Global Crisis

by Parker, Geoffrey

  Together, troops and rioters broke into Morozov's luxurious apartments in the Kremlin, smashing his fine furniture with axes and crushing his jewels to dust; but ‘they suffered not the least thing to be carried away, crying aloud To naasi kroof, that is to say, “This is our blood”’.28 Although the tsar pleaded for moderation, the crowd murdered three of his household officials and forced their way into the residence of Nazarii Chistyi, architect of the hated salt monopoly, and immediately killed him with their axes and clubs, exclaiming ‘Traitor, this is for the salt!’ Then they ‘hauled him down the stairs by the heels, dragging him like a dog’ around the interior of the Kremlin, and ‘having stripped him, they flung him stark naked upon the dunghill’. Next the rioters attacked the residences of Pleschcheev, Trakhaniotov and other ministers of Alexei who had given offence. Although when ‘the night approached the plundering ceased a little, with the day break they began to plunder again’.29

  On 12 June 1648 the crowd torched some 70 residences of nobles and merchants, apparently following some plan, and almost 40 more the following day; then they ‘ran’ (the word used by all the sources) back inside the Kremlin and demanded that the tsar surrender Pleschcheev, Trakhaniotov and Morozov.30 Alexei immediately surrendered Pleschcheev, and even provided two executioners, ‘but as soon as he arrived in the market place the common people [gemene mannen] put him to death there, and eventually a monk threw his body onto a fire’. The tsar now asked for two days to consider the fate of his other ministers, and the demonstrators (perhaps surprisingly) dispersed. No sooner had they done so than fires broke out in five distinct places across Moscow. Thanks to the prolonged drought, the fire spread rapidly and, according to the terrified Swedish ambassador, ‘within a few hours more than half the city within the White Wall, and about half of the city outside the wall, went up in flames’. Some calculated that 50,000 homes and 2,000 people perished in the conflagration.31

  The musketeers captured some of the arsonists who, ‘being racked, have confessed that they were hired to do it with money by Morozov’ – but some went further and claimed ‘that the tsar himself instigated these [fires] in order to distract the common people and those who had houses [in the city] from the uproar, since they would be called back to save their own [possessions] from the fire’. If so, the ruse did not ‘distract the common people’ for long: on 15 June they surged back to the Kremlin and demanded the immediate surrender of Trakhaniotov and Morozov.32

  In the words of an irate citizen: ‘the whole world is shaking … There is great shaking and the people are troubled’. The fate of Romanov rule now hung in the balance. Some people in the crowd declared ‘His Imperial Majesty to be a traitor as long as he refused to banish Morozov from his court and capital. They also resolved that, if His Imperial Majesty did not comply with their wishes, they would use force to make him do so.’ A few even asserted that ‘the tsar is young and stupid’ and, while attributing his obstinacy to wicked advisers, added ‘They manage everything and the Sovereign keeps silent. The devil stole his mind’ – an accusation of Satanism that challenged the tsar's claim to be the champion of Orthodoxy, and thus his right to rule.33

  Realizing the seriousness of his situation Alexei now delivered Trakhaniotov, too, to the crowd. He also promised, kissing a golden crucifix held by the patriarch, that Morozov would become a monk and retire to some distant monastery, and would never again hold government office. Because of the evident religious solemnity, the crowd believed him and once again dispersed, while the tsar distributed a substantial cash payment to all musketeers to regain their loyalty. According to the Swedish resident, he also ordered his Western ‘officers, to train 20,000 soldiers near the Swedish border’.34

  Long before these loyal troops were ready, Morozov managed to precipitate another confrontation. Perhaps imagining that the crisis had passed, he recommended that Alexei should not pay the servitors still in Moscow their promised bonus, and on 20 June a new petition, this time in the name of the gentry, merchants and ‘people of all ranks’, again insisted that Morozov must go. It also demanded that the tsar summon the Zemskii Sobor. In desperation, Alexei recalled the ministers of his father whom Morozov had displaced in 1645, and sent the hated chief minister into ‘perpetual exile’ under heavy guard. Over the next eight weeks more than 70 petitions flowed in from discontented groups and the tsar approved all of them: to appease native merchants, he abolished the trading privileges of the English; to content ordinary Muscovites, he promised money to rebuild structures damaged by the fire; to pacify the servitors, he paid their promised bonus and also returned all fugitive serfs found on Morozov's estates.35 Above all, Alexei reluctantly agreed to convene the Zemskii Sobor.

