Transcript Russia * Changing Realities - White Plains Public Schools

Czars, Ideas, and Out of Isolation
 At
times, Russia has been torn
between the East and the
West, sometimes buffering
the two
 It has also been a pot of
enormous ethnic diversity
 The result has been a mixture
of east and west
 After all, Russia has always
been a nation “standing” on
two continents: Europe and
Asia
 When
the Turks conquered
Constantinople and the Byzantine
Empire fell, the center of Orthodox
Christianity moved northward to
Moscow, which was called the “Third
Rome” (after Rome itself and then
Constantinople)
 At around the same time, Russian
leaders were overthrowing the
Mongols
 In 1480, Ivan III of Moscow refused
to pay tribute to the Mongols and
declared Russia free of Mongol rule
 He,
and later his grandson Ivan IV,
established absolute rule in Russia,
uniting it and expanding it ever
eastward
 They recruited peasants and offered
them freedom from their feudal lords if
they agreed to settle in new lands to the
east
 The catch was that these peasants had
to conquer the land themselves
 Known as Cossacks, these peasantsoldiers expanded Russian territories in
the sixteenth through the eighteenth
centuries well into Siberia and
southward to the Caspian Sea
 Ivan
IV was such a strong leader and held such
absolute power that he became known as Ivan
the Terrible (as in formidable or impressive not
necessarily bad)
 Taking on the title of czar (Russian for
“Caesar”), Ivan the Terrible expanded Russia’s
holding, but not without cost to the Russian
people
 By the 1560s, he ruled under a reign of terror,
regularly executing anyone whom he perceived
as a threat to his power
 He even executed his own son in 1580
 After
the death of Ivan IV in 1584, Russia’s
feudal lords continually battled over who
should rule the empire
 The situation grew especially messy from
1604 to 1613, a period that historians refer
to as the Time of Troubles, because one
pretender to the throne would be killed by
another pretender and yet another
 In 1613, the madness subsided when Michael
Romanov was elected czar by the feudal
lords
 The Romanov Dynasty added stability to the
empire
 It ruled until 1917
 Like
the Ivans, the Romanovs
consolidated power and often ruled
ruthlessly
 The peasants, now serfs, were
practically slaves
 By the late 1600s, the Romanovs had
expanded the empire, with the help
of the Cossacks, eastward through
Siberia
 By 1689, Russian territory spread
from the Ukraine to the Pacific
Ocean, north of Manchuria
 At
around this same time, Peter the
Great, who ruled from 1682 through
1725, came to power
 He was convinced he needed to
westernize Russia
 He built Russia’s first navy and founded
St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea as his
new capital
 The “window to the west,” St.
Petersburg became the home to
hundreds of western European
engineers, scientists, architects, and
artists who were recruited specifically
to westernize Russia
 At
the beginning of Peter’s reign,
Russia was backward by comparison
with the countries of western Europe
 This backwardness inhibited foreign
policy and even put Russia’s national
independence in danger
 Peter’s aim, therefore, was to
overtake the developed countries of
western Europe as soon as possible, in
order both to promote the national
economy and to ensure victory in his
wars for access to the seas
 Breaking
the resistance of the boyars, or
members of the ancient landed aristocracy,
and of the clergy and severely punishing all
other opposition to his projects, he initiated
a series of reforms that affected, in the
course of 25 years, every field of the
national life—administration, industry,
commerce, technology, and culture
 Peter
established a regular army on
completely modern lines for Russia in the
place of the unreliable streltsy and the
militia of the gentry
 While he drew his officers from the nobility,
he conscripted peasants and townspeople
into the other ranks
 Service was for life
 The troops were equipped with flintlock
firearms and bayonets of Russian make;
uniforms were provided; and regular drilling
was introduced
 For the artillery, obsolete cannons were
replaced with new mortars and guns
designed by Russian specialists or even by
Peter himself (he drew up projects of his
own for multicannon warships, fortresses,
and ordnance or munitions)
 Peter
was the first ruler of Russia to sponsor
education on secular lines and to bring an
element of state control into that field
 Various secular schools were opened; and since
too few pupils came from the nobility, the
children of soldiers, officials, and churchmen
were admitted to them
 In many cases, compulsory service to the state
was preceded by compulsory education for it…
Russians were also permitted to go abroad for
