to his ambitions, and pleads with him not to make war against her husband's kingdom. She tells him that all her unhappiness is due to him and not to her husband and his people, and that the whole nation is hating her on account of her father.
Ever ready to find a pretext for making war and for self- aggrandisement, Ivan defeated his son-in-law and took from Lithuania several provinces which had originally formed part of Kievite Russia. When the Polish king sued for peace, Ivan's reply was, that unless Kiev and Smolensk were also handed over, there could be no talk of peace, for his ambition now was to unite under his own rule all the territory ever held in possession by Russian princes. This demand was a characteristic sign of the times : once more there was to be a common Fatherland, and, forgotten though this idea had been during the period of feuds and of subjection to a foreign yoke, it now revived. The wars fought in common against Tatars and Lithuanians had created an atmosphere of brotherhood which had been lacking for centuries.
Ivan's attempt at consolidation led to internal union, and gradually the Tsar came to be invested with a new^ dignity : he became a national Tsar, and not only by courtesy " Hospodar of all Russias," which title he assumed. When, therefore, the Emperor of Germany offered to bestow upon him the title of King, the Tsar refused with dignity, saying : " We, by the Grace of God, have been Emperor of our land
THE MUSCOVITE EMPIRE 37
from the beginning, and do hold our commission from God Himself." The answer was full of significance as proof of the new basis upon which he laid claim to autocratic power.
Ivan's successful reign, the very vastness of his dominions, and his powerful personaHty attracted Boyars from other principaUties, and even before Tver and Ryazan had been officially incorporated into Muscovy their Boyars were already attending the Tsar's Court. Later on, these same Boyars deepl}^ resented the innovations introduced into Moscow by the Tsar's second wife.
After the death of his first wife it was suggested to Ivan by a Greek who lived at his Court, that he should marry Sophia Paleologos, niece and heiress of the last Greek Emperor, who, after the conquest of Byzantium by the Turks in 1453, had lost his crown and had finally taken refuge in Italy. The Princess was then living under the care of a Greek cardinal at Rome. In spite of the fallen fortunes of her house, it was still a desirable match, and therefore the Tsar sent an envoy to Rome, where the matter was satisfactorily arranged. The Princess, who had refused union with a Roman Catholic prince, expressed her wilhngness to marry the Greek Orthodox Tsar, and with her entry into Moscow a new influence began to make itself felt.
The new Tsaritsa Sophia, a clever, witty, and cultured woman, brought in her train Greeks and Italians, who intro- duced into Muscovy culture and art, but also their own ways of thinking and acting, and herein lurked a danger which soon became apparent. Not merely did the Byzantine code of etiquette supplant the old Russian customs, but the evils and intrigues of the corrupt Byzantine Court life found entrance. The Boyars resented these innovations, and ob- jected to the new class of courtiers at the Muscovite Court.
The Tsaritsa's personal influence, however, was not pernicious, and she supported her husband in all his ambi- tions, instigating him to cast off the humihating Tatar yoke. She, the Imperial Princess, objected to her husband's position as vassal to the Khan. Heiress to the Byzantine Empire, she cherished an ambition to elevate her husband to her own
:iS A rHOlSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
oxaltoil j)t)sitioii, and it was she who made him put in a claim as heir to the Greek throne. Ivan III. was the first to make use, occasionally, of the title of Tsar, the Slavonic form of Caesar, and to make the Byzantine emblem of the double- headed eagle his Imperial crest. This assumption of being the sole representative of the Byzantine Empire carried ^vith it the claim to be the head of all Greek Orthodox believers. All this added to the power and dignity of the Tsar, who never lost sight of his aim to become an autocratic ruler in the twofold sense of unhmited power over his own subjects and complete independence of all foreign Powers.
After the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and the Crimea had broken away from their allegiance to the Golden Horde, the Muscovite princes began seriously to consider the possi- bility of gaining their Uberty, If independent Tatar States could come into existence, why not independent Muscovy ?
During the reign of Ivan III. (1462-1505) specially energetic measures were taken to throw off the galling Mongol yoke ; but this end was not finally achieved until 1480, when an event happened which is probably unique in history : two contending forces — Russian and Tatar — which had been lying in wait for each other for weeks on opposite sides of a river, were simultaneously stricken with panic and fled ^vithout striking a blow ; and from that date Russia was free and Muscovy an independent and sovereign State. Ivan's Asiatic despotism, however, not only struck terror into the hearts of his dependants, but prevented foreigners from coming into Russia ; thus the urgently required leaven of West- em civiUsation and commercial enterprise was artificially excluded.
The Tsar's arbitrary conduct created a fatal precedent, and influenced for centuries the Russian attitude towards Imperial power ; instead of a sane and wholesome respect for the Government as the lawful authority, a morbid, slavish fear of power as such became the rule. His arbitrary behaviour and fickleness showed itself in the frequent changes he made with regard to the succession, which had become a very acute question. His eldest son had died and Ivan's grandson was the rightful heir ; his .second wife, however, intrigued to secure
THE MUSCOVITE EMPIRE 39
the crown for her own. son. When remonstrated with by the Boyars for his treatment of his grandson, whom he alternately appointed joint ruler or flung into prison, according to the family influence which swayed him at the moment, the despot replied : "I wiU give Russia to whom I think proper." His last wiU and testament was an important document in which the pohtical privileges of the Tsar as suzerain over all the other Russian princes were clearly defined : for the future all power was to be vested in his hand alone.
Ivan regulated the condition of the peasants, curtaiUng their rights more and more ; but he introduced a more equitable system of taxation. He also collected the laws and had them codified, he limited the power of the Boyars over their followers, and did his best to change the position of the free and independent Boyars to one of servitude. He tried to settle once for aU the vexed question of priority amongst the princes and also amongst the Boyars of Muscovy, whose numbers had been swelled by the infiux from other principalities. This he did by reducing aU to the same level of complete subservience to himself — service was to be rendered to him alone.
After a long reign of forty-three years this powerful Tsar died. He had achieved his aim, his ambition was fulfilled : Russia was a consolidated nation under a central authority. Muscovy had become the first Power, the other principalities had been absorbed into it, his territory had been greatly enlarged and four million inhabitants had been added to the original population of his realm. He had suc- ceeded in establishing a certain amount of order in the land ; administration and therebj^ the chances for civiHsation had been placed on a firmer basis, but his despotism had reduced the people to a state of abject submission. Politically, Muscovy had gained in dignity, she had been liberated from the Eastern yoke and had proved herself victorious in battle against her Western foes. Ivan's claim to be the heir of the Byzantine Emperors, and thus the sole protector and head of all Orthodox Slavs, enhanced the position of the Tsar in the eyes of the Slavs of the Balkan States. He ruled his people with a rod of iron, and well earned the
4(1 A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
name of '* Ivan the Severe " ; some even called him " Ivan the Great," but this is a title one is loth to accord to a ruler lacking in the quality of moral greatness.
After Ivan III.'s death, his son VassiU, III. (1505-1533), succeeded him, and reigned for twenty-eight uneventful years. What the father had introduced and estabhshed, the sou carried on : he enlarged his territory by annexing other Russian lands, and sliowed himself, in the war against Pskov, an important commercial centre, as ruthless as his father, the town being as utterly ruined as Novgorod had been by his predecessor. The people of Muscovy had become so deeply imbued with the spirit of submission to despotic rule that the Austrian Ambassador, who visited Russia at this period, was justified in reporting that for the people " the ^vill of the Tsar is the will of God, and of the will of God the Tsar is the fulfiller."
The glory of having " discovered " Muscovy belongs to Herberstein, the Austrian Ambassador, the " Columbus " of Russia, who had been sent on a mission to the Tsar in regard to the Turkish peril which was threatening Europe. Herber- stein, who spoke Slavonic, was able to converse with the Tsar, and his knowledge of the language enabled him to study the Russian chronicles, which revealed to him the past of this hitherto unknowTi country. On his return to Austria he wrote a book on Russia which was translated into several languages, and suppHed Western Europe with much valuable and true, but also at times startling, information about the newly discovered Muscovy.
It is unfortunate for Russia, however, that her first diplomatic relations with a European State should have been entered into at a period when she had become thoroughly Tatarised and brutaUsed. The Austrian Ambassador's report was not favourable enough to incUne any one of the Powers to seek a poHtical aUiance with so barbaric a State. In a letter to the Emperor of Germany the King of Poland ^\Tote : " We (the Poles) shall on no account grant the Russians a passage through our country. It is important to prevent their reaching the sea-coast, because the Muscovites, Uke all barbaric people, think only of loot and devasta-
THE MUSCOVITE EMPIRE 41
tion and are always a danger to the Christian nations ; but should they find a way to the sea, they will become still more dangerous."
After the death of the Tsar, his widow, the Tsaritsa, was proclaimed Regent for her son Ivan, later on known as " The Terrible " (1533-1588). The administration of the country was to be carried on by the Council of the Boyars ; but, as a matter of fact, it was the Tsaritsa's lover who ruled in her name, with such diplomatic skill and discretion that his power and influence increased. She, however, surpassed in cruelty anything that had ever been known before in Moscow, thus earning the name of " Helen the Terrible," and the people spoke of her as " That drinker of blood." She was poisoned by her enemies, while her lover was left to die of starvation in prison.
During the next four years of the Tsar's minority, intrigue followed in- ^^p of vTI^^M^nomach, trigue, and, although the heads of the with which the Tsars two opposing factions of Boyars were ^^JZ'r.oT^. T^S capable men, the country suffered. of Ivan the Terrible, Meanwhile the young Tsar was wi^s:nt'in'988\rvtlr^i?jfrfn^
neglected and left to his own de- Sl^r'ia1e^o7heTis\ero7tTe'Erir^?
vices; he soon reahsed that as a o^sy^^"""™) human being, as a child, he was of no importance, that neither his wishes nor his feelings were ever considered. The leading Boyar, Shuiski, separated him from his beloved nurse and, later on, from his young friend Voronzov, whose rise to power was feared by the ruHng Boyars, who was therefore taken prisoner in Ivan's presence, and who, but for the boy Tsar's bitter weeping, would have been kiUed. Deprived of every lawful outlet, kept like a prisoner by his Boyars, the lad noticed that aU they did was done in his name and ostensibly by his authority, and gradually he came to reaHse that it was in the title of Tsar that the power was vested. Sensitive, nervous, and highly imaginative, he brooded over the contradictions in his position, and decided to become a ruler whom no one would be able to
42 A IHOI'SAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
limit or oppose. All the evil propensities of his nature were given free course.
With adolescence, his untamed, ^^olent, and licentious nature became apparent. Having hberty to do as he liked, he passed his time either in visiting monasteries and shrines or in riotous living with his companions. His alternately religious and licentious hfe kept the people in terror-stricken suspense, as no one knew what a change of mood might lead to.
like all other Musco\ate princes, Ivan had been taught to read from the psalter and breviaries, but his keen mind did not rest satisfied with the prescribed portions — he began to read the whole Bible and, later on, the Fathers also, and other translations from the Greek, so that for his time he was exceptionally well read. He searched out of the Old Testament the texts dealing with regal power and obedience to authority, till his mind was filled with the %'ision of himself as the chosen representative of all power.
\Mien seventeen years old, Ivan had himself crowned Tsar. He was the first to assume this title definitely, and from this time on Muscovy was no longer reckoned as a Principality but as a Tsardom. This was the first coronation in Muscovy ; the crown used on this occasion was the cap of Ivan's ancestor Vladimir Monomach (1113-1175), the last great personahty of Kievite Russia. Tradition, not founded on fact, says that this cap had been sent by the Greek Emperor Constantine Monomachus to his grandson, who was crowned with it by the Metropolitan of Ephesus. It was further reported that the Kievite prince had bequeathed it to his son Yuri Dolgorouki, the founder of Moscow, with instructions that it should not be used until such time as God should send a worthy monarch to Russia.
In order to increase further the authority and status of the dynasty a new genealogy had to be drawTi up : it was alleged that Rurik, the first ruler of Russia, had been a direct descendant of a mythical brother of Csesar Augustus, supposed to have settled in Lithuania. All these unfounded traditions and legends had been collected and were made use of %^dth the sanction of the Metropohtan Makarius, and thus the Church supported and lent colour to the fictitious
THE MUSCOVITE EMPIRE 43
claim of the Tsars to be heirs to the supremacy of Imperial Rome.
Just after the coronation of Ivan IV., Moscow was nearly- destroyed by a great fire. It was a terrible calamity : seven- teen hundred adults alone were burned and the population rendered homeless. Riots became frequent. A rumour was started by enemies of the ruling cHque that the relations of the deceased Tsaritsa, the Ghnskys, had caused the fire by witchcraft. The exasperated people beheved this, and all members, and even dependants, of this family were massacred. Not satisfied with preventing the escape of any of the supposed sorcerers, the infuriated populace marched towards the palace of the Tsar on the Sparrowhills to demand from him the surrender of the Princess Anna Glinsky and her son.