  These sweeping concessions did not arise only in response to the troubles in Moscow. A combination of drought and locusts ruined the harvests of 1647 and 1648 throughout Russia, even on chernozem lands, creating not only widespread food shortages but also heightened anxiety. Moreover, as the Supplication of 12 June had predicted, revolts also broke out in ‘many other regions and towns’ of the empire.36 Tomsk, 2,500 miles from Moscow in the middle of Siberia, led the way. Its multi-ethnic community (some 700 Russian and about 300 Tatar and other non-Russian households) suffered from poor harvests throughout the 1640s, with yields about one-third below the norm; yet the governor raised taxes while withholding wages from the musketeers and other troops. In April 1648 the town magistrates seized the governor and placed him under house arrest, while the servitors, merchants, peasants, urban taxpayers and Tatars all petitioned the tsar to remove him. Instead the tsar ordered the governor's reinstatement, which provoked a second wave of rioting. This time the insurgents created an alternative regime with its own ‘rebel chancery’ (Voroskii prikaz), its own candidate for governor and its own assembly (krug) which issued manifestos, sent circulars to incite other communities to join them, and petitioned Moscow to recognize their actions. Peace only returned in June 1649 when the tsar recalled the former governor in disgrace.37

  Urban uprisings broke out elsewhere as soon as news arrived of the riots in Moscow. The new town of Kozlov on the Belgorod Line had already sent three petitions to the tsar denouncing the tyrannical practices of its governor, which resulted in a commission of inquiry in 1647; but the governor bribed or intimidated many protestors so that the inspectors found little substance to the accusations and left him in post. The disastrous harvest of that year produced new tensions, however: even servitors with extensive estates had to sell their weapons and clothing in order to buy grain, while the governor's exactions, corruption and abuse of justice continued. Early in 1648 a wave of murders, assaults, arson and thefts suddenly convulsed the town, and a large delegation took another petition to Moscow, arriving just in time to witness the collapse of the tsar's authority. As soon as they returned to Kozlov with the news, the town rose in rebellion. The governor just managed to escape, but the rioters beat to death several of his supporters and ‘threw them into the depths of the river. And they plundered many houses and shops.’ Rioting also broke out in neighbouring forts and Cossack villages, where mobs beat or killed neighbours who had wavered in their support for the earlier campaign against the governor, plundering their shops and houses. Nevertheless, although some documents mention a community (mir), council (sovet) or assembly (krug) of insurgents, the rebels failed to unite the town behind them by the time a new governor with a detachment of musketeers arrived from Moscow. Eventually almost one hundred men were tried and punished – among them the petitioners who had brought news of the Moscow riots and thereby (the judges asserted) provoked the troubles.38

  Frustration at corruption and at Moscow's ‘red tape’ combined with dearth had also created an atmosphere conducive to revolt elsewhere. Thus by the time Kursk rebelled in July 1648, it had suffered from a prolonged food shortage (caused by bad harvests coupled with Tatar raids), and now it faced increased tax demands. The town had sent numerous petitions to the tsar pleading for relief but none succee
ded; and so upon hearing of the events in Moscow, peasants, townsmen, Cossacks and servitors combined to overthrow the governor held responsible for the town's misfortunes. There and elsewhere, only the arrival of musketeers from Moscow restored order.39

  The Great Compromise of 1649

  Although the ‘great shaking’ affected large areas of Russia, the fate of the Romanov state was decided in Moscow. According to one of the tsar's advisers, it was ‘the rebellion of the common people’ of his capital, supported by the local gentry and the musketeers, which led Alexei to summon representatives of his subjects – ‘not willingly, but out of fear’.40 First, an elite group of clerics, nobles, servitors, merchants and representatives of the main towns assembled in the Kremlin in July 1648 and requested that the tsar should ‘order to be written up on all sorts of judicial matters a law code and statute book (Ulozhennaia kniga), so that henceforth all matters would be done and decided according to that statute book’. They also wanted the tsar to convene the Zemskii Sobor to ratify the new laws.41 The tsar duly established a five-man commission to draft a new law code, and they had completed their task by October, when some 600 representatives arrived in Moscow to attend a Zemskii Sobor.