their education and indeed were often
compelled to do so (at the state’s expense)
 The translation of books from western European
languages was actively promoted…The first
Russian newspaper, Vedomosti (“Records”),
appeared in 1703
 The Russian Academy of Sciences was instituted
in 1724
 Beside
his useful measures, Peter
often enforced superficial
Europeanization rather brutally; for
example, when he decreed that
beards should be shorn off and
Western dress worn
 He personally cut the beards of his
boyars and the skirts of their long
coats (kaftany)
 The Raskolniki (Old Believers) and
merchants who insisted on keeping
their beards had to pay a special
tax, but peasants and the Orthodox
clergy were allowed to remain
bearded
 Women
of the nobility were
forced to dress in western
fashions
 Men were forced to shave
their beards
 Most of the hard labor of
building the great new city
was accomplished, of
course, by serfs turned
slaves
 In
1721, in order to subject the Orthodox
Church of Russia to the state, Peter
abolished the Patriarchate of Moscow
 Thenceforward the patriarch’s place as head
of the church was taken by a spiritual
college, namely the Holy Synod, consisting of
representatives of the hierarchy obedient to
the tsar’s will
 A secular official—the ober-prokuror, or chief
procurator—was appointed by the tsar to
supervise the Holy Synod’s activities
 The Holy Synod ferociously persecuted all
dissenters and conducted a censorship of all
publications
 Priests
officiating in churches were obliged
by Peter to deliver sermons and exhortations
that were intended to make the peasantry
“listen to reason” and to teach such prayers
to children that everyone would grow up “in
fear of God” and in awe of the tsar
 The regular clergy were forbidden to allow
men under 30 years old or serfs to take vows
as monks
 The church was thus transformed into a pillar
of the absolutist regime
 Partly in the interests of the nobility, the
extent of land owned by the church was
restricted; Peter disposed of ecclesiastical
and monastic property and revenues at his
own discretion, for state purposes
 Peter’s
internal policy served to protect the
interest of Russia’s ruling class—the
landowners and the nascent bourgeoisie
 The material position of the landed nobility
was strengthened considerably under Peter
 Almost 100,000 acres of land and 175,000
serfs were allotted to it in the first half of
the reign alone
 Moreover, a decree of 1714 that instituted
succession by primogeniture and so
prevented the breaking up of large
properties also removed the old distinction
between pomestya (lands granted by the tsar
to the nobility in return for service) and
votchiny (patrimonial or allodial lands) so
that all such property became hereditary
 Under
Catherine the Great, who
ruled from 1762 until 1796, more
enlightened policies of education
and western culture were
implemented
 Catherine the Great was
considered an Enlightened Despot
because she incorporated some
ideas of the European
Enlightenment into her rule but
would not part with her absolute
power
A
disciple of the English and French liberal
philosophers, she saw very quickly that the
reforms advocated by Montesquieu or JeanJacques Rousseau, which were difficult enough
to put into practice in Europe, did not at all
correspond to the realities of an anarchic and
backward Russia
 In 1767 she convened a commission composed of
delegates from all the provinces and from all
social classes (except the serfs) for the purpose
of ascertaining the true wishes of her people
and framing a constitution
 The debates went on for months and came to
nothing
 Catherine’s Instruction to the commission was a
draft of a constitution and a code of laws
 It was considered too liberal for publication in
France and remained a dead letter in Russia
 Before
her accession to power, Catherine had
planned to emancipate the serfs, on whom the
economy of Russia, which was 95 percent
agricultural, was based
 The serf was the property of the master, and the
fortune of a noble was evaluated not in lands but
in the “souls” he owned
 When confronted with the realities of power,
however, Catherine saw very quickly that
emancipation of the serfs would never be tolerated
by the owners, whom she depended upon for
support, and who would throw the country into
disorder once they lost their means of support
 Reconciling herself to an unavoidable evil without
much difficulty, Catherine turned her attention to
organizing and strengthening a system that she
herself had condemned as inhuman
 She
imposed serfdom on the Ukrainians who
had until then been free
 By distributing the so-called crown lands to
her favorites and ministers, she worsened
the lot of the peasants, who had enjoyed a
certain autonomy
