A history of Russia

matters by debasing the coinage. The debasing of silver with copper, begun in 1656, proved to be no more successful than similar efforts in other countries: it led to inflation, a further financial dislocation, and the huge 'copper coin riot' of 1662. But the greatest rebellion of the reign, headed by Stenka, or Stepan, Razin and long remembered by the people in song and story, occurred in 1670-71. It bore striking similarities to the lower-class uprisings of the Time of Troubles. Razin, a commander of a band of Don cossacks, first attracted attention as a daring freebooter who raided Persia and other lands along the Caspian Sea and along the lower Volga. In the spring of 1670, he started out with his band on a more ambitious undertaking, moving up the Volga and everywhere proclaiming freedom from officials and landlords. In town after town along the river members of the upper classes were massacred, while the soldiers and the common people welcomed Razin. Razin's emissaries had similar success in widespread areas in the hinterland. Native tribes as well as the Russian masses proved eager to overthrow the established order. The rebel army reached Simbirsk and grew to some 20,000 men. Yet its poor organization and discipline gave the victory to the regular Muscovite troops, which included several regiments trained in the Western manner. Razin and some followers escaped to the Don. But the following spring, in 1671, he was seized by cossack authorities and handed over to Muscovite officials to be publicly executed. Several months later Astrakhan, the last center of the rebellion, surrendered.

In addition to suppressing uprisings, the government took steps to improve administration and justice in order to assuage popular discontent. Of major importance was the introduction of a new legal code, the Ulozhenie of 1649. Approved in principle by the especially convened zemskii sobor of 1648 and produced by a commission elected by the sobor, the new code

provided the first systematization of Muscovite laws since 1550. It marked

a great improvement over its predecessors and was not to be superseded

until 1835.

The extension of Muscovite jurisdiction to Ukraine in 1654 represented

an event of still greater and more lasting significance. As we remember, that land after 1569 found itself under Polish, rather than Lithuanian, control. Association with Poland meant increasing pressure of the Polish social order - based on the exclusive privileges of the gentry and servitude of the masses - as well as pressure of Catholicism on the Orthodox Ukrainian people. The religious issue became more intense after 1596. That year marked the Union of Brest and the establishment of the so-called Uniate Church, that is, a Church linked to Rome but retaining the Eastern ritual, the Slavonic language in its services, and its other practices and customs. Although the Orthodox community split violently on the subject of union, each side anathemizing the other, the Polish government chose to proceed as if the union had been entirely successful and the Uniate Church had replaced the Orthodox in the eastern part of the realm. Yet, in fact, although most Orthodox bishops in the Polish state favored the union, the majority of the Orthodox people did not. Two churches, therefore, competed in Ukraine: the Uniate, promoted by the government but often lacking other support, and the Orthodox, opposed and sometimes persecuted by authorities but supported by the masses. Lay Orthodox brotherhoods and a small, diminishing, but influential group of Orthodox landed magnates helped the Church of the people.

The cossacks also entered the fray. Around the middle of the sixteenth century the Dnieper cossacks, the most celebrated of all cossack 'hosts,' had established their headquarters, the Sech - Sich in Ukrainian - on an island in the Dnieper beyond the cataracts. They proceeded to stage unbelievably daring raids in all directions, but especially against the Crimean Tartars and Turkey - as described in detail by Hrushevsky and other Ukrainian historians. The cossacks developed a peculiar society, both military and democratic, for their offices were elective and a general gathering of all cossacks made the most important decisions. The Polish government faced difficulties in trying to control the cossacks. Stephen Bathory and his successors allowed them very considerable autonomy, but also established a definite organization for the 'host' and introduced the category of registered, that is, officially recognized, cossacks to whom both autonomy and the new organization applied. All other cossacks were to be treated simply as peasants. The Polish policy had some success in that it helped to develop economic and social ties between the cossack upper stratum and the Polish gentry. Yet the same well-established cossacks retained ethnic and, especially, religious links with the Ukrainian people. The ambivalent position of the registered cossacks, particularly of their commanders, re-

peatedly affected their behavior. An example is the case of the hetman, that is, the chief commander, Peter Sagaidachny, or Sahaidachny, who did so much to strengthen and protect the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, but in many other matters supported the policies of the Polish government. Nevertheless, as the struggle in Ukraine deepened, the cossacks sided on the whole with the people. And if the hetmans and registered cossacks, who after the expansion in 1625 numbered six thousand men, obtained certain advantages from their association with Poland and found themselves often with divided loyalties, the unrecognized cossacks, who were several times more numerous, as well as the peasants, saw in Poland only serfdom and Catholicism and had no reason to waver.

