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CHAPTER 28

THE RUSSIAN EMPIREIN EUROPE AND ASIA

man Avvakum burned at theTsar Fedor II ordered the holy

of Avvakum's life marked a stun-ning reversal of fortune for a n an advisor on religious issues toTsar Fedor's father. Once d with reforming Orthodoxy, thebranch of Christianity that a in the tenth century from the Byzan-tine empire, Avvakum had ply suspicious of efforts to reform the RussianOrthodox church with the aid of Greek biblical and liturgical texts. Eventually, hebroke with his colleagues over matters of liturgy and ritual and even charged that hisopponents represented the Antichrist come to Russia.

Exiled to Siberia, this charismatic priest attracted followers and met with mem-bers of other sects who also believed that the Russian Orthodox church had cor-rupted the true religion so much that it offered damnation rather than salvation.During the mid-seventeenth century approximately forty groups of these devout dis-sidents boarded boats and took their own lives in dramatic fashion-by setting theirvessels ablaze as they sailed down Russia's rivers. Viewing the horrid spectacle, anEnglish envoy reported that Russia resembled "the suburbs of hell." Although theirnumbers amounted to only 20 percent of the population, religious dissidents consti-tuted a potent threat to the tsarist state because they represented the limits of itscontrol.

Avvakum's life reflected the emergence of Russia as a power in both Europe andAsia during early modern times. His break with the Orthodox church represented areaction against Russian interactions and cultural exchanges with western Europeanpeoples. He witnessed the transformation of the principality of Muscovy, whichfrom its capital city of Moscow governed much of Russia, into a powerful absolutiststate with extensive Asian territories. His Siberian exile was possible only because ofthe eastward expansion of this empire, and his death bespoke the costs of oppositionto Russian state-building efforts.

Between the late fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries, Russia underwent a pro.found transformation- From a small territorial state centered on Moscow, it grewinto a huge Eurasian empire. During the course of its expansion, Russia acquired apowerful, centralized, imperial government under the tsars, and the Romanov familyestablished a dynasty that ruled Russia from 1610 to 1 9 1 11 .

Tsar Peter the Great with a pair of shears, about to remove the beard of a conservative subject. AKG London

697

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698 PART V THE ORIGINS OF GLOBAL INTERDEPENDENCE, ISDD-IBD(The rapid expansion of the empire brought Russian peoples into interactipns

with a wide variety of neighbors, including Europeans, Ottoman Turks, centra.Asian Muslims, and the indigenous peoples of Siberia and northern Asia. In man}cases Russian expansion led to conflict with other peoples; but it also stimulatedcommercial and cultural exchanges. It led most notably to the influence of westernEuropean political and cultural traditions in. Russia'. The tsars tried to control western influences, favoring only those that might benefit their state, while social and re-ligious conservatives sought to reject them altogether. By the early eighteenth cen-tury, however, the Russian state and military forces had drawn deep inspiration fromwestern European models.

By no means did Russia become completely transformed along western Euro-pean lines. Until the mid-nineteenth century, for example, Russian society dependedon the agricultural labor of unfree serfs. Despite increasing trade and manufacturing,agriculture dominated the Russian economy until the mid-twentieth century. Al-though French philosophes found favor at the tsarist court in the eighteenth cen-tury, Enlightenment thought became familiar only to a privileged intellectual eliteand barely touched Russian society as a whole. Nevertheless, selective borrowingand adaptation of western European models greatly strengthened Russian societb.By the eighteenth century Russia was playing a prominent and increasingly impor-tant role in Eurasian affairs.

FOUNDATIONS OF THE ABSOLUTIST STATEPolitical leaders began to build states in Russia about the mid-ninth century' For al-most five hundred -years, the princes of Kiev (in modern Ukraine) dominated Russig.They built a wealthy, commercial society with extensive political, economic, and GUI-rural connections to the Vikings of Scandinavia and the Greek population of''Con-stantinople. In the late 1230s, however, nomadic Mongols conquered Kiev, and descendants of Chinggis Khan ruled Russia for more than 250 years. In the latefifteenth century, as Mongol states fell into disorder, the princes of Moscow workedto recover the territories of Kiev and subject them again to Russian rule.

The Gathering of the Russian LandIn 1480 Ivan III, the grand prince of Moscqw (reigned 1462-1505), later known asIvan the Great, stopped paying tribute to the Mongol khan. By refusing to acknowl-edge the khan's supremacy, Ivan in effect declared Russian independence from Mon-gol rule. Although Ivan's dramatic gesture symbolized a turning point in Russian l}is-tory, by 1480 the process by which the princes of Moscow imposed their ruleeonRussia had in fact been underway for more than a century. The princes of Moscowbegan to expand their holdings as early as the mid-fourteenth century. From theirbase around the small commercial town of Moscow, they acquired new territories by.war, marriage, and even outright purchase. By the mid-fifteenth century their statewas the most powerful of several Russian principalities under Mongol rule.Ivan III Ivan HI continued the policy of "gathering the Russian land" and fashionedMoscow into a large and powetful st teo His territorial acquisitions were impressive:Muscovy, the principality ruled from Moscow, almost tripled in size as he broughtRussian-speaking peoples under his rule. The most important addition to his territo-\

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CHAPTER 28 THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE IN EUROPE AND ASIA 6

MAP [28.1]The expansion of Musco,

ries came with the acquisition of the prosperous trading city of Novgorqd in the'1470s. A hub of the lucrative fur trade and a member of the Hanseatic League ofBaltic commercial cities, Novgorod was an autonomous city-state that governed itsown affairs through a town council. The city's merchants had strong ties to Poland'and Lithuania to the west, and Ivan wanted to make sure that the wealth of Nov-gorod did not strengthen neighboring states! Thus he demanded that the city ac-knowledge his authority in 1471. When Novgorod's merchants organized an upris-ing i11 1478, Ivan put down the rebellion, ended the city's independence, andabsorbed it into his state.

Ivan sought to consolidate his hold over his territorial acquisitions by recruiting Cossackspeasants and offering them freedom to settle in recently conquered land . Knownas cossacks (from a Turkish word meaning "free merl"), these peasants played a huge ~

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700 PART V THE ORIGINS OF GLOBAL INTERDEPENDENCE, 1500-1800

role- in the expansion of the Russian empire. Particularly in the steppelands.to thesouth, the cossacks undertook their own campaigns ofexpansion and vastjy ex-tended the range of Russian influence. During the sixteenth century the cossacksconquered the Volga River valley-and moved across the Ural Mountains ~ifntoSiberia!