 At the end of her reign, there was scarcely a
free peasant left in Russia, and, because of
more systematized control, the condition of
the serf was worse than it had been before
Catherine’s rule
 Russia
suffered because Catherine fiercely
enforced repressive serfdom and limited the
growth of the merchant class
 Catherine continued the aggressive westward
territorial expansion, gaining ground in
Poland and, most significantly, territory on
the Black Sea
 This advance ensured Russia’s access to the
Mediterranean to its south and west
 Both
Peter and Catherine are
important because they
positioned Russia for
engagement with the rest of
the world, particularly the
Western world
 By the late eighteenth century,
Russia was in a significantly
different position than it had
been at the beginning of that
century
 Russia
had gained access to the west by both
the Baltic and the Black Seas, and it gained
cultural access to the West by actively
seeking interaction
 Unlike China and Japan, who repelled the
West from their shores in the same time
period, the Russians wanted to engage and
emulate the West
 But
despite the centralization of
authority under the Ivans, Russia
remained very much a feudal
arrangement, with local lords
exercising considerable power
 While western Europe basked in the
glow of the Renaissance, explored and
expanded its influence across oceans,
and debated about religion, science,
and government in a series of
movements, Russia remained isolated
from the west and pushed eastward
instead
 Its
growth was territorial, but not intellectual or
artistic
 During the fifteenth, sixteenth, and most of the
seventeenth centuries, it had nothing that could
be labeled a Renaissance or Enlightenment
 It wasn’t part of the Renaissance because it was
under the control of the Mongols at the time
 And it wasn’t part of the Reformation because it
wasn’t part of the Catholic Church in the first
place
 So even though today we often see Russia as a
European power, its history progressed along a
very different path
 It wasn’t until the late seventeenth century that
Russia turned its eyes westward
 For
more than a millennium, Russia has
struggled with issues and ideas that have
altered and shaped its culture
 From the West came religion, military
prowess, radical ideas, architectural forms,
art, and music
 To the West Russia gave ethereal icons,
beautiful art and churches, haunting music,
brilliant prose and poetry, supreme athletes
and dancers, and path-breaking cinema
 With the collapse of the Soviet Union and its
Communist alliance in 1991, Russia is again
undergoing great changes, attempting to
blend traditional ways with ideas from
abroad
 Russia’s
attempts to control a large land
mass relied on the forced labor of the
peasants or serfs
 The essential additional mark of serfdom was
the lack of many of the personal liberties
that were held by freedmen
 Chief among these was the serf’s lack of
freedom of movement; he could not
permanently leave his holding or his village
without his lord’s permission
 Neither
could the serf marry, change his
occupation, or dispose of his property
without his lord’s permission
 He was bound to his designated plot of land
and could be transferred along with that land
to a new lord
 Serfs were often harshly treated and had
little legal redress against the actions of
their lords
 A serf could become a freedman only through
manumission, enfranchisement, or escape
 Peasant
conditions there in the 14th century do
not seem to have been worse than those of the
west, and in some ways they were better,
because the colonization of forestlands in
eastern Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia,
and Hungary had led to the establishment of
many free-peasant communities
 But a combination of political and economic
circumstances reversed these developments
 The chief reason was that the wars that
devastated eastern Europe in the 14th and 15th
centuries tended to increase the power of the
nobility at the expense of the central
governments
 In
eastern Germany, Prussia, Poland, and Russia,
this development coincided with an increased
demand for grain from western Europe
 To profit from this demand, nobles and other
landlords took back peasant holdings, expanded
their own cultivation, and made heavy demands
for peasant labor services
 Peasant status from eastern Germany to
Muscovy consequently deteriorated sharply
 Not until the late 18th century were the
peasants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire freed
from serfdom, thus recovering their freedom of
movement and marriage and the right to learn a
profession according to personal choice
 The serfs of Russia were not given their personal
freedom and their own allotments of land until
Alexander II’s Edict of Emancipation of 1861