The Most Holy Tsar Alexis is one of the great examples of the “balancing” power of monarchy. Highly gifted, pious and fair, Alexis was the real force that brought Russia again to great power status after the Time of Troubles. The personal favorite Tsar of Nicholas II, Alexis personality and ideas on state and government maintained the public trust in royal institutions and the truly sacerdotal nature of Russian monarchy.
Alexis was focused largely on foreign affairs through his reign. Inheriting a prostrate, but increasingly prosperous country from his father Michael, Alexis looked outwardly, as his grandfather Filaret did, both for assistance as well as necessity.
Domestically, Alexis eliminated many superfluous government departments (specifically those connected with the royal household) and did all in his power to slash state expenditures. As he inherited the throne at a young age, he was placed under the tutelage of a boyar named Boris Morozov. Always unpopular with the common population, this association with the boyarin led to certain disturbances with the population of Moscow. The most important of these is called the “Salt Riot(s)” of 1648.
The Salt Riot was triggered by Morozov’s ideas concerning taxation. Two issues were involved: firstly, the attempt to collect unpaid taxes since 1644, but an attempt to collect them using force, and demanding that the arrears be paid in an entire lump sum. The second issue was the attempt to raise revenue by placing a heavy tax on salt, one of the most important commodities in Russia at this time. In addition, state finances also caused the co called “copper riots” of 1662, in which inflation, depreciation of the currency and other related issues caused another riot in Moscow. The reality was the rebuilding of Russia was becoming expensive, and involved the state in practices that it otherwise would not have effected.
These two riots were closely related, though occurring some years apart. They are significant for they tell much about the Russian sense of justice, and about basic political moods and ideas of the common Russian population. In both cases, the riots occurred due to what was considered illegitimate means of dealing with the legacy of the Troubles. In other words, Michael, for all the good he did, did not live long enough to fully solve this unfortunate legacy. Therefore, it was left to Alexis to finish this unenviable job.
There were only so many ways the state could meet its needs. Unlike modern states, medieval states simply did not have the coercive powers over its population it may have wanted. For all the pious claptrap about medieval states being “tyrannies,” any historian worth his salt (so to speak) realizes that in terms of the coercive abilities the state could bring to bear on the population, the medieval era is far inferior to modern states. The sloganeering about “liberal democracy” is a convenient smokescreen for the real tyranny of modernity. Alexis did not have an IRS, an FBI, a KGB, a massive standing army, a bevy of hidden cameras in nearly every institution and every intersection, a police force trained in riot tactics, a social security administration that can track each and every citizen, credit card trails, cell phone trails, or any other means to control, track and coerce the population. Only modern regimes have this. The fact that “liberal democracy” goes hand in hand with this sort of surveillance and control truly shows the complete lack of critical ability among the American talking/academic class.
Even in terms of the state, there is no comparison from medieval monarchy in relation to modern democracies. Medieval states were tiny in comparison. The medieval Russian state was based around the Tsar and his servitors, taken from the various strata of the boyarin. They were placed in charge of groups of clerks who kept records concerning military or fiscal affairs. The state itself was merely an enlarged version of the Tsar’s household administration. Overwhelmingly, it was concerned with taxes and foreign/military affairs. There is very little else to say about Medieval states. Of course, modern democracies regulate even the most minute aspects of personal and social life, where a single phone call from an irate neighbor can being the IRS or CPS; medieval states were ruled by ancient custom. In Russia, the state was invisible to the overwhelming majority of the population, who were ruled either by the artel (the urban guild) or the commune (the rural community).
Regardless, both riots were aimed primarily against the oligarchy. Muscovites were purely royalist in both the positive and negative sense. In a positive sense, they were monarchists because they truly believed that the tsar was related to them as a pastor is related to a church. Given the plentitude of political power (such as it was conceived at the time), there is little else he needed, and therefore, his job was to dispense justice. In a negative sense, the tsar was considered the bulwark against the rapaciousness of the boyarin. Overwhelmingly, the Russian monarchs of the medieval period were successful in fulfilling both sets of expectations.
In both cases, the tsar was considered the victim of grasping oligarchs. They accused the boyarin of gaining the trust of the most holy prince, and then using this trust to enrich themselves. Most likely, they were right. Nevertheless, in both cases, the population received their demands, and the offending parties were removed.
After the salt riots, Alexis called the Council of the Land (zemskii sobor) to consider the governments fiscal programs and methods of taxation. As a result of this the boyarin were removed, and a set of nobles of a humbler scale were included in the ruling body. This shows the rather substantial accountability of royal government. The population were justly upset over heavy handed tax collection techniques; they demonstrated, and a representative assembly was called to consider their grievances. In democracies, tax collection is far more heavy handed, where every minute aspect of one’s financial life is scrutinized by an army of “civil servants.” Complaints are often met with audits and, on occasion, threats from the BATF forces. By contrast, during the salt riot, the streltsy sided with the people.
Alexis faced a population that had still not reached the pre-Troubles level in terms of wealth, and, unfortunately, the tsar and the council were forced to strengthen the institution of serfdom in order to ensure a stronger tax base. Placed in layman’s terms, this meant that the peasant could not leave the land (or more accurately, the commune) he worked. He was officially bound to the commune and under the taxing authority of the landlord, who was a civil servant. He was not a slave, and was treated no differently than he was previously. Furthermore, shifting from one commune to another was a comparatively rare occurrence regardless (except during the troubles), but it ensured a steady supply of labor as well as more predicable taxes. Peasants were legally bound to the land/commune, not to the landlord, though in practice, it meant the same thing.
