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View of the Kremlin, Moscow (1600?)
Russia does not really play a major part in European history until the late 17th century when the vast country was under the rule of Czar Peter the Great. At the time when Louis XIV was dominant in France and England was going through its constitutional crisis, Peter was attempting to change Russia’s entire identity. Isolated from Europe for centuries by geography, religion, and political culture, Russia seemed to Europeans to be primitive, exotic, and oriental. Peter’s goal was to make Russia not only a European state but also a power – a major “player” in Europe’s commerce, culture, and politics. In his efforts to remake Russia in a Western image, Peter would have to overcome a seemingly impossible obstacle – Russia itself. In order to understand the challenge facing Peter, it is necessary to first take a look at Russia’s history prior to Peter’s coming to power in 1682.
Russian history plays out on the background of key factors that today still influence Russia’s identity and direction. Perhaps the most significant is geography. With no natural frontiers, and with the vast steppes providing easy access, Russia has suffered numerous invasions and has attempted to defend itself by expanding outward, primarily to the east. Because its major rivers flow into “landlocked” seas or into the Arctic Ocean, Russia has attempted to secure access to open waters, preferably those with coasts that do not freeze. This quest for open seas and warm-water ports has seen Russian efforts to expand to the Black Sea, Baltic Sea, Pacific Ocean, and, in the 19th and 20th centuries, the Mediterranean. Another factor, related to geography, was Russia’s isolation. In Peter’s time, Russia was politically isolated from Europe by stronger states along its western and southern reaches: Sweden, Poland, and the Ottoman Empire. Isolation from Europe was also cultural. Unique in language, alphabet, and religion, the Russians developed their cultural identity outside of the Greco-Roman and Germanic influences that shaped most of European civilization.
Periods of Russian History
The original inhabitants of what is today Russia were preliterate peoples called Slavs. Slav in Russian means “glory” and identifies the common linguistic background of numerous Eastern European peoples.[1] Russia’s original Slavic inhabitants were forest peoples who, around 500 AD, migrated (possibly from the Carpathian Mountain regions) into that area of western Russia between what are today the cities of Kiev, Moscow, and Novgorad. The Russian Slavs in time divided into three regional linguistic subgroups – the “Great Russians” (simply, the Russians), the “Little Russians” (Ukrainians), and the “White Russians” (Belorussians).[2] The history of Russia is essentially the history of the Great Russians. Organized in tribes and clans, the Slavs lived in small village communities, wherein all property was held collectively, and important decisions were made by a general council. Marriage was by conquest or purchase, and polygamy was common. Spiritually, the Slavs practiced animism and ancestor worship. They practiced a “cut and slash” subsistence agriculture that quickly exhausted the soil. In time they mastered iron working and developed trade with the Byzantine peoples to the south. Their major trade goods were resources from the forests: furs, honey, and beeswax. As their populations grew, villages became towns, the largest of which was called Kiev, located on the Dnieper River. The Slavs were also attracted to the steppes, the prairie flatlands to their south. While rich in soil, the steppes were also open and easy invasion routes for marauding nomadic peoples. The seeming innate xenophobia, characteristic of Russian culture, has its origins in a succession of invasions across the steppes by barbarian peoples from the east. These included the Avars, Khazars, Pechenegs, Polovsti, and, eventually in the 13th century, the Mongols.
In the 800s AD the Slavic regions were invaded and conquered by “Varangians” who came from the north. These peoples were Vikings from Scandinavia. The words "Russia" and "Russian" are believed to have their origins in the Viking conquest, originating from "Rus," the name of the conquering Vikings. In time the Vikings were assimilated into the Slavic culture but remained the ruling element and became the Russian nobility from which the rulers of the Russian cities came. By 900 AD the most powerful city was Kiev (today Kyiv). Through trade contacts with the Byzantine capital Constantinople, Kievan Russia's cultural development reflected Byzantine influences.
Kievan Russia, c. 860 - 1240 The First Russian State
From Constantinople came the basic cultural features of traditional Russian civilization. In 988 AD the Kievan prince Vladimir adopted the Eastern Orthodox form of Christianity which would in time become the Russian Orthodox Church. Greek Orthodox missionaries, Saints Cyril and Methodius, developed a new alphabet, called Cyrillic, to be adapted to the Slavic Russian language. Today's Russian alphabet is derived from the early Cyrillic.[3] Impressed by the grandeur of the court of the Byzantine emperors, the Kievan princes made themselves autocrats and based the exercise of political power on great ceremonial acts of extravagant and elaborate ritual.