While expanding the boundaries of the Muscovite state, Ivan also provided i~with a'strong centralized government. He drew inspiration for this project especiallyfrom the Byzantine empire. Although Ottoman Turks had conquered Constantino-ple in 1453 and put an end to the Byzantine empire, Ivan sought to appropriate tHeByzantine legacy for his own purposes. He married Sophia Palaeologus, niece of tJ1e

A seventeenth-century crowd prepares for Easter observances in the plaza now known as Red Square outside the Kremlin in Moscow,The churches reflect Russian architectural traditions, but the design of the walled Kremlin itself was the work of Italian and Englisharchitects. The Fotornas Index

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CHAPTER 28 THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE IN EUROPE AND ASIA

last Byzantine emperor, and called himself tsar (sometimes spelled czar)-a Russian-ized form of the term caesar, which Byzantine rulers had borrowed from the classicalRoman empire to signify their imperial status. He made the Byzantine double-headed eagle the symbol of his authority, and he adopted the elaborate pomp andceremony of the Byzantine court for use in Muscovy. He also sought to beautify andgloJjfy his capital, and under influence of his wife Sophia he commissioned Italianarchitects to rebuild the Kremlin, the fortress that stood at the heart of Moscow.

Like the Byzantine emperors, Ivan III ruled not only as head of state but also as. The Third Romehead of the chu ch. Like absolutist rulers in western Europe, he claimed to derive htsauthority directly from God. Establishing that claim sometimes put the secular gov- ternment at odds with organized religion because it implied the authority of the ruler.over the church. For the most part, however, the expanding Muscovite state cooper-ated harmoniously with the Russian Orthodox churth, which expanded its own influ-ence as the Muscovite state grew. Orthodox clergy affirmed that God appointed thets~ to his position. By the early sixteenth century, Orthodox monks had begum torefer to Moscow as the "third Rome." They held that Germanic invaders had on-quered the first Rome and that the Ottoman Turks had toppled the second Rome,Constantinople'. Only Moscow survived as the seat of true Christian faith, and itsprominence was due largely to the expansionist and centralizing policies ofIvart III.

The Time of TroublesIn spite ofIvan Ill's claims to divine-right rule, the tsarist court encountered oppo-sition to its centralizing and expansionist policies. Most prominent of the opponentswere rulers of minor principalities facing absorption into the Muscovite state and es-pecially the powerful boyars , the elite military aristocracy comparable to feudalknights in western Europe' and samurai in Japan. Resistance to the policy of central-ization climaxed during the reign of Ivan Ill's grandson, Ivan IV~ who becameknown as Ivan the Terrible because of the severity and cruelty of his response.Tsar IVan IV (reigned 1533-1584) is one of the most curious and compelling fig- Ivan IVures in Russian history. Only three years old when his father died, Ivan began to ruleofficially when he reached the age of sixteen, when he also married into the powerfuland ambitious boyar dan of the Romanovs. Following in the footsteps of Ivan III, heembarked on a series of reforms intended to improve administration and root outcorruption in both government and church. Distancing himself from boyar clan rival-rie~ Ivan ruled with the help of his Chosen Council, an inner circle 'Ofadvisors whoowed their proximity to the tsar to their talents rather than their families. Ivan alsoinaugurated the practice of calling "assemblies of the land," meetings of representa-tives who informed him of local situations throughout Russia. Thus Ivan IVsoughtto create an administration thatfunctioned independently of personal whims.

Other facets of Ivan's personality, however, overwhelmed his constructive desireto build a more effective government. Long suspicious of the boyars who impededhis efforts at reshaping the Russian government, Ivan suspected them of murderinghis beloved wife Anastasia (1560). In 1564 he abdicated the throne in highly sensa-tional fashion, claiming that obstructionist boyars prevented him from governing ef-fectively. When a large delegation of panic-stricken subjects appealed to him to-re-turn, he agreed on the condition that he receive powers to deal with treaclterousboyass, as well as complete control over a vast portion of Muscovite territorythat hecalled the oprichnina, the "land apart," This new power allowed Ivan to confiscatelarge estates and redistribute them among his supporters.

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702Ivan's Reign

o f Terror

War and Famine

PART V THE ORIGINS OF GLOBAL INTERDEPENDENCE, 1500-1800

Ivan went further to create a new aristocracy, the oprichniki , settled on the redis-tributed lands. He fashioned this newly privileged class into a private army whosemembers dressed in black and wore insignia displaying a dog's head and a broom,symbolic of their determination to hunt down treason and sweep it out of Russia.Under Ivan's guidance the opricbniki laid waste to numerous civilian populatioas,including that of Novgorod. Observers wrote of giant frying pans set up in the cen-ter of Moscow to cook suspected traitors and of oprichniki skinning victims alivewith taunts that the innocent among them would grow new skins.

It is difficult to account for Ivan's behavior. To some extent his policies reflectedthe fact that he faced dangerous enemies. Creation of the oprichnina had weakenedRussia, leaving the state vulnerable to attacks from Poland in the west and the MO,9golsin the southeast. But Ivan also turned on faithful oprichnikii, subjecting numerous servi-tors to the same grotesque punishments inflicted on his supposed enemies. It is possi ..ble too that medical problems help to explain Ivan's eccentric behavior. A twentieth-century autopsy showed that the tsar suffered from a debilitating spinal disorder, and

historical records attest that he frequentlyturned to drugs and alcohdl in an effortto relieve his severe pain. In any caseIvan's reign ended effective boyar opposi-tion to Russian autocracy.'

When Ivan died in 1584, after fifty-one years on the throne, he left no capa-ble heir, having killed his oldest sonhimself. Russia soon fell into civil war,which helped to bring a devastatingfamine on the land, and neighboringPoland and Sweden took advantage ofthe chaos by invading Russian territo-rie . This so-called time of troubleslasted fifteen furious years (1598-161'3).Popular yearning for a legitimate head ofstate led to the brief reigns of two pre-tenders-both claiming to be Dmitrii, a,deceased son of Ivan the Terrible rrurac-ulously restored to life-and an uprisingled by a former slave confirmed tlratdeep social problems plagued Rul sia.

In 1610, when Polish and Swedisharmies seriously threatened the integrityof Muscovy, volunteer armies rallied toexpel the invaders and then took it uponthemselves to resolve their differences andelect a tsar. Representatives from aroundthe country selected the boyar MikhailRomano", a young relative of Ivan IV'sfirst wife Anastasia, as the new tsar.Romanov's dynasty endured until 19>17,rarely facing challenges to its legitimacydespite the wide variety of tsars and tsari-nas who occupied the imperial throne.