It was a crucial moment in the Tsar's life. Hitherto he had been fully convinced of his own omnipotence, but now he felt himself helpless and unable to face the rioters. Over- come by fear, he accepted the advice of the priest Sylvester, who at that very moment appeared suddenly before Ivan, declaring that the riot was the result of the misery he had caused to his people, and was a judgment of heaven on all his wickedness. Terror-stricken, the Tsar promised to respect and to follow his admonisher in all things.
A few shots from the guards, by Sylvester's order, dis- persed the crowd, and the Tsar was relieved from fear. Grate- ful for his deUverance, he appointed Sylvester to be his spiritual monitor and guide, and this priest, together with Ivan's friend, Adashev, for a time gained complete ascendancy. These new advisers were wise men, who let the Tsar imagine that all the good and constructive work done by them was due to his own initiative, and for a period of nine years Muscovy breathed freely. Ivan's wife also had a good influence over him, as he loved her devotedly, and the depression which had brooded over his earlier years began to pass off.
Sylvester and Adashev, who were truly good and honest statesmen, formed a Council of picked men, chosen not only from amongst the Boyars, but also from amongst the upper strata of tlie civic population. Occasionally the Council
U A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
(.•allcHl iipDii tho whole nation to send up representatives : tlu" Duma thus formed was the first of its kind, being not local, like the ancient Vetche, but imperial.
This Zemsky Sobor, or Territorial Council, and later on also an Ecclesiastical Council, did excellent work. Matters of juridical, administrative, and religious importance were discussed and eventually reorganised ; some useful reforms were introduced, and the laws concerning every sphere of domestic and ci^^c life were revised. The tangible results of all this beneficent activity were the compilation of " The Legal Constitution " and " The Hundred Chapters " — a collection of ecclesiastical laws.
Sylvester, who came from Novgorod, where civic life was highly organised, kept the example of that republic in his mind. His " Domostroi," or " Rules for the Household," prove that he was deeply in earnest in his endeavour to draw Russian society out of the morass into which Tatar influence and despotism had drawn it.
Of Adashev, Kourbski, the contemporary historian, wrote : " That it would be impossible adequately to describe him — no one would give credence to such a description ; but he could safely say that this man was like an angel among the Tsar's coarse and brutish companions."
The Tsar Ivan's advisers did not limit their activities to domestic affairs : their most important and far-reaching success was the final conquest of the Khanate of Kazan in 1552, which added considerably to Russian territory and to Russian influence over the various tribes of south-eastern Europe. In order to Christianise the new Moslem subjects, and at the same time to extend and confirm Russian influence, churches and monasteries were built and a bishopric was founded at Kazan (1563).
A few 3^ears later Astrakhan was also conquered, and thus the entrance to the Caspian was secured, the whole course of the Volga now running through Russian territory.
Sylvester and Adashev realised what an urgent need there was for Russia to come into touch with Western Europe, to learn from foreign nations things of which Russians were ignorant. For this purpose a Saxon named Schlitt was
THE MUSCOVITE EMPIRE 45
authorised in 1577 to procure artists, artisans, physicians, chemists, printers, etc., in the Tsar's name. This emissary succeeded in finding one hundred and twenty-three such men wiUing to take the risk of going into wild and barbaric Muscovy. The plan, however, was frustrated owing to the jealousy of the senators of Liibeck, who, in conjunction with the Livonian Knights, resented the idea of Russian progress. Schlitt was thrown into prison in Liibeck and his band of pioneers of Western culture scattered. But despite all that Germans did to keep Russia isolated, the hour had come for Muscovy to be brought into touch with Europe, and Englishmen were the agents by which this momentous change was brought about.
In 1553, Richard Chancellor, the master of a vessel, the Edoardo Bonaventura, bound on a voyage of discovery of a northern passage to China and India, landed on the coast of the White Sea. The natives of these parts, who had never seen a big vessel before, were terror-stricken until the gallant captain succeeded in reassuring them, whereupon they proved themselves most friendly. A message was sent to the Tsar to inform him of the arrival of the strangers. Ivan evinced a keen interest in the travellers, and sent them a cordial invitation to visit him in Moscow, even going so far as to offer to bear the expense of the journey.
Chancellor, however, getting impatient, had set oG on his own account, and on the road he met the emissaries of the Tsar, who returned with him to Moscow. He had been furnished by his King, Edward VI., with a letter of recommendation to the ruler of any country he might happen to traverse. The reception afforded him by the Tsar surpassed all his expecta- tions : he was granted not only an interview, but permission to trade with the monarch's subjects. The EngHshmen were delighted with the prospect of commercial enterprise opened up before them. They began to look upon Muscovy as a second America, and the " discovery of Russia," with all its possibilities, portended great things for the future. A " Company for trading with Muscovy, Persia, and Northern Lands " was founded. The " Russia Company," as it came to be called, was properly constituted and invested with rights
4r. A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
and juiWleges ; it was also permitted to buy land annually for a sum not exceeding £()0.
In 1555 Captain Chancellor revisited Moscow, but this time as an accredited British envoy : he succeeded in secur- ing a charter for the company, which was also granted the monopoly of all wholesale and retail imports, and permission was given to build British factories at Cholmogori and \'ologda. The Tsar even presented the company with a house and land in Moscow, and there, as elsewhere in the factories belonging to the English, they were under their own jurisdiction and exempt from Russian law.
On his return journey Chancellor was accompanied by a Russian envoy. Unfortunately, the gallant Englishman lost liis life in a shipwreck off the coast of Scotland, but the Tsar's ambassador was saved and succeeded in reaching London. From this time forward, intercourse was established between England and Russia, and English vessels annually visited the estuary of the river Dvina, where, thirty years after the landing of the Edoardo Bonaventura, the town of Archangel was founded as a result of the increasing number of colonists who had settled there. The monopoly obtained by the English traders gave them a very unfair advantage over the Russian merchants, the benefits of the treaties being on the EngUsh side. These special privileges were largely due to the influence exercised over the Tsar by Jenkinson, the indefatigable traveller and explorer of Asia. The excellent relations between England and Russia became strained later on, owing to Queen Elizabeth's refusal to enter into an alliance ^vith the Tsar against Sweden, Poland, and Turkey. Another cause of estrangement was Ivan's suggestion that he and the Queen should agree to offer each other an asylum in case of need ; this did not appeal to the Queen at all, although the idea of a refuge in England, away from his truculent Boyars, may have greatly comforted the heart of the Tsar. There was yet another grievance against Elizabeth : he had sued for the hand of Mary Hastings, the Queen's cousin ; but although the young lady may at first have felt flattered at the prospect of becoming Tsaritsa of Russia, later on, when she heard a
THE MUSCOVITE EMPIRE 47
detailed description of her wooer's character, she drew back. The Tsar had to console himself elsewhere until he exceeded Henry VIII. by one in the number of his wives.
The whole country gained by the rule of Sylvester, but the Tsar began to be restive under the restrictions imposed upon him. Hitherto his fear of Sylvester and his attachment to Adashev had sufficed to keep these two in their position of authority. The crisis came after a serious illness, during which Ivan commanded the Boyars to swear allegiance to his infant son ; but the Boyars refused, preferring to uphold the claim of the Tsar's cousin, as they knew only too well to what endless strife and intrigues a regency would lead.
Ivan did not die, and after his recovery he decided to break away from tutelage. To all appearance he had forgiven the Boyars their refusal, but the moment for freeing himself from all restraint had come. The just but strict rule of Sylvester had caused many of the Boyars to hate him : his enemies succeeded in convincing the Tsar that Sylvester had by sorcery caused the death of his beloved wife, and at their instigation he was cited to appear before an ecclesiastical court. Ever since 1559 there had been an estrangement between the Tsar and his spiritual adviser, who was now fetched from the monastery to which he had withdrawn. The Council found him guilty and condemned him to banish- ment in the most northern monastery, that of Solovietsk on the White Sea. Sylvester in his fall drew Adashev after him, the latter being put into prison, where he died of fever and thus mercifully escaped a violent death.
Now that the Tsar had shaken o£F the restraining in- fluence of his advisers, his mental and moral depravity had full play. The psychology of this Tsar is full of subtlety, and a simple verdict of insanity hardly covers his terrible deeds ; for underlying all there seems to be the struggle for a principle — for his conception of sovereignty. His notion of the rulership clashed with that of the Boyars, who, accord- ing to ancient Russian custom, claimed the right to share the government with him, while he called them slaves and claimed the right to dispense altogether with their co-opera- tion. Finally a poUtical impasse was reached, and the Tsar,
48 A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
unable to evolve a new and modified scheme of government, derided to rid himself once for all of the Boyars.
He left Moscow surreptitiously, pretending to abdicate, and his departure threw the city into a state of confusion. From the village of Alexandrovo he sent two proclamations in which he explained his reasons for " going to reside wherever God would call him," these were the behaviour of the Boyars and the support given to them by the priests. He put the Boyars under his imperial ban, while he assured the merchants and other taxpayers of his goodwill. The various estates sent deputations to the Tsar to plead with him to return ; the people offered to hunt dow^n the traitors, and even the Boyars and priests came in person to protest their loyalty.
Finall}' Ivan IV. agreed to return, but on his own con- ditions : these were extremel}^ stringent, and gave him the right to banish and put to death any Boyar he chose, and to sequestrate the property for himself. He thus practically instituted a dictatorship. He also estabhshed a new Court and created a new class of courtiers. Of the worst of the Boyars, and out of the dregs of society, he formed his band of secret police, the Opritchnina, which scoured the country for traitors. Suspicion of treason was an obsession with Ivan, and thousands of innocent people were sacrificed in consequence — even nims amongst them. The Tsar personally sent lists of his victims to monasteries, requesting prayers for the repose of their souls, to pay for which he sent sums of money. He kept a diary in which he noted down the names of those whom he killed wdth his own hand. His mania for giving orders to have people beheaded can only be compared to that of the Queen in Alice in Wonderland.
A new system of government was now instituted for a period of seven years, and two Russias existed side by side : one, the Zemstchina, was ruled over by the Council of the Boyars, with the Kremlin as headquarters ; the other, the Opritchnina, was under the absolute control of the Tsar, who had taken up his residence in Alexandrovo with his new courtiers and bodyguard, the Opritchniki, who eventually numbered six thousand men.
THE MUSCOVITE EMPIRE 49
This division of Russia's territory into the Zemstchina and the Opritchnina was carried out on arbitrary lines, and in one part of Moscow alone twelve thousand officials and citizens were deprived of their property, which was taken over by the creatures of the Tsar, the dispossessed owners being forced to travel on foot to distant parts of the country as colonists.
The Ufe of the new Court was fashioned on monastic Hnes : the Tsar himself sang in the choir, read the offices in the chapel, and prostrated himself on the stone floor to such an extent that his forehead was covered with bruises. When he had satisfied the rehgious side of his nature, he plunged into the other extreme — licentiousness and cruelty ; at such times it was his keenest dehght to watch the anguish of his tortured victims. The only man who dared to withstand him was the newly elected MetropoUtan, Phihp, Abbot of the Solovietsk Monastery, whose manly and hol}^ personahty stands out all the more brightly on account of the background of flattering, insincere, and self-seeldng priests. The Tsar met his master in this high ecclesiastic, a man remarkable for his purity of motive, his uncompromising severity and indomitable courage. But, finally, even this man was crushed by the tyrant ; he was accused of defalcation and of wizardry, false witnesses being easily procured. He was banished to an ecclesiastical penitentiary, where he was left to die of starvation.
The Tsar's love of carnage was illustrated in the way he carried on warfare against Novgorod, Pskov, and the Baltic provinces. But even while this sanguinary conquest was carried out and he was revelhng in bloodshed and cruelty, he still found time to occupy himself with foreign politics. Poland specially claimed his attention. After the death of the last of the Jagiellons,i a deputation invited Ivan's son to become King of Poland. The Tsar refused to accede to this request, but offered himself instead as candidate for the throne. He told the Poles that all the causes for war would be removed if Poland, Lithuania, and Russia were united with Moscow. So they would, from his point of view ; but the Poles declined this offer with justifiable alacrity,
1 See Chapter XXV., " Poland."
4
r.o A THorSANI) YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
War broke out in consequence, and matters became especially acuta in the reign of the capable and chivalrous Stephan Bathory, who had meanwhile been elected l^ng of Poland, and who had actuall}^ suggested a duel between liimself and the Tsar as the best means of settling the vexed question. Ivan, however, dechned the honour.
Ivan the Terrible found himself at last compelled to request the intervention of the Pope, who readily accepted the role of intermediary in the hope of gaining the Tsar's allegiance to the Roman Church. The Papal ambassador, the Jesuit Posse \in, \isited Moscow, and showed plainly that he had only the interests of Rome at heart, not those of Muscovy or even Poland, although he favoured the latter as a Roman Catholic country. The result of this intervention was the conclusion of a truce for a period of ten years, each party surrendering part of the territories annexed at various times : this meant for Ivan that he had to give up the idea of reaching the Baltic.
