John LeDonne's two works on Russia's foreign policy and expansion provide detailed background: The Russian Empire and the World, 1700—1917: The Geopolitics of Expansion and Containment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) and The Grand Strategy of the Russian Empire, 1650-1831 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). On the Hetmanate: Zenon E. Kohut, Russian Centralism andUkrainian Autonomy: Imperial Absorption of the Hetmanate 1760s-1830s (Cambridge, Mass.: Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1988); Daniel Stone, The Polish-Lithuanian State, 1386-1795 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001); Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, 2nd edn. (Toronto: Published by University of Toronto Press in association with the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1994); Paul R. Magocsi, A History of Ukraine (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996). On Ukrainian identity: Frank E. Sysyn, "The Cossack Chronicles and the Development of Modern Ukrainian Culture and National Identity," Harvard Ukrainian Studies 14 (1990): 593-607; Serhii Plokhy, The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), and The Cossack Myth: History and Nationhood in the Age of Empires (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Faith Hillis, Children of Rus': Right-Bank Ukraine and the Invention of a Russian Nation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013).
Social history of Rus' lands includes Kateryna Dysa, Witchcraft Trials and Beyond: Volhynia, Podolia andRuthenia, 17—18th Centuries (New York: Central European University Press, 2011) and Natalie Kononenko, Ukrainian Minstrels: And the Blind Shall Sing (Armonk, NY, and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1998).
On the Baltics: Andrejs Plakans, A Concise History of the Baltic States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Edward C. Thaden and Marianna Forster Thaden, Russia's Western Borderlands, 1710-1870 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Andres Kasekamp, A History of the Baltic States (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Fascinating study of multi-ethnic community in Vilnius: David Frick, Kith, Kin, and Neighbors: Communities and Confessions in Seventeenth-Century Wilno (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013).
On the Jews in the Commonwealth and Russia: Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010); Gershon David Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Alexei Miller, "The Romanov Empire and the Jews," in his The Romanov Empire and Nationalism: Essays in the Methodology of Historical Research, English edn. rev. and enlarged (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2008), 93-137. Classics include Salo W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, Vol. 16: Poland-Lithuania 1500-1650, 2nd rev. edn. (New York, London: Columbia University Press, 1976); Bernard D. Weinryb, The Jews of Poland: A Social and Economic History of the Jewish Community in Poland from 1100 to 1800 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1973).
On expansion into the Black Sea steppe: Roger P. Bartlett, Human Capitaclass="underline" The Settlement of Foreigners in Russia, 1762-1804 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); D. J. B. Shaw, "Southern Frontiers in Muscovy, 1550-1700," in James H. Bater and R. A French, Studies in Russian Historical Geography, 2 vols. (London: Academic Press, 1983), 1: 117-42; Carol Belkin Stevens, Soldiers on the Steppe: Army Reform and Social Change in Early Modern Russia (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1995); Brian L. Davies, Empire and Military Revolution in Eastern Europe: Russia's Turkish Wars in the Eighteenth Century (London: Continuum, 2011).
An English translation of Catherine II's Instruction of 1767 is Vol. 2 of Paul Dukes, Russia under Catherine the Great, 2 vols. (Newtonville, Mass.: Oriental Research Partners, 1977); on population is article 265.
On Crimea, see Edward Lazzerini, "The Crimea under Russian Rule: 1783 to the Great Reforms," in Michael Rywkin, ed., Russian Colonial Expansion to 1917 (London: Mansell, 1988), 123-38; Kelly Ann O'Neill, "Between Subversion and Submission: The Integration of the Crimean Khanate into the Russian Empire, 1783-1853," Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2006 and her "Rethinking Elite Integration: The Crimean Murzas and the Evolution of Russian Nobility," Cahiers du monde russe 51 (2010): 397-418. On slavery: Liubov Kurtynova-D'Herlugnan, The Tsar's Abolitionists: The Slave Trade in the Caucasus and its Suppression (Leiden: Brill, 2010); Christoph Witzenrath, ed., Eurasian Slavery, Ransom and Abolition in World History, 1200-1860 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015).
PART II
THE MUSCOVITE EMPIRE THROUGH THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Broadcasting Legitimacy
One of the most visible characteristics of early modern empire was its self- representation of legitimacy, often embodied in visual and literary media. One might call this "ideology," but that bookish term does not fit well with early modern societies of limited literacy. Jane Burbank and Fred Cooper introduce the more flexible concept of "imperial imaginaries" to embody the myriad ways in which states expressed a vision of self in ritual, symbolic, and literary media as well as in political praxis and terminology. Imperial rulers broadcast their image to audiences including foreign powers, their subject peoples, and perhaps most importantly their elites, whose support was crucial to maintaining empire-wide control. The intent in disseminating an ideal image of ruler, elite, and society was to inspire respect, awe, cooperation, and, optimally, social cohesion, although the latter, in early modern conditions, could never be very strong.
Empires constructed wide-reaching, even cosmic, claims to legitimacy that gave them, in Thomas Allsen's phrase, "a kind of immortality." These claims depicted rulers as bringing "good fortune" on the realm, sometimes arrogating to them sacred status, more often giving them the role of conduit of the deity's blessing. In the Mediterranean and Eurasia, imperial rulers typically claimed legitimacy by linking themselves to a prior imperial tradition (translatio imperii), adopting its terminology, regalia, architectural and documentary styles, and the like. Russia drew on two imperial legacies, the Roman through its affiliation with Byzantine Orthodoxy and the Chinggisid. From the Mongols Russia borrowed pragmatic tools—vocabulary, institutions, and practices in finance, military, and politics. In adopting the title of "tsar" in 1547, Russia was evoking Chinggisid legitimacy, since its sources used "tsar" for khans as well as for Byzantine emperors. As we have seen, in negotiations with steppe peoples through the eighteenth century Russians acted out Chinggisid practices. Furthermore, at the crucial time when Moscow was assembling its myth of self in the 1480s, Ivan III explicitly deployed Mongol political symbolism in a missive to the Holy Roman Emperor, calling himself the "white emperor." But to European powers this reference was obscure, and thereafter Ivan III's court deployed the symbolic vocabulary of its Christian Orthodox heritage.