Count S. D. Shcrcmetev costumed as Field MarshalBoris Sherernetev for the imperial ball at the WinterPalace, February 1903. Count Shercmetev wearsthe traditional dress of boyars, includ.ing thedist inctive bearskin cloak. Courtesy of PriscillaRoosevelt. From Life on the Russian Country Estate(Yale University Press, 1995)

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WESTERNIZATION AND EMPIREThe establishment of the Rornanov dynasty settled the dynastic question in Russia,but it did not bring political stability, Trade and military conflicts led to interactionsbetween Russian and neighboring peoples, and the tsars became increasingly awarethat western European technology outstripped their own. By the mid-seventeenthcentury the tsarist court was the site of a spirited debate about whether or not Russiashould follow the example of western European societies. Tsar Peter I and Tsarina

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704

Peter's Program0 / Westernization

Military Reform

BureaucraticReform

Social Reform

St. Petersburg

PART V THE ORIGINS OF GLOBAL INTERDEPENDENCE, IS00-1800

Upon returning to Moscow, Peter set Russia spinning. He did not imitate all thefeatures of western European societies: he was too much of an autocrat to find anyinterest in the institutions of representative government that he encountered in Eng-land and the Netherlands. But unlike the rulers of China, Japan, and the Islamic em-pires, who sought to limit foreign influences in their lands, Peter instituted a policyof conscious westernization by selectively adopting western European models andusing them to guide the reform of Russian government and society.

Peter's commitment to reform derived from his ambition to make Russia one-ofEurope's great military powers. He reformed the army by offering better pa)f anddrafting peasants who served for life as professional soldiers. He provided his forceswith extensive training and equipped them with modern weapons. He ordered aris-tocrats to study mathematics and geometry so they could calculate how to aim can-nons accurately, and he refused permission for them to marry until they successfullycompleted their studies. By the time of his death, the Russian army was the largestin Europe with three hundred thousand troops, and it proved its effectiveness in aprolonged struggle known as the Great Northern War (1700-1722) that Peterwaged against Sweden. Recognizing the importance of merchant and naval fleets towestern European states, Peter also determined to create a Russian navy that woulddominate the Baltic and the northern seas, Shipbuilding, sailing, and navigation hadintrigued Peter since his boyhood in Germantown, and as. tsar he began the con-struction of a navy even before he had any port facilities suitable for military vessels.

Peter also overhauled the government bureaucracy to facilitate tax collectioo andencourage industrial production. Because Russia had only a very small educatedurban class, Peter relied on nobles to serve as government officials. He established-the Table of Ranks, which permitted officials to move along fourteen stations ac-cording to merit. Old titles, such as boyar, disappeared along with the bearskinrobes favored by the old nobility. Besides providing opportunities for social mobilitybased on merit, the Table of Ranks also underscored the subservience of individualsto the state. By emphasizing that the tsar himself was an energetic servant of thestate rather than a privileged parasite: Peter made the abstract political concept- apsychological reality.

In his effort to westernize Russia, Peter also brought change to sex and gendeg re-lations. He abolished the terem, the Russian equivalent of a harem, which kept uppctr-class women secluded from men outside their own farnilies , and encouraged social-mixing of the sexes, especially in towns and cities. His transformation of Russia eveninvolved a cosmetic makeover, as he commanded his subjects to wear western cloth-ing and ordered men to shave their traditional beards. These policies, which were ex-tremely unpopular among conservative Russians, provoked spirited protest amongthose who resented the increasing influence of western European ways. Yet Peterconsidered westernization so important that he reportedly went into the streets him-self and hacked the beards oft-recalcitrants' faces. In the face of stiff opposition, how-ever, the tsar eventually compromised by allowing men to keep their beards if theypaid extra taxes, an option that many chose well into the nineteenth century.

Perhaps the best symbol of Peter's policy of westernization was St. Petersburg, a ."window on the west' that he opened in 1702when he ordered the construction ofa new capital city on the Baltic Sea. The city rose near the site of a Swedish fort cap-tured during the Great Northern War, and the tsar named it after his patron saint.The construction of St. Petersburg cost an estimated ten thousand serfs' lives andhence bore the nickname "the city built on bones." Yet the new city provided a'

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CHAPTER 28 THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE IN EUROPE AND ASIA 7(

PETER THE GREAT AND THE FOUNDING OF ST. PETERSBURG

Jakob Staehlin von Storcksburg was an aristocratic German scholar who traveled to Russia in 1735 andspent more than twenty years there, mostly in St. Petersbtlrg. Von Storcksburg was a great admirer of Peterthe Great and collected scoresof stories and anecdotes about the tsar, his deeds, and his character. In one thetraveler detailed the lengths that Peter went to in founding St. Petersburg.

Long before the Swedish war [the Great NorthernWar], Peter had conceived the project of obtaining aport on the Baltic, that he might there construct theships necessary to the execution of his designs.

As soon as he was master of the country in which St.Petersburg is situated, he determined to build a citythere and laid the foundations of it in 1703. He sur-rounded it with fortifications on one side of the Neva[River] and placed the admiralty on the other.

This spot of ground contained before only a singlefisherman's hut by the side of the fort; and this very hutafforded the monarch a retreat at the commencementof his undertaking. It is now carefully preserved under aroof as a precious monument of the prodigious laborsof the Russian hero. . . .

At length, in 1714, finding himself in peaceful pos-session of his conquests and at the eve of an advanta-geous peace, the tsar saw with much joy that he shouldsoon be freed from all the obstacles that had opposedthe execution of his designs, and particularly the desirehe felt to turn all his attention to the civilization of hisempire. He therefore published a ukase, or ordinance,to hasten the building of his new city.

He required all landholders, clergy as well as laymen,and monasteries as well as gentlemen, to build housesproportioned to their means . . . on the groundmarked out in lots of twelve, twenty, thirty, and fortyyards long, and to render them habitable in the space oftwo years, under pain of confiscation of their property.

To facilitate the execution of his orders, and that noone might have an impediment or excuse, he made anabundant provision of materials and established an ar-chitect's office under the direction of Tressins, an Ital-ian, where plans, according to the extent of the ground,were given gratis .... Timber, piles, and lime weresent in such quantities from Ladoga and Novgorod thatthey were to be bought at a very moderate price.

Planks, laths, and beams were all furnished by a greatnumber of sawing mills turned by wind or water. . . .

A great number of workmen were collected by thetsar's order from all parts of Russia to work at his newcity and pave the streets. He had long before directed allvessels or carriages that might come loaded to St. Peters-burg to bring a certain quantity of stones besides theirusual load or cargo, and to deliver them at the entranceof the town to a commissary appointed for that purpose.

SOURCE: Jakob Staehlin von Storcksburg. Original Anecdotes of Peter the Great. London:]. Murray, 1788, pp. 190-98. (Translation slightly modified.)

haven for Russia's fledgling navy and offered access to western European landsthrough the Baltic Sea.

Peter worked zealously to establish St. Petersburg as a center of efficient govern-ment. He transferred many government offices to the new capital and ordered no-bles to build houses there even before wrapping up his victory against Swedeh. Heinvested vast sums in buildings and fountains, mostly designed by Italian architects,that recalled the cities of western Europe. After Peter, Russia claimed two capitals:the original capital of Moscow in the Russian heartland and the new administrativecenter and tsarist residence in St. Petersburg.