Politically, Russia was a loose confederation of strong cities that usually looked to Kiev for leadership. Through trade with Constantinople Russia had contact with the Mediterranean area. Trade was limited to only a small segment of the population. The economy of Russia from the Kievan period to the twentieth century was agrarian. As the Russian culture developed the traditional socioeconomic structure came into existence. The upper class included the princely families (hereditary rulers of the Russian cities), the land owning nobility (traditionally called boyars), and the Russian Orthodox clergy. There was a tiny middle class of artisans and merchants. The large lower class was made up of free peasants.
Mongol Domination, 1240 -1480
Between 1237 and 1240 Kievan Russia was conquered by the Mongols, an Asiatic nomadic peoples whose horse-mounted armies swept westward across the steppes and made Russia part of their gigantic Eurasian empire. The Mongol Empire in Russia was known as the "Khanate of the Golden Horde." The experience of two centuries of Mongol rule would have profound impact on the future Russian cultural development.
Under the Mongols Russia was isolated from economic and cultural contact with the West. Russian economic, technical, and social development stagnated. The rise of a powerful Poland to the west further isolated Russia. Poland, a Roman Catholic state, was ardently opposed to the "heresy" of Russian Orthodoxy and conquered parts of western Russia (thus beginning a long-lasting legacy of Polish-Russian hostility). Cut off from the world "outside" and seeing itself as surrounded by hostile neighbors, the Russian national character became increasingly xenophobic.
During the period of Mongol rule, the Russian Orthodox Church gained considerable power and influence over Russian life. The Mongols recognized in the Church an institution that would favor preservation of the status quo. In return for the support of the Church, the Mongols granted the Church control over extensive landholdings, exempted it from taxation, and supported its teachings. Russian princes, particularly those of Moscow, likewise sought the support of the Church in their efforts to increase their power and extended the Church the same privileges. The Church, conservative in its spiritual thinking, tended to support strong government be it Mongol or Russian. By 1500 the Russian Orthodox Church owned one quarter of all the land in Russia.
The Mongol rule over Russia was indirect rather than centralized. The Russian cities and principalities acknowledged the supremacy of the khan (the Mongol ruler) through payment of taxes and tribute but were otherwise autonomous. The terror of Mongol reprisal was enough to keep Russia effectively under control, but the rulers of those Russian territories farthest away from the seat of Mongol power often challenged for independence. The principality of Moscow became increasingly the center of Russian cultural, spiritual, economic, and political life. In 1472 the Muscovite prince Ivan III successfully broke with the Mongols.
Muscovy: The Rule of Moscow, 1472 - 1703: The Rise of a Russian National State
Prince Ivan III (1462 - 1505) began the "liberation" of Russia from the Mongols and made Moscow the capital of new Russian kingdom. In 1472 Ivan's armies were victorious in battle with the Mongols winning independence from Mongol rule. Claiming to be the heir of Kiev, Ivan demanded that he be recognized as sovereign by other Russian princes. To further his autocracy he proclaimed Moscow to be the "Third Rome," the third center of Christianity. (Constantinople, the "Second Rome," had fallen to the Muslim Turks in 1453.) Ivan also began construction of the fortress-palace complex known as the Kremlin. In time the Kremlin became synonymous with Russian power.
Russian autocracy would become considerably stronger during the reign of Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible), 1533 - 1584. Ivan expanded Moscow's domination by waging war against the Mongols and other Russian princes. These successful conquests made the Russian ruler's power more centralized and more absolute. Ivan marked his expanding authority by calling himself Czar ("emperor", the title by which Russian rulers would be known until the end of the monarchy in 1917).
Ivan's absolutism was based on force and terror. He founded a brutal secret police force and thus established a precedent for all Russian governments since - the use of police power as the instrument of arbitrary authority. He strengthened the mutually supportive relationship of the state and Church virtually making the Church an instrument of the government. The Church recognized the czar as ruling through divine right.
It was during the reign of Ivan IV that serfdom became a characteristic of Russian life. Needing a stable source of manpower for tax purposes and to provide soldiers for the army, laws were decreed denying the peasants their freedom. At first peasants were bound to the lands on which they lived, the estates of the crown, nobility, and clergy. Within a century serfdom had been so intensified that peasants were virtually slaves who could be bought and sold as individuals. By 1800 over 90% of the Russian population were serfs.
