RUS Lecture 3

The Romanov dynasty owed its legitimacy to a tenuous connection (Mikhail was the grand-nephew by marriage of [Ivan Grozny] to the Rurikids, but lasted more than 300 years. Mikhail (1613-1345) was not a strong, involved leader; he was guided by his father, [Patriarch Filaret] for most of his reign. His successor Aleksei (1645-1678) was similarly inclined, relying on a handful of statesmanlike [boyars] Although Aleksei's reign was marked by the legalization of serfdom (1649), the schism of the [Old Believers] (1654), and the peasant revolt of Stenka Razin (1670), order was maintained. Further, a measure of stability was brought to Russia's western borders with the annexation of Ukraine in 1654 and treaties with Poland and Sweden.




Peter The Great was crowned co-Tsar in 1682 at the age of ten, at seventeen he successfully deposed his sister, the Regent Sophia, and became Tsar in his own right in 1696. By the time of his death in 1725, he had so thoroughly changed Russia that its history is often divided into "Petrine," "pre-Petrine," and "post-Petrine" times.

Peter was a warrior, and fought many battles on land and sea to extend the boundaries of his Empire. He captured (but was not able to keep) the Black Sea port of Azov in 1696; to enlist allies for a projected war against the Ottoman Empire he made a most excellent trip through Europe. He returned suddenly in 1698 to put down a revolt of the Streltsy or "shooters," which comprised the tsar's bodyguard and from then on sought to cast Russia in his own image: energetic, martial, and extremely Westernized. Beards were shaved off, caftans shortened, Germans and French and Dutch and English emulated, snuff sniffed, the Orthodox Church formally subordinated to the state, a list of Western ranks drawn up and imposed on the boyars, young Russians sent off to the West to study, and a government bureaucracy was drawn up on European lines.

But the key to Westernizing Russia could only be attained through war. Russia desperately needed a warm-water port on the Baltic Sea. This had been the goal of Ivan Grozny's inconclusive wars with Sweden over Livonia, and this put Peter on a collision course with his nemesis, Charles XII of Sweden. After a series of setbacks, Peter was able to begin in 1703 the building of his "window to Europe" - the city of Saint Petersburg. In 1712, it became the capital of Russia, and in 1721 Peter had himself declared imperator.

Like Augustus, Peter was a mix of visionary and bully. From his time on, Russia would maintain a modern military, a reasonably efficient government, and an entirely global outlook. Industry, education, and the arts made great strides under his reign. But his contributions came at a tremendous moral and physical cost. Tens of thousands of Russians died in Peter's wars and his building projects; the Orthodox Church, along with many other uniquely Russian institutions, never fully recovered from his zealous reforms. He even had his own son, the Tsarevich Aleksei, killed for supposedly conspiring against him. He left the throne to his beloved second wife, a former camp follower known to history as [Catherine The First] - thereby virtually ensuring years of anarchy.

Catherine The Great was born a poor German child in 1729, and was named Sophia by her down-on-their-luck noble parents. At age 14 she was betrothed to [Peter III], last surviving male descendant of Peter The Great. When she converted to the Russian Orthodox faith, she took the name Yekaterina, or "Catherine." They married in 1745, and their son Paul I was born in 1754. Peter III ascended to the throne upon Elizabeth Petrovna's death in 1761 and proceeded to ally himself (and therefore Russia) with his beloved Germany. This resulted in a 1762 coup d'etat which placed Catherine in power. A fervent imperialist, she added to the Russian empire the shocking pink territory on the map below. But she accomplished far more than that.

Catherine became the most powerful sovereign in Central Europe. She founded academies, journals, and libraries, and corresponded with the French Encyclopedists, including Voltaire, Diderot, and d'Alembert. In this way she laid the foundations for the Russian [intelligentsia]. Building on Peter's reforms of the Russian state, she further increased central control over the provinces. A remarkable diplomat in an age of remarkable diplomacy, she drastically increased her empire's boundaries, achieving a boundary with Prussia and Austria to the west, reaching Crimea and the Black Sea on the south, and Sakhalin Island to the east.

For all of her intellectual accomplishments and liberal instincts, however, Catherine became increasingly conservative throughout her reign. Faced with a choice between her philosophical beliefs and her responsibility for maintaining order in the Russian Empire, she chose her country. The brutality with which she suppressed the Pugachev rebellion of  1773-1774 demonstrated how seriously she took this duty. The [French Revolution] of 1789 caused her to become even more repressive, although she did not apparently consider intervention a possibility.