  For a moment it seemed that the assembly (and therefore the new law code) was doomed because, having bought the musketeers’ compliance with another substantial gift, Alexei summoned Morozov back to Moscow where he resumed his post as chief minister. Many leading Muscovites, fearing that this blatant breach of the tsar's solemn promise would produce another wave of popular violence, fled the capital, while some wealthy merchants moved into the residence of the Swedish envoy, defended by his staff and some of the tsar's musketeers.42 Perhaps this reaction unnerved Morozov, or perhaps he came to realize that a comprehensive law code might benefit the central government, for he allowed the assembly to continue its deliberations. Many of the provisions of the new law code (Sobornie Ulozhenie), which contained almost 1,000 articles, closed off the avenues that had led to the troubles. Article 1 (‘Blasphemers and Church troublemakers’) ensured the sanctity of churches and church services (precluding any further attempt to intercept the tsar on religious holidays), while Article 3 (‘The sovereign's palace court’) did the same for the sovereign's palace (making any forced entry to the Kremlin treason). Article 10 (‘The judicial process’) decreed that, in future, subjects must submit their petitions through the local governor to the appropriate chancellery, not to the tsar: anyone who tried to circumvent this procedure would be imprisoned and flogged. Article 19 (‘Townsmen’) required all citizens to register in the town where they resided on publication of the law, and forbade them and their descendants ever to leave it.

  In return for these measures, the tsar made numerous concessions, including many demanded in past petitions. The Ulozhenie granted the registered inhabitants of each town a monopoly over all local trade and crafts activities; abolished the tax exemptions enjoyed by most privileged orders; and allowed the pursuit and recapture of all former citizens who fled in order to escape paying taxes. Above all, Article 11 (‘Judicial process for peasants’) settled the matter of fugitive serfs. Henceforth no peasant could legally leave the estates of his lord; no time limit existed for reclaiming fugitive serfs; and all those who had previously fled could now be reclaimed. The peasants also lost their right of full ownership of personal property: the law deemed all their goods to be possessions of their lord. Moreover, these measures applied to the serf's family: ‘a peasant who married a fugitive, or the child of a fugitive, was transferred with his spouse when the latter was reclaimed by the fugitive's rightful lord’. Almost immediately government commissioners began to track down and return fugitive serfs, finding that in some regions up to one-fifth of the population consisted of runaways. Although in some areas (notably the southern frontier and Siberia) fugitives could still live in relative safety, the Ulozhenie deprived perhaps half the rural population of their freedom of movement. Noblemen could now buy and sell serfs (and their families), move them around, trade them and even (by the end of the century) wager them in card games. A nobleman's power over every servile family living on his estates was limited only by murder: ‘premeditated murder of a peasant’ by a lord, any lord, ‘was punishable by death’.43

  The government had resisted restricting peasant migration for as long as possible because of its importance for the expansion of Siberia and the southern frontier; but Alexei's dependence on his servitors both to preserve domestic law and order and to fight foreign enemies eventually led him to give way. The trauma of the ‘great shaking’ of 1648 must have made the sacrifice of the serfs seem a cheap price to pay for the return of political stability – especially since the Zemskii Sobor showed no interest in demanding more concessions (at a time when Alexei could hardly have refused to make them).44 The compromise of 1649 brought gains to both sides. On the one hand, landholders gained total control over their serfs for the next two centuries; on the other, the restoration of domestic harmony allowed the tsar to rearm. By the end of the year, the Swedish ambassador reported that foreign officers had begun to drill Russian soldiers in Moscow ‘almost daily, because they must become capable of training the others who are to be enlisted’. This would soon allow Alexei to annexe large parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.45

  The Ukrainian Revolt

  The ‘Eternal Peace of Polianovka’ bound only the two principal signatories, and so technically it lapsed with the death of Michael Romanov in 1645; but Władysław IV made clear his desire to renew the peace, and he immediately sent an embassy to Moscow to negotiate not only this but also a common strategy for an attack on the troublesome vassals of the Ottoman sultan: the Crimean Tatars. Anticipating Moscow's agreement, Władysław set out to persuade the Cossacks living along the Don and Dnieper rivers in Ukraine to spearhead the venture.

