Russia

by Philip Longworth

  Nevertheless, huge swathes of the country were still under rebel control, and the government’s tax income was falling steadily Then a spurious ‘Tsarevich Petr’, arrived at the rebel base of Putivl with a large entourage of Cossacks and reinforced his claim to rule by executing dozens of gentry. Before long he moved on to take the town of Tula. But there his forces found themselves besieged by tsarist troops for four months. Then a second false Dmitrii made an appearance near the Polish frontier. Who he really was is still a mystery, but he and his ‘retainers’ were well rehearsed in a repertoire of theatrical tricks designed to convince onlookers that he really was the rightful tsar, and he soon boasted an army that included mercenaries from Lithuania and Zaporozhian Cossacks, as well as the usual motley array of angry peasants and slaves, other Cossacks, and would-be Cossacks.

  Tsarist forces captured Tula, Bolotnikov and ‘Petr’ in October 1607, and this persuaded the second ‘Dmitrii’ to postpone the offensive he was planning. Instead he fell back to the Polish frontier, regrouped his forces, and waited for more to join him. Then, advancing on Moscow, he established his headquarters at Tushino, less than 10 miles to the north-west. A large force of Polish troops also came up, sent by King Sigismund to secure the return of Polish prisoners captured when the first false Dmitrii was killed; then another rebel army approached as the Tsar was trying to reach an agreement with the Poles. And the chaotic chain of events only became more tangled, aided by bad faith on all sides.

  The Tsar was isolated in Moscow; then Marina, widow of the first false Dmitrii, decided to ‘recognize’ the second false Dmitrii at Tushino, which bolstered the pretender’s credibility and his chances of establishing his rule over all Russia. But, although he now commanded the loyalty of more than half of the country, he lacked the funds to organize a proper government. He even lacked the wherewithal to supply and feed his own troops. They therefore had to live off the country and resort to forced confiscations and robbery in order to maintain themselves. The demands and depredations of the pretender soon seemed worse even than those of the Tsar, who had begun to confiscate Church plate.

  Then the Tsar decided to cede territory to Sweden in return for the services of a force of mercenaries. The King of Poland now moved openly to capture the great frontier citadel of Smolensk. Russia’s neighbours were beginning moving in like jackals on a dying beast to dismember the Empire. And still the chaotic civil war continued. The false Dmitrii and Marina moved to Kaluga, and some of the more prominent of their erstwhile supporters, including Filaret Romanov and others of his family, thought of backing King Sigismund’s son Wladyslaw as candidate for the throne of Russia.

  The damage to agriculture and the economy was as bad as the political damage. This was partly because of the disruption of the civil wars, but partly also the result of a renewal of vicious weather conditions. In 1607 there were serious floods in the Moscow region and deep frosts in western Russia, which prevented the germination of seedcorn and so precipitated yet another famine; in 1608 the crops in both central and western Russia were destroyed by a bitterly cold winter and heavy rainstorms in summer and autumn which washed out the harvest. There were epidemics and outbreaks of animal diseases that year too, and raging fires caused by lightning.

  Bereft of support, the Tsar waited in the Kremlin for his fate to be decided. On 16 July 1610 the decision came. The power-brokers had decided to get rid of both him and ‘Dmitrii’ and to elect a new tsar. Vasilii Shuiskii was forced to become a monk, which emasculated him as a political actor. However, no agreement could be reached on who should succeed him, so a ministerial council of seven boyars assumed the task. In August they decided to elect Prince Wladyslaw, who had indicated his willingness to convert to Orthodoxy, as tsar. However, Wladyslaw himself now preferred to conquer Russia outright if he could, and other powerful Russians opposed his candidacy anyway. At last Zolkiewski, commander of the Polish forces which had managed to clear ‘Dmitrii’s’ army from the Moscow area, decided on a coup de main. He persuaded the more important potential Russian candidates to form a delegation to King Sigismund at Smolensk to discuss Wladyslaw’s election — and then had them arrested. So Vasilii Golitsyn, Filaret Romanov and others - including ex-tsar Vasilii Shuiskii — found themselves prisoners in Poland, where some of them were soon to die in mysterious circumstances. 27