The Tsar, absolutely unchecked by any restraining influ- ence, surrendered himself more and more to his orgies of blood, till one day in a fit of ungovernable fury he slew his eldest son with his own hand. This act caused him bitter remorse, and he would have suffered still more had he known that by it he had extinguished his dynasty.
The remaining years of his life were a monotonous repeti- tion of deeds of violence, alternating wdth pilgrimages to monasteries and shrines. His love for theological argument in his letters to his former friend Kourbski, who had taken refuge in Poland, give an insight into the Tsar's large store of undigested knowledge. They abound in briUiant ideas and clever arguments, interspersed with absolutely absurd statements, the utter lack of balance in his character manifest- ing itself in his Hterary effusions.
Although during the last years of his Ufe the Tsar indulged less in wholesale slaughter, the death of this " reUgious monster," as he has been aptly described, was a real deUver- ance for Russia. The historian Klyuchevski endeavours to explain the phenomenon of the Tsar's reign by " moral iastabihty." He says that " his alternation of lofty mental
THE MUSCOVITE EMPIRE 51
flights with shameful moral degradation helps to throw a light upon Ivan's policy of State. Although he accompUshed and designed much that was good, wise, and even great, yet the terrible deeds perpetrated by him have made him an object of horror and aversion, not only to his own but also to subsequent generations."
The net result of Ivan's reign is clear. By his terribly inhuman methods of putting down treason he only created anarchy, for he struck out indiscriminately, Uke a bhnd man, in his fury. He succeeded in creating a new aristocracy consisting of mihtary officials and of courtiers who were of his own making ; and thus beside the old noble famihes, whose genealogies dated back to the early days of Russian history, a new class of aristocrats developed. In spite of his declared hatred of the Boyars, he could not dispense with them ; hence the dual rule of Russia during this period of history.
The beneficent reforms of Sylvester and Adashev are reckoned as righteousness to Ivan, and also their far-seeing policy of colonisation, which was furthered by every means — even by compulsion.
The conquest of the whole of the Volga region and of Siberia (by the Cossack Yermack) had brought vast territories under Russian rule, and this gave the Tsar the right to call himself not only Tsar of Muscovy, but also Tsar of Kazan, Astrakhan, and Siberia as the lawful successor of their conquered rulers. From a commercial and economic point of view the Tsar's readiness to welcome foreigners, both Enghsh and Dutch, had far-reaching results ; it also taught the Russians the importance of the Dvina as an outlet into the White Sea, the town of Archangel being founded in 1583.
By the time of Ivan the Terrible's death in 1584, autocracy and despotism had been raised to a pinnacle on which his immediate successors did their best to keep it.
After Ivan's death, his son Feodor (1584-1598), who was feeble both in mind and body, ascended the throne, but although nominally Ruler of All the Russias, it was his brother-in-law, Boris Godounov, who governed in his name. The weak-minded but harmless youth, whose incUnation was
52 A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
to play at roligion, and whose principal amusement was to ring tlie olunx'h bolls, was only too glad to leave all his re- sponsibilities in the hands of his capable brother-m-law. That Boris Godoimov, a man of Tatar origin, a companion of the Tsar Ivan, and 3-et one who never took part in liis infamous amusements, was nevertheless trusted by the tyrant, speaks well for his diplomatic tact. He was appointed by Ivan the Terrible to be one of the four councillors who after his death were to assist his son in governing Muscovy.
This clever, capable, and gifted minister ruled Russia with \\'isdom and discretion, gaining considerably in prestige by his foreign pohcy. During the fourteen years of his deputed power the country enjoyed a period of rest and calm, during which the wounds of the nation began to heal. His enormous wealth enabled Boris to dispense charity on a lavish scale, especially during a terrible famine which killed off hundreds of thousands of people. So great was this calamity, that all the efforts of the ruler could not prevent cannibaHsm from spreading to a frightful extent, but his noble conduct and paternal care of his people during this period of stress caused them to bestow upon him the name of " Father." This otherwise fine character, however, was marred by the canker of ambition, in order to satisfy which he misused his admini- strative powers.
The economic conditions of the vast Empire were com- plicated by sparsity of population : land was of little value without labourers to work it. The demand was much greater than the supply, which was still further diminished by the peasants' habit of migrating to pastures new, especially to the south ; and the landowners thus found themselves left in the lurch. The position of the peasant had hitherto been one of negative Hberty : no one interfered with him, and he was free, if not satisfied wdth master or land, to move on. Once a year, on St George's Day, he could move to whatever place seemed to promise him a greater reward for his toil. Slavery did exist, but it was limited to prisoners of war.
As Boris Godounov could not reckon on the support of the great Boyars in his ambitious schemes, he did his best to win
THE MUSCOVITE EMPIRE 53
over the lesser nobles, who were the chief sufferers from the lack of labour. In 1597 he issued an ukase by which the peasants were tied down to the land, and in this way many millions of hitherto free people were changed into serfs. From a pecuniary point of view this law was a gain to the land- owners, who were now given the right to pursue and fetch back their fugitive serfs. Thousands of these fled to the Cossacks 1 on the Don, thus artificially increasing the tur- bulent, restless element in the land.
After the downfall of the Mongol Empire, Cossacks had settled on that river, whence they set out to fight against isolated tribes of Tatars ; and there, as formerly on the Dnieper, runaway serfs, outlaws, and adventurers found refuge. The community thus formed came to be recognised by the Tsars as valuable frontier guards. The innate tendency of the Russian peasant to migrate to any part where free land is to be had has made him at all times a good colonist.
Cossackdom represented a distinct conception of freedom, of the warrior life ; it had become a national institution, and at various outposts of the Muscovite Empire such warrior communities sprang up or were purposely organised by the State as colonising agents. The similarity of pohtical and economic conditions all over Russia fostered this peculiar movement. Parties of Cossacks settled on the Ural River, whence later on some of them were transplanted by the Russian Government to the Kuban, there to act as a mihtary vanguard.
Although Boris achieved his aim of winning the gratitude and thereby securing the adherence of the lesser nobility, still between him and his authority stood a young life — that of the infant brother of the Tsar. After the death of Ivan the Terrible, Boris Godounov had banished the seventh wife of the late Tsar, with her infant son, to Uglitch, a small town at some distance from Moscow. Some years later that city was startled by the news that the Tsarevitch, by that time a lad eight years old, had died, and the rumour quickly spread that he had been murdered. Although overcome with grief, Tsar Feodor took no measures to find out the ^ See Chapter XXIIT., " Don Cossacks."
-.4 A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
truth of the report, simply accepting Boris Godounov's state- ment that the cliild had died of injuries received during an attack of epilepsy.
For tlie sake of appearances a commission of inquirj'^ was instituted by the powerful minister himself. That the verdict of death b}'^ accident should be confirmed was a fore- gone conclusion, as the members of the commission were in his pay. Ostensibly to punish the culpable negligence of the Tsarevitch's entourage, but in reahty to get rid of anyone who could reveal the truth, Boris had almost all the in- habitants of Uglitch massacred or sent into exile.
Seven years after the murder of the Tsarevitch the Tsar Feodor died, and \vith him the line of Rurik became extinct.
The Tsabdom of Muscovy.
THE MUSCOVITE EMPIRE 55
III. PERIOD (1462-1689)
MUSCOVY
^ . /Tvan III. Vassilievitch (the Great) (1462-1505) marries niece of last ° m Greek Emperor. Moscow the capital. First Hospodar of all .2 o i Russia.
S" Vassili III. Ivanovitch (1505-1533). (^ [ivan IV. Vassilievitch (the Terrible) (1533-1584). Feodor Ivanovitch (1584-15'98).
CM
CHAPTER V
THE PERIOD OF TROUBLE: USURPERS AND PRETENDERS
(1598-1612)
The Tsar Feodor died without having made a will. He left the future of his realm " to the will of God." His widow was at once proclaimed Tsaritsa and allegiance was sworn to her, in spite of her honestly meant refusal to succeed her husband on the throne. Ultimately, she gave in, but on condition t,ha,t her brother, Bfiris Godounoy, should continue to rule on her behalf as he had ^one on behalf of her late
Husband. She then entered a convent. Meanwhile, Boris having ~ also retired to the same place, the government was carried on by the Council of Boyars in the name of this nun.
Three times did the Patriarch offer the crown to Boris Godounov, but he always refused it, as it was his ambition to be chosen by the nation and not by his creature the Patriarch. Some nine j^ears previously, in 1589, the Tsar Feodor had succeeded in persuading the Patriarch of Con- stantinople, who was idsiting Moscow to collect money, to consecrate the Metropohtan of Moscow as Patriarch. Up to that time there had been two Metropolitans in Russia — the one at Kiev, owing allegiance to Poland, and the other at Moscow, under the Patriarch of Constantinople, who himself was subject to the Sultan. This ecclesiastic, at the time of his visit, was a fugitive, and the wealth of Moscow inclined him to accede to the Tsar's request to confer on the Metro- pohtan of Moscow the dignity of the Patriarchate.
The man chosen for this honour was in the pay of Boris Godounov, and, as it was he who suggested offering the crown
56
THE PERIOD OF TROUBLE
57
to his patron, it is not surprising that the Boyars were loth to acknowledge their debt of gratitude, and gave only a half-hearted support to his candidature. In consequence of his persistent refusal to accept the crown, the National Council was called and, owing to pressure brought to bear on its
Jewelled Saddle of Boris Godounov (1598-1605).
members and bribery by the Imperial nun, Boris was elected Tsar of All the Russias.
If the new Tsar had been born to his position, his person- ahty, his great gifts and administrative powers, would have made him a first-rate ruler ; but the crime upon which his assumption of power had been based influenced all his future actions : fear of the Boyars, fear of the relations of the murdered Tsarevitch and his mother, turned Boris Godounov
58 A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
into a despot. Although liis tyranny did not make itself gononilly felt, and was not so sanguinary as that of Ivan the Terrible, it was quite bad enough. The Boyars in general and the family of the late Tsarevitch's mother — tlie Romanoffs — in particular, to their undoing, felt his iron grip. Exile and torture were freely used for the crushing of any possible rivals, and a system of espionage was introduced.
For fourteen years Boris Godounov reigned in Moscow, seven years as Regent and seven as Tsar (1598-1605). His mental qualities fitted him to govern, and his decided pre- dilection for Western culture had a beneficent influence on barbaric Russia. Political sagacity made him seek an alliance with Austria and caused him to suggest the Tsar Feodor as candidate for the vacant throne of Poland, but, as before, Poland refused the honour of such close union with Muscovy.
It was during this period that a French vessel visited ^r?hangel_Jpr thefirst time, an event which led to direct diplomatic relations with IVance. Foreigners — English, Dutch, and German — were welcomed ; but, although Boris favoured the English, it was the Dutch who succeeded later on in gaining commercial ascendancy. The Tsar fully reahsed how very important it was for Russia to put an end to the isolation and seclusion hitherto persisted in. In the Tsar's closest entourage were to be found foreigners whose military and scientific achievements secured them positions of importance, and he had his son Feodor and his daughter Xenia educated by foreign tutors.
His plans, for the founding of universities and schools show his appreciation of culture. He even sent a number of young Russians to German}', France, and Belgium to be educated. For England, indeed, he had the most pronounced partiality — so much so, that he was called the " EngHsh Tsar."
The success of this foreign policy did not conduce, however, to internal quiet : a terrific storm was gathering. The Tsar Boris knew that he was hated by the Boyars, first on account of his serviUty to Ivan the Terrible, and secondly because he had succeeded where they had failed. He knew only too well that the people looked upon him with suspicion because
THE PERIOD OF TROUBLE 59
of his marriage with the daughter of Malyuta Skouratov, the chief of Ivan's company of demons, a leader in devilry and therefore the Tsar's favourite.
Another reason for animosity on the part of the citizens was the Tsar's partiality for foreigners, whom the Russian merchants looked upon as trade rivals. Finally the peasants were groaning under the bondage into which his ukase had thrown them. The great cities, which until recently had en- joyed a full measure of liberty under Lithuanian rule, grew restive under the Tsar's iron hand, as also did the Cossacks of the Don and the Volga, and even the lesser nobihty, for whose sake free peasants had been made into serfs.
AIL-Qver the Empire there was smouldering unrest : the evil days of Ivan were forgotten in the discontent created by present conditions. When, therefore, a man appeared who claimed to be lawful heir to the throne, a descendant of Rurik and son of Ivan — that very Dmitri who was supposed to have died in Uglitch, — the response to his appeal was tremendous.