Ivan IV began Russia's expansion to the east. Blocked by powerful enemies to the west, successive Russian czars extended Russian influence and sovereignty over the more primitive peoples to the east. By 1637 Russia's empire stretched eastward beyond the Ural Mountains across the vast pine-forested region known as Siberia to the Pacific Ocean. As Russian population centers were in the western ("European") section of the Russian Empire, the eastern ("Asiatic") lands remained largely unpopulated and undeveloped.
In the early 1600s Russia experienced several years of unrest known as the "Time of Troubles." Without a strong czar, rival factions of boyars competed for the monarchy. Both Poland and Sweden intervened militarily, seeking to put their candidates on the Russian throne. Famine and the flight of people to the frontiers worsened conditions in Russia. In desperation, the Church called for a crusade to save Moscow from the invading Polish “heretics” and the Russian people responded. A new Russian army, made up of volunteers from all classes, defeated the Poles. In 1613 the chaos was ended when the feuding boyars recognized 16-year-old Michael Romanov as their new czar. Thus, the Romanovs became the hereditary ruling family of Russia. The Romanov czars would rule without interruption until the Revolution of 1917.
The Reign of Czar Peter the Great, 1682 - 1725
Czar Peter I (born, 1672) is by far the most remarkable figure in Russian history and is one of the major figures of modern history. He became czar at age ten, co-ruling with his sickly and imbecilic brother over a government dominated by his ambitious older sister and a faction of nobles loyal to her. At the time of his death 43 years later, Peter had built the power of czar to be that of the undisputed master over a Russia that had become a major European power.
Physically Peter was overpowering. As an adult, he stood seven feet tall and towered over his subjects. Dynamic, forceful, intensely curious, restless, and moody, his vigor overwhelmed and exhausted those who served him. As a boy he spent his time in the German Quarter of Moscow, enjoying the company of the foreign merchants and artisans who lived and worked there. They provided the young prince with an exciting and exotic escape from the dullness of Kremlin life. From them he learned carpentry and masonry. With them he would drink, smoke, engage in coarse humor, and play practical jokes. He also loved playing soldier. He created his own personal army made up of his young friends. A Scottish army officer, Patrick Gordon, serving as an advisor to the royal army, was responsible for training the youngsters as soldiers. Peter insisted that he start at the lowest rank, so Gordon made him the regiment’s drummer boy. He would, however, rise through the ranks to become an officer. The boys were trained as if a real army, and Peter learned a valuable lesson in leadership: to reward and advance those who showed talent and ability. Eventually Peter’s boy army was some 600 in number, and, using cannons and weapons that Peter requisitioned from the Kremlin arsenal, engaged in mock combat. In one mock battle 24 of the youngsters were killed. Consequently, Peter learned another lesson: war was not a game. He did, however, know what it was to be a soldier, and this would serve him well in the future.
As a young man, Peter also took up sailing. He found an old derelict sailboat of foreign design, ordered it repaired, and learned to sail it. He found sailing exhilarating but confining on Moscow’s narrow river. The boat was taken to a large lake, where he was able to experience the thrill of moving in the wind on open water. He immediately ordered the building of a boatyard for the construction of additional sailing vessels, all of Dutch design. Thus, began Peter’s fascination with ships and the sea, and, unknowingly, a new direction for Russia’s future.
In 1689 at his mother’s insistence, Peter would marry Eudoxia Lopukhina, the daughter of a distinguished boyar family. Being from a conservative and devoutly Orthodox background, Eudoxia had nothing in common with Peter. She feared the influence of foreigners on his thinking. He relished being with his boats and foreign friends. Nonetheless, they had two sons, Alexis, who became the crown prince, and Alexander, who died in infancy. Peter became increasingly distant from Eudoxia and in 1698 had her consigned to a convent. In 1703 Peter became attracted to Catherine Skavronskaya, a Lithuanian peasant woman in the service of one of his officers. In 1707 they were secretly married. She was energetic and loved sharing in Peter’s life, even accompanying him on military campaigns. In 1712 they were publicly married in a state ceremony, wherein she assumed the title Tsaritsa. Peter and Catherine would have twelve children, ten of whom died in infancy. Surviving were two daughters, Anne and Elizabeth. When Peter died in 1725, Catherine succeeded to the Russian throne as Empress Catherine I.