  Curiously enough it was Poland’s new role as the arbiter of Russia’s fate that served as a catalyst for Russia’s political recovery Whatever Russians, including the rebels, thought of their rulers, the tsars were at least Orthodox Christians. People reacted strongly against Poland because it was Roman Catholic and predatory. As he made clear in a message to Pope Paul V, King Sigismund aimed to accomplish what his predecessor Stefan Bathory had failed to do: to gain dominion over Russia and return it ‘from error and schism to obedience to the Holy See’. Sigismund revived the idea ‘all the more ardently since in addition to all the other enormous benefits that would accrue to Christendom from the subjugation of Moscow’ it would help him regain control of Sweden. 28 The old revulsion felt by Orthodox Russians at the prospect of ‘Latinization’ welled up again, and was given more force by the behaviour of Polish troops in Russia. These sentiments were exploited with energy by the Russian Church to form one plank of a springboard to recovery. Another came spontaneously from Russian servicemen and government functionaries.

  Their movement had begun early in 1611 in efforts to depose Vasilii Shuiskii and eliminate the pretender Dmitrii. As a letter sent from Iaroslavl to Vologda in February of that year put it:

  The Poles have inflicted much oppression and outrage on the people of Moscow, and so the most holy Hermogen, Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, and the people of Moscow had written to Prokofii Liapunov, leader of the gentry of Riazan province, and to the towns from the upper Oka to the lower Volga urging them to join together to march against the Poles … before they take Moscow … [This he had done and many soldiers had set out for Moscow] and you, gentlemen, should all stand firm in the Orthodox Christian faith, and not betray it for the Latin faith lest you destroy your souls. 29

  Letters were also sent from Iaroslavl to Kazan, from Solvychegodsk to Perm, and between many other cities, urging that men be sent without delay, whether on horseback or on skis, and all sorts of people besides gentry were soon involved in the enterprise. Townsmen and peasants, local officials, humble servicemen, blacksmiths were all urged to raise soldiers, equip them, and march them to Moscow, where they were organized by a triumvirate consisting of Liapunov, Prince Dmitrii Trubetskoi and the Cossack leader Ivan Zarutskii. Russian patriots were soon on the march.

  But even now the agony did not end. Swedish forces invaded, laid siege to Novgorod, and eventually took it. The Poles captured Smolensk, and Polish troops were still in Moscow. Hordes of predatory Russians were still battening on large areas and sucking them dry. And now other foreigners began to think that they could gain from Russia’s distress. The Pope wanted Russia for the access it would give his missionaries to reach all the heathens of Asia. King James I of England and Scotland wanted to gain control of Russia’s oriental trade. 30 The Patriarch had been imprisoned by the Poles, yet a call to arms was issued in October 1611 by the abbot of the Trinity St Sergius Monastery at Zagorsk, and metropolitans, bishops and abbots across the land echoed his call. Even before that, scribes in towns throughout the realm wrote letters on behalf of the local governors and other notables, setting out the purpose of a mobilization, explaining the means, and trying to co-ordinate it: ‘We should take oaths ourselves, and get the Tatars and Ostiaks to swear their Muslim oath, so that … we make common cause with them for our true and incorruptible Orthodox faith … against the enemies and destroyers of our Christian faith, against the Poles and Lithuanians.’ They also made it clear that the next tsar must ‘be chosen by the entire land of the Russian realm’ rather than arbitrarily - in other words, that an Assembly of the Land must endorse the choice of sovereign. 31