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706

Catherine had high re-spect for western Europeanlands, especially France. Sheencouraged nobles to travelin western Europe, and bythe late eighteenth century,educated aristocrats ~ftencommunicated among them-selves in French, Catherineherself became deeply infatu-ated with the philosophes ofthe Enlightenment, and shecorresponded extensivelywith the philosophe .DenisDi erot. She considered thephilosophes' ideas for liberalsocial reform, bu t she wasnot willing to grant reformsthat would weaken her holdon society. As she pointedout to Diderot, "You writeon paper, but I have to writeon human skin, which is farmore ticklish."

PART V THE ORIGINS OF GLOBAL INTERDEPENDENCE, ISDD-l8De

The Limits of WesternizationThe most able of Peter the Great's successors was Catherine II (reigned 1762-1795).also known as Catherine the G eat, who continued to pursue Peter's policy of west-ernization-e-or at least she did so until it seemed that western European influencesmight threaten the tsarist autocracy: Born into the ruling family of the minor Balticprincipality of Anhalt-Zerbst, Catherine found herself in an arranged marriage to ~grandson of Peter the Great'. Her marriage was unhappy, however, and she alliedwith the leading nobles at the tsarist court to displace her feeble husband. Catherine'sremarkable skill at fashioning herself into a Russian ruler supported by the nobilitystands as a testament to her adaptability. Making the Russian language and Ortho, oxfaith her owrt, she left behind a significantly more powerful empire than the one shehad entered as a nerv;us bride.Catherine II Like Peter, Catherine attempted to increase the effectiveness of the tsari t bu-reaucracy by appointing officials with a modern, western European-style educa-tion, and she worked to rationalize the administration of her realm. She ~rga-n.ized the Russian empire into fifty administrative provinces, 'each supervised by crgovernor-general. She spelled out the rights and obligations of the nobilijy andthe urban classes in her Charter of the Nobility and the parallel Charter of theTowns. Catherine was an autocrat in the mold of the enlightened despots of .ast-ern Europe, and even though she sought economic development of Rus ia'stowns, she was not willing to grant them any substantial autonomy. She took careto keep the nobles happy, however, since she owed her rule to their suppert, Sheconfirmed them in their privileges, and she extended their rights over thespeas-ants on their lands.

Catherine the Great, depicted in 1762 in the style and dress ofwestern European rulers. Novostiy 'Sovfoto

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Catherine thought of herself as an enlightened despot. Like Maria Theresa ofAustria and Frederick II of Prussia, she sought to devise policies that would improveber subjects' lives without detracting from her own power and authority. She re-stricted the punishments that noble landowners could inflict on the serfs whoworked their lands, for example, and she sought to eliminate common penalties suchas torture, beating, and the mutilation of individuals by cutting off their noses;" ears,or tongues .

Catherine's interest in reform cooled rapidly, however, when it resulted in chal-lenges to her rule. She faced a particularly unsettling trial in 1773 when the cossackEmelian Pugachev mounted a serious rebellion in the steppelands north of theCaspian Sea.. Pugachev's rebellious force was a motley collection of disgruntled cos-sacks, exiles, peasants, and serfs. They sought an end to taxes, government super-vision, and the military draft, and they demanded the right to possess their own landand elect their own leaders. During a year of bitter violence, Pugachev's rmy killedthousands of noble landowners, government officials, and Orthodox priests. Theimperial army crushed the uprising in late 1771, captured Pugachev, and took himto Moscow in chains. In spite of Catherine's interest in humane punishments, hergovernment beheaded Pugachev, quartered his body, and displayed its partsthroughout the city as a warning against rebellion.

Pugachev's rebellion alarmed the tsarina and led her to tighten her grip on Rus-sian affairs.sbur the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 effectively enoedCatherine's interest in reform inspired by western European societies. The stormingof the Bastille by Parisian crowds soon led to a reign of terror against monarchy andnobility. During the last years of her reign, Catherine abandoned the program ofwesternization and adopted extremely conservative policies for fear that further re-form might encqurage revolutionary turmoil in Russia. After more than a century 'Ofwesternization, the tsarist autocracy adopted policies like those of contemporqry.rulers in China, [apan, and the Islamic empires aimed at limiting foreign and espe-cially western European influence.

Pugachev'sRebellion

The End of Reforn

The Russian Empire in EuropePolitical consolidation led to the development of a powerful state with considerablefinancial resources at its disposal and a technologically advanced military at its tom-rnand, This situation helps to explain the remarkable transformation of the smallprincipality of Muscovy into a : vast empire that survived until 1991. Expansionbegun under Ivan the Great continued incrementally, pushing westward into- Eu-rope, especially Poland, Lithuania, and the Ottoman-controlled Balkan peninsula.Then during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, Russia began its eastward movementinto Siberia and the former Mongol territories. By the late eighteenth century-theRussian empire was a vast, multicultural realm that embraced much of the Eurasianlandmass from Poland to the Pacific Ocean, and Russian explorers had even ven ..tured tentatively into North America and the Pacific islands.

During the early stages of Russian expansion, the tsars sought to recapture terri- Poland-Lithuaniatories associated with the Kievan state and return Russia to dominance in eastern Eu-rope. The biggest target of this expansive effort was Poland. The ebbing of Mongolpower had led to the rise of Lithuania, which united with Poland into a kingdom thatstretched from the Baltic Sea as far as the Black Sea. In 1569, when Ivan IV's reign ofterror engulfed Russia, Poland-Lithuania organized into a dual republican state with

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MAP [28.2]Imperial Russia in theeighteenth century.

The Absorptionof Ukraine

The Partitionof Poland

PART V THE ORIGINS OF GLOBAL INTERDEPENDENCE, iSDD-l8De

separate administrative and legal systems, but ruled in common by an elected kingand parliament. Although the state dominated much of eastern Europe, the politicalstructure of the Polish-Lithuanian republic eventually became too unstable tef medi-ate conflicts effectively and ultimately left it vulnerable.

Despite their ethnic similarities, Russia and Poland had gone separate ways reli,giously: Poland was Roman Catholic, as was Lithuania. Several Orthodox Slavi terri-tories, such as Belarus and Ukraine, fell within the borders of Poland-Lithuania andfeared Roman Catholic influence, especially after Jesuit missionaries began to visitUkraine in the sixteenth century. Because of the Orthodox faicl1that they shared withRussia-and because their peasants resented oppressive Polish landlords-thesesmaller Slavic communities gravitated toward the empire emerging around Moscow-

Animosity against Poland directly inspired the union of Ukraine with Russia'. TheUkrainian adventurer Bogdan Khrnelnitskyi seeking revenge against Poland for themurder of his S0n, united the peasants of Ukraine against their Polish rulers andsought union with Moscow on the basis of the Orthodox faith' they held in com-mon. Russian cooperation with Khrnelnitsky led to war with Poland, and the fight-ing lasted thirteen years, with tremendous costs for all belligerents. It ended in 1667with a partition of Ukraine, and Kiev returned to the empire that it had once servedas capital city.