From 1624 to 1638 a series of cossack and peasant rebellions swept Ukraine. Only with great exertion and after several defeats did the Polish army and government at last prevail. The ruthless Polish pacification managed to force obedience for no longer than a decade. In 1648 the Ukrainians rose again under an able leader Bogdan, or Bohdan, Khmelnitsky in what has been called the Ukrainian War of Liberation. After some brilliant successes, achieved with the aid of the Crimean Tartars, and two abortive agreements with Poland, the Ukrainians turned again to Moscow. Earlier, in 1625, 1649, and 1651, the Muscovite government had failed to respond to the Ukrainian request, which, if acceded to, would have meant war against Poland. However, the zemskii sobor of 1653 urged Tsar Alexis to take under his sovereign authority Hetman Bogdan Khmelnitsky and his entire army 'with their towns and lands.' Both sides thus moved toward union.

The final step was taken in Pereiaslavl in January 1654. A rada, or assembly, of the army and the land considered the alternatives open to the Ukraine - subjection to Poland, a transfer of allegiance to Turkey, or a transfer of allegiance to Muscovy - and decided in favor of the Orthodox tsar. After that, the Ukrainians swore allegiance to the tsar. A boyar, Basil Buturlin, represented Tsar Alexis at the assembly of Pereiaslavl. It would seem that, contrary to the opinion of many Ukrainian historians, the new arrangement represented unconditional Ukrainian acceptance of the authority of Moscow. The political realities of the time, with the Ukrainians, not the Muscovite government, pressing for union, the political practice of the Muscovite state, and the specific circumstances of the union all lead to this conclusion. It should be noted, on the other hand, that in subsequent decades and centuries the Ukrainians acquired good reasons to complain of the Russian government, which eventually abrogated entirely the considerable autonomy granted to the Ukrainians after they had sworn allegiance to the Muscovite tsar, and which imposed, or helped to impose, upon them many heavy burdens and restrictions, including serfdom and measures meant to arrest the development of Ukrainian literary language and culture. After the union, the Ukrainians proceeded to play a very important

part in Muscovite government and culture, for they were of the same religion as the Great Russians and very close to them ethnically, but were more familiar with the West. In particular, many Ukrainians distinguished themselves as leading supporters of the reforms of Peter the Great and his successors.

The war between the Muscovite state and Poland, which with Swedish intervention at one point threatened complete disaster to Poland, ended in 1667 with the Treaty of Andrusovo, which was negotiated on the Russian side by one of Alexis's ablest assistants, Athanasius Ordyn-Nashchokin. The Dnieper became the boundary between the two states, with the Ukraine on the left bank being ceded to Moscow and the right-bank Ukraine remaining under Poland. Kiev, on the right bank, was an exception, for it was to be left for two years under Muscovite rale. Actually Kiev stayed under Moscow beyond the assigned term, as did Smolensk, granted to the tsar for thirteen and a half years; and the treaty of 1686 confirmed the permanent Russian possession of the cities. The Muscovite state also fought an inconclusive war against Sweden that ended in 1661 and managed to defend its new possessions in Ukraine in a long struggle with Turkey that lasted until 1681. In Ukrainian history the period following the Union of Pereiaslavl, Bogdan Khmelnitsky's death in 1657, and the Treaty of Andrusovo is vividly described as 'the Ruin,' and its complexities rival those of the Russian Time of Troubles. Divided both physically and in orientation and allegiance, the Ukrainians followed a number of competing leaders who usually, in one way or another, played off Poland against Moscow; Hetman Peter Doroshenko even paid allegiance to Turkey. Constant and frequently fratricidal warfare decimated the people and exhausted the land. Yet the Muscovite hold on the left-bank Ukraine remained, and the arrangement of 1654 acquired increasing importance with the passage of time.