  Until 1569 Ukraine formed part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which boasted weak government control and a strong Orthodox Church; but in that year Lithuania joined Poland in a closer union, and the region passed under Polish control. This transfer produced three destabilizing consequences. First, the crown strove to impose Polish officials, laws, troops and the Catholic faith on the newly incorporated lands. Second, the underpopulated Ukraine attracted many immigrants from many areas: Poland, Lithuania, Russia; the Balkans and even further afield. Some settled on the Black Earth farmlands (just as fertile as those in Russia: page 153 above), while others went to the towns – both to new settlements founded by the nobles and to established cities like Kiev, the capital, which by the 1620s numbered between 10,000 and 15,000 inhabitants – where they formed a reservoir of malcontents. The third destabilizing consequence arose because the crown granted huge estates in Ukraine to a few great nobles, on the grounds that they required extensive resources in order to coordinate frontier defence. By 1640 about one-tenth of the landholders controlled two-thirds of the population. The rapid growth of some noble estates almost defies belief: for example, the Wiśniowiecki family possessed some 600 settlements in Ukraine in 1630, over 7,000 in 1640, and no fewer than 38,000 (with 230,000 ‘subjects’) in 1645. To maximize the yield of their vast new estates, these nobles appointed aggressive estate managers, and tasked them both with collecting tolls, taxes and rents more efficiently and with exporting as much as possible of the crops raised on the rich soil. Many of the estate managers came from the expanding Jewish population of Ukraine, which rose from perhaps 3,000 in 15 localities in 1569 to at least 45,000 in almost 100 communities by 1648.46

  The relative ease of river access (for both settlers and exporters) meant that these developments occurred primarily along the Dnieper and its tributaries, challenging the independence of the Cossacks there who lived from a combination of fishing, hunting, farming and raids to secure Tatar booty (both human and material). Nevertheless, since the crown still needed the Cossack ‘Host’ (as its warriors were known) to defend its southern border, it maintained a ‘register’ of veterans who received an annual s
tipend. The Cossacks elected their own officers and a commander, the Hetman, who in wartime led them on campaign; but in most years, the ‘Cossack register’ included scarcely one-tenth of the available warriors. Only they were entitled to a stipend, leaving a disgruntled and heavily armed population living along the Dnieper ‘below the rapids’ (Zaporizhia), for whom raiding offered the only chance of preserving the lifestyle they had adopted.

  In 1630 the Cossacks rebelled, appealing to ‘both clergy and laymen of the Greek [Orthodox] religion’ because their faith ‘was being taken away, and asking them to stand up for the faith’.47 Alarmed by the unity between Cossacks and clergy, the government increased the number of registered Cossacks from 6,000 to 8,000. Nevertheless, the influx of Polish settlers to the Dnieper valley continued, as did the demands of the new noble landowners. In 1635 the federal Diet provocatively reduced the number of registered Cossacks to 7,000 and called for a fort to be built at Kodak on the lower Dnieper, garrisoned by units of the regular army. These measures provoked a new revolt by the Cossacks, who sacked Kodak and murdered its garrison. Although payment of wage arrears to the registered men allowed the capture and execution of the leading rebels, according to Adam Kysil (a Ukrainian nobleman appointed by King Władysław as a commissioner to pacify the revolt) the Cossack problem remained ‘a boil perennially on the verge of bursting'; and, indeed, almost immediately, another rebellion broke out.48 Once again, the Cossacks claimed that they sought to defend the Orthodox faith as well as the civilian community, and to that end (according to a chronicler) they ‘treated the Poles with contempt, killed the Germans like flies, burned towns, and slaughtered the Jews like chickens. Some burned monks in Roman Catholic churches.‘49