RUSSIA 



45 





him as her son, and when Boris Godunoff 

 suddenly died at this juncture, Dmitri was pro- 

 claimed tsar; he was received as such at Mos- 

 cow, and crowned (1605). He returned to the 

 peasants the freedom they had lost under God- 

 unoff; but the people of Russia did not find in him 

 the Russian tsar they expected to find. He was a 

 mere instrument in the hands of the Poles, he 

 married a Pole, and his Polish garrison exasperated 

 the people of Moscow. A revolt headed by Prince 

 Vassili Shouisky (1606-10) broke out. The impos- 

 tor was murdered, and Shouisky proclaimed tsar by 

 the boyars. But Russia did not recognise him. 

 New impostors appeared and were supported by 

 the revolted peasants, while bands of runaway 

 peasants who had gathered during the preceding 

 decades on the banks of the Don and Dnieper 

 under the name of Cossacks ( 'free men '), in- 

 vaded Russia, devastating the provinces, and 

 robbing the nobles, the towns, and the wealthier 

 peasants. Sigismund of Poland, taking advantage 

 of the confusion, invaded Russia, and with the 

 consent of the Moscow boyars proclaimed his son 

 Vladislav tsar ; but he preferred to have Russia for 

 himself, and took possession of Moscow (1610). 

 Shouisky was taken to Poland, where he died in a 

 prison. 



All this would appear difficult to explain, unless 

 the following lie taken into account. Russia by 

 that time was receiving western civilisation from 

 Poland, and the boyars were the first to accept it 

 in appearance, imitating the extravagant lire of 

 the Polish nobles, ruining the peasantry, and aim- 

 ing at an oligarchy of nobles such as they saw in 

 Poland. The great rising of the people of Russia, 

 which began in 1601 under the banner of the false 

 Dmitri, and continued during the next eleven 

 years, was a rising of the toiling masses and small 

 traders against the boyars. But this rising had, at 

 the same time, opened Russia to Polish invasion, 

 and left the whole territory landlords and peasants 

 alike at the mercy of predatory gangs of Cossack 

 and Polish robbers. A reaction was inevitable, 

 and it came from the cities supported by the church. 

 A cattle-trader of Nijni-N'ovgorod, Minin, aroused 

 his fellow-citizens to march for the delivery of 

 Moscow, which was held by the Poles and besieged 

 by the Cossacks. The same movement took place 

 in all Russian cities, and their folkmotes (vetrhe) 

 entered into agreements to levy militias and unite 

 them into one army, and convoked a 'General 

 Council of the Land,' composed of representatives 

 of all classes, at Yaroslavl. Under the leadership 

 of Prince Pojarskiy and Lapnnoff they retook 

 Moscow, drove the Poles out of Russia, and the 

 council (Sobor), now moving to Moscow, was urged 

 to elect a tsar. The boyars were inclined to elect 

 a Swedish or Polish prince, but the lower orders 

 anil the clergy opposed this, and the Sobor elected 

 Mikhael Romanoff ( 1612-45). The boyars finally 

 acquiesced in the hope of maintaining the power 

 under a sixteen years' old tsar ; but the Sobor re- 

 mained quasi-permanent at Moscow during the 

 fir*t ten years of Mikhael's reign, and all decisions 

 were issued conjointly in the name of the tsar and 

 of the Sobor, Mikhael Romanoff belonged to a 

 family (the ancestors of which had emigrated in 

 olden times from Prussia) which was very popular 

 now in Itussia. His father, the Rostoff metro- 

 politan Philarete, who had been sent as an envoy 

 to Poland, was kept imprisoned by the Poles; his 

 uncles had died in prisons under Boris Godunoff; 

 and his grandmother, who was the first wife of 

 Ivan IV., had left a very good memory behind 

 her. 



The first years of the reign of Mikhael Romanoff 

 were characterised by a general movement on the 

 part of the Russian towns to crush the peasants' 



insurrection and to extirpate the bands of robbers. 

