18b: Rise of the RomanovsIn 1612, Russia stood at a turning point. Ivan the Terrible had spent the first half of his reign building a Russian Empire and the second half tearing it down. The Time of Troubles (1598-1612), which followed the death of Ivan's successor Fyodor, tested the fiber of the new nation in many ways. It offered false Dmitrys, Polish and Swedish invasions, murdered Tsars, class war between peasants and boyars. Yet the Gathering of the Lands begun by Grand Prince Ivan Moneybags turned out to be more than just a land grab. United by their Kievan Rus heritage and held together by the Russian Orthodox Church, the people of Holy Russia rose to the challenge of becoming the Third Rome. When the zemsky sobor met in 1612, there was no question of a democratic, representative government. Russia was ruled by its upper class, but the upper class could not rule itself. When Kievan Rus had disintegrated into a patchwork of appanage principalities, it allowed the Mongols to come in and take over. Russia needed another tsar. The new would need to be conservative in social religious matters; not so dominating that he would overwhelm the boyars but yet strong enough to lead Russia in the right direction. The Zemsky Sobor deliberated long and hard before choosing a candidate acceptable to everyone. This was Mikhail Romanov,16 year old grand-nephew of Ivan the Terrible's first wife Anastasia and son of the Orthodox patriarch Filaret. On February 21, 1613 young Mikhail was elected Tsar, but first he had to be found. This took about a month, since Mikhail's mother argued that the last few Tsars had come to sad ends. Finally Mikhail accepted the zemsky sobor's argument that he alone could save Holy Russia in those troubled times.
On June 22, 1613, Mikhail Romanov was crowned in Moscow as Tsar of All the Russias. He soon signed peace treaties with Sweden (1617) and Poland (1619); the second of these treaties brought home from exile Mikhail's father, the Patriarch Filaret. In his secular life as the boyar Fyodor Nikitich Romanov, Filaret had been considered as a possible successor to the late Tsar Fyodor, but gave way to Boris Godunov. Boris ordered Fyodor Romanov to become the Monk Filaret, driving him into the camp of the False Dmitrys. But eight years in Polish exile had earned Filaret a break. All Russia welcomed him back home in 1619, especially his son Tsar Mikhail. Indeed, most scholars regard Filaret as the quiet senior partner in his son's government. The Zemsky Sobor was now all but ignored. Mikhail and Filaret continued the Muscovite tradition of binding the Russian peasants to the land. Those peasants who could escape fled to the Cossack territory in the south: Russia's version of the American West. The remaining peasants were stuck being serfs - little more than human farm machinery. After Filaret's death died in 1633, Mikhail flailed about on his own, allowing the Zemsky Sobor to meet again, and ttrying to fend off raiding Tatars from the south. His reign was not one of great achievements, but he lived up to the hopes placed in him when he was selected Tsar. He had left Russia in good shape for his son and heir Alexei and successfully founded the Romanov dynasty, which would rule Russia - sometimes well, and sometimes very badly - for the next three centuries. Like his father Mikhail, Tsar Alexei (ruled 1645-1676) was personally devout and leaned heavily upon his advisors for guidance. The first of these, the boyar Boris Morozov, was a faithful public servant who somehow incurred the public's distrust. The Moscow Salt Riots of 1648, in which even the streltsy took the people's side, forced Alexei to exile Morozov and buy back the streltsy's loyalty - much as a Roman emperor might buy that of the Praetorian Guard. The boyars, sensing weakness, basically forced Alexei to grant a legal code called the Ulozhenie. The Ulozhenie consolidated Russia's slaves and free peasants into a new hereditary and unchangeable serf class. The serfs could only be owned by noblemen, but in return for the right to own serfs, noblemenhad to serve in the Tsarist army. The two major military events of Alexei's reign were the Polish War and the Stenka Razin revolt. The Polish War sprang out of Bogdan Khmelnitsky's 1648 Ukrainian Cossack revolt against Polish control. In 1653, with the Zemsky Sobor's consent, Alexei dispatched troops to take as much Polish territory as possible. Meanwhile, the Swedes began fighting with the Ukrainian Cossacks. Desperate for help, the Cossacks signed the treaty of Pereyaslavl in 1654. In return for Russian protection, the Cossacks acknowledged Russian overlordship over Ukraine. Interestingly, Russia and Ukraine are still disputing the meaning of this treaty! In 1656, Alexei declared war on Sweden. Seizing the the opportunity to regroup, Poland attacked Russia. Finally, in 1670, the three warring powers finally made peace. Russia had come out ahead on territory but the Russian peasants were tired of conscription and heavy taxes. They responded gladly 1670 to Stenka Razin's call for a peasant uprising. In fact, Razin's promises of a Russia ruled by Cossack ideals of personal liberty even found support in cities like Great Novgorod and Moscow itself. The result was inevitable. Razin's supporters either melted away or turned on him, and in April 1671 he was drawn and quartered at the Lobnoe Mesto (Place of Proclamations) on Red Square. Oddly enough, Russians today remember Stenka Razin better than they do Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. The biggest shakeup of Alexei's reign occurred within the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1651 the Metropolitan Nikon became Alexei's main advisor in matters spritual and temporal; this itself was not strange given Tsar Mikhail's close working relationship with Patriarch Filaret. Elevated in 1652 to Patriarch of Moscow, Nikon wanted to bring the Russian Orthodox Church back into line with the good old-time Greek Orthodox religion. Granted, the Russian Orthodox Church had evolved some rather unique ideas of its own over the six centuries since St. Vladimir had adopted it. But it's not unusual for religions to adapt to their believers' sustoms. In 1653 Nikon decided to restore all authentic Greek Orthodox practices. From that point on, for instance, the sign of the cross was to be made with not two fingers, but three (as in other Orthodox countries). The name of the Savior was no longer to be spelled "Isus" but as "Iisus." And so on. Most Russian Orthodox believers resented the changes - why should the Third Rome go back to Greek traditions? Many fought the reforms bitterly: sometimes, to the death. Even after Nikon's fall from grace in 1558, the Church Council maintained that the changes were necessary. In 1667, those who believed in the old customs were formally excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church and forbidden to have priests. Many such "Old Believers" fled or were exiled to other countries, and some even sealed themselves up in their homes or churches and burned themselves to death. Russia, however, was merely on the verge of far more radical change.
18a: Turn and Face the Strange
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18c: Peter the Great
18d: Russia as European Power
18e: Conclusions
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