The Russian Empire in the Eighteenth Century: Tradition and Modernization

Tradition and Modernization

Aleksandr Kamenskii, David Griffiths

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317454694
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Russia's 18th-century drive toward modernity and empire under the two "greats" - Peter I and Catherine II - is captured in this work by one of Russia's outstanding young historians. The author develops three themes: Russia's relationship to the West; the transformation of "Holy Russia" into a multinational empire; and the effects of efforts to modernize Russia selectively along Western lines. Writing in a clear, crisp style, Kamenskii enlivens the narrative with observations from contemporary literary figures and political commentators that point up the lasting significance of the events he describes.

Chapter 1

The Third Rome on the Eve of the Petrine Reforms

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“The need to pursue a new path was recognized, the necessity to do so was defined: the people bestirred themselves and intended to take the path; but they awaited something; they awaited a leader; the leader appeared.” This was how the great nineteenth-century Russian historian Sergei Soloviev described Russia’s situation on the eve of the Petrine reforms.¹ In order to understand the thought behind these words, let us look still further back into the past to ascertain just what Russia was like in the seventeenth century, and why change became not only possible but necessary.

It has long been accepted wisdom in Russian historiography to divide the history of prerevolutionary Russia into two periods: the Muscovite and the Petersburg. Many historians still employ the term “Muscovite Rus” to denote the state of which Moscow was the capital and which existed up to the reforms of Peter the Great, only to disappear in the course of its transformation. It is assumed that Moscow, among a number of towns of northeastern Rus, was founded by Iurii Dolgorukii, the Prince of Rostov, in approximately 1147. The town was remote from Rostov, not to mention Kiev, which was then the center of the state. Soon, however, Kievan Rus fragmented into a number of petty principalities, which were conquered a few decades later by nomadic hordes from the East. Tatar-Mongol rule was imposed. Beginning with the mid-thirteenth century, the historical fates of northeastern and southwestern Rus began to diverge, and by the beginning of the next century Moscow had become one of the centers of the emerging nation’s political life.

Historians frequently debate why the Russian nation coalesced around Moscow. They mention its remoteness from the Golden Horde, the fact that it was located at the crossroads of important trade routes, and the administrative talents of the Muscovite princes. As is usual in such circumstances, each explanation is partially correct, since a combination of favorable circumstances obviously contributed to the emergence of Moscow. In the course of the fourteenth century, the Muscovite princes steadily expanded their domains, triumphing over their rivals, and all the while becoming more independent of the Tatar khans.

The question of the impact of the Tatar-Mongol yoke on Russia likewise has attracted the attention of several generations of historians, and continues to elicit debate. Most agree that Tatar-Mongol rule dealt a crushing blow to the emerging nation’s economic life and significantly retarded Russia’s social and political development. Many have found the source of Russian backwardness in comparison with the West in the two centuries of Tatar occupation and accompanying death and destruction. While some historians see the yoke as an alien imposition against which the Russian people were forced to struggle for two centuries, others see the Golden Horde’s influence as the source of Russian despotism and totalitarianism. The latter point out that Muscovite Rus borrowed taxation and principles of military organization from the Tatars as well as the pattern of social relations associated with them. For these reasons the Russian émigré historian George Vernadsky saw Muscovite Rus as the direct heir to the Golden Horde.²

Still other scholars maintain that both the extent of the devastation and the burden of the Tatar-Mongol yoke have been greatly exaggerated. Lev Gumilev, one of the most interesting twentieth-century observers of Russian history, has argued that in terms of the damage it inflicted, Khan Batu’s military campaign was consonant with the internecine warfare endemic to those unruly times.³ Historians of this school point out that the conquerors did not infringe on the national traditions and cultural values of the Russian people; they did not destroy churches and monasteries aimlessly. Their relations with those they conquered were based on the vassal-suzerain foundations prevalent in medieval times. Just as the appanage princes formerly had recognized the seniority of the Kievan prince, they now readily accepted their position as vassals of the khan of the Golden Horde, whom they addressed as “tsar.” They did not scruple to take advantage of links to his court, including matrimonial ties, to settle old scores with their political enemies. The proponents of this interpretation, minimizing in every way possible the negative impact of the Tatar-Mongol conquest, emphasize that it was a lesser evil than Roman Catholic influence, for it allowed Russia to preserve its own religion, and therefore its culture.*

Because it seems obvious today that the profound influence of Mongol domination upon Russian development can no longer be denied, I have not devoted much space to this question in my book.⁴ Suffice it to say that the Mongol conquest was an important landmark in Russian history: The difference between Kievan Rus and Muscovite Rus was, as Gumilev accurately noted, at least as great as that between the Rome of the caesars and the Rome of the popes, affecting not only the overall culture but morals and customs as well.⁵ But where did these morals and customs come from? It is worth dwelling on this question just a bit, for the factors that contributed to the appearance of these morals continued to exist until the eighteenth century and even beyond.