Poland's political woes increased. The Polish parliament operated under a crip-pling handicap in that it required unanimous consent to make law: a single negativevote could prevent the passage of any legislation. This policy generated such acuteinstability that the Polish state could not defend itself at the end of the eighteenth

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CHAPTER 28 THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE IN EUROPE AND ASIA 7century when its predatory neighbors-Russia, Austria, and Prussia-partitioned the'Polish- Lithuanian republic and absorbed its regions into their own states. Polish re-sentment kept the historical memory alive, and the Poles rose against Russia in 1830and 1863 before regaining their independence in 1918.

As Russia annexed territory from the disintegrating Polish state, it absorbed largenumbers of Jews into its ethnic mise Poland had institutionalized tolerance of Jewsin 1265. Thereafter Poland became Europe's most important sanctuary for Jewsuntil the Nazi conquest of Poland in World War II. Following the partitions,Catherine II prohibited Jews from moving out of the territory in which they lived!unless they obtained official permission to do so. The! restriction of Jews to this no-torious Pale of Settlement provided a focus for anti-Semitism and motivated manyJews from this region to leave Russia and migrate to the United States at the end ofthe nineteenth century.

During the later decades of the eighteenth century, Russia expanded south into Southern ExpansicOttoman territories in Europe. Tsarist forces pushed into Balkan regions that theOttomans could no longer defend and made common cause with Greek OrthodoxChristians who resented their Turkish overlords. Russia annexed the Crimea out-right, and the army made plans to march on Istanbul. As the Russian military ad-vanced, however, western European powers became alarmed at the prospect thatRussia would gain control of the Black Sea, the Bosporus, and the Dardanelles andhence would enjoy free access to the Mediterranean. British and French diplomatsovercame their own disagreements and cooperated to prevent further Russian ex-pansion in the region. Nevertheless, the Slavic peoples of Russia and the Balkansforged a relationship that inf1uenced the history of the Balkan peninsula throughtwo world wars and many bitter civil conflicts in the twentieth century.

The Russian Empire in AsiaWhile building an empire in the settled, agricultural lands of eastern Europe, Russiaalso expanded into the more sparsely populated and less technologically developedregions of central Asia and northern Asia. The Mongol empires had broken into theseparate khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and the Crimea by the sixteenth century.Ivan IV's army marched into Kazan in 1552 and annexed neighboring Astrakhanshortly thereafter. These conquests gave Russians control over the Volga River andoffered opportunities for trade with Safavid Persia and the Ottoman empire throughthe Caspian Sea. Expansion into central Asia continued through the late nineteenthcentury and brought significant populations of Turkish and Mongol peoples underRussian rule.

In search of warm-water ports, tsarist forces continued to push south to the The CaucasusCaspian Sea and the Caucasus, a vibrant multiethnic region embracing the modern-day states of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Georgia, an ancient kingdom whoseruling dynasty traced its ancestry back to King David of Israel, was especially attrac-tive to Russian imperialists. Although independent of both the Greek and the Russ-ian churches, Georgians were Orthodox Christians who feared the Ottoman Turksand sought a Russian protectorate in 1783. Russia soon absorbed Georgia when thetsar declared the established kingdom extinct and coopted the native nobility bygranting its members the same privileges enjoyed by Russian aristocrats. With itsluxuriant scenery and mineral baths, Georgia became a favorite vacation spot forRussian aristocrats and remains a prime holiday destination today.

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Siberia

Native Peoplesof Siberia

PART V THE ORIGINS OF GLOBAL INTERDEPENDENCE, lSOO~1801

The dense forests and frozen tundras of Siberia offered a much less hospitabl.environment than the steppelands, but Russian explorers and merchants made thei.way into northern Asia as well as central Asia during the seventeenth and eighteentlcenturies. The Russian conquest of Asia began in 1581 when the wealthy Strogano:merchant family hired a freebooting cossack adventurer named Ermak to capture thekhanate of Sibir in the Ural Mountains. The Stroganovs wanted access to Siberiarfurs, a major source of wealth that lured the tsarist state eastward, just as NortrAmerican furs attracted the interest of English, French, and Dutch merchantsAdapting an old Mongol practice of exacting tribute in furs, the Russian government established small fortified settlements throughout Siberia that coerced locapeoples to supply pelts on a regular basis.

Siberia was home to some twenty-six distinct ethnic groups that lived by hunt-ing, trapping, fishing, or herding reindeer. These indigenous peoples varied widelyin language and religion, and they responded to the arrival of Russian adventurers indifferent ways. Some groups readily accepted iron tools, woven cloth, flour, tea, andliquor for the skins of fur-bearing animals such as otter, lynx, marten, Arctic fox, andespecially the sleek black sable. Others resented the ever-increasing demands for furtributes and resisted Russian encroachment on their lands. Russian forces then re-

A woodcut illustration depicts indigenous peoples of Siberia delivering fur tribute to Russian merchantsin a walled, riverside fort . Oregon Historical Society. OrHi 97421

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sorted to punishing raids and hostage taking to induce Siberian peoples to deliverfurs. The Yakut people of the Lena and Aldan River valleys of central Siberiamounted a revolt against Russian oppression in 1642 and experienced a brutal retri-bution that continued for forty years, forcing many Yakut out of their settlementsand reducing their population by an estimated 70 percent. Quite apart from militaryviolence, the peoples of Siberia also reeled under attack from contagious diseasessuch as smallpox that previously had not penetrated the forests and tundras. Epi-demics of the mid-seventeenth century reduced the populations of many Siberianpeoples by more than half

As violence and disease sharply diminished the delivery of furs, the Russian gov-ernment soon recognized that its interests were to protect the "small peoples," asstate officials called the indigenous inhabitants of Siberia. Peter the Great sent mis-sionaries in hopes of converting Siberian peoples to Orthodox Christianity andbringing them into Russian society. But few Siberians expressed an interest in Chris-tianity, and those few came mostly from the ranks of criminals, abandoned hostages,slaves, and others who had little status in their native societies. Furthermore, onceindigenous peoples converted to Christianity, they were no longer obligated to payfur tributes to the state. The tsarist government therefore demonstrated less zeal inits religious mission than did the Spanish and Portuguese monarchs, who made mespread of Roman Catholic Christianity a prime goal of imperial expansion. Ortho-dox missionaries managed to attract a few Siberian converts but mostly served theneeds of Russian merchants, adventurers, and explorers. The peoples of Siberiamostly continued to practice their inherited religions guided by native shamans.