It is evident from Peter’s youthful experiences that he found the foreigners in Russia fascinating. He came to see Russia as backward and ignorant and, as czar, directed his relentless energy to reforming and modernizing. So committed would he be to achieving his goals that he would not tolerate criticism or dissent. In 1718 Peter ordered the arrest and imprisonment of Prince Alexis, his only son and heir, for opposing his policies. Alexis died under torture.
Peter's overriding goal was to make Russia a major European power. Peter saw the sources of Russia's problems as Russia's isolation, technological backwardness, and inability to compete with the other stronger nations on her frontiers. Underlying it all was the traditional Russian suspicion of change which was deeply rooted in its Orthodox conservatism and xenophobia. Russia would always be the victim unless it changed the way it thought. The nations that were strong and modern were the nations of the West. In order to compete with them and assert its rightful place among them, Russia must, he felt, become like them. Peter's goal, therefore, would be achieved through two major objectives: modernization through Westernization and securing access to warm-water ports.
In order to establish effective contact with the West it was necessary to secure access to the sea. Russian access to open water was prevented by two powerful states, both traditional enemies of Russia. To the north Protestant Sweden controlled the lands along the Baltic coast. To the south the Muslim Ottoman Empire controlled the lands along the Black Sea coast. Overland access to the West was blocked by Catholic Poland. Striking first at the Turks, Peter's armies were soundly defeated in a brief war, 1696 - 1697.
Unable to defeat the Turks, Peter resolved to "reeducate" Russia to Western thought and technology. In 1698 he personally took a "fact-finding" trip to Western Europe. While on his tour, Peter visited Prussia, the Netherlands, England, and France. There he visited - and worked in! - shipyards and met with military leaders and other "experts" in all fields of science and technology. He commissioned Western military and other technicians to come to Russia to train and modernize the Russian army using the French army as a model. Thus, the Russian army was professionalized and made an effective instrument of royal power.
In 1700 Peter's revitalized armies were sent to war against Sweden. Peter was determined to have access to the Baltic and planned to build a new Russian capital on lands taken from the Swedes. This Great Northern War would last until 1721. At first the armies of the Swedish king Charles XII seemed invincible and the Russians continued to suffer defeat. Yet Peter was not discouraged, and his programs of reform continued.
To provide the needed manpower for both troops and the building of the new capital, Peter further intensified serfdom. Serfs lost what remaining legal rights they had and became subject to conscription for state service. Taxes were increased to meet the costs of the war and reform programs. Administration required expansion of the bureaucracy. Peter required all nobility and other free Russians to provide state service and made them subject to call as army officers or government officials. Foreigners were encouraged to come to Russia and contribute their talents and energies to the modernization policy. They were rewarded with positions of authority in the government and given titles of nobility with vast estates.
In 1703 Peter ordered the building of a new seaport city in the barren marshes on the coast of the Gulf of Finland, lands newly taken from Sweden. Named St. Petersburg, the new city was to be Russia's "Window to the West." In 1712 Peter ordered the government to relocate from Moscow to St. Petersburg, and the new city would be the Russian capital until 1918. It is estimated that over 100,000 serfs died in the city's construction.[4]
In Westernizing Russia Peter made numerous social and economic reforms. The nobility was ordered to build and take up residence in St. Petersburg. Both men and women of the upper classes were required to wear western-style clothing. German and French replaced Russian as the language of the upper classes. It became illegal for Russian men to wear beards. (This "reform" was seen by many as blasphemous as beards were believed by the Church to be a sign of a man's devotion to God.) Western manners and customs were expected to replace what Peter considered the backward and crude practices of traditional society. An Academy of Sciences (Russia's first university) was founded in St. Petersburg. Other reforms included simplification of the Russian alphabet and founding the first Russian newspaper. Mercantilism became the characteristic economic policy. New industries were founded, largely by foreigners, and foreign trade increased by 400%. On the surface a new Russia was emerging.
The Russian Orthodox Church was not receptive to Peter's reforms and criticized the czar's policies as endangering Russia's spiritual relationship with God. Peter brought the Church under government control by creating the Holy Synod (a council of bishops) to administer the Church. This body would be supervised by a civil official, the Procurator of the Holy Synod, appointed by the czar.
