Transcript AP Chapter 18

AP Chapter 18
The Rise of Russia
Russia’s Expansionist Politics Under
the Tsars
The Need for Revival
• Under Ivan III (Ivan the Great), who claimed
succession from the Rurik Dynasty and the old
Kievan days-a large part of Russia was freed
(from the Tartars) after 1462
• He organized a strong army
• He also used loyalties to the Orthodox
Christian faith and to Russia to win support for
his campaigns
Ivan III
Ivan the Great
Tartars
• The Mongol period reduced the vigor of
Russian cultural life, lowering the levels of
literacy among the priesthood
• With trade and manufacturing down, Russia
had become a purely agricultural economy
dependent on peasant labor
• Ivan III called Russia the Third Rome and
claimed the title of tsar or Caesar
Ivan IV
Ivan IV
• Ivan IV or Ivan the Terrible, continued Ivan III’s
policies
• He placed greater emphasis on controlling the
tsarist autocracy by killing many of the Russian
nobles or boyars whom he suspected of
conspiracy
Time of Troubles
• Ivan IV died without an heir which led to the
Time of Troubles
• In 1613 an assembly of boyars chose a
member of the Romanov family as Tsar
• The Romanov Dynasty was to fuel Russia until
the great revolution of 1917
Michael Romanov
Anastasia Romanov
Michael Romanov
Michael Romanov
• Michael Romanov was the first Tsar of the
Romanov Dynasty
• He reestablished internal order
• He drove out the foreign invaders (Sweden &
Poland) and resumed the expansionist policy
of his predecessors
• He gained the Ukraine, including Kiev, in the
south
Expansion
Patterns of Expansion
• The territorial expansion policy focused
particularly on Central Asia
• Both Ivan III and Ivan IV recruited peasants to
migrate to the newly seized lands, particularly
in the South
• These peasant adventurers, or Cossacks, were
Russian pioneers, combining agriculture with
daring military feats on horseback
Cossacks
Cossacks
• During the 16th Century, the Caspian Sea area
but also moved into Western Siberia, across
the Urals, beginning the gradual takeover and
settlement of these vast plains, which
previously had been sparsely inhabited by
nomadic Asian peoples
• Expansion also offered tsars a way to reward
loyal nobles and bureaucrats by giving them
estates in new territories
Expansion
• Russia used slaves for certain kinds of
production work into the 18th Century
• Russia created trading connections with its
new Asian territories and their neighbors
• Russia’s early expansion eliminated
independent Central Asia that age old source
of nomadic cultures and periodic invasions in
both the East and West
Continued
• Russia became a multicultural Empire like the
Mughal and Ottomans
• Particularly important was the addition of a
large Muslim minority, overseen by the Tsarist
government but not pressed to integrate with
Russian culture
Western Contacts and Romanov Policy
• The Tsars realized that Russia’s cultural and
economic subordination to the Mongols had
put them at a commercial and cultural
disadvantage
• Ivan III was eager to launch diplomatic
missions to the leading Western States
• During the reign of Ivan IV, British merchants
established trading contacts with Russia
Continued
• The Tsars imported Italian artist and architects
to design church buildings and the
magnificent royal palace in the Kremlin in
Moscow
Royal Palace of the Kremlin
Alexis Romanov
Alexis Romanov
• He abolished the assemblies of nobles and
gained new power over the Russian Church
• His policies resumed the Orthodox tradition of
State control over the Church
• Dissident religious conservatives, called Old
Believers, were exiled to Siberia or Southern
Russia
Russia’s First Westernization, 16901790
• Tsarist autocracy of Peter the Great
• In politics, Peter the Great was an autocrat
• He had no interest in the parliamentary
features of Western center such as Holland,
seizing instead on the abolitionist currents in
the West
• He enhanced the power of the Russian state
by using it as a reform force
Peter the Great
Peter the Great Continued
• Peter extended an earlier policy of recruiting
bureaucrats from outside aristocratic ranks
and giving them noble titles to reward
bureaucratic service
• He imitated Western military organization,
creating a specially trained fighting force to
put down local militias
• He set up a secret police to prevent dissent
and to supervise the bureaucracy
Peter Attacks
• Peter the Great attacked the Ottoman Empire,
but he won no great victories
• His attack on Sweden left that country as a
second rate military status
• This gave Russia a “window on the sea”,
including a largely ice free port
• From this time onward, Russia became a
major factor in European diplomatic and
military alignments
St. Petersburg
He moved his capital from Moscow to St.