Granted, both destructive internecine warfare and devastating nomadic raids were common occurrences in Rus even prior to the Mongol conquest. In instances of internecine warfare, however, one or another Russian principality had always emerged the victor. And an indisputably more powerful Rus had always succeeded in defending itself against nomadic raids. These events were, as a rule, strictly local in character. But this time, nearly all the territory of Rus was conquered by invaders. The Mongol conquest was not confined to a relatively small number of towns that were burned to the ground, as Gumilev would have us believe, but rather extended to the largest and most important of them. Even granted that towns made of wood could be rebuilt relatively quickly, that the Tatars did not even bother to station garrisons in those towns that remained intact after having surrendered without a struggle, and that the inhabitants of those that resisted frequently managed to flee to the woods and wait there until it was safe to return to the smoldering ruins, still it was one thing to rebuild several small towns that had been burned to the ground and another entirely to rebuild dozens of large towns. A town that put up any resistance to the invaders was put to the torch, and the entire male population capable of bearing arms perished with it in the flames. Even in the best of cases, only women, children, and old men managed to save themselves. Even a town that placed itself at the mercy of the invaders would be thoroughly sacked before they departed, carrying with them all its agricultural stores. I find no evidence to support denials of Russia’s devastation by the Mongols. One of the conquest’s most important consequences clearly was the destruction of those still weak economic ties that bound together the individual Russian lands. It is no coincidence that Russian artisans in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries sought work in Karakorum, the capital of Mongolia; understandably, there was no market at all for their goods in their homeland.

The Mongol invasion also had political consequences. The towns that were destroyed were rebuilt in what was in effect a different country and under different sociopolitical circumstances. At one time, Russian princes themselves had launched distant campaigns of conquest, reaching the very walls of Constantinople. Now Prince Alexander Nevskii, after defeating the Swedes in 1240 and the Swordbearers of the Teutonic Order two years later, had to kowtow before the khan in order to obtain a charter to rule his own principality. It is quite clear that Rus’s international importance had declined precipitously and that the country would be excluded from international politics for years to come.

The impact of the Mongol yoke on the development of Kievan Rus’s sociopolitical arrangements was even greater. According to most historians, the old Russian state had developed along the same lines as other European nations, on the whole. The question is merely one of Kievan Rus’s stage of development, or, more specifically, whether it harbored feudal relations prior to the conquest. I would suggest that certain conclusions can be drawn from simple logical deduction, without resorting to a detailed analysis of the nature of one or another institution or the pattern of social relations.

As we know, the old Russian state had taken shape by the end of the ninth century. By this time, statehood in Western Europe had already enjoyed a long history, while the pattern of its social relations, too, had assumed many of its characteristic features—features that certain scholars of Kievan Rus assiduously and unsuccessfully seek in that state. By the time Christianity finally took root and a culture based on literacy began to spread in Rus, Western Europe already had a tradition not only of religious but also of secular literature and historical writing. Several centuries were to elapse between the compilation of the so-called barbarian law of Western Europe and the Russkaia pravda, or Russian Law Code, the first Russian codification of the laws known to us.

Was it possible for a developed pattern of feudal relations similar to that of Western Europe to arise in Rus simultaneously with the appearance of the state?* The posing of such a question is by definition ahistorical, for in order to do so Rus would have had to pass through specific stages of development, and that required time.

The Petersburg historian I.Ia. Froianov has concluded that at the peak of Kievan Rus’s development, large-scale landholding was but poorly developed and feudal relations had barely begun to take root, while the charters of judicial and financial immunity granted by the princes exhibited the character of “prefeudal arrangements.”⁶ This line of argument brought down upon its author a steady stream of invective from official Soviet historians. But even if one attempts to find some sort of golden mean between Froianov’s position and that of his critics, we are still faced with a significant lag in the level of historical development of Rus as compared with its West European counterparts. This lag cannot of course be measured in miles or in kilometers, much less in units of time. What is important to note is that at the time of the conquest, Rus’s political structure was still in its formative stages, and therefore fragile. Hence, the direction of its development could be easily altered. We might also note that after the conquest, when the grand prince was in reality appointed by the khan, conditions for the appearance of classical feudal immunities, seigniories, and the like were hardly propitious. Although the Muscovite principality increased in strength so greatly by the fourteenth century that the crown had in effect become hereditary, it was still a new state and only beginning to create its own political traditions.

One more extremely important factor deserves mention. It has long been assumed in our historical literature that the aristocracy served to inhibit despotism. In ancient Rus, where relations between the prince and his retinue preserved to a significant degree the elements of communal democracy, such an aristocracy did not yet exist. Granted, the social stratum out of which such an aristocracy might have emerged under favorable conditions did exist. But it was precisely this stratum of the population, according to V.B. Kobrin, that was obliterated during the Mongol conquest.⁷ Hence, the Muscovite state’s aristocracy had to emerge anew from those strata of the population that had previously been situated at lower rungs of the social ladder. The psychology of this new aristocracy’s members and their relations with princely power were different from those of the old aristocracy. On the other hand, the institution of princely power had not been destroyed by the Mongol conquest, but on the contrary had been strengthened.