Who this pretender really was has never transpired, or whether he honestly believed in his identity with £he Tsarevitch. His history and personality are intensely interesting. A PoHsh magnate was the first to beUeve in his story, and procured for the pretender the whole-hearted support of the PoHsh Gqy^rmnent — given perhaps more for the salEe~ofTLarassing Russia and Boris Godounov than from any conviction of the righteousness of the cause. In return for the support given him, Dmitri agreed to surrender to Poland certain much-coveted territory, and promised the Papal nuncio to bring Russia into union with Rome and also to undertake a crusade against the Turks. He became engaged to Marina Mniszek, daughter of the Voyevod of Sandomir, who was to be married to him after his accession to the throne ; to her he promised the Crown jewels treasured up in the Kremhn, and to her father the town of Smolensk. With Polish money and Pohsh soldiers to back him the pretender entered Russia, where the populace hailed him with joy. The Tsar Boris sent troops against him under Prince Vassili Shuiski ; but that Boyar was in no hurry to
60 A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
conquer the onomy of his enemy, and, although there were moments when defeat seemed inevitable, the efforts of the pretender were ultimately crowned with success.
Suddenly the Tsar died. Was it by poison_ taken jn a fit of melancholy ? Or was it from a paralytic stroke ? Whq can tell ? After the death of Boris Godounov began a period of distress^— tEe'^'^ troublous times," — which lasted for eight years. Neither liis son, a lad of sixteen years, nor his widow, the daughter of the most abhorred man in Muscovy, could reckon on support from the more or less disaffected army ; and finally even Basmanov, a Boyar who had been a loyal friend to the late Tsar, realised that the choice lay between surrendering to the claims of the~prelEender or opposing him and being crushed. Consequently, when Dmitri appeared before Moscow his proclamation was readily listened to, the people, clergy, and Boyars acclaiming him Tsar. After his entrance into the KjremUn he did all he could to show respect to the memory of his " father " and brother, and finally he had a private interview with the Dowager Tsaritsa, who duly recognised him as her son.
Th^onlj__man_to^_iiphold and spread the rumour that Dmitri was not what he pretended to be was Prince Vassiji Shuiski, whose enemies denounced him to the new Tsar. TTp wa.qjTnndpimnpd for treason, and his head was already- on] the_block_when at the last moment he was pardoned.
Dmitri (1605^1606) was cro%vned with great pomp and ceremony, and began his rule under the happiest auspices. He had vowed not to shed a drop of " Christian blood," and therefore only sent into exile the leading men of the Godounov party. He recalled from exile Philaret Romanoff, the head of his supposed mother's family, and appointed him Metropolitan of Pskov. He treated his subjects with kindness and Uber- aUty. He was gracious to foreigners and tolerant in religious matters ; with regard to commerce it was his intention to introduce free trade ; he made drastic changes in the judicial system, which at this time was based on bribery ; and he also ameUorated the lot of the serfs.
Whoever this pretender may have been, he had a sympa- thetic personality : full of gaiety and the power of enjoyment,
THE PERIOD OF TROUBLE 61
he also possessed a cultured mind, pleasing manners, and perfect savoir faire. He must have been firmly convinced of his personal safety, his position, and the strength of his cause, for he dismissed his Polish army, retaining only a company of foreign mercenaries. An ardent admirer of the King of France, he did his best to introduce Western methods and customs into Asiatic Muscovy, and often pleasantly suggested to the Boyars that foreign travel was extremely beneiicial. In dress, also, he introduced changes ; Dmitri was the first Russian ruler to discard the flowing Tatar robes universally worn in Muscovy.
Those drastic innovations caused dissatisfaction among the conservative Boyars and all who resented any departure from tradition. Another great cause of discontent was the increasingly overbearing behaviour of the Polish nobles who had followed in Dmitri's train and settled in Moscow. A climax was reached when his young Polish bride arrived. Her gaiety and thoughtlessness and her inconsiderate demand for secular music in the nunnery where she spent the few days before her wedding, as also her refusal to wear the traditional but unbecoming garments compulsory for a Tsar's bride, greatly incensed the people, already offended with their Tsar for marrying an " unbaptised one," a term apphed to CathoHcs by the fanatical Greek Orthodox Russians.
By his failure to restrain the future Tsaritsa from thought- less and frivolous behaviour Dmitri played into the hands of the ambitious Prince Shuiski, who secretly fanned the discontent. Rumours spread that the " Latin heresy " was to be introduced into Russia, and the large party of arrogant Poles — Jesuits and princes — who accompanied the Polish bride-elect gave colour to this assumption.
Shuiski and the Boyars, by means of a ruse, succeeded in arranging a coup d'etat. Eighteen thousand soldiers who were camping round Moscow were told that the Tsar had been taken captive by the Poles and that his life was in danger, whereupon they demanded to be entrusted with the protection of the KremHn in place of the foreign mercenaries, whp were to be sent away. Dmitri, though warned of danger, ignored it in the happy confidence that all was well ; but during
02 A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
a Statv ball whit'ii took place on the following night, when tlu' iivvat bolls of Moscow sounded the alarm and the Boyars entoied the Kremlm, the unhappy Tsar jumped out of a window to save himself, breaking his leg in the fall. Unable to escape, he was soon discovered and killed. His corpse was treated with indescribable savagery. After the mutilated body had been exposed three days to the gaze of the public, it was burnt and the ashes scattered to the winds.
Themurder of tlie_Tsar was followed by the massacre of over tAvelve hundred Poles ; the .young Polish Tsaritsa was spared, but, alas ! for a life of shame. Dmitri's reign was beneficent, and his personality one of the most distinguished among Russian rulers. In all respects and in every sphere he outshone his predecessors in kindliness of nature, in in- tellectual culture, and abihty. Barbaric Muscovy, however, was not yet ripe for a Europeanised ruler : Tatar despot- ism still appealed more to the OrientaUsed character of the people.
After the pretender's death Prince Vassili Shuiski (1G06) usurped the throne. The joyousness'of the Court of Dmitri was transformed into gloomy solemnity which, according to a Polish contemporary, " gave the impression of a permanent funeral." The next few years of Russian history were full of violence, civil war, and anarchy. Pre- tender after pretender put forward a claim to the throne, either personally or as the puppet of a party of Boyars. Ultimately the usurper Shuiski was deposed, he retired to a monastery, and once again the country was ruled over b}^ the Council of Boyars.
The problem as to who the new Tsar was to be was urgent and very difficult, for no party felt itself strong enough to support successfully its own candidate. Moscow was threatened by two hostile armies, one the Polish army, the other led by a rebel — the so-called " Brigand of Touchina " — a Cossack pretender whom the Nvidow of the first pretender had been forced b\^ her father to recognise and to accept as her husband.
At this juncture the Boyars decided to offer the crowTi to Vladislav, son of the King of Poland ; the latter, however,
THE PERIOD OF TROUBLE 63
desired it for himself. Russia was in desperate straits : on the one hand she was in danger of being reduced to the status of a province of Poland, which fate, it is true, would have brought her into touch with Western civilisation, but at the cost of her independence ; and on the other she was threat- ened with domination by robbers and Cossacks, which would have meant anarchy and a total relapse into barbarism.
But when things seemed at their worst, the incredible happened, and Russia was saved from foes without and within. The__people, the enslaved peasants and the down- trodden citizens, came to the rescue : national consciousness a woke__and„ti,e- nigh-tmare ^f f ojeigiL rule was lifted . The way for this deliverance was prepared by a religious revival : a wave of penitence and humiliation swept over the land, the monks of the famous Troitza monastery leading the move- ment. Just as in the days of lawlessness in Israel God raised up men to deliver the people, so now He raised up two deliverers for Russia — Minin, a butcher of Nijni Nov- gorod, and Pojarski, a country squire. Each of these men called upon the class to which he belonged to work for unity, and at the cost of great self-denial and sacrifice an army was raised and equipped. A mighty wave of national enthusiasm carried the people along with it ; part of the Cossack army which was investing Moscow was won over by the national party, the Poles were driven out of the city, and Moscow was restored to the Russian people. Minin, Pojarski, and the priest Palitsin shared the supremacy during the ensuing interregnum until a new Tsar could be elected and the old capital once more be placed under a lawful ruler. Russia was saved by this triple dictatorship of sincere patriots, who, themselves men of the people, understood the people.
Although the Russian nation seemed reduced to the verge of inertia by despotism, her vitality had not been utterly destroyed. A Council of the nation met in solemn delibera- tion, and, contrary to the wish of the Boyars. who favoured a PoHsh candidate, it was decided not to elect any foreigner. Yet it was no easy task to decide upon a " Russian -born " candidate in the midst of the clamour raised by rival factions.
The terrible upheavals which took place during this
04 A 1 IIOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
■■ IViiod of Trouble " (1698-1612) are duo chiefly, according to Professor Klyuchevski, to two causes : the extinction, after nearly eight centuries of rule, of the Rurik dynasty, wliich gave rise to a succession of pretenders, and the condi- tions created by the perpetual strife between tlie difl'erent classes, each supporting a Tsar of its own.
ntimately ^likhail Romanoff, a youth of sixteen, son of the Metropolitan Philaret and a relative of the first wife of Ivan IV. — Anastasia Romanoff — was elected Tsar.
PERIOD OF TROUBLE
BORIS GODOUNOV (1598-1605).
Feodor Borissovitch (1605).
PSEUDO DMITRI (1605-1606).
VassiU V. Shuiski (1606-1610).
In terregnuiu and Period of Anarchy, Vladislav of Poland (1610-1613).
CHAPTER VI
THE ROMANOFFS
(1612-1689)
Mikhail Romanoff was chosen Tsar, not on account of any special virtue in himself, but because of the popularity enjoyed by his family, which some three hundred years previously had come over to Muscovy from Prussia, at the time when that country was still inhabited by Slavs. The Romanoffs had an unstained record, and, although only untitled Boyars, their position had never been questioned by their peers. Their integrity, love of learning, and charm of manner had made them popular in each successive generation.
There were two other factors which told strongly in Mikhail's favour : his youth, which the Boyars hoped would render him a pliable tool, and the whole-hearted support given him by the two great parties which had been instru- mental in hberating Russia from Polish supremacy — namely, the citizens and the lesser nobihty in conjunction with the Cossacks. In fact, the election of Mikhail Romanoff may be looked upon as a national reaction.
A new era opens up with the election of Mikhail Romanoff and the establishment of a new dynasty. The "Period of Trouble " had come to an end, and out of the poHtical and economic upheavals a new structure arose. Many old and cherished ideas and conceptions had to be discarded, and new ones, due to the altered conditions created during the troubled period of lawlessness, took shape. The old poHtical traditions of the personification of the State in the Tsar (" L'etat c'est moi "), and of the will of the sovereign as the sole expression of the State, had been shaken to their
65 5
00 A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
very foundations. Tho people had witnessed the impotence of Tsars who wore merely usur})ers and pretenders and had not a nation behind them ; they had also passed through times when there was no Tsar, and when nevertheless Russia had managed to exist. The " State of Muscovy " came to represent a political conception in which the idea of the nation, as apart from the sovereign, was expressed. Recent experience had proved that, although a nation could exist without a Tsar, no Tsar could exist without a nation.
The unparalleled conditions created by the extinction of the Rurik dynasty led to the election of a Tsar, and, even though this was achieved by means of the intrigues of the different ruUng parties, still, nominally it was done by the will of the nation. Their Tsar was no longer a " divinely appointed " ruler, but one only in virtue of the will of the people expressed by the Zemski Sobor, which consisted of representatives of the clergy, the Boyars, the lesser nobiHty, the leading merchants and commercial men of all ranks, and of the rest of the free populace. In every sphere of life innovations crept in and a new class of courtiers developed — a class of mere parvenus.
The elected Tsars surrounded themselves with the men who had supported them and whose capacity and gifts had brought them to the fore. The position of the Tsar towards the Boyars also underwent a change. In former days their mutual relations had been based on custom and not upon any fixed law. All this was now altered : precedents were created and definite rules were established, and by the very fact that the Empire could no longer be claimed by the Tsar as his ancestral patrimony the demand of the Boyars to partici- pate in the government had more justification than before.
Gradually the new pohtical and administrative idea of a triumvirate of " Sovereign, State, and Nation " was evolved : i.e. the Tsar was to hold his crown in virtue of heredity, but also by grace of election. He was to be a limited monarch, and to share his rule permanently with the Council of Boyars, and in exceptional cases also \vith the Zemski Sobor, i.e. with the National or " Territorial Council."
The PoUsh Prince Vladislav, to whom the crown of Moscow
THE ROMANOFFS 67
had previously been offered, but who had lost it through the treachery of his father, Casimir II,, nevertheless persisted in his claim to be Tsar. The Poles refused to recognise the newly elected Tsar, Mikhail Romanoff, the first action of whose reign was to wage war against both Poland and Sweden, his arrogant neighbours. Ultimately it was decided to settle aU diplomatic differences by means of a conference, an Austrian envoy acting as arbitrator. Although this mediator failed, in 1615, to reconcile " fire and water," the EngUsh and Dutch plenipotentiaries proved more successful in 1617, when at the Treaty of Stolbovo the vexed question of the disputed provinces was settled and a compromise with Sweden agreed upon.
Russia was thus set free to fight against Poland, with whom also, two years later, a treaty was concluded. A truce of fourteen and a half years was decided upon, and, in consideration of the right to retain Smolensk and other provinces, the PoHsh prince resigned his claim to the throne of Muscovy and an exchange of prisoners took place.