  The mov
ements headquarters were in Iaroslavl on the Volga, and, though Prince Trubetskoi was still associated with it, Prince Dmitrii Pozharskii, commander of the local troops, now became its leading secular light, being elected by people of all ranks to command the army and the land. Also important was the elected representative of the great merchants {gosti) and other commercial interests, Kuzma Minin, a master butcher from Nizhnii-Novgorod. Pozharskii, in his appeals issued in the spring of 1612, blamed

  the Devil … [for] creating disunity among Orthodox Christians, seducing many to join corrupt and sinful company, and [causing] rogues of every rank to band together and introduce internecine strife and bloodshed into Moscovy [so that] son rose against father, father against son, and brother against brother … and there was much shedding of Christian blood …

  But now, gentlemen, we have exchanged messages with the entire land, vowed to God … and pledged our souls … to stand firmly … against the enemies and depredators of the Christian faith … We must choose a sovereign by common agreement, whomever God may grant us … lest the Muscovite state be utterly destroyed. 32

  Rousing appeals, a good religious cause and patriotism were not enough, however. There had to be sanctions to force the recalcitrant into line, and those who responded had to be fed and rewarded. Documents surviving from the first attempt at a national mobilization show how this was organized. Servicemen who failed to answer the call to arms and present themselves at the appointed place by the appointed date were to forfeit their service estates, though those who pleaded poverty could petition for their return. On the other hand, those who served well would be allotted estates and money pay. 33 These provisions had presupposed functioning state ministries — particularly the department of service estates and the financial departments, including the office that ran the crown estates -and as yet the movement had no control of these. Nevertheless, it did redistribute some land on this basis of its promises. But its first need must have been for money.

  We know it commanded sizeable sums, because it was able to mint coins and pay the troops it recruited. Since the normal means of raising state income had broken down, one may assume that initially at least the Church was the chief source of funds. Very little is known about the finances of the Russian Church, but both the high profile of the Church in the revival and the fact that it commanded a major proportion of the country’s resources, including approximately a third of all cultivated land, strongly suggest that the Church filled the critical financial gap. 34 And so in 1612 events at last moved towards a resolution.

  In August 1612 the army - over 10,000 strong, but not particularly well equipped — arrived outside Moscow. It soon engaged the Polish forces of Hetman Chodkiewicz, forcing them into retreat. It also halted King Sigismund when he approached with an army to take control of the situation. Realizing that their prospects now seemed poor, in October the Russian power-brokers who had sponsored Prince Wladyslaw withdrew from the Kremlin, and on the following day the Polish garrison, now down to 1,500 hungry men, surrendered.

  The call went out for delegates to come to Moscow to choose a tsar, and by January 1613 hundreds were arriving. Wladyslaw, the Polish candidate, was now ruled out, and the Swedish contender, Prince Karl Filip, had little more support. Trubetskoi’s candidature was blocked by Pozharskii, and both of them opposed the sixteen-year-old Michael Romanov, who was hardly an impressive candidate and had been associated with the Polish occupiers. However, the Romanovs were rich, and they spent money to promote their man. The Cossack delegates were eventually won over — or bought — and on 21 February Michael was chosen. 35 His father, Filaret Romanov, was installed as patriarch, and Michael himself was crowned in July 1612. Though the Cossack leader Zarutskii, Marina and her four-year-old son (known as the ‘little brigand’) were not to be caught and dealt with until the summer of 1614, at last the work of reconstruction could get under way

  The Time of Troubles left in its wake both a damaged economy and damaged institutions. It also established a tradition by which governments were to be challenged by pretenders who denied the tsar’s legitimacy. Such claimants sprang up from various parts of the country with increasing regularity over the next two centuries, threatening to destabilize government in Russia. 36 Yet there was a positive legacy too. The trauma impressed on most Russians a sense that even oppressive, autocratic government was preferable to the mayhem of anarchy, and the regime took care to remind them of it.