If the prince previously had been “first among equals” within his military retinue,⁸ just as the West European kings of early medieval times were first among their knights, now he was elevated above those around him by the will of the khan, his suzerain. The iarlyk, or charter, granted the prince by the khan changed the former’s juridical status, transforming him into the khan’s commander-in-chief within a specified territory. By the time a complement of prominent families had appeared, from which a ruling elite, the privileged stratum of the new state, might be formed, the institution of princely power was already well developed and independent enough to assert its authority. Pretenders to the status of aristocrats, on the other hand, found themselves more dependent on the prince than would have been the case had the institution of princely power and the aristocracy arisen simultaneously.*

A unified Muscovite state took shape in the midst of its princes’ fierce struggle to annex neighboring principalities. Every one of those principalities had its prince with his court—the “great servitors,” as the boyars were traditionally termed. Each prince considered the principality his votchina, or allodial landholding: that is, hereditary property conquered by his forefathers.* But the boyars also possessed allodial estates. They enjoyed certain immunities, chiefly judicial and fiscal, on their lands. Just how highly developed boyar landholding was is unknown, for very few sources dating from before the mid-fifteenth century have been preserved.⁹ Feudal immunity was also limited in character, for it had to be confirmed by a princely charter. In case of disgrace, allodial estates could be confiscated, as happened, for example, with the Muscovite boyar A.P. Khvost in the middle of the fourteenth century. At the end of the fifteenth century, Ivan III, the grand prince of Moscow, and then his son Vasilii III confiscated without hesitation the allodial estates of dozens of Novgorodian and Pskovian boyars and deported whole clans to other regions of the country.

Moreover, the concept of the allodial landholding, as Danilova has demonstrated, signified at that time not only a landed possession but inheritable property (in the form of land, a right to the princely title where appropriate, or even an administrative position). Insofar as the boyars were concerned, princely power was the sole source of allodial estates. Princely landholding, moreover, was more widespread than any other, and therefore the boyars’ chief source of income was not landed possessions but provincial and district maintenance: that is, the income derived by boyars at the local level from governing territories assigned to them.¹⁰ If we add to this the absence of special legislation dealing with the rights of possessors of allodial estates, it becomes clear that it would be stretching the point greatly to speak of the existence of the right of private property in land in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Russia.**

At first, the boyars formally held the right to serve the prince of their choice, even if their allodial estates were located in other principalities. Early on, however, the concept of treason emerged to undermine this right. In 1375, the boyar Ivan Veliaminov departed from Moscow for Tver, to an enemy of the Muscovite prince, only to be captured four years later and publicly executed. From the middle of the fifteenth century on, when the formation of the unified state entered its final stage, the boyars lost their right of departure from the prince altogether. Given the fierce conflict between proponents and opponents of centralization, the Muscovite princes accepted into their service their opponents’ “free servitors,” as well as the appanage princes and Tatar and Lithuanian princes. Unwilling to take any chances, the Muscovite princes extracted oaths of loyalty from them all, sworn not only in their own names but also those of their posterity. From that time on in Russia, the avoidance of state service, not to mention the expression of a desire to emigrate, was considered treason.

In addition to the former ruling princes and boyar landholders who entered the Muscovite prince’s service, we find large numbers of landless people who received land from the grand prince on conditional tenure, as a form of reward for service. The latter’s dependence on princely power was, naturally, even greater than that of the former. The more dependent a given stratum of the population, the more useful it would be to the prince as a pillar of support. It is therefore understandable that the state had to strive to transform the greatest possible number of free allodial landholders into dependent “servitors.” On the other hand, the state itself, the princely power, depended on those who provided it with social and military support. When rewarding the service person with payment in the form of “inhabited property” (the term, meaning landed property together with the peasants who worked it, dates from a later time), the state had to guarantee a steady flow of revenue from these estates, sufficient first of all for him to subsist, and secondly to render his service obligation possible. But income depended on peasants. If they were allowed to move around freely, the state could not guarantee a stable income for conditional, or even allodial, landholders. Thus, the peasants gradually became attached to the land, or enserfed, a process compl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Author’s Note
• Translator’s Note
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Third Rome on the Eve of the Petrine Reforms
• Chapter 2: The Birth of the Great Reformer
• Chapter 3: The Origins of Empire
• Chapter 4: “The Era of Palace Revolutions”
• Chapter 5: “You Know Whose Daughter I Am”
• Chapter 6: The Age of Catherine the Great
• Chapter 7: The Empire Advances
• Chapter 8: “He Wanted to Be an Ivan IV”
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Index