In the realm of foreign affairs, Alexis was tsar during what many would say is the birth of modern Ukraine, and its conception was the hetman Bogdan Khmelnitskii. The Cossacks (Kazaks) were the heroes of South Russia/Ukraine. The Cossacks were a freebooting group whose origins lay with the Mongol invasions. The Cossacks occupied the plain (steppe) of the extreme southwest of Russia, and acted as guards against Islamic expansionism. Cossacks were an “order” of fighters dedicated to the protection of the Orthodox church and the proper treatment of Orthodox Slavs in both Polish and Turkish lands.
The Cossack forces in southern Russia felt squeezed between three empires: the Turk, Russian and Polish. As a result, their militancy became sharper. The perennially free Cossack forces chafed at the encroachment of empire and its civilization, but more specifically, Khmelnitskii chafed under the arrogance of Polish landlordism. Once major magnates sought to expropriate land from the “schismatics,” and petitions to the toothless Polish monarch went unanswered, years of humiliation and second class status finally came to head at the Khmelnitskii rebellion of 1648.
The Polish landlord class had developed the reputation as the most rapacious in Europe. Without a strong monarch to control their greed, Poland became an institutional oligarchy. Making matters worse, The Polish landlords used Jewish middle-men in dealing with the Ukrainians, since the Talmud forbids (or strongly discourages) their working the land (cf. Yebamoth 63a), the major occupations then open were as merchants, tavern keepers and “accountants” to Polish lords. As a result, Polish rapaciousness was matched by the Jewish, and therefore, both groups became targets of Cossack rage.
The Tartars became quick allies of the Cossacks and joined their battle against Poland. At the death of Vladislas, Poland was placed in turmoil, and any coherent military leadership was non-existent. The Cossack forces went from victory to victory, though, when possible, the Polish landlords would engage in savage reprisals against Orthodox villagers. Finally, the Polish oligarchy elected the relatively unpopular but militarily competent Jan II Casmir as monarch and military leader of the Polish forces. The Poles needed to deal with the Cossack and Tartar forces as organized units, as well as the disorganized but spontaneous peasant uprisings against Polish landlords throughout western Ukraine and Ruthenia. It did not take long before a small uprising of a Cossack aristocrat became a major national war of liberation. However, a well placed bribe to split the Tartars from Khmelnitskii led to major Cossack defeats.
The losing of steam of the rebellion and the unreliability of the Tartars forced Bogdan to approach Alexis for assistance. Khmelnitskii made it clear that either he received help fro Russia, or he would go to the Turks for assistance. Overwhelmingly, the rank and file Cossacks supported the union with Alexis, and the Russo-Polish war began. Major victories for the Russian forces permitted them to retake the ancient Russian cities of Smolensk, Lv’iv and Brest. Poland was in disarray and its military forces, under the influence of feuding landlords, ineffective. In 1655, King Charles X of Sweden invaded Poland both to control Russian advances as well as to pick the bones of a now prostrate Poland.
By 1660, Poland was able to make peace with Sweden, and the new Cossack hetman, Yuhum Somko, was leaning to Poland. The Treaty of Andrusovo in 1667 ended hostilities with Tsar Alexis and Russia clearly emerging the victor, having penetrated westwards and attempting to unify the other two Orthodox Slavic peoples of the east, the White Russians and the Little Russians (Ukraine).
Nevertheless, a few issues need to be dealt with. Firstly, the Polish state was becoming more and more irrelevant given it oligarchic constitution. Secondly, the Cossacks were split after the death of Khmelnitskii, split between the landowners, who sided with Russia or Poland, and the “naked” or newly recruited Cossacks, who sought an alliance with Turkey (though this division can be taken too far). Thirdly, Alexis, though victorious, was even worse off than he was before financially, with inflation and the “copper riots” continuing to strain the resources of the already struggling state. From the victories of Alexis and its high cost, the rebellion of “Stenka” Razin was one of the results.
Razin’s rebellion lasted from 1670 to 1671. It was based on Cossack discontent, high taxes and the costs of the war against Poland and Sweden. A competent military commander, Razin was a Don Cossack, considered highly religious, who did not consider Alexis to be the “popular tsar” the common population expected. He sought the destruction of serfdom, redistribution of the land, and a return to the Old Belief (see next lecture). He became the head of a “robber gang” that exacted tolls on the Volga to Astrakhan (his base for a time) and sought to create an Orthodox republic. Sending proclamations throughout the trading cities of southern Russia, Razin perpetrated massacres and pillaging throughout the region. Like all of these rebellions, he was plagued by a lack of discipline. His forces were based around the Cossack core, but his infantry were peasants, townsmen and non-Russians from the extreme south who were no match for Alexis’ forces. By the end of 1671 he was captured, but his vision of Russian remained the central core of populism to the present day.
The major accomplishments of Alexis were not negligible, however, and they included:
His failures were also serious,
You speak in glowing terms about Alexis, and then proceed to speak of all the discontent surrounding him. Am I missing something?
Apparently, you are. Russia had just gone through a trauma. She lost a larger portion of her population, fought wars on numerous fronts (Poland, Turkey, Sweden), saw its capital occupied and numerous phony tsars placed on the throne. and had gone broke in the process. Academic treatments of contemporary Russia, including that from the airheads Barbara Skinner and Wendy Slater, piously condemn Orthodox nationalism in Russia, refusing to deal with the fact that this is a response to the slaughter of millions of Russians over the 72 years of Marxist occupation. Russians have suffered like no other people, and to organize for self defense is a natural and normal response to genocide.
In Alexis’ case, it was no different. After the severe sufferings of the troubles, the state could barely finance itself. Tax collections were difficult on a strapped population, and therefore, there is bound to be serious political turmoil. Need I remind you that the modern democracy of Northern Ireland sees sectarian riots every single weekend? That the “democracies” of Latin America a generation ago were unable to get a hold over inflation? Given the reality of Russian life under Alexis, it is shocking that the turmoil was as minor as it was.