It could therefore be argued that Muscovy won its first great war with the Ottoman Empire. It had secured its position on the left bank, eliminated for
28 On the construction and colonisation ofthe Iziuma Line, see V P. Zagorovskii, Iziumskaia cherta (Voronezh: Voronezhskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 1980).
some time the danger of a rival right-bank hetmanate, and further reduced the Crimean Tatar threat. A further indication that the war had strengthened Muscovy's military and political standing was the new foreign policy pursued by the Commonwealth after the collapse of the Gninski mission to Istanbul in 1678. The Sejm finally ratified a fifteen-year extension of the Andrusovo Armistice (on terms less advantageous to the Commonwealth than previously demanded) and King Jan Sobieski abandoned attempts to ally with the Porte and returned to his project of driving the Turks from Podol'ia and Moldavia. He therefore began negotiations to induce Tsar Fedor to join him, Emperor Leopold I and Venetian Doge Alvise Contarini in coalition to drive the Turks from Europe.
By 1684 Moscow was ready to join this Holy League. Sobieski's surprising victory over the army of Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa at the gates of Vienna (12 September 1683) undoubtedly helped to convince the Muscovite government, but there were other reasons. The most important consideration was the Commonwealth's clear eagerness for Muscovite alliance, which showed Golitsyn the time had come to demand that the Poles renounce all claim to Kiev, the left bank, the Zaporozhian Sech' and the regions of Smolensk, Chernigov and Seversk. Golitsyn demanded the Commonwealth sign a treaty of permanent peace on these terms, and to the Sejm's dismay King Jan Sobieski's envoys signed it (26 April 1686).[77] Hetman Samoilovich was also angered by this, for the treaty had the effect of recognising Polish claims over the right bank and frustrating his campaign to unite all Ukraine under his own mace.
The Treaty of Eternal Peace can be said to mark the point at which Muscovy achieved lasting geopolitical preponderance over the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Map 21.2 shows territory ceded by Poland-Lithuania after 1667). Sobieski had hoped to compensate the Commonwealth for these lost territories by driving the Turks out of Podol'ia and Moldavia, but neither of these objectives was accomplished in his lifetime and the lives and revenue he squandered on them ultimately provoked a backlash by the magnates, who further reduced the military power available to the crown. Nor was he able to re-establish control over the right bank; efforts by Polish magnates to recolonise the region drove the majority of right-bank cossacks into a new revolt led by Colonel Semen Palii.
Ratification of the Eternal Peace now obligated Muscovy to make good its pledge to the Holy League and wage war upon the Crimean khanate. Golitsyn
undertook two expeditions against Perekop (1687,1689) to pin the Tatars down in Crimea while the Poles invaded Moldavia, the Austrians engaged the Turks in Transylvania and the Venetians campaigned in Dalmatia. On both of these expeditions Golitsyn led an enormous army of over 110,000 Muscovite troops and 30,000-50,000 Ukrainian troops across hundreds of kilometres of empty and arid steppe; both expeditions failed to besiege Perekop and withdrew with heavy casualties, mostly from drought and lack of fodder; and Golitsyn contributed to his own downfall and the downfall of regent Sophia by trying to pass offboth campaigns as successes, to the disgust ofhis officers and the court. In fairness to Golitsyn, a successful expedition across the steppe to capture Perekop was probably beyond the capabilities of any other power of the age and may not even have been Golitsyn's real objective. The Crimean expeditions did divert the Crimean Tatars from reinforcing Ottoman operations on other fronts and did show the Holy League the tremendous powers of resource mobilisation Muscovy now possessed (if also of its ability to waste resources); they did establish two important garrisons and supply depots (Novobogorodit- skoe and Novosergeevsk) for future expeditions against the khanate and the Ottoman fortresses on the Dnieper; and they had the effect of tightening Moscow's control over the Zaporozhian host and the left bank, by planting Muscovite garrisons just across the Dnieper from the host and by creating the opportunity to scapegoat and depose Samoilovich and replace him with Ivan Mazepa.
Besides profiting politically from the discrediting of Golitsyn's Crimean expeditions, Tsar Peter and his circle initially saw no advantage to campaigning on behalf of the Holy League; they were convinced the Poles and Austrians were already bogged down in Moldavia and Hungary and inclining to a separate peace with the Ottomans, so it would be better for Muscovy to seek its own reconciliation with the Porte and khanate lest it be left struggling on alone. For the time being, then, the new government would distance itself from Warsaw and Vienna and soften its demands upon the sultan and khan in hope of negotiating an armistice. It was not until 1694 that Peter would renew commitment to the Holy League by preparing a major expedition against Azov.
Muscovy's emergence as a great power
In Tsar Alexis's reign Muscovite foreign policy had played for very high stakes but had run high losses in the process. Tsar Alexis had entered the Ukrainian quagmire in 1654 in order to obtain Bogdan Khmel'nyts'kyi's aid in Belarus' and Lithuania; he had prolonged the war with the Commonwealth by setting unrealistic terms for peace, including his election to the Polish throne; and he had left the conflict with the Commonwealth unresolved in order to suddenly open an unsuccessful war upon the Swedes for control of the Baltic coast.
Muscovite foreign policy after 1676 was generally more cautious but surefooted. The 1677 Chyhyryn campaign (which ended very fortunately) or Golitsyn's Crimean expeditions (which wasted lives but did not leave the southern frontier more vulnerable) cannot be compared with Tsar Alexis's gambles. Yet several major strategic objectives were achieved by 1689. Muscovy had won Polish and Ottoman recognition of the Tsar's sovereignty over left-bank Ukraine and had begun to exercise greater control over the Zaporozhian and Don cossack hosts. It no longer faced any significant threat from a right-bank hetmanate (the right bank's pro-Polish hetmans could seldom mobilise more than 5,000 men, its pro-Ottoman hetmans no more than a few hundred). The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was no longer Muscovy's mortal enemy; it had finally signed a treaty of permanent peace and abandoned its claims to the long-contested territories of Smolensk and Chernigov in return for Muscovite entry into the Holy League. The Crimean khanate remained a threat to the towns of Sloboda Ukraine and the Belgorod Line, but no longer to the Muscovite heartland; more of the steppe had come under Muscovite military colonisation, advancing the front to just a few hundred kilometres of the khanate and encouraging Muscovite and cossack forces to go on the offensive with a series of operations on the lower Don and Dnieper. Muscovy still did not have mastery over the Livonian coast of the Baltic but had been able to enjoy a long respite from conflict with Sweden.
These successes were owed in part to blunders by Muscovy's rivals. A contributing factor was the greater experience and enlarged scope of Muscovite diplomacy. Now that Muscovy had demonstrated its military usefulness to the Ottoman Empire's enemies it became practical to send frequent missions to most of the European powers. Muscovy finally had its first permanent mission, at Warsaw, which served as a clearing house for reports from its envoys in other European capitals as well as a source of improved intelligence on foreign efforts to manipulate Polish political factions. The Little Russian Chancellery (Malorossiiskii prikaz) had also taken on great importance for managing political relations with the hetmans, colonels and towns of the left bank. Its work made it possible to reduce the ability of the later hetmans (Samoilovich, Mazepa) to pursue their own foreign policies while maintaining their loyalty for longer than had been possible before; by further servilising the hetmans it was possible in turn to force the colonels and starshina to accept Muscovite garrisons as an essentially permanent fact.
77
AndrzejSulima Kaminski,