The trappers and soldiers who extended Russian authority into Siberia includedadventurous cossacks, social misfits, convicted criminals, and even prisoners-of-war.The harsh terrain discouraged a few, but it also limited Moscow's long reach. Serf-dom did not extend east of the Ural Mountains, so disgruntled peasants had somemotivation to flee to Siberia. By 1763 the 420,000 Russian migrants nearly doubledthe native population of Siberia. The tsarist government used Siberia as an immenseprison, a place to exile disagreeable individuals such as the priest Avvakum, and lateras a site of forced labor camps.

Russia's eastward expansion did not end in Siberia. Russian officials commis-sioned the Danish navigator Vitus Bering to undertake two maritime expeditions(1725-1730 and 1733-1742) in search of a northeast passage to Asian ports. Beringsailed through the icy Arctic Ocean and the Bering Strait that separates Siberia fromAlaska and explored northern Asia as far as the Kamchatka Peninsula. Other Russianexplorers pushed further into Alaska, which the tsarist government sold to theUnited States in 1867, and proceeded south through western Canada into northernCalifornia. By 1800 Russian mariners had also begun to explore the Pacific Oceanand had sailed as far south as the Hawaiian Islands. Indeed, they built a small fort onthe island of Kauai and engaged in trade there early in the nineteenth century. Rus-sians did not establish a permanent presence in North America or the Pacific islands,but their ventures into those regions bespoke a dynamic and expansive society.

A SOCIETY IN TENSIONAs the tsars gathered the Russian land and built a Eurasian empire, Russia became avast but sparsely populated land. In 1700 Russia was thirty times the size of France,but with a population of about fifteen million it had fewer inhabitants. As Russian

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Russian Populatioof Siberia

American andPacific Exploraticn

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712 PART V THE ORIGINS OF GLOBAL INTERDEPENDENCE, ISOO-180(

rulers stretched the boundaries of their realm, they faced the challenge of mobilizinga labor force to settle and cultivate the empire's land. They did so by restricting th emobility of Russian peasants and tying them to the land as serfs. Peter the Greasponsored the establishment of factories, but Russia remained a predominantly ruraand agricultural society.

Muscovite Society before WesternizationRural Life In the absence of manufacturing industries and well-developed trade networks, agri-

culture dominated the Russian economy. Agricultural society revolved around thepeasant village. There peasants often lived in extended families, and the male heads 01their households gathered periodically to make decisions for the entire village. The)

allocated village lands according to theneeds of individual families and negoti-ated with the owners of the land, whowere mostly nobles, and with agents otthe tsar, such as tax collectors and mili-tary recruiters. Peasant women tended todomestic chores and took primary re-sponsibilty for arranging marriages-arole that offered them considerable so-cial influence, since marriages created al-liances between families in the villagecommunity, Unlike their counterparts inmost of the world, Russian women re-tained control of their dowries after mar-riage, and as a result they enjoyed a de-gree of financial independence rarelyknown to women elsewhere.

Some peasants were free, especially inSiberia and other regions recently addedto the Russian empire, since the tsars en-couraged migration to newly conqueredregions by offering generous terms topeasants who settled there. In EuropeanRussia, however, most peasants wereserf" tied to lands owned by nobles, thecrown, or monasteries that their ances-tors had cultivated for generations. Dur-ing the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-

turies' as the Russian empire expanded, the conditions of serfdom becameincreasingly tight because of efforts by noble landowners and the tsarist state to en-sure the availability of a rural labor force. Landowners constantly pressured the tsarsto limit serfs' rights to marry or move off the land, since their holdings would beworthless without cultivators, and to enhance their own rights to recapture serfswho escaped. In 1649 the government promulgated a law code that placed serfsunder strict control of their landlords. Serfs were not slaves, but during the late sev-enteenth and eighteenth centuries lords increasingly sold serfs as if they were privateproperty.

Though photographed in the late nineteenthcentury, these woodchoppers look much like theirancestors of the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies. Ria-Novostiy 'Sovforo

Serfdom

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CHAPTER 28 THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE IN EUROPE AND ASIA 7The law code of 1649 also tightened state control over the Russian labor force

by establishing a rigid, castelike social order that sharply restricted both occupationalaIrd geographical mobility. It required artisans and merchants to register their infantchildren into their fathers' occupations and to introduce them to the family trade. Italso established a hierarchy of nobles, capped by fifty-two distinguished boyar fami-nes, who owed military and political services to the state. The law code of 1649largely reflected the interests of this nobility, since it provided them with a legalfoundation to mobilize a labor force and enabled them to derive an income from theagricultural production of serfs working their estates. Some nobles also owned smalltowns and derived further income from taxes levied on the craft production andtrade carried on there.

During the reign of Catherine the Great, nobles gained a free hand over their es-tates and the serfs who worked them. Catherine sought noble support for her cen-tralizing policies and her desire to hire educated experts of common birth for ad-ministrative and military positions. In exchange for their support, she granted themextensive rights in their own domains. Nobles gained rights to deploy laborers asthey saw fit, levy taxes on serfs attached to their lands, and administer punishmentsthrough courts that they controlled. Catherine's bargain with the nobility greatlystrengthened tsarist authority, but it did so by subjecting most Russians to the harshand sometimes arbitrary rule of noble landlords.

Catherine and theNobility

The Growth of Trade and IndustryInteractions with European and Asian peoples did not alter the fundamentally agri- European Tradecultural character of Russian society, but they stimulated trade and motivated Peterthe Great to encourage the development of heavy industry. Direct trade with west-ern European lands began in the mid-sixteenth century after an English expeditionsearching for a northeast passage to Asian markets made its way north around Scan-dinavia and into the White Sea. Tsar Ivan IV had the crew escorted to Moscow andoffered the sailors concessions to trade in Russia. Dutch and other mariners followedEnglish merchants to northern Russia. The port of Archangel (founded in 1584)soon became a flourishing trading city where merchants exchanged Russian furs,leather, and grain for western European armaments, textiles, paper, and silver.

Meanwhile, Russian expansion to the south and east led to increased trade with Asian TradeAsian peoples. As the Russians acquired territory in the south, they found opportu-nities to engage in trade with merchants from Safavid Persia, the Ottoman empire,and even Mughal India. The Volga and other rivers flowing into the Caspian Sea of-fered access to the flourishing economies of the Islamic empires, and Astrakhan onthe Volga delta became a bustling trade city mirroring Archangel in the north. Dur-ing the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Astrakhan was horne to a communityof about two hundred foreign merchants from as far away as northern India, andone hundred or more additional Indian merchants made annual commercial trips tothe Caspian. Some Indian merchants made their way up the Volga River and tradedin Moscow and elsewhere in the Russian interior, whereas others devised plans(which they never realized) to extend their activities to the Baltic Sea and take theirbusiness to western Europe.