The father of the Tsar, Philaret, Metropolitan of Rostov, who was among the prisoners, then rejoined his son, who was in urgent need of a strong and permanent adviser. During the first years of his rule he had been a pliant instrument in the hands of the Council of Boyars, who on his acces- sion had made him swear not to put any of them to death nor to decide anything without their consent : their horrible experiences during the last reigns forced the Boyars to safe- guard their persons against any possible arbitrary action on the part of the Tsar. They exacted from him a promise to leave aU matters of administration in their hands : in fact, they deprived him of any right to initiative. The Boyar Council and the National Council practically ruled the country : the Tsar convened the National Council ten times ; having been elected to power by it, he could not refuse it a share in the government.
The first task of the new regime was to estabUsh internal order and to clear the country of the turbulent and dangerous element of robbers and outlaws, and last, but not least, to keep down the Cossacks, who by the freedom they enjoyed
08 A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
attracted the down- trodden serfs in ever-increasing numbers. TIio Cossiuks of the Dnieper fought under Poland against Russia, while those of the Don owed allegiance to Muscovy. A large number of these, however, had followed the second pretender, Dmitri, whom Marina, wife of the first pseudo- Dmitri, had joined in a career of adventure which ended in disaster. Marina herself was interned for Ufe in a nunnery, her Cossack lover was impaled, and their little son was hanged.
On his return from captivity the Tsar's father was raised to the Patriarchate, and till Mikhail's death in 1645 father and son acted as co-rulers of Russia, to the great advantage of the country. Philaret was a strong, clever, and cultured man, a born diplomat and ruler of men : he occupied in Russia the place held in England by Cardinal Wolsey and in France by Cardinal Richeheu. It was he who directed the foreign policy and controlled the internal affairs of the Empire. Having been taught Latin by an Enghshman, and having travelled to Western Europe, he reahsed the vital importance to Russia not only of attracting but also of retaining the foreigners w4io now began to flock into the Muscovite Empire. He organised an army of foreign mercenaries and secured the services of foreign officers, among whom the EngHsh were given preference. The only drawback to this arrange- ment was the Muscovite notion that " once in Russian service, always in Russian service," and those who desired to return to their respective countries were forcibly prevented from doing so and were sometimes even imprisoned.
The Streltzi, or Russian militia, v/ere reorganised, and, instead of being as hitherto led by Boyars, capable men of miUtary talent were appointed oflicers. By this arrange- ment the army and the aristocracy became estranged and the power of the latter considerably curtailed : the Streltzi were forced to marry in order to have sons, who were to become soldiers in their turn.
The two Tsars — for their relationship amounted to this — introduced many changes into commercial Hfe, and with the help of foreigners industrial enterprise was developed and fostered.
Economic conditions also required readjustment. During
THE ROMANOFFS 69
the period of anarchy, landownership had rapidly declined and taxation was weighing heavily on the peasantry. Dis- satisfaction was rife, and complaints were made by the Russian people, who were no longer the silent, long-suffering slaves to which despotism had reduced them.
Philaret treated the Boyars with a high hand, yet he managed to limit their power without arousing their active antagonism.
Despite his usurpation of power, the Regent ingeniously evaded conflicts with his son, being too wise, too experienced and far-seeing to risk a rupture. There were moments when he actually took a higher position than his son, when for in- stance, in the procession on Palm Sunday the Tsar had to lead the horse of the Patriarch, who inci- dentally was also his father.
The reign of the first of the Romanoff djoiasty having proved bene- ficent, it naturally followed that on the death of the Tsar Mikhail he was suc- ceeded by his son Alexei (1645-1676),
then only sixteen years of age. Once Dotjblk CitowN of the
. , ,, , Co-TsAKs Ivan AND Peter.
again an immature youth became
nominal head of the State, while the real power was wielded
by a strong man, the young Tsar's tutor Morozov. This
man brought about a marriage between his pupil and a girl
belonging to the family of the Miloslavskys, an insignificant
Boyar family, with which he then allied himself by marriage,
increasing in his capacity of brother-in-law his power and
authority. In league with the President of the High Court
of Justice, Morozov introduced a reign of nepotism and
corruption ; bribery became the only means of obtaining a
favourable verdict, and the burden of taxation fell more and
more upon the helpless peasants and citizens.
The moment, however, arrived when the down-trodden
people rebelled against the systematic oppression to which
they were subjected, and more especially against their two
powerful oppressors. One day, when the Tsar was riding
through Moscow, one of the desperate citizens stopped his
horse and forced the ruler to listen to his subject's appeal
70 A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
for justice. Alexei promised to instigate an inquiry, but this answer was not sufficient to satisfy the exasperated suppUants. A terrible riot broke out which lasted for three days, and Morozov would undoubtedly have been murdered if the Tsar had not pleaded, ^nth tears, for the life of his " second father." Being a clever man, Morozov amended his ways and from that time onward gave no further cause for complaint. The evils existing in the economic and judicial system were, however, so deep-rooted, and riots and risings were consequently of such frequent occurrence, that the Tsar finally decided to have the laws re\nsed, and in 1648 a new code was introduced. At the same time he created the " Department of Secret Affairs," a kind of secret service, as a means of preventing further revolts.
The reign of Alexei Mikhailovitch was rich in important innovations which prepared the ground for the great changes and reforms introduced later on by his son Peter. What Philaret had begun was now carried on a stage further, partly because the Tsar was attracted by any innovations which smoothed his political path or which were of personal benefit to himself, but more especially because he had able and far- seeing statesmen to advise and assist him.
In every sphere of life reforms were inaugurated : the army was reorganised, trade placed on a more solid basis, and the pubUc welfare promoted in every way. With regard to foreign policy, war and peace with Poland and Sweden alter- nated until, in 1667, the differences between Poland and Russia were temporarily settled. Although Russia lost certain territories, she gained others, among them Smolensk, the much-coveted city, and that part of the Ukraina in which Kiev was situated. Even though this union of the Ukraina ^ with Muscovy remained for another century more or less a " personal " union with the Tsars, and only meant a terri- torial gain of three thousand square miles, it was of great value, as it definitely settled the Cossack problem. Those inveterate fighters from the Dnieper, the Zaporogian Cossacks, were thus transformed from dangerous foes into useful allies. The Cossacks of the Don, however, remained a potential element
^ See Chapter XXII., " The Ukraina ; the Cossacks of the Dnieper, or the Knights of the Zaporogian Setcha."
THE ROMANOFFS 71
of the unrest which in the great rising under Stenka Razin in 1670 found its most marked expression.
Stenka did not aim at being a pretender to the crown : his ideal was to be, not a Tsar, but a " brother " of the people. Unfortunately, however, in his hatred of the Boyars, he per- mitted his followers to commit such acts of cruelty that his name became a terror to the upper classes, though to the Russian peasant he is, even to-day, a hero — a deUverer from oppression. They believe that he never really died, and are convinced that he will reappear in the hour of their need.
At the Treaty of Westphalia on the close of the Thirty Years' War, the Russian Tsar, who had become the ally of Sweden, made his voice heard for the first time in the councils of Europe. From this time Russian ambassadors more frequently visited European Courts, which in return sent their representatives to the Russian Court. A " Department for Foreign Ambassadors " was organised in Moscow. This increased intercourse with Western Europe necessitated a regular postal service, and the honour of being the first to bring Russia into the Postal Convention belongs to the Tsar Alexei Mikhailovitch.
Foreigners of every nationahty and condition visited and even settled in Moscow, where the Tsar favoured the creation of the so-called " German suburb " — a kind of foreign quarter where they were free to live in their own style and manner, apart from the noise and insecurity of the Russian capital. Relations with England, however, grew strained, and ended in the temporary expulsion of aU EngHsh merchants from Moscow, in consequence of the Tsar's indignation with the English as a whole nation.
In the year 1645 a Russian envoy, demanding a personal interview with King Charles I., found that he was expected to deal with the ParUament instead, and refused to do so. When he reported to the Tsar later on that the Enghsh had imprisoned their king, Alexei Mikhailovitch 's anger was aroused and vented on the British merchants, restricting their hitherto unhampered activity by irritating and contra- dictory orders. The Russian merchants took the opportunity afforded by the Tsar's attitude to present a complaint regard-
T-J A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
iiig the detrimental eflFect of British trade in Russia ; when, therefore, the news of the execution of lung Charles reached Russia, he expelled the Enghsh altogether as members of a nation guilty of the crime of regicide. The Russian merchants hailed this decision with joy : it, however, proved only a temporary measure, for foreign articles in general, and even objects of luxury, had become a necessity to the wealthy members of the community, the whole standard of life having been raised.
As in all times of transition, two tendencies were struggling for supremacy : the old exclusive Tatar tendency towards obscurantism was resisting the influx of new conceptions and ideals. This was manifested in the attitude taken up by man}^ in regard to education and the marked progress of civihsation. They feared the introduction of learning as dangerous both to the national and to the spiritual welfare of the people. This clinging at all costs to the tradi- tions of the past found its most startling expression in the Great Schism, called forth by the reforms of the Patriarch Nikon, whose influence over the Tsar became paramount, and who played as important a role during this reign as his predecessor the Patriarch Philaret had played during the previous one. The gentle, clinging, and intensely reUgious nature of Tsar Alexei }delded readilj^ to the masterful personality of the Patriarch, whose ascendancy over the young ruler became absolute — although, at the same time, a genuine friendship existed between the Tsar and his spiritual adviser.
The Patriarch Nikon owed his exalted position to his own great gifts. He was the son of a peasant, but he displayed such administrative talent in the various monasteries to which he was sent that he was made Metropolitan of Novgorod. There, during a crisis, he rendered such services to the Muscovite Government that later on he was appointed to the Patriarchate, by virtue of which he wdelded the highest ecclesiastical authority. The Tsar readily accorded him the position of co-ruler which his grandfather Philaret had so successfully occupied.
The new Patriarch was a cultured man, whose ambition it was to reorganise the Russian Church. He introduced
THE ROMANOFFS 73
changes, which, however, found no favour amongst the majority of an utterly uneducated clergy : he refused to ordain ilhterate men, enforced a more decorous behaviour during service, and insisted that prayers should be read more audibly and reverently. Himself a good preacher, he demanded that sermons should be preached by the other clergy, a hitherto unheard-of thing.
In 1649 the Patriarch of Moscow invited some monks from Kiev to make, from the original, an exact translation of the Bible into Slavonic, as an authorised version for use in the Russian churches. It had become apparent that there was no uniformity in the text of the various missals used in the churches. Nikon wished to remedy this, and also to eliminate many clerical errors which had crept into the text owing to the ignorance of copyists.
The Patriarch had not expected that these innovations would arouse a storm. The common people, however, and many of the clergy saw in this revision an attack on their faith. They feared that their salvation was endangered, they apprehended the reign of Antichrist, and, supported by all the adversaries of culture and progress, the masses refused to worship and the priests to officiate according to the revised version. The points upon which this divergency of opinion existed were trifling in themselves, but they appeared of vital importance to the Russian people. The bitterest strife was waged about such minutiae as crossing with three instead of with two fingers, or as the repetition of " O Lord, have mercy," instead of simply " Lord, have mercy." The people endured torture and banishment rather than repeat three hallelujahs, as the Reformers wished, instead of two. There was a bHnd and desperate cUnging to the past, and a terrible fear lest salvation should be endangered by these impious innovations.
Neither the ecclesiastical party which imposed the reforms nor the laity and clergy which opposed them were able to distinguish between the essential and the unessential ; both sides showed themselves equally fanatical. The " Old Ritualists," as they called themselves, were subjected to fierce persecution and to the martyrdom of thousands.
74 A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
Many of those " Raskolniki " or schismatics saved themselves from death and banishment only by escaping into the forests, whore, later on, they split up into new sub- divisions.
An estrangement gradually made itself felt between the Tsar and the Patriarch. This was due to several causes, the chief among these being the fact that the Tsar, during a prolonged absence from Moscow as leader of the army against Poland, had gained in experience, self-confidence, and manli- ness, and had begun to crave for independence. The rule of the Patriarch during his absence had been excellent, but by liis arrogant manner he had ahenated both Boyars and Tsaritsa.
Had the Tsar been of a less gentle nature, the friendship between him and the powerful co-ruler would never have lasted as long as it did. A rupture was inevitable, and, urged on b}^ the Boyars and bj^ his wife, the Tsar unwittingly brought about the crisis. He sent a message to the Patriarch to ask by what right he was assuming the title of " Great Ruler." Nikon's reply to this provocation was to send in his resignation. This was more than the Tsar anticipated, but it was too late for either side to draw back. Nikon's enemies made use of the strained situation, accusing him of ecclesiastical misdemeanour, and a Council was called to sit in judgment on him in which even ecclesiastics of the Eastern Church took part. The great reformer was con- demned and banished. Strangely enough, although he him- self was deprived of all authority and power, his revisions and reforms were accepted by the Council and introduced into the Russian Church.
