The North Caucasus
Throughout the seventeenth century Russia could boast of no visible territorial expansion in the North Caucasus. Russia's advance here had been stalled for the same reasons as its march eastward into south-eastern Siberia was halted in the 1650s. In the Caucasus, Moscow approached the sphere ofinfluence oftwo sovereign states, the Ottoman and Persian empires. At the time when Russia's unquestionable military and economic superiority enabled it to expand with relative ease into the lands inhabited by various tribal societies, Moscow had to take a long pause before it was able to confront the similarly organised and dynamic empires of the Chinese, Persians and Ottomans.
Since its first penetration of the Caucasus in the 1560s Moscow struggled to maintain a foothold there. Forced to raze Fort Tersk several times, Moscow had decided to build a fort at a new location further north in the estuary of the Terek River. In 1588, Moscow dispatched a contingent of musketeers and cossacks to defend the newly built fort at the site of the old Turkic town of Tiumen'. Initially named Fort Tiumen', it was quickly renamed Fort Tersk. The survival of Tersk remained precarious for a few more years under the renewed Ottoman demands to raze the fort and the rumours of the impending Crimean campaign. But the Ottomans were busy prosecuting their successful war against Safavid Persia and their priorities were to maintain the newly won possessions along the Caspian coast: Derbent, Shemakha and Baku. The issue seemed to have been raised by the Ottomans for the last time in 1593. When Moscow assured the Ottomans of its peaceful intentions and promised not to interfere with the Ottoman interests in the region, the Porte stopped demanding the demolition of Tersk.[88]
If anything, Russia's presence in the North Caucasus in the seventeenth century was a testimony to its tenacity and determination. Moscow's attempts to move south of Tersk proved to be unsuccessful. Several large-scale military campaigns into Daghestan were a failure. Twice Moscow built and rebuilt Fort Sunzhenskii on the Sunzha River where it flows into the Terek River, and twice Moscow was forced to abandon it. The small cossack settlements which emerged in the foothills of the Caucasus along the Terek River (the Greben' Mountains) had to be razed in the 1650s. Only Tersk stayed and remained Russia's principal base in the North Caucasus throughout the seventeenth century.
The absence of a visible territorial expansion notwithstanding, Russia succeeded in establishing itself as a major power in the north-eastern corner of the Caucasus. Throughout the seventeenth century, Moscow cultivated ties with the numerous chiefs and nobles among the local peoples: the Kumyks, Nogais, Chechens and particularly the Kabardinians. Occasionally, the Russian troops marched from Tersk to assist a loyal native chief against his rivals. But most of the time, Moscow extended its influence through a system of payments, rewards and other benefits to those who represented Russian interests in the region.
Throughout the seventeenth century, a growing number of native nobles chose to seek refuge in Tersk from their rivals and foes. They often arrived with their retinue and were given land, grain and cash in exchange for their military service. Native commoners too fled to Terskin ever-increasingnumbers fleeing justice, or heavy taxation or simply lured by promises of better life. Many of the commoners became converts to Christianity. By the 1620s, four large quarters populated solely by the indigenous people grew outside the walls of Tersk: Circassian (Kabardinian), Okochane (members of the Ingush clan of Ako who came to Tersk in the 1590s), New convert and Tatar. The Kabardinian quarter was the largest with about 175 households by the end of the century. All in all, the population of these four quarters was almost three times larger than the Russian population of Tersk.[89]
Perhaps the most celebrated example of the natives' co-operation with Russia was the Kabardinian dynasty of the Cherkasskiis, whose members for several generations faithfully served Russian interests in the region. With the construction of Fort Tersk in 1588, several Kabardinian chiefs offered their service to Moscow and arrived at Tersk to reside there with their retinues. Among these chiefs, one, Sunchalei Ianglychev, earned the complete trust of the Russian government. He travelled to Moscow several times, was granted an annuity, and in 1615 was appointed a ruling prince over the non-Christian population of Tersk. His son Mutsal and grandson Kaspulat continued to serve Russia faithfully.
In the last half of the seventeenth century, Kaspulat Mutsalovich Cherkasskii proved to be Russia's indispensable liaison in the entire southern region. He ensured that important chiefs in Daghestan and various Kabardinian nobles were at peace with Russia. His sister's marriage to a Kalmyk chief tayishi accounted for his special relations with the Kalmyks. On numerous occasions, his motley contingent of the Kabardinians, Kumyks, Nogais and others in Russian service joined the Kalmyks in their campaigns against the Crimea and in Ukraine against the Ottomans. Handsomely rewarded for his service, Kaspulat Cherkasskii was put in charge of all the non-Christians of Tersk, had fortified houses near Astrakhan' and Tersk and was granted for life the right to collect customs duties in Tersk.[90]
By the end of the century Tersk grew into an important frontier town. The Russian government was making sure that Tersk was adequately protected. In 1650 alone, 1,379 musketeers and cossacks were transferred to Tersk from other frontier towns and settled there with their families.[91] Tersk remained Russia's principal frontier garrison in the Caucasus until the second quarter of the eighteenth century when the advancing Russian forts and cossack settlements turned this once strategic frontier town into a provincial backwater.
The Baltics and Ukraine
Like its double-headed eagle, the symbol of the Russian monarchy, Russia faced simultaneously two very different worlds: one in the east with its animist, Muslim and Buddhist populations and the other in the west with a predominantly Christian population. Unlike its rapid advance in the east, Russia's numerous attempts to expand in the west were frustrated by the superior militaries of its neighbours: the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Sweden. Two wars in the Baltic region (1558-83,1656-61) brought Moscow in control of some parts of Livonia and Estonia, only to be given up shortly thereafter. Only in the early eighteenth century was Russia able to establish itself in the Baltic region. The significance attributed to the Baltics was inescapable when Peter the Great imposed his vision on the region and founded a new imperial capital on the Baltic shores.
In the second half of the seventeenth century, Moscow's newly claimed subjects in the west came from eastern Ukraine. They were also Orthodox and, in Moscow's view, shared the same historical traditions of Kievan Rus'. Yet for centuries, the residents of Ukraine had remained cut off from Moscow and instead subjected to influences from Poland and Lithuania. Linguistically and culturally, they clearly possessed an identity different from their Orthodox co-religionists in Moscow. Given their common confessional identity, Moscow considered the Ukrainians to be Russian, but with a small nod to their difference it referred to them as 'little Russians'.
Russia's acquisition of eastern Ukraine was very similar to its annexation of Siberia in the sense that Russia's involvement and expansion here was equally hesitant and cautious. The annexation of Ukraine might also have had to await the early 1700s, when the modernised Russian military proved superior to its western neighbours, had not the opportunity presented itself in 1654. For decades the Dnieper cossacks who resided in the well-fortified territory called the Zaporozhian Sech' enjoyed their freedom and privileges like their counterparts on the Don, Volga and Iaik rivers. But when the Polish government attempted to increase its control over the Zaporozhian cossacks, they revolted. The largest such uprising tookplace in 1648-9 under the leadership of Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi, who was able to unite the cossacks and the Ukrainian peasants under the anti-Polish, anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic banner.
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89
Ibid., p. 402, n. 165;
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