PART III
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RUSSIA UNDER THE FIRST ROMANOVS (1613-1689)
The central government and its institutions
MARSHALL РОЕ
For the Muscovite state, the seventeenth century was one of evolution and growth, rather than radical change.[1] The century experienced no political revolutions of the magnitude seen during the reigns of Ivan III and Ivan IV. Russia, having recovered from the confusion of the Time of Troubles, remained a strong autocracy held firmly in the hands of a small, martial ruling class. This is not to say that there was general stasis. Things still fell apart, though only for brief moments. And one can detect a single important political trend - the remarkable inflation of honours begun under Tsar Aleksei (Alexis) Mikhailovich and radically amplified by his weak successors. Nonetheless, the general picture was one of continuity, punctuated by momentary fits of confusion and gradual change.
The case is much the same in the realm of institutions.[2] Seventeenth-century Muscovy was administered by the same fundamental types of organisation that it had been before the great upheaval ofthe beginning ofthe century. The most important institutions remained the royal family, its court and courtiers (gosudarev dvor) and the administrative chancelleries (prikazy). Similarly, the boyar council and the Assembly ofthe Land-both inventions of an earlier age - continued to operate in the seventeenth century much as they had before. All of these institutions grew, but not so much as to fundamentally alter their essential character.
Finally, we might note that the state existed for the same purpose as it had in the sixteenth century and earlier - to serve the interests of the Muscovite ruling class.[3] Though one occasionally finds biblical tropes in Muscovite ornamental texts about monarchs 'tending their flocks' and such, the truth is that the elite did not hide the fact that they were a self-interested ruling class and that the state was the instrument of their domination. They showed open contempt for peasants, merchants and often clergymen, and almost never missed an opportunity to fleece them - a point made and bemoaned by the well-travelled, well-educated and well-informed political philosopher (and proto-Slavophile!) Iurii Krizhanich in the 1660s.4 Any attempt at protest that was not couched in the most subservient terms was met with a rush of horrific violence (violence that only the state could muster, since it was the only organised interest in early modern Russia). As visiting foreigners often noted, there was no talk of the 'commonwealth', the 'common good', or common anything (that would come with Peter and from Europe). Muscovites high and low believed the tsar owned everything - land and those occupying it - by heavenly proclamation.5 That he distributed his largesse unequally (and predominantly to the elite) bothered not a soul. No one could conceive of any other order, no one objected to it (at least for very long . . .) and no one even thought it wrong. It was the way of things, and that was that.
The tsar in his court
Muscovites had an entire catalogue of sayings to the effect that the tsar was like God (and, one might add, the God of Moses rather than Jesus),[4] so it is only appropriate that we begin our survey of seventeenth-century institutions with the ruler and his court.
Let us begin with the royal person, for he was an institution in his own right. In contrast to some monarchies, the Russians do not seem to have recognised or even known about the 'king's two bodies' doctrine.7 The clergy said and commoners believed that the tsar was selected by the Lord, not to hold the office of tsar, but to be tsar. This is why one finds so much talk of the 'true tsar' and 'pretenders', particularly during the Time of Troubles when it was hard to tell the difference, but also after the ascension of the Romanovs.8 Just how one could know the 'true tsar' was anybody's guess, but that there was a 'true' - that is, divinely appointed - tsar was never seriously questioned. There was, then, no office of'tsar'; there was just the 'true tsar', a person and family ordained by the hand of the All Mighty.
We know, of course, that Michael Romanov was elected or, rather, his family won out in a rough and tumble competition dominated by occupying cossacks in 1613. But it was not considered polite (or even safe)[5] to mention this after the fact. That is because Michael was the 'true tsar'. His family and their propagandists spent a lot of effort to drive this point home. They went so far as to argue that they were not only the very descendents and rightful heirs to the Riurikids (via one of Ivan IV's marriages), but that they were in some mystical sense Riurikids themselves. This effort to cloak themselves in other-worldly divinity appealed to the Muscovite mind, but it doubtless had little effect on the men who actually engineered the Romanov 'succession'. They knew, as politicians always know, what had actually happened. Nonetheless, it made no sense for them to do anything but play along. The tsar, after all, was one of them and would - if he were wisely selected - protect their interests. Michael and his successors did just this, and they became 'true tsars' as a result.
Though one reads occasionally in Muscovite didactic texts that the tsar should do this or that (take council, be merciful, be wise),[6] he really had only two hard and fast duties: to produce a suitable heir and to rule the country in consultation with his boyars. There were, naturally, rules about how he would perform these two tasks, the former governed by Christian doctrine and the latter by custom. Since the rights and obligations of Orthodox marriage are
Duma ranks
Boiare <
t
Okol'nichie -4— t
Dumnye dvoriane <
' t . Ceremonial ranks <
| n |
| >Dumnye d'iaki |
 |
| Figure 19.1. The sovereign's court in the seventeenth century |
sufficiently well known (one wife, or at least one at a time), as is the process by which an heir is begotten, let us discuss the rules of Muscovite politics as they were practised in their principal arena, the sovereign's court (gosudarev dvor).11
The sovereign's court was the locus of political power in Muscovy. It was not a place (though the royal family did have quarters in the Kremlin called a 'court' or dvor), but rather a hierarchy of ranks. Figure 19.1 outlines them.
As one would expect, higher ranks were more honourable than lower ranks, and generally less populous. To some degree, different rank-holders did different things: the men in the duma ranks (boiare i dumnye liudi) advised the tsar in the royal council (duma), an ill-defined customary body whose power waxed and waned depending on the age of the tsar, the authority of those around him and the number of counsellors present. Those below the duma ranks (the sub-duma court ranks in Figure 19.i) generally worked as footmen of various sorts at court - serving at table, guarding the palace, performing in ceremonies, escorting emissaries and so on. Despite their modern 'servile' connotations, these lines of employ were considered very honourable duty by high-born Muscovites (and certainly better than serving in the provinces). Finally, the administrators served in the chancelleries (prikazy). Because they performed servile work (writing), they were drawn from a less honourable class (sluzhilyeliudipopriboru, or 'service people by contract') rather than from the ranks of hereditary servitors (sluzhilye liudi po otechestvu, or 'service people by birth').[7]
1
The best general history of seventeenth-century Russia remains V O. Kliuchevskii,
2
For an overview of governmental institutions, see N. P. Eroshkin,
3
For an extended discussion of the Russian ruling class and its interests, see Marshall T. Poe,
4
On these dicta, see Marshall T. Poe, A
On pretenderism, see Chester Dunning,
5
On the Romanovs' campaign to stamp out pretenderism, see Mark C. Lapman, 'Political Denunciations in Muscovy 1600 to 1649: The Sovereign's Word and Deed', unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard, University, 1982; N. I. Novombergskii,
6
See Daniel Rowland, 'The Problem of Advice in Muscovite Tales about the Time of Troubles',
For a bibliography of works on the
7
On this distinction, see N. P. Pavlov-Sil'vanskii,