Chapter 17-18 Essays - Europe, Russian Empire, Rurik Dynasty

Chapter 17-18 Michael Romanov assumed power over a destroyed country with the capital itself as well as a number of other towns, burned down. Many roaming bands, some of them several thousand strong, continued looting the land. Moreover, Muscovy remained at war with Poland and Sweden, which had seized respectively Smolensk and Novgorod as well as other Russian terror and promoted their own candidates to the Muscovite throne, Prince Wladyslaw and Prince Phillip. In 1613 and the years following, the most pressing problems were those of internal disorder, foreign invasion, and financial collapse. Within some three years the government had dealt effectively with the disorder, inspire of new rebellions. Authorities made certain concessions to the Cossacks and amnestied all bandits, provided they would enroll in the army to fight the swedes. Everything considered, Tsar Michaels government could also claim success in checking foreign aggression and stabilizing international relations, although at a price . Sweden, with its new king Gustavus II, or Gustave's Adolphus, occupied elsewhere in Europe, concluded peace in Stolbovo in 1617. According to the agreement, the swedes returned Novgorod and adjacent areas of northern Russia, but kept the strip of territory on the Gulf of Finland, thus pushing the Russians farther from the sea. During Michaels reign, important events also occurred south of the Muscovite borders. In 1637 Don Cossacks, on their own seized, the distant Turkish fortress of Azov by the sea of the same name. In 1641 a huge Turkish Army and navy returned, but in the course of an epic siege of four months could not dislodge the intruders. Michael died in 1645 at the age of forty-eight, and his only son Alexis or Aleksei, a youth of sixteen, succeeded him as tsar. Known as Tishaishii, the quietest One, in spite of his outburst of anger and general impulsiveness, Alexis left a favorable impression with many contemporaries, as well as with the subsequent historians. In his br illiant reconstruction of the tsar's character Kliuchevsky called Alexis "The kindest man" a glorious Russian soul and presented him both as the epitome of Muscovite culture and as one of the pioneers of the new Russian interest in the West. Alexis's Long reign, 1645-76 was by no means quiet. Old crises and problems persisted and some new ones appeared. Not least, he was faced with major popular uprisings, including in Moscow itself. In May and June 1648, the exasperated inhabitants of Moscow staged a large rebellion. Begun by artisans and tradesmen, they were soon joined by soldiers and some gentry. From 1624 to 1638 a series of Cossack and peasant rebellions swept Ukraine. Only with great exertion and after several defeats did the polish army and government last prevail. In Pereiaslavl in January 1654, an important but conversial treaty was signed that brought the Ukrainian cassock host and its lands into a union with Moscow. In response to the new Cossack-Muscovite alliance, Pola nd-Lithuania declared war on Russia. The brutal Thirteen-Years War, which included intervention by Sweden at one point, ended in 1667 with the Treaty of Andrusova. Significant events in the second half of Alexis's reign include the ecclesiastical reform undertaken by Patriarch Nikon and the resulting major split in the Russian Orthodox Church. The measures of Patriarch Nikon that has the most lasting importance concerned a reform of Church books and practices that resulted in a permanent cleavage among Russian Believers. Alexis's Successor Theodore, his son by his first wife, became tsar at the age of fourteen and died when he was twenty. The sixtieth-century economic depression also affected trade, crafts, manufacturing, and urban life generally. After the Time of Troubles, However, we see impressive new growth, largely stimulated by the demands of the expanding Moscow state, though all accounts agree that the Russian economy remained far less developed than in Western Europe at th at time. Serfdom was the foundation of the Muscovite economic and social system. Serf labor supported the gentry and thus the entire structure of the state. It seems that earlier peasant dependence, including slavery, was primarily the result of contracts: in return for a loan of money, grain, or agricultural tools, the peasant would promise to pay dues, the quitrent or obrok, to the landlord and preform