On "sacred violence," see my Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998); Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977).
On non-Russians using the courts, see my By Honor Bound and "Russian Law in a Eurasian Setting: The Arzamas Region, Late Seventeenth-Early Eighteenth Century," in Gyula Szvak, ed., The Place of Russia in Eurasia (Budapest: Magyar Ruszisztikai Intezet, 2001), 200-6.
On northern and Siberian provincial architecture through the seventeenth century, see William Craft Brumfield's series "Architectural Legacy in Photographs" on provincial towns, published in Moscow by "Tri Kvadrata": Tot'ma (2005), Tobolsk (2006), Irkutsk (2006), Cherdyn' (2007), Solikamsk (2007), Buriatiia (2008), Chita (2008), Usol'e (2012). Other works on local architecture include: Ravil Bukharaev, The Kremlin of Kazan through the Ages (London: Curzon Press on behalf of Kazan Council of People's Deputies, 2000); Ojars Sparitis and Janis Krastins, Architecture of Riga Eight Hundred Years: Mirroring European Culture (Riga: Nacionalais apgads, 2005); O. Druh and Iu. Ferentseva, eds., Kyiv: History. Architecture. Traditions (Kyiv: Baltiia-Druk, 2011).
For political succession: Janet Martin, Medieval Russia, 980-1584 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); my Kinship and Politics; A. P. Pavlov, "Fedor Ivanovich and Boris Godunov (1584-1605)," in Perrie, ed., Cambridge History of Russia, 264-85. On the Time of Troubles: Sergei Platonov, The Time of Troubles: A Historical Study of the Internal Crises and Social Struggle in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Muscovy, trans. John T. Alexander (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1970); Chester Dunning, Russia's First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001); Maureen Perrie, "The Time of Troubles 1602-1613," in Perrie, ed., Cambridge History of Russia, 409-31. On political negotiations in the Time of Troubles, see Robert O. Crummey, "'Constitutional' Reform during the Time of Troubles," in Crummey, ed., Reform in Russia and the U.S.S.R. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 28-44; Hans-Joachim Torke, "From Muscovy towards St. Petersburg, 1598-1689," in Gregory L. Freeze, ed., Russia: A History, 2nd edn. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 55-86; Lindsey Hughes, Sophia, Regent of Russia, 1657-1704 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).
On sacralization, see B. A. Uspenskij and V. M. Zhivov, "Tsar and God: Semiotic Aspects of the Sacralization of the Monarch in Russia," in Uspenskij and Zhivov, "Tsar and God" and Other Essays in Russian Cultural Semiotics, ed. Marcus C. Levitt (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012), 1-112; Sergei Bogatyrev, "Ivan the Terrible Discovers the West: The Cultural Transformation of Autocracy during the Early Northern Wars," Russian History 34 (2007): 161-88. On pretenderism in theory, see B. A. Uspenskii, "Tsar and Pretender: Samozvanchestvo or Royal Imposture in Russia as a Cultural-Historical Phenomenon," in Uspenskij and Zhivov, "Tsar and God," 113-52. On political practice, see Maureen Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism in Early Modern Russia: The False Tsars of the Time of Troubles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Psychological and physiological interpretation of Ivan the Terrible: Edward L. Keenan, "The Tsar's Two Bodies," unpubl. lecture 1975, "How Ivan Became 'Terrible'," Harvard
Ukrainian Studies 28 (2006): 521-42, and his "The Privy Domain of Ivan Vasil'evich," in Dunning, Martin, and Rowland, eds., Rude & Barbarous Kingdom Revisited, 73-88. Ivan as rationaclass="underline" R. G. Skrynnikov, Ivan the Terrible, trans. Hugh F. Graham (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International Press, 1981); Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie, Ivan the Terrible (London: Longman, 2003). The "sacred violence" theme: Isabel de Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); Sergei Bogatyrev, "Ivan IV (1533-84)," in Perrie, ed., Cambridge History of Russia, 240-63. On history writing after Ivan IV, see Daniel Rowland's study of authors reflecting on the Time of Troubles: "The Problem of Advice."
7
The State Wields its Power
Early modern Eurasian empires were capable of flexing their power across the realm. But in doing so, they sought power more than cohesion. Cohesion was to be deliberately managed. Certainly imperial imaginaries strove to disseminate a vision of cohesion: rulers and elites broadcast their ideal image of legitimacy in hopes that subjects would accept and even identify with it. Cohesion within the elite was a positive goaclass="underline" rulers certainly intended that their imperial elite should be cohesive, forged from multiple groups and united around loyalty to ruler and empire. But linking the entire empire in some sort of united identity was not a goal or practice, nor was standardization of administration or cultural homogenization. To some extent cohesion was to be avoided.
Karen Barkey speaks of early modern Eurasian empires as "strong states" composed of "weak societies," weak because the composite societies of an empire were not linked "horizontally" across territory or across class. Rather, such empires are linked vertically, from community to center. Barkey uses the analogy of spokes on a wheeclass="underline" everyone has a direct relationship to the center, be it the imperial elite or local societies, but the outside rim of the wheel is missing. Jane Burbank's model of Russia's "imperial system of rights" expresses this verticality: everyone related directly to the Russian emperor with a different package of "rights." Early modern empires tolerated difference across their realms, imposed little on colonial subjects in daily life, and limited their demands to those goals that were most lucrative or most central to the state—extracting and maximizing human and fiscal resources, defending and expanding the realm and rendering high justice.
Certainly such an approach suited Muscovy. As Muscovy developed empire, it faced challenging circumstances. By climate and geography, most of the empire before the eighteenth century could support neither dense population nor surplus agrarian production. Communications in the empire's vastness were physically difficult, with spring thaw and autumn rains creating weeks of impassible roads (rasputitsa; Figure 7.1); travel was best when rivers were clear of ice or when the ground was covered with firm snow and ice (providing forage could be found for horses in winter). Dearth of bureaucratic personnel also challenged communications, as officialdom always stood in low priority to staffing the army and maintaining the ranks of taxpayers. Thus, the state's presence was light in the provinces through the early modern period. Some have called the Russian empire "under-governed," but perhaps the term is not so much under-governed as lightly governed.
Governing lightly, however, does not mean passively. As much as early modern empires tolerate difference, they did not hesitate to intervene in society where
Figure 7.1 The spring and autumn muddy seasons (rasputitsa) slowed down road travel in Russia; here contrasting seasons outside of Novgorod. Photos: Jack Kollmann.