In 1709 Russian armies decisively defeated a massive Swedish invasion force led by Charles XII at Poltava in the Ukraine. Poltava is considered one of the more significant battles in European history as it marks the emergence of Russia as a major power. The war would continue for another 12 years before a settlement was arranged in the Treaty of Nystadt (1721). By this treaty Russian sovereignty over the Baltic coasts (including the location of St. Petersburg) was confirmed by Sweden.
Peter the Great died in 1725. Characteristically, he died from complications resulting from his having plunged into icy water to save shipwrecked sailors. He was succeeded by his widow, Catherine, who inherited a state system that guaranteed continued effective government even without Peter's enormous energy.
In spite of the spectacular achievement of Peter's reign, his reforms have been considered incomplete and controversial. The Westernization affected only the upper classes, no more than ten percent of the population. The great mass of the Russian people, the peasant serfs, remained the "Dark People," seen by the educated as ignorant, superstitious, and backward. Peter's legacy included resentment from all but a few. The upper classes resented having to change their lifestyle. The peasants hated the new tax burden and conditions of forced labor and military conscription. The Church was angered over Peter's efforts to secularize it and condemned him as the "Antichrist." The new capital was seen as foreign and soulless. When Peter's son and heir, Prince Alexis, opposed his father's reforms and tried to flee the country, Peter condemned him for treason and witnessed the prince's death under torture.
The impact of Peter's "revolution" was profound. Russia, through its victory over Sweden, was recognized as a great military power. It would play a significant role in the future of European - and world - affairs. The Russian upper classes were westernized. Royal absolutism was strengthened, made more efficient, and further centralized through state service and state control of the Church. Through the intensification of serfdom, the peasantry was exploited, alienated, and demoralized. The characteristic peasant attitude became one of fatalism. The Church taught that the peasant condition was God's will. Therefore, one must accept it.
Unseen among the results of Peter's reform policies was a cultural schism that would surface more than a century later: the division of educated Russians into two opposing philosophies on Russia's identity - the "Westerners" and "Slavophiles." In the 19th century these divergent points of view undermined the czarist government and would become a background cause of the 1917 Russian Revolution.
"Westerners" felt that Russia must follow the precedent of Peter the Great and continue to learn from the West. They admired Western Europe's progressive development toward constitutional government and economic productivity. They were attracted by the rational ("Enlightened") approach to solving the problems of society. "Slavophiles," on the other hand, felt the government was not "Russian" enough. They saw the West as soul-less and incapable of the kind of spiritual life necessary to keep a society alive and vital. They romanticized the Russian peasant, seeing him as symbolic of Russia's inner strength - simple, agrarian, faithful. Russian greatness, Slavophiles argued, would come from Russia's traditional values - from within, not from without. This philosophic conflict that is the legacy of Peter's revolution is still characteristic of the Russian mind today.
Notes
[1] Other Slavic cultures include the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Ruthenians, Bulgarians, Slovenians, Croatians, Serbians, Montenegrins, and Bosnians.
[2] Today these linguistic identities are reflected in three independent “Russian” states: Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Regions that are today Ukraine and Belarus were, at various times, parts of Poland and the Ottoman Empire as well as of the Russian Empire and later Soviet Union.
[3] In fact, Cyril and Methodius, created two alphabets: the first was for the Slavonic dialect, which became the liturgical language of the Russian Orthodox Church; the other was for the vernacular dialect – what is today Russian.
[4] In 1914, in an expression of Russian nationalism and Slavic identity at the outbreak of World War One, the city was renamed Petrograd, Russian for "Peter's city." In 1924 the Communist government renamed the city Leningrad in honor of the late revolutionary leader, Vladimir Lenin. With the collapse of Communism in 1991, the citizens of Leningrad voted to restore the city's original name, St. Petersburg.
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Image of Moscow - www.belygorod.ru/img2/RusskieKartinki/Used/0VAsnetA_RascvetKremlya.jpg
Images of Ivan IV and Peter are from Wikipedia sources.
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Sources for the Origins of Russia
Durant, Will and Ariel. The Age of Louis XIV. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963.
Massie, Robert. Peter the Great. New York: Knopf, 1980.
Mazour, Anatole and John Peoples. World History: People and Nations. Austin: Holt, Reinhart, and Winston, 1993.
Palmer, Robert R. et al. A History of the Modern World. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002.
Time-Life Books, Editors of. The Powers of the Crown: Time Line 1600 – 1700. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1989.
Wallace, Robert. Rise of Russia. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1967.
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