Petersburg (which he built)
What Westernization Meant
• He tried to streamline Russia’s small
bureaucracy and altar military structure by
using Western organizational principles
• He improved the military’s weaponry
• He created the first Russian navy
• He completely eliminated the old noble
councils creating a set of advisors under his
control
Westernization Continued
• A Tsar-appointed town magistrate served as
final authority for elected town councils
• Peter’s ministers systematized law codes to
extend through the whole Empire and revised
the tax system, with taxes on ordinary Russian
peasants increasing steadily
• New training institutes were established for
aspiring bureaucrats and officers
Peter’s Economics
• Peter’s economic efforts focused on building
up metallurgical and mining
• Landlords were rewarded for using serf labor
to staff new manufacturing operations
Women under Peter’s Reign
• He encouraged upper-class women to wear
Western style clothing and attend public
cultural events
• He made no move to change gender relations
among the masses of Russian peasants
• He required male nobles to shave off their
beards and also wear Western clothes
Peter’s Beard Tax
Peter’s Science
• Peter and his successors founded scientific
institutes and academies along Western lines and
serious discussions of the latest scientific and
technical findings became common
• Peter wanted economic development to support
military strength rather than achieve wider
commercial goals
• Westernization was meant to encourage the
autocratic state, not to challenge it with some of
the new political ideas circulating in the West
Consolidation Under Catherine the
Great
Continued
• The death of Peter the Great in 1724 was
followed by several decades of weak rule,
dominated in part by power plays among
army officers who guided the selection of
several ineffective emperors and empresses
• After Peter III’s death, his wife Catherine the
Great continued to rule as Empress
Continued
• She defended the powers of the central
monarch
• She put down vigorous peasant uprisings
which were led by Emalia Pugachev
• Catherine’s reign combined genuine
Enlightenment interest with her need to
consolidate power as a truly Russian ruler
• She imported several French philosophers for
visits and patronizing the arts and sciences
Continued
• She summoned various reform commissions
to discuss new law codes and other Western
style measures including reduction of
traditionally severe punishments
The Centralizer
• She was a centralizer and certainly an
advocate of strong tsarist hand
• She did give new powers to the nobility over
the serfs
• She increased the harshness of punishments
nobles could decree for their serfs
The Builder
• She continued building St. Petersburg in the
classical styles popular at the time in the West
and encouraged leading nobles to tour the
West and even send their children to be
educated there
Expansion
• Catherine pursued the tradition of Russian
expansion by resuming campaigns against the
Ottoman Empire, winning new territories in
Central Asia, including the Crimea, bordering the
Black Sea
• She accelerated the colonization of Russia’s
holdings in Siberia and encouraged further
exploration, claiming the territory of Alaska in
Russia’s name
• She increased Russian interference in Polish
affairs
Expansion
Themes in Early Modern Russian
History
• After the expulsion of the Tartars, increasing
numbers of Russian peasants fell into debt and
had to accept servile status to noble landowners
when they could not repay
• They retained access to much of the land, but not
primary ownership
• Serfdom gave the government a way to satisfy
the nobility and regulate peasants when the
government itself lacked the bureaucratic means
to extend direct controls over the common
people
Continued
• By 1800, half of Russia’s peasantry was enserfed
to the landlords, and much of the other half
owed comparable obligations to the state
• An act in 1649 fixed the hereditary status of the
serfs, so that people born to that station could
not legally escape it
• The intensification of estate agriculture and serf
labor reflected Eastern Europe’s growing
economic subordination to the West
Continued
• Coerced labor was used to produce grain
surpluses sold to Western merchants for the
growing cities of Western Europe
• Most peasants were illiterate and quite poor
• They paid high taxes or obligations in kind,
and they owed extensive labor service to the
landlords or government
Serfs
Trade and Economic Dependence
• Most manufacturing took place in the
countryside, so there was no well defined
artisan class
• Small merchant groups existed
• The nobility, concerned about potential social
competition, prevented the emergence of a
substantial merchant class
Social and Economics that Worked
• It produced enough revenue to support an
expanding state and empire
• The system, along with Russia’s expansion,
yielded significant population growth
Economic Limitations
• The system suffered from important limitations
• Most agriculture methods were highly traditional,
and there was little motivation among peasantry
for improvement because increased production
usually was taken by the state or the landlord
• Manufacturing lagged behind Western standards,
despite the important extension developed under
Peter the Great
Social Unrest
• Russia’s economic and social system led to
protest
• By the end of the 18th Century, a small but
growing number of Western oriented
aristocrats such as Radichev were criticizing
the regime’s backwardness, urging measures
as far reaching as abolition serfdom
• More significant still were the recurring
peasant rebellions
Radichev Criticized The Government of
Catherine the Great
Pugachev
• Peasant rebellions had occurred from the 17th
Century rebellion of the 1770s was
particularly strong
Pugachev’ Rebellion
Russia and Eastern Europe
• Areas such as present day Poland or the Czech
and Slovak regions operated more fully within
the Western cultural orbit
• Hungary became part of the German
dominated Hapsburg Empire as did Czech
lands, then called Bohemia
• The eclipse of Poland highlighted Russian
emergence on the European as well as the
Eurasian stage
The Russia of the Tsars