A history of Russia

Significant events in the second half of Alexis's reign include the ecclesiastical reform undertaken by Patriarch Nikon and the resulting major split in the Russian Orthodox Church. Nikon himself certainly deserves notice. Of peasant origin, intelligent, and possessing an extremely strong and domineering character, he attracted the favorable attention of the tsar, distinguished himself as metropolitan in Novgorod, and, in 1652, became patriarch. The strong-willed cleric proceeded to exercise a powerful personal influence on the younger and softer monarch. Alexis even gave Nikon the title of Great Sovereign, thus repeating the quite exceptional honor bestowed upon Patriarch Philaret by his son, Tsar Michael. The new patriarch, expressing a viewpoint common in the Catholic West, but not in the Orthodox world, claimed that the church was superior to the state and endeavored to assert his authority over the sovereign's. Charged with papism, he answered characteristically: 'And why not respect the pope for that which is good.' Nikon pushed his power and position too far. In 1658

Alexis quarreled with his exacting colleague and mentor. Finally, the Church council of 1666-67, in which Eastern patriarchs participated, deposed and defrocked Nikon. The former Great Sovereign ended his days in exile in a distant monastery.

The measures of Patriarch Nikon that had the most lasting importance concerned a reform of Church books and practices that resulted in a permanent cleavage among the Russian believers. While this entire subject, the fascinating issue of the Old Belief, will be considered when we discuss religion in Muscovite Russia, it might be mentioned here that the same ecclesiastical council of 1666-67 that condemned Nikon entirely upheld his reform. The last decade of Tsar Alexis's reign passed in religious strife and persecution.

Alexis's successor Theodore, his son by his first wife, became tsar at the age of fourteen and died when he was twenty. He was a sickly and undistinguished person, whose education, it is interesting to note, included not only Russian and Church Slavonic, but also Latin and Polish taught by a learned theologian and writer, Simeon of Polotsk. Theodore's brief reign, 1676-82, has been noted for the abolition of mestnichestvo. It was in 1682 that this extremely cumbersome and defective system of service appointments at last disappeared, making it easier later for Peter the Great to reform and govern the state. The mestnichestvo records were burned.

XVIII

MUSCOVITE RUSSIA: ECONOMICS, SOCIETY, INSTITUTIONS

The debate concerns the issue as to whether the peasants had been tied to their masters prior to the Ulozhenie. As we already had reason to learn from the above, the gentry and the lower servitors did not ask for the repeal of St. George's Day. They, as well as the peasants, knew that it had been repealed, even if temporarily. The peasants hoped for the restoration of their ancient right and indubitably wanted that to happen; the landlords neither wanted it, nor thought it likely to occur. The Ulozhenie put an end to the hopes of the peasants and fully met the demands of the gentry and the lower servitors, not directly, however, but indirectly, by means of the recognition of the time-tested practice of forbidden years, which was not to be repealed.

GREKOV

The zemskie sobory in the Muscovite state represent a form of popular participation in the discussion and decision of some of the most important questions of legislation and government. But what form of participation it is, how it arose and developed - these problems have led to no agreement in historical literature.

DIAKONOV

One of the most spectacular aspects of Russian history is the unique, enormous, and continuous expansion of Russia.

LANTZEFF

To quote Liashchenko, and in effect the entire Marxist school of historians: 'The agrarian order and rural economy again serve as a key to the understanding of all economic and social relationships within the feudal economy and society of the Moscow state during the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries.' And while the term feudal in this passage exemplifies the peculiar Soviet usage mentioned in an earlier chapter, Liashchenko is essentially correct in emphasizing the importance of agriculture for Muscovite Russia.

Rye, wheat, oats, barley, and millet constituted the basic crops. Agricultural technique continued the practices of the appanage period, which actually lasted far into modern times. The implements included wooden or iron ploughs, harrows, scythes, and sickles. Oxen and horses provided draft power and manure served as fertilizer. Cattle-raising, vegetable-gardening, and, particularly in the west, the growing of more specialized crops such as flax and hemp, as well as hunting, fishing, and apiculture, constituted some other important occupations of the people. Many scholars

have noted a crisis in Muscovite rural economy, especially pronounced in the second half of the sixteenth century, and ascribed it both to the general difficulties of transition from appanages to a centralized state based on gentry service and exploitation of peasants and to Ivan the Terrible's oprichnina. Trade, crafts, and manufacturing grew, although slowly, with the expansion and development of the Muscovite state. Russia continued to sell raw materials to other countries, and its foreign trade received a boost from

the newly established relations with the English and the Dutch. The Russians, however, lacked a merchant marine, and their role in the exchange remained passive. Domestic trade increased, especially after the Time of Troubles, and profited from a rather enlightened new commercial code promulgated in 1667. The mining of metal and manufacturing had to provide, first of all, for the needs of the army and the treasury. Industrial enterprises belonged either to the state or to private owners; among the latter were the Stroganov family which engaged in various undertakings, especially in extracting salt, and the Morozovs, so prominent in Alexis's reign, who developed a huge business in potash. Foreign entrepreneurs and specialists played a leading role in the growth of Muscovite mining and manufacturing, and we shall return to them when we discuss Western influences on Muscovy. As a result of intensified and more varied economic activity, regional differentiation increased. For example, metalwork developed in the Urals, the town of Tula, and Moscow, while the salt enterprises centered principally in the northeast.

Serfdom. Muscovite Society

Serfdom was the mainstay of Muscovite agriculture. Serf labor supported the gentry and thus the entire structure of the state. As we saw earlier, certain types of peasant bondage originated in the days of Kiev, and had undergone centuries of evolution before the times of Ivan the Terrible and Tsar Alexis. Originally, it would seem, peasant dependence on the landlords began through contracts: in return for a loan of money, grain, or agricultural tools, the peasant would promise to pay dues, the quitrent or obrok, to the landlord and perform work, the corvee or barshchina, for him. Although made for a period ranging from one to ten years, the agreements tended to continue, for the peasant could rarely pay off his obligations. Indeed his annual contributions to the landlord's economy often constituted merely interest on the loan. Invasions, civil wars, droughts, epidemics, and other disasters, so frequent in Russian history in the period from the fall of Kiev to the rise of Moscow, increased peasant dependence and bondage. Gradually it became possible for the peasant to leave his master only once a year, around St. George's day in late autumn, provided, of course, his debts had been paid.

All these developments that laid the foundations for full-fledged serfdom - which were discussed in previous chapters - preceded the Muscovite period proper. Yet the contributions which the Muscovite system itself made to serfdom should not be underestimated. The new pomestie agriculture meant that bondage spread rapidly as lands