 Peace was obtained from Gustavus Adolphus of 

 Sweden by abandoning Schliisselburg ; but the war 

 against Poland continued, notwithstanding a short 

 armistice. The states-general convoked again 

 (1632 and 1642), freely voted fresh subsidies, but 

 no success was obtained, and the very existence 

 of Russia was menaced when the revolts of the 

 Cossacks of the Dnieper against the Polish nobles 

 changed the face of affairs in favour of Russia. 



Under Mikhael's son Alexei (1645-76) the work 

 of modelling Russia into a state continued, and 

 the local administration was entirely reformed. 

 But the revolts of the people began anew, especially 

 since serfdom was enforced by the law elaborated 

 by the states-general of 1648, and the first half of 

 Alexei's reign was marked by a series of popular 

 revolts at Moscow, Nijni, Pskov, and finally in 

 south-east Russia, under Stenko-Razin, when the 

 runaway serfs and the free Cossacks of the Volga 

 rose fiercely against Russia, hanging the landlords, 

 and aiming at 'settling their accounts with the 

 boyars in the Kreml itself.' At the same time 

 canie the great disruption (raskol) in the church. 

 The patriarch Nikon was striving to acquire in the 

 East the same supremacy as the pope had in the 

 West. Being himself one of the richest serf-owners 

 in Russia, he made a display of extravagant luxury 

 in his life ; he surrounded himself with a kind of 

 ecclesiastical court which plundered the lower 

 clergjy ; he built under Moscow a ' New Jerusalem,' 

 and in processions went preceded by a ' Latin cross' 

 (with one cross-bar only) like the pope. In short, 

 he was considered 'Latin' (i.e. Polish) in all his 

 arrogant behaviour. His attempt at completing 

 the already undertaken revision of the sacred 

 books, into which many errors had crept through 

 illiterate copyists, became the signal of a revolt of 

 the bulk of the nation against' the state's 'Latin' 

 Church. A popular church, having priests elected 

 by the parishioners, and taking the 'old faith' for 

 its watchword, was opposed by the people to 

 ' Nikon's Church,' although its followers were piti- 

 lessly tortured and exterminated by the state. All 

 great subsequent risings of the peasants ( Razin's, 

 Pougatchev s, and many smaller ones) were there- 

 fore made under the cross with eight ends (three 

 cross-bars) of the 'old faith.' 



Nikon's attempts at subduing the tsar to his 

 arrogant supremacy ended in his deposition and 

 exile, and later on Peter I. abolished even the 

 dignity of patriarch, substituting for it the Holy 

 Synod. Alexei frequently convoked the states- 

 general, first to confirm his accession to the throne 

 ( 1645), then to revise the existing laws and to com- 

 pile (1648) a new code (Sobornoie Ulojenie), and 

 next ( 1651 and 1653 ) to pronounce upon the annexa- 

 tion of Little Russia. Under Alexei Russia finally 

 gained the mastery over Poland, and reconquered 

 Smolensk ; but her success was chiefly due to the 

 revolt, under Bogdan Hmelnitsky, of the Orthodox 

 Cossacks of Little Russia, who were terribly 

 oppressed by their Catholic landlords. After see- 

 ing the impossibility of resisting Poland single- 

 handed, the Cossacks appealed for protection to 

 Russia, and recognised her supremacy. This 

 event decidedly turned the scales in favour of 

 Russia in the long struggle between the two 

 chief Slav powers. But in order to maintain her 

 rights on the Dnieper Russia had now to sustain 

 a war with Turkey, which continued till after 

 the accession of Feodor (1676-82), when it was 

 terminated (1681) by the treaty of Bakhtchisarai, 

 by which Turkey gave up all claims upon Little 

 Russia. After Feodor's death the states-general 

 chose his half-brother Peter as tsar, but his half- 

 sister Sophia, an able and ambitious princess (see 

 PETER THE GREAT), succeeded in obtaining the 



