Relations with Poland-Lithuania were more difficult. The Poles declined to recognize Michael; the Russians naturally refused to accept Władysław as tsar. After mediation efforts collapsed, the Poles launched a new military offensive in 1617 and were able to attack the city of Moscow in the autumn of 1618. That same year, however, the two sides agreed to an armistice of fourteen and a half years: both were exhausted from the conflict, the Polish Sejm (confronted with the outbreak of the Thirty Years War) denied more funds, and Moscow fervently wanted an exchange of prisoners. The armistice, signed in the village of Deulino (north of Moscow), compelled Moscow to renounce its claim to west Russian areas (Severia, Chernigov, and—with a heavy heart—Smolensk). The question of Smolensk, together with the Poles’ refusal to renounce their claim to the throne of Moscow, carried the seeds of future conflict.
Internal Affairs and the Smolensk War
After his return in 1619, Filaret became the patriarch of Moscow (which, for the sake of propriety, was formally bestowed by the patriarch of Jerusalem). The world now seemed to be in order, even in the relations between father and son. Nevertheless, the government faced serious problems; in addition to seeking vengeance on Poland, Filaret had to address the question of tax reform. To finance the Streltsy (a semi-regular military unit of musketeers created to defend the court and borders), in 1614 the government already imposed some new special levies—‘Streltsy money’ from townspeople and ‘Streltsy grain’ from peasants. The government also increased the ‘postal money’, the largest regular tax. It assessed these levies on the basis of a land tax unit (sokha), which took soil quality into account, but was none the less so high that many commoners preferred to abandon their community and become indentured bondsmen of a secular lord, a monastery, or tax-free town. Because of the principle of collective responsibility (krugovaia poruka), those who remained behind had to assume the obligations of the bondsmen and thus pay even higher taxes. Ever since 1584 the government had periodically prohibited this form of tax evasion, but with scant effect. Filaret also failed to achieve a satisfactory solution, partly because he himself was an interested party: the Patriarchate owned approximately a thousand plots of land in Moscow, which were duly exempted from the ban. In effect, the government only forbade indentureship, not the acceptance of tax evaders. More successful in the long run was the gradual conversion of the tax base from land to household, a process that commenced in the 1620s but only reached completion in 1679.
Filaret’s policy towards towns was still less successful. The basic problem was that, without a strong middle class, the towns did not constitute juridical entities. Filaret moved the rich merchants to Moscow to serve in central administrative offices (prikazy), but that policy only emptied towns at the provincial level. Moreover, the government put foreign policy over the interests of indigenous merchants: foreigners, especially British, engaged in retail trade throughout Muscovy, enjoyed exemption from most customs duties, and even had fishing rights in the White Sea. These privileges were the target of a collective petition from thirty-one Russian merchants in 1627—the first of numerous such complaints in the next decades. The townsmen of Moscow also complained of other burdens, such as billeting, in a collective petition of 1629.
In 1621–2 Filaret considered a new attempt to reconquer Smolensk and compel the Poles to recognize the Romanov dynasty. On the basis of information from a council of the realm, however, he realized that the country was simply unprepared for such an undertaking. But the Thirty Years War soon afforded an opportunity for vengeance; as an important ally of Sweden, Moscow was later named in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Although Moscow did not directly participate in the conflict, from 1628 it delivered commodities such as grain (which, as a state monopoly, yielded a huge profit) and, more important, in 1632–4 went to war with Poland, which was forced to divert forces to the east. Meanwhile, with Swedish aid, the Russians built their military force into a standing army with approximately 66,000 soldiers (the so-called ‘Troops of the New Order’), which included approximately 2,500 Western officers under the Scottish colonel, Alexander Leslie. Nevertheless, Filaret, who died in 1633 in the midst of the war, had overestimated Moscow’s power: the campaign proceeded so badly that the commander-inchief, M. B. Shein, in the wake of mass desertion by his soldiers (which was hardly unusual at the time) and the futile siege of Smolensk, was found guilty of treason and executed. The two sides agreed to a new peace at Polianovka in 1634. Wladystaw did renounce his claim to the tsarist throne, but in exchange Moscow had to pay 20,000 roubles and to return all the areas that it had occupied.
The Final Years
Nevertheless, the war drew Muscovy even closer to the West. Besides the Troops of the New Order (temporarily disbanded for lack of funds), the most tangible sign of Europeanization was the influx of Western merchants and entrepreneurs. Dominance shifted from the English to the Dutch: Andries Winius obtained monopoly rights to construct ironworks in the towns of Tula and Serpukhov (the first blast furnace began operations in 1637); the Walloon Coyet established the first glass plant in the environs of Moscow. The driving impulse, as in other spheres, was the demand for military armaments.
For the time being, the Orthodox Church was able to contain Western influence in cultural matters. The main spiritual influence, instead, came from Ukraine—for example, a proposal in 1640 by the metropolitan of Kiev, Petr Mohyla, to establish an ecclesiastical academy in Moscow, and the import of books with the ‘Lithuanian imprint’ (which, because of their Roman Catholic content, were prohibited). The Church also denounced as ‘heresy’ the correction of church books, which had commenced in 1618 (in conjunction with the development of printing) and sought to compare Russian liturgical texts with the Greek originals.
The religious tensions were also accompanied by increasing social conflict. In 1637 the tsar’s service people filed their first collective petition and later persuaded him to reduce their service obligations by half. But as yet the government spurned their other demands—for a decentralization of the judicial system (to avoid expensive trials, corruption, and procrastination in Moscow) and for the total abolition of a statute of limitations on the return of runaway peasants. Michael did, however, extend the statute of limitations for the recovery of fugitives (from five to nine years). After another petition in 1641, he increased the term to ten years for the general fugitives and fifteen years for peasants who had been forcibly seized by other landowners.
In foreign affairs too the tsar had to make a difficult decision. In 1637 the Don Cossacks of Muscovy attacked the Turkish fortress of Azov and for four long years held out against the Ottoman army and fleet. A council of the realm in 1642, however, expressed deep reservations, and the tsar persuaded the Cossacks to abandon the fortress. War with Turkey would have certainly entailed immense losses, and the Sultan had already threatened to exterminate the entire Orthodox population of his empire. Similarly, Moscow continued to spurn the centuries-old urging of the West for a crusade against the Ottoman Empire.
By contrast, Muscovy’s eastward expansion proved far more successful. After the first penetration into Siberia in the late sixteenth century, the government had sanctioned—sometimes ex post facto—the conquests of Cossack units acting on their own initiative: they thus founded Eniseisk in 1619 and Iakutsk in 1632, and reached the Pacific at the Sea of Okhotsk in 1639. To the south Moscow established timid contacts with China, sending its first envoy to Peking in 1619.