The reign of Alexei Mikhailovitch was rich in striking personalities who, each in his sphere, promoted the Europeanis- ing of Muscovy. One of these pioneers of education derided the obscurantists by comparing them to owls, who, he said, had no right to express an opinion on the sun, as the optic organs of the owl were unable to endure the hght. In spite of opposition from the extremists, education made progress, and to have their children educated by foreign tutors became the rule among wealthy princes and Boyars.
THE ROMANOFFS 75
The leaders of this new movement were some cultured monks from Kiev, introduced into Moscow by Nikon and supported by such statesmen as Ordin-Nashtchokin and Rtishtchev, who, each along his own lines, furthered the cause of civilisation. Western culture found permanent entrance into Russia, but although individual representatives of foreign nations left their mark, and eminent Germans especially had great and lasting influence, the most important external medium of culture was Poland. One half of Russia had been for centuries under Lithuanian — i.e. Polish — influ- ence, and a large section of Russian society had strong political and family ties with Poland, consequently her influence was naturally predominant. The most vital cultural influence, however, came to Muscovy from Kiev, which in course of time had once more attained the high position of leader of Russian spiritual and national life.
It had become imperative for Russia to assimilate all the best that the West could offer her. Consequently not only European comforts Hke chairs and carriages, luxuries like foreign wines, exotic plants, and expensive clothing, were introduced, but general knowledge had to be easily accessible to the younger generation of the aristocrats. To this end Peter Mohyla, the Metropolitan of Kiev, a true statesman, proposed to the Tsar that a monastery should be established in Moscow where Greek and the Slavonic language should be taught. This suggestion was not accepted at the time, but, when the Patriarch of Jerusalem advised the Tsar to use his influence to further education and culture and to put them on a sound basis, Kiev was requested to send learned monks to Moscow for this purpose.
The most eminent among these was Slavinitski, who issued not only theological but also scientific books. He translated Thucydides into Russian, and also works on history, philology, archaeology, geography, and medicine. His nomination to the position of manager of the Imperial Printing Works gave him a free hand in literary activity, and his position as priest enabled him to spread his views from the pulpit by means of his powerful sermons. He protested energetically against the low conception of religion which considered the
7r. A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
invocation of saints sufficient to deliver a man from sin. Slavinitski's influence was great and beneficent ; in him common sense, sound learning, and true spirituality were harmoniously blended.
The fact that the Tsar realised that secular education was not only harmless but very beneficial to the nation is shown in liis proposal to found schools in which highly educated foreigners should be appointed as masters.
Another influential monk must be mentioned, Simeon Polotski, whom the Tsar had met in Poland and engaged as tutor to his children. This versatile man was a brilHant preacher, a MTiter of religious as well as secular drama, and acted as an intellectual stimulus to the Tsar as well as to his entourage. From 1670 Polotski directed the Imperial Printing Works, issuing educational and historical works and also works of fiction. Foreigners introduced the drama into Muscov}'' to replace the coarse marionette shows which were the only form of dramatic entertainment then prevalent in Russia. The chief patron of the drama was the Tsar, who, according to his EngHsh physician, Horsle}^ once watched for ten consecutive hours the tragedy of Ahasuerus and Esther, ^vritten and staged by a Protestant clergyman in charge of the German Church in Moscow. Sixty-four young foreign officers and merchants had been trained by him to act in this play, which proved a great success and helped to promote histrionic effort.
Among the various eminent men who lent lustre to the reign of Alexei Mikhailovitch must also be mentioned the Tsar's Chancellor, Ordin-Nashtchokin, a statesman of excep- tional breadth of ^asion, who realised that success in military and political enterprise was of little permanent value unless supported by corresponding internal development and pro- gress. He has justly been called the Colbert and Louvois of Russia, since he inaugurated far-reaching reforms in the army and in commerce. In the character of this first " truly European " statesman honesty and painstaking industry were blended with great diplomatic sldll. Ordin-Nashtchokin may be considered a forerunner of Peter the Great.
Next to him in constructive activity stands Rtishtchev,
THE ROMANOFFS 77
whose aim it was to create more equitable relations between the classes. The third of these eminent leaders of Russian progress was the cultured and refined Boyar Artamon Matveiev, who was married to a Scotch lady, nee Hamilton, and whose father had been ambassador to various European Courts. Although these statesmen were far in advance of their time, they were nevertheless truly national in spirit.
Another man who left his mark on this period was a Serbian, Krishanitch, who was the forerunner of Panslavism and the first to suggest to the Russian Tsar the pohtical and national advisabihty of making the cause of the Slav peoples of the Balkans his own. Unfortunately for this prophet, his candour irritated the autocrat. He preached the doctrine that empires do not exist for Tsars but Tsars for empires, and he also expressed his strong conviction that Russian tjTanny was worse than any other. The fact that Krisha- nitch was a member of the Roman Church and advocated a pohtical union with Poland, combined with his fearlessness of speech, cost him his hberty. He was banished to Tobolsk, where he wrote his famous treatise on Panslavism.
Concurrently with this tendency to culture there ran a stream of reaction which sporadically broke out in anti- foreign agitation such as that to which the wise Patriarch Nikon had fallen a victim. In the eyes of the conservative hierarchy and laity Russia was in danger from two separate quarters — Roman Cathohcism and Protestantism ; the one being promoted by Pohsh, the other by German influence, through the many foreigners in the capital. The dilemma consisted in the undisputed fact, that the State needed foreigners to organise it on European fines, and that the Church also required help from the cultured West. But how to utifise, assimilate, and adapt this help without losing national characteristics ? That was the problem to be solved by statesmen. Tsars, and clergy.
It was in the house of Artamon Matveiev that the Tsar Alexei Mikhailovitch met the young Na tafia Naryshkin, his friend's niece, a very beautiful but also an excep- tionally well-educated girl, whom he chose as his second wife. The new Tsaritsa, although much younger than the
78 A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
Tsar's eldest daughter, greatly influenced her husband during the live years of their married life. Natalia was an exception among the ladies of her time ; brought up by her two Scotch aunts, she liad been accorded in her broad-minded uncle's house all the educational and social privileges denied to her less fortunate Russian sisters.
The Tsar's last actions were quite in keeping with his gentle and amiable character : he proclaimed an amnesty, recalled all exiles from their place of banishment, and remitted all overdue taxes. His eldest son Feodor he blessed as his successor, and his infant son Peter he entrusted to the care of Artamon Matveiev, his wife's uncle.
During Alexei Mikhailovitch's reign Muscovy had entered the Concert of Europe, and, although her contribution to the harmonies and dissonances of the general ensemble might easily have passed unnoticed, nevertheless her participation in it had become an estabhshed fact, and particularly so where Turkey was concerned. It was a fortunate coincidence that the pioneers of culture, the heralds of a new era — the Europeanisa- tion of Russia — lived in the reign of so broad-minded and kind-hearted a monarch. Without his whole-hearted support their efforts would have been far less successful.
In 1676, five years after his marriage to Nataha Naryshkin, the Tsar died, and his son Feodor (1676-1682), whom he had entrusted to good masters, succeeded him on the throne. The wise and Hberal education which had been given to this prince bore good fruit, and during an uneventful reign of six years the gentle Tsar followed in his father's footsteps both as to foreign and internal poUtics. Diplomatic relations with Western Europe were consoHdated — with France especially they were friendly, — outstanding disputes with Poland were settled ; the Ukraina was more closely united to Russia ; and a truce of twenty years was concluded with the Sultan.
How great a change had come over the attitude of official and aristocratic Russia is aptly illustrated by the fact that Louis XIV. of France and Wilham III. of England were now the models to be copied, no longer the Shah of Persia or the Sultan of Turkey.
THE ROMANOFFS 79
Having been educated by one of the most eminent monks from Kiev, the Tsar Feodor genuinely cared for Western culture, and did his best to promote education. The Slavo- Graeco-Latin College was founded in his reign, which was characterised by a constructive home policy.
The one act which was destructive, though only to become constructive, was the drastic manner in which he settled the vexed question of rank. The Tsar decided to abolish this perpetual cause of friction among his Boyars. The nobiHty had hitherto reckoned their im- portance in accordance with the positions held by their ancestors at the various princely Courts ; a Boyar would in 1640 refuse to occupy any administrative or miUtary position, or any post at Court, under a man whose ancestor might, in the thirteenth century, have held an inferior position. The crucial question was whether the ancestor of a noble had served an appanage or suzerain prince. Every Boyar family possessed a genealogy in which the rank of service of his ancestors was tabulated, and in all disputed cases it was this " Rodoslovie " or " family record " which was consulted. This system of " Miestiechestvo " or " rank by service " comphcated the administration to such an extent that the Tsar decided to cut the Gordian knot with his sword of autocracy. On a certain day the unsuspecting nobles were ordered to bring their treasured records to the Tsar, who had every one of them burned, thus making a clean slate. The discomfited Boyars had to make " bonne mine au mauvais jeu," and had to pretend to be satisfied with new documents simply recording their status at that date.
The death of the Tsar Feodor inaugurated a period of family feuds. In the ordinary course of events the Tsar's second brother Ivan would have succeeded, but unfortunately he was feeble-minded. The respective relations of his father's two wives struggled and intrigued for supremacy, each party claiming power through the person of the two candidates for the throne. Ivan's mental and physical defects afforded his mother's family, the Miloslavslds, an opportunity of exercising pressure to secure authority, which, however, was successfully contested by the Naryshkins, and
80 A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
these, supported by the Patriarch, proclaimed the young Peter Tsar and liis mother Regent.
Their calculations had, however, been made without taking a most important fact into consideration, namely, the personahty of the late Tsar's sister, the Tsarevna Sophia, who, although not the eldest of the Tsar Alexei's six daughters, was by far the most ambitious. The terem, the women's department of the Kremhn, in which two generations of Imperial widows and spinsters were Uving together, was a hotbed of intrigue, and indeed the only variety from the terrible monotony of the life of seclusion to which the Imperial princesses were condemned by Russian custom was intrigue. The Princess Sophia, who had been educated by the same tutor, Simeon Polotski, as her brother Feodor, was much better instructed than any Russian princess had ever been before, and she not unnaturalty chafed under the Oriental system of female seclusion. Her imagination had been inflamed by stories from Byzantine history of woman's life, and her desire to play a great role by assuming regal power was fostered by a monk who put before her the example of the Empress Pulcheria of Byzantium.
She finally succeeded in her ambitious scheme ; a coup d'etat was prepared and carried out with the help of the Streltzi or militia, whose chief was an adherent of the Miloslavski party. A false alarm that the Tsar Ivan had been murdered by a member of the Naryshkin family served as pretext for action, and a sanguinary palace revolution quickly placed the coveted power in the hands of the Tsarevna, who was proclaimed Regent on behalf of her two minor brothers, the younger of whom, Peter, she sent away with his mother, the deposed Regent, to Preobrajenskoe, a place some miles outside Moscow. The Tsarevna Sophia, the " Virgin Ruler," as she wished to be called, had now free scope for all her ambitious plans. She took part in the government of the country, personally presiding over the Council of Boyars ; she broke with every tradition, ignored every custom, spoke even with the common soldiers, and mixed with the men, till her behaviour scandalised the conservative citizens of her capital.
THE ROMANOFFS 81
Clever though the Tsarevna was, she had a still cleverer adviser in the person of her lover, " the great Golitzin," as he was called by his contemporaries. Cultured and refined, a connoisseur of art and literature, the Prince was the first in Russia to possess a private hbrary ; his palace was more like an art gallery than a private house, full of treasures innumerable and costly. Prince Vassili Golitzin was also a first-rate diplomatist ; for seven years he controlled the foreign policy of Russia on behalf of the Tsarevna, and the conclusion of the favourable Treaty of Androussovo was due to his skill. The vexed question of the Ukraina, about which war had been waged for over thirty years, was thus definitely settled. Through GoUtzin's influence Russia also joined Poland, Austria, and Venice in the " Holy League."
This tolerant statesman offered an asylum to the persecuted Huguenots, for, although a great personal admirer of Louis XIV., Prince GoHtzin strongly objected to intolerance, and especially to the use of coercion, in religious matters. Russia, like other States which gave refuge to the Huguenots, gained nothing but advantage from this large-hearted poHcy, for these French families and their descendants, as has been the case elsewhere, contributed greatly to the intellectual, scientific, and industrial progress of the country of their adoption.
Unfortunately for the Tsarevna, her other advisers were less Europeanised than Golitzin, and this circumstance led to frequent friction. The most reactionary and the most difficult to manage were the Streltzi, who reasoned that, as it was owing to them that the Regent had been raised to her present position, she should fall in with their ideas and should accede to their ever-increasing demands for special privileges. In order to obtain greater freedom of worship, the Streltzi, the majority of whom were Old Believers, instigated two risings. The Tsarevna finally summoned an Ecclesiastical Council, at which she was present, and in which bitter recriminations were made on both sides. The Old Believers, both lay and clerical, vehemently objected to the presence of a woman at the deliberations, and advised her to return to the terem, the only suitable place for women ;
6
82 A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
and, a goiunal loss of temper ensuing, the Council ended in a tiasco.