The increasing prominence of foreign merchants in the imperial economysparked deep resentment among Russian merchants, who were few in number andpoorly organized in comparison with their western European and Asian competitors.

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IndustrialDevelopment

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Russian merchants lodged protests with the tsarist government and demanded restrictions on the activities of foreign merchants. The tsars responded by requiringforeign merchants to reside and conduct their business in officially approved districts, such as the Germantown suburb of Moscow or border cities like Archangeand Astrakhan, and by forbidding them to trade in particularly lucrative commodities such as tobacco and alcohol. Yet these measures did little to diminish the influence of foreign commerce in Russia. Some foreign merchants simply ignored the restrictions or bribed their way around them, while others joined forces with Russiarmerchants and conducted business with local partners. In any case foreign trade ancmerchandise deeply influenced the Russian economy.

Peter the Great's policy of westernization increased the prominence of foreignersin Russia. On his tour of western Europe in 1697-98, Peter avidly sought out tech-nical experts willing to work abroad, and he lured about one thousand engineers.shipbuilders, military officers, teachers, and industrial specialists to Russia. He of-fered loans, subsidies, tax breaks, and tariff protection to those who would establishfactories in Russia, and his efforts resulted in the opening of about two hundred newindustrial plants. Most of the new factories produced iron, armaments, or textiles,and others turned out glass, paper, and leather goods.This early effort at industrialization was all the more remarkable because of Rus-sia's lack of cities and chronic shortage of labor. Moscow had a population of about150,000 when Peter took the throne, but all other Russian cities combined had onlyanother 300,000. In the absence of an urban working class, Peter drafted factory la-borers from the ranks of serfs-an imperial decree of 1721 permitted factory ownersto purchase serfs from landowners-as well as soldiers, beggars, prostitutes, crimi-nals, and orphans.

During Peter the Great's reign, St. Petersburg took shape as a splendid capital . The Winter Palace il lustratesPeter's interest in western European architectural styles . Tom Owen EdmundsfThe [mage Bank

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CHAPTER 28 THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE IN EUROPE AND ASIA ?Peter's economic policies did not put Russia on a par with England or the Population Gtowt

Netherlands as an industrial power, but they laid a foundation for the developmentand diversification of a fundamentally agricultural society. During the eighteenthcentury, for example, Russia's population more than doubled, from fifteen millionto thirty-seven million. Some of the increase reflected territorial gains by the ex-panding Russian empire, but much of it came about because of improved economicconditions. A growing population led to increased urbanization. By 1800 St. Peters-burg had become the largest city in Russia with a population exceeding two hun-dred thousand, even though it was not yet a century old. Other cities throughoutthe Russian empire also experienced rapid growth.

CULTURAL CLASHES ~European influences touched Russian cultural and religious life as well as politicaland economic matters. During the seventeenth century the Russian Orthodoxchurch experienced a bitter dispute between reformers who sought to adapt ritualand liturgy from eastern European and Greek Orthodox churches for use in Russia.With the aid of the tsars, the reformers ultimately had their way, but the Russianchurch lost its autonomyand fell under the controlof the tsar ist autocracy.During the later seven-teenth and eighteenth cen-turies, Peter the Great andCatherine the Great spon-sored the introduction ofwestern European thoughtand educational curriculainto Russia. Cultural ex-changes enlivened Russianintellectual life, but the out-break of the French Revolu-tion prompted Catherine tocurtail her support for west-ern European ideas.

Crisis in the ChurchThe spirit of reform andregulation that inspired offi-cial Russia also influencedchurch leaders, some ofwhom had long wanted torevise liturgy and rituals.They too looked west for in-spiration-not to westernEurope, however, but toOrthodox Greece and east-ern Europe. Ceremony plays

Church Reform

St. Basil's Cathedral , located ju t outside the Kremlin in Moscow,was the most prominent seat of authority in the Russian Orthodoxchurch . Harald Sundz'the Image Bank

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their landholdings because the monasteries, the largest of which even boasted mili-tary fortifications, could serve as bases of operations against them. During periods ofcivil stress, some citadels of faith, such as the Solovestskii monastery, became militaryfortresses. Thus beginning with Ivan III, centralizing tsars sought to appropriatechurch property whenever possible and to increase tsarist authority over the church.

This policy culminated in the reign of Peter the Great, who displaced the patri-arch of Moscow and established a state council that supervised church affairs. Thetsar himself named members to the council and appointed a military officer to over-see the council's work. The tsar also selected bishops for the Russian church and re-quired parish clergy to support the government by reporting criminal, rebellious,treasonous, or otherwise suspicious behavior to state authorities. By the early eigh-teenth century, the tsarist autocracy had effectively turned the Russian church into adepartment of the state government.

Westernization and the Enlightenment in RussiaThe westernizing tsars, Peter and Catherine, added new wrinkles to Russian culturallife by sponsoring the introduction of western European art, literature, and ideas.Impressed by its grace and athleticism, for example, Peter brought in the ballet,which had originated in France but soon took on a vibrant Russian identity thatcontinues to the present day.

His program of westernization also had an educational dimension. Before Peter Educationformal education had been almost a monopoly of the Russian Orthodox church, andapart from monastic schools geared to the preparation of clergy, Russia had no ad-vanced educational institutions. In an effort to establish an alternative tradition ofsecular education, in 1714 Peter created a system of elementary schools that taught

In 1756 Catherine the Great began construction of the Hermitage, shown here, to house her artcollect ion. The Hermitage itself reflects the influence of western European architectural styles, and manyof the items conserved there were works ofFrcnch, Italian, and Dutch artists . Tom TracyjTheStock Market

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EnlightenmentInfluences

The Intelligentsia

The Endof Experimentation

PART V THE ORIGINS OF GLOBAL INTERDEPENDENCE, 1S00-180(

reading, writing, and basic science in Russia's provincial capitals. Ten years later hefounded an academy of sciences that offered advanced instruction along western European lines in mathematics, natural sciences, geography, languages, philosophy, history, economics, and law.

Catherine continued Peter's interest in secular education and in some ways car-ried it further. She sought to expand Peter's elementary schools into a vast networkof primary education that would educate all children except for serfs, and sheopened the first Russian schools for girls. (She initially wanted girls' schools to offerthe same curricula that boys studied, but she later decided that the girls, who madeup about 7 percent of Russia's twenty-two thousand schoolchildren, should learr.homemaking skills.) Her ambitious educational plans had limited results-partly be-cause there were not enough teachers to staff the schools and partly because of aris-tocratic resistance to the extension of formal education to the lower classes. Never-theless, she laid a foundation tor widespread primary education.

