of peasant serfdom as a means of guaranteeing the state a supply of food and service manpower.
Typical qf_the new military-administrative leaders that helped transform Russian society during the weak reign of Michael Romanov was Ivan Cherkasky.135 His father was a converted Moslem from the Caucasus who had entered the service of Ivan the Terrible and served as the first military voevoda of Novgorod, where he married the sister of the future Patriarch Philaret and befriended the brilliant Swedish mercenary general de la Gardie. Young Ivan was brought up as a soldier with his loyalty to the Tsar uncomplicated by local attachments. He studied the military methods of the nearby Swedes and collaborated with them in mobilizing Russian opinion against the Poles during the Time of Troubles. His military activity earned for him (along with the co-liberator of Moscow, Dmitry Pozharsky) elevation to boyar rank on the day of the Tsar's coronation in 1613. By amassing personal control over a number of Moscow chanceries, including a new, semi-terrorist organization known as the 'bureau for investigative affairs,' he became probably the most powerful single person in the Muscovite government until his death in 1642.13‹i Throughout his career, his use of (and friendship with) Swedish and Dutch military and administra-* tive personnel was indispensable to his success. He hailed the Swedes and the alliance 'of the great tsar and the great king' against 'the Roman faith of heretics, papists, Jesuits,'137 He insisted that the Russians, like the
Swedes, should defend their 'sovereign nature' against new Roman pretensions to universal Empire. He emulated the Swedes and Dutch (who showered him with gifts often more lavish than those given the Tsar) by introducing secret writing into Russian diplomatic communications.138
In 1632 the Dutch built the first modern Russian arms plant and arsenal at Tula; and in 1647, printed in the Netherlands the first military manual and drill book for Russian foot soldiers, which was also the first Russian- language book ever to use copper engravings.138 French Huguenot fortification specialists were put to work, and the building of the first fortified line of defense in the south spelled the end to the traditional vulnerability to pillaging raids from that direction.140
A final by-product of the Russian links with their more distant 'Ger- ., man' alEesfwas the turning of Russian eyes at last toward the sea. The/j-eastern Baltic (and indeed some of the lakes and rivers of the north) had become areas of contention in which the Swedes had exercised humiliating advantages over the landlocked Muscovites; and the southward movement of Russian power down the Volga and Don confronted Russia with Persian and Turkish naval power at the point where these rivers entered the Caspian and Black seas respectively. Thus^ the period from the late sixteenth to the late seventeenth century-which also saw the opening of Siberia and j% the Russian drive to the Pacific-witnessed a series of efforts to build a I '' Russian^ navy. The Russians received aid and encouragement in this en-deavor from the Danes (who were anxious to strengthen Russia against the j ~ %› Swedes) and even more from the English and Dutch (who were anxious to protect trade routes from their respective ports of Archangel and Khob- mogory on the White Sea through Russian rivers to the Orient). Ivan IV was the first to think about a navy; Boris Godunov, the first to buy ships for sailing under the Russian flag; Michael Romanov, the first to build a river fleet; and Alexis, the first to build an ocean-going Russian warship.141
The fateful feature of this Russian orientation toward the North European Pr6testant countries was that it was so completely military and administrative in nature. Muscovy took none of the religious, artistic, or educational ideas of these advanced nations. Symptomatic of Muscovy's purely practical and military interest in secular enlightenment is the fact that the word nauka, later used for 'science' and 'learning' in Russia, was introduced in the military manual of 1647 as a. synonym for 'military skill.'142 The scientific revolution came to Russia after the military revolution: and naturaTscience was for many years to be thought of basically as a servaffl^rthe^lniritary establishment.
The long military struggle which led to the defeat of Poland in the war of 1654-67, and of Sweden a half century later, produced a greater
cultural change in the Russian victor than in either of the defeated nations. -Poland ancf 'Sweden both clung to the forms and ideals of a past age, ' whefeas Russia underwent a far-reaching transformation that pointed toward the future. What had been ajnonolithic, monastic civilization became a multi-national, secular stateT Under Alexis Mikhailovich and his son Peter the Great, Russia in effect adopted the aesthetic and philosophic culture of Poland even while rejecting its Catholic faith, and the administrative and technological culture of Sweden and Holland without either the Lutheran or the Calvinist form of Protestantism.
Symbol of the Polish impact was the incorporation into the expanding Muscovite state in 1667'of the long-lost 'mother of Russian cities,' the culturally advanced and partially Latinized city of Kiev. The acquisition of Kiev (along with Smolensk, Chernigov, and other cities) inspired the ii nation but upset the tranquillity of Muscovy, marking a return to the forgotten unity of pre-Mongol times and the incorporation of far higher levels of culture and enlightenment.
Symbol of the Swedish impact was the last of the three great centers of Russian culture:Hit. Petersburg, the window which Peter forced open on NorffleTnTiuropeJn the^arly eighteenth century and transformed into the new capital of Russia. Built with ruthless symmetry on the site of an old Swedish fortress and given a Dutch name, Petersburg symbolized the coming to Muscovy of the bleak Baltic ethos of administrative efficiency and military discipline which had dominated much of Germanic Protestantism. The greatest territorial gains at the expense of Poland and Sweden were to follow the acquisition of these key cities by a century in each case -the absorption of eastern Poland and most of the Ukraine occurring in the late eighteenth century and the acquisition of Finland and the Baltic provinces in the early nineteenth. But the decisive. psychological change was. accomplished by the return of Kiev' and the building of St. Petersburg. Bringing these two Westernized cities together with Moscow into one political unit had disturbing cultural effects. The struggle for Eastern Europe had produced profound social dislocations while increasing popular involvement in ideological and spiritual controversy. As the stream of Western influences grew to a flood in the course of the seventeenth century, Russians seemed to thrash about with increasing desperation. Indeed, the entire seventeenth and the early eighteenth century can be viewed as an extension of the Time of Troubles: a perjc^jjiLeonJinuous violence, of increasing^^borrowing from, yet rebelling against, the West. The deep split finally came to the surface in^this last stage of the confrontation between Muscovy 'andTETWest
– amp;? III |f^2›-
THE CENTURY OF SCHISM
/
The Mid-Seventeenth to the Mid-Eighteenth Century
The profound conflict in the seventeenth and the early eighteenth century between the practical need to master the skill and cleverness (khitrosf) of foreigners and the emotional need to continue the ardent devotion (blagochestie) to the religious traditions of Old Muscovy.
Religious leadership in the national revival that resulted from the political humiliation of the Time of Troubles and continued economic and military dependence on the West. The growth in monastic prestige and wealth and the resultant schism (raskol) between two reforming parties within the Church during the reign of Tsar Alexis (1645- 76). The effort of the 'black,' or celibate, monastic clergy to maintain the centrality of religion in Russian culture through expanding the power of the Patriarch of Moscow, a position first created in 1589; invested with special authority under the patriarchate of Philaret (1619-33), father of Tsar Michael; and raised to theocratic pretensions under Patriarch Nikon (1652-8, formally deposed in 1667). The concurrent campaign of the 'white,' or married, parish clergy to maintain the centrality of traditional religion through popular evangelism, puritanical exhortation,