The dissatisfied Streltzi stirred up another riot, in con- sequence of which the Tsarevna fled with her brother, the Tsar Ivan, to tlie Troitza monastery. From this impregnable stronghold she now vented her wrath on the Streltzi, whose chief she had beheaded. She then returned to the Kremlin %Wth Ivan, but now an attack was made on her power from an unexpected quarter. Her younger brother Peter, who had been leading the irresponsible life of a boy at Preobrajenskoe, and whom she hoped to turn into a boor by depriving him of educational advantages, suddenly began to evince a keen interest in the affairs of the Government, appearing one day at the Council of the Boyars and calmly claiming his place as co-Tsar with his brother Ivan. He also efl:'ectively objected to a triumphal procession arranged by his sister for GoHtzin on his return from a war against the Turks in which the Prince had been only partially successful.
The Tsarevna and her partisans soon reahsed that unless her brother were quickly rendered powerless her exercise of power would speedily come to an end. A plot was hatched and the Streltzi were informed that the Tsar Peter and his army of " play soldiers " were advancing against Moscow with the intention of killing the Tsar Ivan and his six sisters. As the Streltzi nourished a grievance against Sophia, only four hundred of them declared their readiness to stand by the Tsarevna ; these were given orders to kill the Dowager- Tsaritsa, and, should " her young cub " try to defend her, to kiU him also.
Warned of this plot, Peter in his turn took refuge in the Troitza monastery, where he was joined by his mother and his wife Eudoxia, to whom he had been married when only a boy. From this place he issued his orders : ten men out of every regiment of Streltzi were to appear before him.
Sophia used every means in her power to retain her followers. She coaxed in vain, and threats proved equally useless ; none of the messengers she sent to her brother returned, not even the Patriarch, who until then had been her staunch supporter. In despair she set off in person to
THE ROMANOFFS 83
throw herself on her brother's mercy, but on the way orders reached her to return to the KremHn and also to hand over at once her favourite, the leader of the Streltzi. Unable to resist, the Tsarevna was forced to give in : her friend was delivered over to the Tsar, by whose order he was tortured and killed. Her chief adviser, Prince Golitzin, only escaped the same fate through the intervention of his nephew, Boris Golitzin, a great friend of the Tsar Peter, and, last but not least, the Tsarevna herself was condemned by her brother to a life of celibacy and seclusion. Forced to enter a convent, this ambitious and full-blooded woman had to spend the rest of her Ufe as a nun.
The poor, feeble-minded Tsar Ivan remained untouched by all these changes : he acquiesced as readily in the plans of his brother Peter as formerly in those of his sister.
NEW DYNASTY
Mikhail Romanoff (1613-1645) : first of New Dynasty. Alexei Mikhailovitch (1645-1676). Feodor Alexeievitch (1676-1682).
Regency of Tsarevna Sophia Alexeievna (1682-1689) for Ivan V. Alexeievitoh and for Peter I. Alexeievitch.
CHAPTER VII
PETER THE GREAT, THE EUROPEANISER OP RUSSIA
(1689-1725)
It was as the successor of the policy inaugurated by his great-grandfather Philaret and his father Alexei Mikhailovitch, and by maldng use of their wise measures of preparation, that Peter I. was able to gain liis fame in history as the great Reformer of Russia.
Yet at aU times and in all circumstances he must have stood out as a leader of men, a great organiser and admini- strator. The accident of his birth, which made him heir to the throne of Russia, only opened up a wider field of activity and gave him greater scope for display of his gifts. It was his character as a man, not his position as the Tsar, which made him what he was, and where a less capable and far- seeing man would have abused the power thus placed in his hands, he used it only to the advantage of his beloved people and of his country. This is the great fact which gives moral value to his gigantic personahty.
The student of psychology will find intense interest in following the development of his character, and in tracing the early years of Peter's hfe we may clearly perceive the trend his future would take.
Sent into a kind of exile with his mother by his ambitious sister, the Regent Sophia, the boy was left pretty much to his own inclinations and devices, which found stimulus and outlet through the influence of capable, practical foreigners with whom he came in contact. It is reported that his imagination had been fired by coloured pictures of Germany, that he listened eagerly to stories about his father's reign,
84
. PETER THE GREAT 85
and that his curiosity was aroused by an astrolabe, the use of which he wished to understand. Fortunately for him, the men to satisfy his curiosity and his zeal for learning were at hand, and although not instructed in the ^nesse of Greek and Slavonic, as his eldest brother and sister had been by the cultured monk who was their tutor, he was taught in a very practical way elementary science. A Dutch carpenter, a German doctor, and various foreigners of the " German suburb " were his first teachers. Without the knowledge of his sister he frequented these quarters, and there, in actual contact with men, he passed the initial stages of his education, acquiring much useful knowledge, but also some undesirable habits from intercourse with rough associates.
His inquisitive mind and his practical talents soon found an outlet, and his future reforms spontaneously evolved themselves out of boyish pursuits and games. He found an Enghsh saihng-boat, procured by his father as a model for a fleet, which had lain useless and forgotten in a shed, but it gave the impetus to Peter's love for the navy. A Dutch- man taught him how to sail it himself, and as his skill increased his desire grew to sail on a wider expanse of water, and new boats were built by his orders. He had a vision, not only of a maritime outlet, but of a navy ; and when, visiting Archangel, he beheld the White Sea and saw the foreign vessels in the harbour, his determination became fixed, not only to create a fleet, but to gain access to the sea. He never lost sight of this ambition, which explains the wars of later years.
Just as the navy of Russia owes its origin to his boyish dehght in a discarded saihng-boat, so the nucleus of the future army was but a company of boy- soldiers with whom the Tsar played at war. What had been started for amusement gained in significance and importance : the Semeonovski Regiment, formed of the three hundred falconers, and the Preobrajenski Regiment, consisting of stable-boys, villagers, and companions of the young Tsar, had their origin in either case in these war-games, and by the time Peter had reached the age of nineteen and insisted on taking the reins out of his sister's hands, the number of these " play-soldiers " had reached fifteen hundred.
so A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
The young Tsar realised early that his position alone did not necessarily qualify him to take the command in these military games and therefore he secured the assistance of fully qualiHed instructors from among the foreign residents, two of whom, the Scotsman Patrick Gordon and the Swiss Francois Lefort, became from that time the young Tsar's friends and co-operators. This playing at war was taken with intense seriousness ; trenches were dug, forts built, besieged, stormed, defended or taken, and in time the nucleus of a real army was formed and trained, in which, however, the Tsar only occupied the lowly rank of bombardier.
After the coup d'etat in 1689, by which Peter had dethroned his sister and assumed the rulership which was his by right, the young Tsar left the actual rule of the realm in the hands of his maternal uncles, and pursued for another five years his scheme of fitting himself for the great task he had chosen, the creation of a navy and an army.
Soon after Peter's assumption of power there came a clash between the two opposing forces of the time in Russia — desire for progress and conservative clinging to traditions of the past. The occasion for conflict was a vacancy in the Patriarchate. The Reform party, under the leadership of the young Tsar, put forward the progressive Metropolitan of Pskov ; while the Old Russian party supported the claim of the Bishop of Kazan, a strong Conservative, to whom a shaved chin was a sure sign of heresy.
Peter had been married when quite a youth, his mother hoping to distract him from his mihtary games and foreign friends. His wife's whole family belonged to the anti-reform party, and as in face of their opposition the j^oung Tsar did not feel strong enough to enforce his own wishes, the MetropoUtan of Kazan, the representative of obscurantism, became Patriarch.
In regard to foreign politics Peter followed in the steps of his sister. As a member of the Holy League it was his duty to fight against the Turks, and, besides this, the Patri- arch of Jerusalem had appealed to him on behalf of the downtrodden Balkan Christians. When, therefore, the Tsar decided to try his new ships in an attack on the Turkish
PETER THE GREAT 87
stronghold at Azov, whereby he hoped to gain access to the Black Sea, his political responsibiUties afforded him a good pretext for making an attack on Azov. He therefore sent his infant fleet, built at Voronej, down the Don ; but this venture was doomed to failure. The navy was too new, too small, and not experienced enough to resist the Turkish fleet ; and added to all this was the treachery of a foreign engineer, who, in revenge for a rebuff given him by the Tsar, spiked the Russian guns before going over to the enemy.
For Peter, however, obstacles existed only to be overcome. Undaunted by this defeat, he returned to Moscow more persistent than ever in his intention to create a navy, which was to be ready within a year's time : twenty-six thousand men were set to work on it, and, although misadventures and delays took place to hinder the work, his ambition was reahsed, and after a space of twelve months seventeen hundred ships of all kinds were ready for use. Again he sailed for Azov, the fortress was forced to capitulate, and thus the outlet to the Black Sea was secured. The Tsar was delighted, triumphant — at last Russia had a port on the Euxine ! On his return to the Capital he called his Council, and in consulta- tion with it he ordered three thousand Russian families and also four hundred Kalmucks and Streltzi with their families to settle at Azov as a permanent garrison. Churches were to be built and a base for naval activity was established. It was also decided to build warships and to send fifty young Russians to Western Europe to study shipbuilding and seamanship. These measures greatly incensed the reactionary party, whose anger increased when the Tsar announced his resolve to visit foreign lands in person.
Peter had already at this early stage of his reign a clear perception of his duty towards the people, whom he loved with a great and ardent love. He realised the gigantic nature of the task set before him, and that to change the passivity and dependence of his nation into activity and self-reliance both internal and external stimuli were required ; that if the Russian nation was ever to rise out of the morass into which Mongol and despotic rule had plunged it, strong measures must be used, including even force when necessary. It would
SS A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
not suffice to have merely a few clever and cultured foreigners as leaders of the army or as diplomatists and craftsmen — their role should be limited to that of teachers, whose ambition it should be to make their pupils inde- pendent. The skilled foreigner was only to be a school- master, with whose services the pupil when grown to manhood should be able to dispense. Peter realised that practice, and practice only, makes perfect ; and that it was better for Russians to flounder and make mistakes for themselves than to let tilings be done very perfectly for them by foreigners.
The Tsar had before him the vision of liis people's moral and economic awakening, and there came to him now the illumi- nating idea that practice not preaching would have the most lasting effect, and that only by setting an example himself could he be of real help to his people. Thereupon he decided to leave his exalted position, in order to become first an apprentice, then a skilled workman, and finally a teacher and an example. For this end he had to go to school.
He sent an imposing embassy of two hundred and seventy men, under the leadership of his beloved and admired friend Lefort, to the Courts of Europe, joining it himself in the capacity of a private gentleman under the pseudonym of " Pet^r Mikhailov." This mission proved a great success, and helped to change the conception hitherto held in Western Europe of the coarseness and boorishness of Russian am- bassadors.
On the frontier of Holland the Tsar took leave of his party to become a humble shipbuilder. At Saardam he w^orked at high pressure, and those of his grandees who had followed him in personal attendance were made in their turn to tackle shipbuilding. During these months in Holland the eager Tsar, who wished not only to see but to understand every detail of what was new to him, exhausted his Dutch guides by his indefatigable energy. Not satisfied with personallj'^ gaining knowledge and skill, he wished his people to share his pri\ileges, and to that end purchased mechanical models, collections of books, and natural history specimens. The " collection," however, in making which he took par- ticular care was a company of officers, engineers, artists.
PETER THE GREAT 89
sailors, and workmen, all of whom he engaged for service in Russia.
While at work in Western Europe Peter kept in touch with home affairs, and his practical orders to those he had left in charge proved that his studies abroad in no wise absorbed him to the detriment of his realm.
From Holland Peter went on to England, where he studied shipbuilding at Deptford Avith the same thoroughness, thus learning what was most valuable in each country. His talks with WilHam III. were of great practical use to him, for that experienced ruler was able to dispel some of Peter's political fallacies and illusions, which were mainly due to want of knowledge. The king also gave him sound advice on the subject of war with Turkey.
Avoiding France, which was the ally of Turkey at that time, he next proceeded to Austria, where he studied military science ; but his plan to visit Italy was frustrated by the serious news that the Streltzi, his inveterate foes, had again risen in revolt.
The part played by this body of men in the life of the young Tsar had been a pernicious one, deeply and injuriously influencing his nature. As a young child he had witnessed the cruelty of the Streltzi to his mother and her family ; their very existence acted as a poison on his sj^stem, and not even all his absorbing work could make him forgetful of their baneful power. Formerly they had been mere tools in his sister's hands ; but by this time they had come to hate him on his own account, for, instead of being able to live the leisurely life of the militia, they had been forced by Peter to fight against external foes, had been sent to the south against the Turks, and had then been removed to the western frontier, and their fear was lest they should be turned into regular soldiers. They upheld, as a body, the old regime ; many of them were also Old Behevers, who abhorred the changes introduced by the Tsar in the matter of clothing and shaving of beards.