Catherine also sponsored the introduction of Enlightenment values in Russia.Where Peter. had looked to western Europe for technology, Catherine looked forphilosophy. She generously subsidized the publications of the French philosophes,and like enlightened despots in Prussia and Austria, she sought to harness the cul-tural forces of the Enlightenment for the benefit of her realm. In a melodramaticgesture intended to demonstrate the benefits of science to an ill-educated populace,she had herself inoculated against smallpox in 1768. By 1800 some two million Rus-sians had followed her example.

With Catherine's encouragement Russian literature flourished. Poets and play-wrights turned a wooden language used in church liturgy and bureaucratic docu-ments into a creative instrument for self-expression. Although at first they simplyimitated western European styles and genres, Russian writers soon developed a liter-ature that captured the experiences of their own society. Like the Enlightenmentphilosophes whom she admired, Catherine appreciated satire and diversity of opin-ion, even when she was the target-although to be sure her critics remained moreguarded than forthright. The empress herself contributed to Russian literary expres-sion by translating a bit of Shakespeare and writing several plays.

Catherine's encouragement of cultural experimentation facilitated the emergenceof an intellectual class known as the intelligentsia. Although the writers and criticswho composed the intelligentsia had no legal status, they enjoyed recognition as anunofficial social estate and worked strenuously to influence public opinion and statepolicy. Their principal means of communication were "thick journals," monthlycompendia with news on the latest developments in science, philosophy, and thearts, which became the principal platforms for political and cultural debate in thelate eighteenth century. Government censors kept a close eye on their contents, butwriters found ways to express provocative views in thick journals by addressing sensi-tive issues indirectly. Many government officials were themselves educated men whofound thick journals intriguing. Even censors, who had to possess university degrees,often found the journals engaging.

The outbreak of the French Revolution brought a speedy end to intellectual andcultural experimentation in Russia. Catherine feared that further efforts at reformmight inspire rebellion, and during her last years she cut her ties with western Euro-pean intellectuals. The policy of westernization lost imperial sponsorship, but ques-tions of relations between Russian and western European societies continued tospark intense debate throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

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,--r-,' ,...'( s grew from a small regional state to a vast continental empire during earlyo rnt}mes. After throwing off Mongol rule, the princes of Moscow founded an

abs L ~ tr state and greatly expanded their realm. Between the late fifteenth and lateeighteenth centuries, the Russian tsars absorbed extensive territories in eastern Eu-rope, central Asia, and northern Asia. While bringing additional resources to thestate, this expansion also led to problems in Russian society. It strained labor re-sources because the Russian population was not large enough to settle and work allthe newly acquired territories, especially in the vast tundras of Siberia. Tsars and no-bles sought to ensure a reliable labor supply by tightening the conditions of serf-dom, which caused deep discontent among the peasantry. Expansion set the stagefor further conflict by encouraging interaction between Russian and western Euro-pean societies. When reforming tsars sought to strengthen Russia by remodeling italong western European lines, they provoked opposition from nobles, merchants,church officials, and others who preferred traditional ways. The tsars actively pro-moted reform from the late seventeenth to the late eighteenth century and, unlikethe rulers of China, Japan, and the Islamic empires, encouraged selective imitationof western European examples. After the outbreak of the French Revolution, how-ever, the tsars feared that further change would spark rebellion. As a result, theysharply limited western European inf1uence in Russia and largely abandoned theprogram of reform.

CHRONOLOGY1462-1505 Reign oflvan III (Ivan the Great)1533-1584 Reign of Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible)1598-1613 The "time of troubles"1610-1917 Romanov dynasty1681 Execution of Avvakum1682-1725 Reign of Peter I (Peter the Great)1700-1722 Great Northern War1702 Founding of St. Petersburg1725-1742 Maritime expeditions ofVitus Bering1762-1795 Reign of Catherine II (Catherine the Great)1773-1774 Pugachev's rebellion

FOR FURTHER READINGPaul Avrich. Russian Rebels, 1600-1800. New York, 1972. A fascinating and spirited account of major

peasant rebellions preceding the revolutionary upheaval of 1917.James H. Billington. The [C01~ and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture. New York, 1966.

A rich, imaginative, and evocative analysis of Russian cultural history in its political context.Robert Crummey. The Formation of Muscovy, 1304-1613. London, 1987. An erudite and measured study,

among the most informative about Russia's transition from feudalism to absolutism.--. Aristocrats and Servitors: The Boyar Elite ill Russia, 1613-1689. Princeton, 1983. A companion

volume to The Formation of Muscovy that examines the construction of a centralized rsarisr state be-fore the reign of Peter the Great.

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720 PART V THE ORIGINS OF GLOBAL INTERDEPENDENCE, lS00-180C

Stephen Frederic Dale. Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600-1750. Cambridge, 1994. Examine!the workings of an Indian trading community that conducted business in Persia, central Asia, aneRussia.

Isabel de Madariaga. Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great. New Haven, 1981. In addition to the biographical insights offered into Catherine's life , this book highlights the larger social , cultural, and po'litical transformations that Russia underwent during her reign.

Paul Dukes. The Making of R1I>'SianAbsolutism, 1613-1801. 2nd ed. London, 1990. A succinct study of twcdisparate centuries, the seventeenth and eighteenth, and two influential tsars, Peter and Catherine.

Richard Hellie. Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy. Chicago, 1971. The most thorough study 01the origins and evolution of serfdom, this book also offers a social history of the military during thepivotal seventeenth century.

Daniel Kaiser and Gary Marker. Reinterpreting Russian History: Readings, 860s-1860s. New York, 1994.This collect ion blends primary sources with secondary works, offering insights into poli tical, sociaLeconomic, and cultural history.

Robert J. Kaiser. The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR. Princeton, 1994. Establishes ahistorical framework for analyzing the many nationalit ies that made up Russia and the USSR.

Michael Khodarkovsky. Where Two Worlds Meet: The Russian State and the Kalmyk Nomads, 1600-1771.Ithaca, 1992. One of the first major studies to look at Russian imperial expansion through the eyes ofcolonized peoples.

Nicholas Riasanovsky. The Image of Peter the Great in Russian History and Thought. Oxford, 1985. Exam-ines the significance of Peter's reputation for relations between Russia and western European societies.

Yuri Slezkine. Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoplesof the North. Ithaca, 1994. Thoughtful analysisof Russian relations with the hunting, fishing, and herding peoples of Siberia.

Ronald Suny. The Making of the Georgian Nation. Bloomington, 1988. Studies Russian absorption of theCaucasus from the perspective of the native Georgians.

David Turnock. The Making of Eastern Europe: From Earliest Times to 1815. New York, 1988. An espe-cial ly useful survey that examines broader movements that affected eastern Europe as a geographicalregion .

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