Other forms of 'popular monarchism' in this period involved rumours about official documents. The disturbances in Voronezh and Ustiug Velikii in 1648 were triggered by (unfounded) reports that official letters had been received calling on the townspeople to follow the example of the Muscovites and attack rich merchants: the alleged existence of such documents served to legitimise attacks on the local elites. In other cases, for example in Tomsk in 1649 and in Novgorod and Pskov in 1650, when real documents condemning the revolts arrived from Moscow, the rebels maintained that they had been falsified by the boyars or officials: these claims rationalised the insurgents' refusal to obey orders instructing them to surrender to the authorities. Such rumours reflected the popular belief that true justice would be sanctioned by
the tsar, and that letters in his name must embody such justice.[280]
***
The evidence which we have considered in this chapter suggests that these seventeenth-century revolts were directed primarily against individuals rather than against institutions, and that their participants were mainly concerned with the redress of specific grievances rather than with the advocacy of any coherent programme of reform, let alone revolution. Only in the case of the Razin revolt do we find an indication of broader aims. In his speech to the cossacks at Panshin Gorodok, Razin called on them all 'to drive the traitors out of the Muscovite state and to give the common people freedom'.[281] According to a contemporary English account of his Volga campaign: 'Every where he promised Liberty, and a redemption from the Yoak (so he call'd it) of the Bojars or Nobles; which he said were the oppressors of the Countrey . . . '.[282]The aim of 'liberty' and freedom from oppression is rather vague; but some indication of what it meant in practice is provided by accounts of the rebels' sojourn in Astrakhan', indicating that they destroyed the documents which registered slaves, thereby granting the bondsmen their freedom. Similar actions are recorded in the Moscow risings of 1648 and 1682.[283] In some towns which were under the insurgents' control, cossack-style 'circles' replaced the existing authorities.[284] But it would be rash to conclude on the basis of this kind of evidence that the rebels aimed to abolish slavery and serfdom as institutions, or to introduce some type of grass-roots democracy.
In so far as there was a common factor in the very diverse popular revolts which occurred under the first Romanovs, it may be identified as protest against the expansion of the state, against its infringement of the traditional rights and freedoms of townspeople, peasants and cossacks, and against the increased burden of taxation which it imposed upon them. These protests took place in the name of good tsars with wise advisers, who would protect their people against traitor-boyars and corrupt officials (an idealised version of the paternalistic monarchy of the sixteenth century); but they did little to prevent the further growth ofthe bureaucratic state under Peter the Great and his successors.
The Orthodox Church and the schism
ROBERT O. CRUMMEY
The seventeenth century was a time of bitter conflict and wrenching change in the Orthodox Church of Russia and its relationship with the tsars' government and society. In this respect, the Church reflected the fissures in Muscovite society and culture of which it was an integral part. After the successful building of a 'national' Church in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, described in an earlier chapter, its leaders faced grave challenges. Critics from within demanded liturgical purity and moral reform and representatives of other branches of Eastern Orthodoxy challenged the legitimacy of Russian national tradition. At critical moments - especially in the pivotal years, 1649-67 - the clashing interests of the tsars' government and Church's leaders disrupted the 'symphony' that, in Orthodox tradition, ideally characterises the relations of Church and state. And laymen and women increasingly rebelled against the Church's claims and its economic power and social privilege. By the first decades of the eighteenth century, the results of these conflicts included a radical redefinition ofthe relationship between Church and state and a schism among the faithful.
The legacy of the past
Several of the most important themes in the history of the Russian Church after 1613 can be traced to pivotal events at the end of the sixteenth century and beginning of the seventeenth. First, in 1589, while visiting the Russian capital in search of financial support, Patriarch Jeremiah of Constantinople agreed, under extreme pressure, to the creation of the Patriarchate ofMoscow and, in 1590 and 1593, the other Orthodox patriarchs accepted the fait accompli. This act both culminated and symbolised the changing relationship between the Greek and Russian branches of Orthodoxy Even after 1589, the Greeks who came to Moscow for alms remained convinced that the Greek 'mother Church' was still the ultimate arbiter of Eastern Orthodox belief and practice.
For their part, the leaders of the Muscovite government and Church were acutely aware of the fact that, after the fall of Byzantium in 1453, the tsardom was the only major Orthodox state left on earth and thus primary guardian of true Christianity.
Second, in the late sixteenth century, the Orthodox Church in the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth faced many threats. The Roman Catholic hierarchy and missionary orders, in alliance with the government of Sigismund III, worked energetically to convert Orthodox believers as did various Protestant groups. The Orthodox response took two forms. Lay leaders established centres of Orthodox scholarship and publishing and founded schools. The Ostrih Bible of 1581, the first published translation of the Old and New Testaments into Church Slavonic, is the best-known result of these early initiatives. In 1596, however, all but two members of the Orthodox hierarchy of the Commonwealth accepted the Union of Brest under which they recognised the supremacy of the Pope in return for the right to retain the Orthodox liturgy in Slavonic.
From the outset, many Orthodox believers, particularly the leaders of the laity, rejected the union. A network of confraternities spread to all the main urban centres in the Orthodox regions of the Commonwealth and everywhere founded schools modelled on the best pedagogical practices of Roman Catholic Europe. By 1633, moreover, the revitalised Orthodox hierarchy had won legal recognition from the crown. In short, the Orthodox Church in Ukraine successfully rebuilt itself as an institution and developed networks of schools and scholars fit to defend Eastern Orthodoxy against its enemies, especially post-Tridentine Roman Catholicism. For the rest of the century, the Orthodox Church in Muscovite Russia had the opportunity to draw upon these experiences and cultural resources.
Third and last, the experience of the Time of Troubles (1598-1613) shaped the later history of the Muscovite Church in two important ways. First, Russia's sufferings undermined the conviction that, as the last Orthodox realm on earth, Muscovy enjoyed God's special blessing. Again and again, contemporaries asked why God had allowed His people to suffer such devastation. Second, the Troubles emphasised the potential role of the Russian patriarch as leader in revitalising the community. However accurately, tradition holds that Patriarch Hermogen (Germogen) (1606-12) sent out pastoral appeals urging Russians to hold fast to the native tradition of Orthodoxy, reject all compromise with foreigners and their ways, and give their lives to restore the tsardom. Hermogen's three most powerful seventeenth-century successors - Filaret (1619-34), Nikon (1652-8 or 1666) and Ioakim (1674-90) - all followed his lead, attempting to use their office to impose their convictions and agendas on the Church.
280
Maureen Perrie, 'Popular Monarchism in Mid-i7th-Century Russia: the Politics of the "Sovereign's
283
Stepanov
Buganov,