Although secluded in a nunnery, the ex-Regent Sophia had never lost her love of intrigue ; from behind its walls she had fostered this rising — which, fortunately for Peter,
90 A TTTOrSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
Patrick Gordon was successful in quelling by the time the Tsar reached Moscow.
On his way home Peter managed to visit the Polish king, with whom he planned a war against Charles XII. of Sweden.
Once more at home in his capital, the Tsar thoroughly investigated the Streltzi rising ; he soon detected his sister's share in it, and even came into possession of an autograph letter which had been received from her by the leaders of the mutinous miUtia. The Tsar, so great in many respects, so unhke his predecessors in that he was often able to endure contradiction and humbly to accept honest and justified criticism, in the present emergency lost his moral balance. Whenever his straightforward nature encountered intrigue and deceit his hot temper was apt to break out, and now aU self-control, all pity, seemed to have forsaken him, leading him to vent his Avrath in a ruthless and brutal manner on the Streltzi and on the originator of the plot — his sister. Two thousand Streltzi were killed, many by his own hand, and the ex-Regent was locked up in a cell, outside the only window of which the corpses of Streltzi were hung, two of them holding in their stiffened hands her letter instigating the revolt.
When it became apparent to Peter that his wife also had supported this rising, which was intended to undo all his work, and when he understood that she had set his own son Alexei against him and his reforms, his fury knew no bounds. For some years he had lived separately from her, and now he compelled her to enter the Pokrovskoe nunnery at Suzdal, where, nine months later, she took the veil, thus making her marriage void.
After this terrible' experience the Tsar decided to intro- duce drastic changes. He realised that the Russian nation could not be awakened by any gentle and gradual process ; the lethargy of centuries had to be dispelled by vigorous means, and a succession of ukasi was issued by him to intro- duce reforms and to remove abuses. Peter had set himself the task of bringing Russia out of her isolation into per- manent and not merely occasional touch with Western Europe. His nation had been left long — far too long — to itself and
PETER THE GREAT 91
to intercourse with the Mongols, who were morally on a lower level than the Russians. To teach his people right values and true proportions, they must associate themselves with their superiors in those very matters in which they stood higher than the Tatars.
The need for an outlet to the sea more and more began to influence the Tsar's foreign policy, for he had come to realise that, after all, Azov could not fulfil the great things he had hoped for from its acquisition, and that at all costs his country must have free access to the Baltic.
With this purpose ever before him, the Tsar did all in his power to accomplish his gigantic enterprise, but it took him twenty-one years to become acknowledged master of the much-coveted Baltic. A heavy price, however, had to be paid for this supremacy.
The " Northern War " (1700-1721), with its great defeat at Narva in 1704 and its decisive victory at Poltava in 1709 (and with its alternate gain and loss of territory), ultimately ended in complete victory for Peter, who was left in undisputed possession of the Baltic provinces of Livonia and Esthonia, and of the Finnish provinces of Ingria, Carelia, Wiborg, etc.
As early as 1703 the estuary of the Neva with the district surrounding it, and the Swedish fortress of Nyenschantz, had been taken by the Russians ; there he founded St Petersburg, now Petrograd, for he found it absolutely imperative to transfer his seat of government to a new capital, whence, unhampered by Muscovite tradition, ani- mosity, and obstruction, his reforms could be launched upon the empire.
To his mind Moscow, the ancient capital of Russia, was the citadel held by his enemies, the reactionaries who loved the old Tatar manner of life, with that comfort, indolence, and irresponsibility which could flourish only where ignorance reigned. Moscow, grown strong and come to power by means of Tatar favour, was the incarnation of all those evils which Peter purposed to abolish. St Petersburg, as he called his fair creation on the banks of the Neva, after his patron saint, was to be the stronghold of Western civilisation, a seat of learning and a generator of energy.
<)2 A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
Peter's olioicc of locality was not without precedent : as early in the history of Russia as 1240 Alexander Nevski, Prince of Novgorod, in a desperate effort to wrest this region from the Swedes, won that famous victory on the Neva from which he got his name.
The waters of the mighty Lake Ladoga flowed through that river into the Gulf of Bothnia. Although the Neva was only thirty-six miles long, it united lake and sea, and might have linked up, by means of canals, the whole river system of the interior of Russia. The territory through which the Neva flowed and the western shore of Lake Ladoga belonged to Sweden ; the eastern shore belonged to Russia. It was at the point where the river Volkhov flows into the lake that in 861 Rurik built the town of Ladoga, from whence he stretched out his hand over the Russian lands. Later on, where the Neva flows out of Lake Ladoga the Russians built the fort Oryechek ; and several centuries later on that very spot Peter built his famous fortress — Schliisselburg. Tradition, history, and commerce had linked Russia with Lake Ladoga, whose outlet to the sea remained in Swedish hands until Peter took possession of it in 1703.
Sweden had always known the value of this marshland, and, realising its political possibilities, had in 1300 a.d. built a fortress on the Neva : the Pope himself sent priests, equally skilled in the use of the trowel and the sword, to assist in thus establishing an outpost of Romanism on the borders of schismatic Russia.
The history of the frontier fortress, the battles waged against it, and its repeated reconstruction, prove that Peter the Great was only following out an old policy in utilising this tract of land. While, however, his Swedish predecessors had built their fortress, and later on a town, some miles below the estuary of the Neva, he decided on building St Petersburg on the numerous islands which formed the delta of the river. There, where Finnish fishermen used to eke out a precarious living, and where at a later date Swedish nobles had hunted elk, fox, and bear — there the Russian Tsar founded his new capital. The names of these islands still bear witness to the life led by the first Finnish settlers ; it was on the
PETER THE GKEAT 93
" Hare " island that the Tsar built the fortress of St Peter and St Paul.
It seems that the Tsar's idea had been to create a second Amsterdam, or perhaps a Venice of the North. The largest of the islands, now Vassili Ostrov, he intended to intersect with canals — a plan which came to nought, but to this day the regular " lines," as the streets are named, recall this frustrated scheme. Two hundred thousand men — among whom were Swedish prisoners of war, Esthonians and Letts, and some twenty thousand Cossacks — lost their lives in the swamps which it was their task to transform into dry land. It was said at the time that the soil was hardened by the bones of these victims.
For the Tsar, with his indomitable will, obstacles did not exist, and the beauty of the city which bears his name is a proof of his success in overcoming almost insuperable difficulties. This town was created by the Tsar's word of authority : his nobles were commanded to build themselves houses, and those who had masons among their serfs were obliged to send them to the banks of the Neva. The nobles groaned under this despotic order to build themselves houses on the marshland, for they infinitely preferred living on their estates or in Moscow, " the heart of the Empire." How- ever, it was useless to battle against the hurricane let loose by the Tsar.
The Tsar's choice of a site for his new capital was severely criticised by his contemporaries : the deadly climate of the marshland, its close proximity to Sweden, and its distance from the centre of the vast empire were some of the ob- jections brought forward. The newly acquired seaports on the Baltic — Reval and Riga — could never be rivalled by St Petersburg, as the Neva was too shallow for navigation by large vessels, but, never daunted, the Tsar established the Baltic wharf, at which a new fleet was built with feverish haste. He also obliged merchant ships to use the new harbour by putting prohibitive dues on that of Archangel, and by such methods he succeeded beyond expectation, for in 1725 two hundred and forty vessels visited St Petersburg, many of which were piloted by the Tsar in person.
94 A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
Peter's illustrious antagonist, Charles XII., caused him much trouble, and when Mazeppa, the Cossack Hetman, joined the Swedish king, revolt was added to foreign warfare. The reasons which turned this Cossack into a traitor are not far to seek. Peter I. presented lands in the Ukraina to the Starostas, who had hitherto only held them by virtue of their office. He thereby changed Cossack lands into the private property of his grandees, and this arbitrary action led to dissat- isfaction among the people of the Ukraina, whose sympathies, as a fact, were divided, some favouring Poland and some even Turkey. The Hetman Mazeppa, a personal favourite of the Tsar, cherished, unknown to Peter, the ambition of making himself King of the Ukraina. He knew full well that from national and political reasons the Tsar would never agree to the rise of an independent State in the south-west of Russia. Mazeppa therefore decided to offer his help to Charles XII. and thus attain his ambition. Although Peter was warned by trustworthy men of Mazeppa's treachery, he refused to believe it till the stern actuality of Mazeppa's revolt forced him to do so. Mazeppa's plot failed to secure him the desired aim : the majority of Cossacks did not join him, as anticipated, and the small number he could lead to his ally the King of Sweden was but a negligible quantity. At the battle of Poltava in 1709 Charles XII. was beaten, and the way to Russia's final success was opened up : she now stepped into the place hitherto occupied by Sweden as a first-class Power.
Simultaneously with the " Northern War " Peter also waged war against Turkey, the ally of Sweden. Envoys from the Balkan people had pleaded with him to deliver them from the oppression of the Turks, and the Tsar, considering himself their lawful defender, and reckoning on a general rising of the Balkan population, had marched against the Turks. The undertaking, however, failed, and nearly ended in disaster for the Russian troops. The WaUachs, instead of rising against the Turks, as promised by the political agents of the Balkan nations, remained loyal to the Sultan, and the Tatars of the Crimea delayed the Russian commissariat by an unexpected attack from the rear. After three days of
Warriors sent by Andrei Bogolyubski, Prince of Suzdal (1157-1174) against Novgorod.
Detail from an Ikon in the Church of the Holy Mother of God in Novgorod.
PETER THE GREAT 95
heroic and stubborn fighting on the part of his famished army Peter had to acknowledge himself beaten ; and but for the astute behaviour of his comrade and friend, his wife Catherine, matters might have gone very ill with the Russians. She sacrificed all her jewellery, collected every bit of gold and jewellery in possession of the officers, and sent it as a present to the Turkish Grand Vizier. Peter authorised the envoy who was to hand over the presents to make peace at all costs short of surrendering the estuary of the Neva. The Grand Vizier showed himself generous and agreed to the withdrawal of the Russian army ; the only stipulations being the surrender of Azov and Samara and the razing to the ground of the fortress Taganrog, recently built by the Russians.
By the time the Sultan and Charles XII. heard of these terms it was too late to make any effective objection to them. The Grand Vizier had, however, to pay for his generosity by exile, and the Treaty of "The Pruth " (1711) was only ratified owing to pressure brought to bear upon the Sultan by the European Powers.
All Europe seemed to be at war during these years, and rapid changes in political combinations turned the enemy of to-day into the ally of to-morrow, and vice versa. The period of 1700 to 1721 is like a kaleidoscope, which ultimately shapes itself into a picture of gain and glory for Russia but of apprehension for her Allies. Russia was becoming powerful, and the Western States began to look upon the hitherto despised barbaric Muscovy as a potential danger and menace to themselves. The last of Peter the Great's wars was undertaken in 1722 against Persia, resulting in the ac- quisition of Baku and the occupation of Daghestan, Ghilan, and Mazenderan, and during the last years of his life he did his best to extend his empire eastward.
During the first quarter of the eighteenth century Peter revisited Western Europe. In 1711 he did so to drink the waters at Carlsbad, and also to marry his son Alexei to the sister-in-law of the Austrian Emperor ; and in 1717 he visited France with the object of arranging a marriage between his daughter Elizabeth and the young King of France
l)(> A THOUSAND YEARS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
— a plan which came to naught, as the Duke of Orleans, the Regent, declined the alliance. As on his first visit to Europe, the Tsar studied art, commerce, science, and litera- ture, discussing deep subjects with the great men at the Sorbonne and pohtical matters with ministers of state. Although neither family nor pohtical union was con- cluded, relations with France gradually became settled, and in 1721 the first permanent French Ambassador took up his residence in St Petersburg.
While in Paris Peter is reported to have embraced the statue of RicheHeu and to have exclaimed : " O thou great man, if thou wert still alive I would present thee with one half of my dominions if only thou wouldst teach me how to rule the other half."
On his return journey from France news of family troubles vexed the Tsar : he received information of his son's fhght from Austria, where that unworthy youth had taken refuge after severe altercations with his father. The latter had demanded from his heir either the amendment of his evil ways — his ill-treatment of his wife, and his machinations against his father's reforms — or his abdication. Instead of acting on this choice Alexei had fled to Austria, and at this juncture of the Tsar's European tour had now vanished from there. The unhappy father sent two confidential agents to search Europe for his contumacious son, who was finally tracked down at Castle St Elmo at Naples and brought back to St Petersburg.
In consequence of this affair the Tsar instituted in 1718 an inquiry which proved conclusively that during the last seven years the Old Russian party, in co-operation with the ex-Tsaritsa, had intrigued to frustrate his reforms, and that his heir had lent himself to their machinations. Severe judgment and punishment were meted out to aU who had been imphcated in this anti-reform movement : loss of property, flogging, and even the death-penalty were imposed upon the Tsar's secret enemies. His first wife, the nun, was convicted of having intrigued to raise her son Alexei