  Events had also demonstrated that even in the early 1600s Russians were coming to share a common national consciousness. It has been argued that the imperial nature of the ethnically diverse Russian state inhibited the development of Russian nationalism, but a strong sense of patriotism — perhaps as strong as that manifested in Elizabethan England - was shared by Russians from the north and south, east and west. Russians knew who they were, and it was not only their Orthodox religion, contrasting with the Catholic, Protestant and Muslim faiths of their neighbours, that defined them; nor their language, which, except for the Old Church Slavonic used for religious purposes, was not yet a standard or literary one; nor their customs, which varied to some extent from region to region — though all these elements contributed. They shared a sense of community associated with the land, and, as the letters sent out to mobilize a national army demonstrate, even strangers among them, such as Muslim Tatars, were not excluded. They too were accepted as part of the Russian political community. 37

  And, though the Troubles had shorn Russia of much of its empire, there were some areas where the process of empire-building had hardly been interrupted.

  7

  Recovery

  E

  ARLY IN 1613 several groups of officials and clerks, with small retinues of servants carrying bales of sable-skins, live falcons and other valuables, were to be seen leaving Moscow by sledge or boat. These wise men bearing gifts were embassies bound for the courts of the Habsburg Emperor, the King of Poland, the Turkish Sultan, Denmark, England and several lesser powers. Later that year and the year that followed, others left — for Persia, France and Holland. Their purpose was to announce that Tsar Michael Romanov (together with his father, Patriarch Filaret) now guided Russia’s destiny; that the Time of Troubles was over. But their brave show masked the sad condition of the country. The economy was shattered, the currency debased, the government bankrupt, administration in disarray, the population reduced and exhausted. And Russia was still pursuing unaffordable wars with Sweden and with Poland. The only foreign-policy options now were defensive; the only possible economic policy was retrenchment.

  Despite its desperate need for revenue, the government had to suspend tax collection in some stricken regions for a time to allow them to recover, and the ambassadors were in effect sent out with begging bowls in hand. With Poland they were to negotiate a treaty of ‘eternal peace’, even at the cost of ceding rich tracts of territory and important towns including the great fortress city of Smolensk. Other powers were to be asked for military and financial aid. 1 But the brave show of formal ceremony which the ambassadors maintained, and their cautious, hard-headed, approach in negotiations, could hardly disguise the fact that Russia’s aspirations to great-power status had become laughable.

  Yet within forty years Russia’s wasted muscles were bulging once again. By the 1670s roles had been reversed: proud Poland was much reduced; Russia had supplanted it as the strongest power in eastern Europe. How is the extraordinary turnaround to be explained? By what mysterious means was the pitiable Russia of 1613 transformed into a new Goliath? And how was it able to ward off a series of internal troubles that threatened to undermine its new stability: an open rift between tsar and patriarch; an irreparable split among Russian Christians; the appearance of yet more pretenders; and repeated rebellions, both urban and rural, some of massive scale? 2

  Imperial growth hinged on military power, but this in turn depended on size of population and the generation of wealth, both of which are difficult to measure for an age for which there
are no census data, official statistics or economic indicators. Informed estimates suggest that the population grew from as little as 8 million in 1600 to 11 million or more by 1678, 3 but the increase was due to several factors other than natural increase: the acquisition of eastern Ukraine along with Smolensk in 1666 gave a big boost to population, and the conquest of Siberia added as many as half a million more. On the other hand the great plague of 1654 sharply reduced the population of Moscow, and war casualties — notably those sustained in the Polish war of 1654—67 — decimated the male population. These losses were offset to some extent by the government’s practice of transporting civilians, especially those with skills, to Moscow from the western territories it occupied, and by the importation of foreign professional soldiers and technological experts. Even so the rate of natural increase must have been high, and the most obvious reason for this was improvement in diet since the Time of Troubles. There were fewer interruptions to the production and transportation of food; fewer famines, less disruption; and in the last three decades of the century Russia shared in the upsurge of prosperity and optimism enjoyed by most of Europe.