Summary Russia 1645—1741 Revision Notes (History OCR A-Level)
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Course
Russia 1645—1741 (Y210)
Institution
OCR
History OCR A-Level Non-British period study: Russia 1645—1741.
Essay planning evidence grids, written by a straight A* student. Summarised and well organised notes and in order. Includes collated information from class, textbooks and online.
Topics include: Russia 1645—1698, The reforms of ...
Russia 1645-1698
Russia in 1645
• There was lots of importance placed on the Church and State relationship
• The state was backward as it was intertwined so closely with the church causing any
change to the role of religion in the state to be exacerbated and rejected by many
• The economy was backwards, economic progress was associated with the West
• Their income came mostly from agriculture
• No democratic institutions
• There was minimum political opposition as people remembered the time of troubles and
didn’t want to revert back to that state
• The state was semi-monastic, with the calendar and daily rituals revolving around
religious ceremonies
• They disliked the West and saw them as unclean
• They expanded the Russian State to the East
• Believed Russia was superior but wanted to get a hot water port to increase trade
Social and economic backwardness
Economy
Progressive Backward
• Encouragement of domestic manufacturing • Grain requisitioning was introduced
• Iron-works was established • The plague of 1654 occurred and killed many
• There is experimentation with industrialisation • There was conscription into the army
• The beginnings to develop foreign • By 1700, there were only 30 factories in the
relationships whole of Russia
• Russia were trying to group mulberries, pears • The Tsar himself was the single largest trader
and vines and manufacturer
• A homegrown merchant-manufacturing elite • The Tsar had monopolies over successful
emerged industries
• Four eet vessels were built by the Dutch • There were limits of foreign trade
• Heavy import duties were introduced and a
ban on the export of precious metals
Society
Boyars
• The Boyar Duma was at the top, varying between 28 to 153 members
• Membership was based on hereditary right but royal favour helped too
• Rank of boyars became more ceremonial and less linked with high o ce
• Boyars needed state support to keep and exploit their peasants
• They believed challenging God’s representative was a sin so never rebelled
Service gentry
• The elite of the provincial towns and countryside
• Performed policing duty and formed the backbone of the army in wartime
• Inferior to the Moscow-based nobles as they weren’t close to the Tsar but shared the
privilege of exemption from tax and Labour burdens and the right to hold land and serfs
Non-nobles
Page 1 of 40 A Level History
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,Russia 1645-1741
• Emergent middle-class
• Bound to their communities by the collective tax-obligations
• Include merchants and ordinary tradesmen and craftsmen
• The capital lacked the people (bankers, scientists, doctors, actors etc…) that were
found in Western towns
• Even Russian provincial nobles lacked the tradition and gentility associated with noble
status elsewhere in Europe
• The general picture of noble life in the provinces was one of the coarseness, drunkness
and violence
Peasants
• In 17th Century, peasants accounted for 90 per cent of the population
• They had to collectively to pay taxes and perform labour obligations as communes
• The 1649 Law Code xed serfdom as a hereditary status and the state established the
administrative apparatus to enforce this measure
• Many serfs ran away and would sometimes give land for authorities to turn a blind eye
• Peasants did retain some control over their own lives by feeding themselves and their
families in an economy of marginal su ciency
• Serfs, unless they were household servants, had minimal contact with their owners
Problems with the Tsar
• The tsars were not above demanding ’loans’ from the Church which they never repaid,
nor would they tolerate criticism from the priesthood, but were willing to be guided by
the patriarch
• At times they allowed the patriarch a status of equality with themselves which allowed
them to have enormous in uence over the tsars
• Disadvantageous as Alexis loyally supported Nikon (patriarch 1652-1666), who was
determined to correct errors which had entered Russian liturgy and ritual during
centuries of isolation, and to make Russia conform with the original Greek doctrine
• His arrogance alienated Alexis by 1658, and he lost e ective power over the church
several years before he was formally deposed
Personality and the rule of Alexis
Alexis
• Known by many as pious and quiet
• Alexis was described as a ‘good manager of men’, generally commanded the loyalty of
those around him, ruling by consensus without conceding any of his powers as autocrat
Progressive Backward
• He issued a new law code, instituting serfdom • His cautious approach to government was
• He opened Russia’s rst court theatre and inspired by religion and respect for tradition
taste for Western fashions • Images of him payed details to the religious
• His rule led to a shift in the balance between ceremonies in which he participated
church and state, in favour to the state • A Muscovite tsar was believed to be
• Alexis was a violent leader and squashed strictly adherent to Orthodoxy
rebels by quartering and burning them alive Christianity, without which his realm
• However, his regime was not noticeably couldn’t prosper
milder than those before and after him
Page 2 of 40 A Level History
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, Russia 1645-1741
Alexis’ pastimes
Progressive Backward
• Alexis had a zoo with lions and tigers, model • In the summer, the tsar’s family traveled to
gardens and orchards out-of-town estates that were equipped for
• In October 1672, Alexis watched the rst play entertainments
in Russian history • Any plays performed under Alexis were
• Court theatrical performances continued until strongly moralising and most were based on
Alexis’s death in 1676 when they were biblical subjects
stopped by Joachin • The development of secular instrumental
• New theatre opened doors to Western-style music was hampered by the disapproval of
instrumental music the church
• Alexis had organs, pipes and drums played • An edict in 1645 didn’t object the instruments
at his wedding in 1671 themselves but their use for ‘pagan’
entertainments
Inner circle
Progressive Backward
• Men from lower backgrounds enjoyed • When he was young, Alexis was mentored by his
prominence at court as well as the tsars former tutor, Boris Morozov
relatives and wealthy landowners • His path to power followed a familiar pattern
• There wasn’t much opposition as people - his closeness to the tsar won him a
didn’t want to return to the time of promotion to the boyar duma
troubles • Morozov accumulated a substantial amount
• Alexis had to ensure the loyalties of those of income
born to privilege but also allow freedoms • He also married the sister of Alexis’s rst wife
to appoint some on the grounds of merit • Top appointments continued to be regulated by
or friendship the code of precedence
• The code was often suspended during
military campaigns and was eventually
abolished entirely in 1682
The Kremlin
Progressive Backward
• The royal presence was extended • The life of the court and church hierarchy remained
beyond Moscow when Alexis went inextricably linked centred on the Kremlin cathedrals
on pilgrimages • The public were not allowed into the palace courtyard
• The Foreign O ce director Matveev and there were no public rooms like the west had
(who had a Scottish wife) staged • High o cials had to dismount their horses at a
home theatricals speci ed distance from the entrance
• Prince Vasily Golitsyn, one of the • Events in the Kremlin revolved around the Orthodox
few Russian’s to know Latin, owned liturgical year as well as selected saints’ days
musical instruments • A major proportion of the Moscow elite’s time was
spent in ceremonial activities
• Their independant cultural life outside the royal
household was extremely restricted
• There were no schools or universities, no public
theatres or secular press
• Travel required the permission of the tsar and patriarch
• Boyars didn’t compose, play music or take a scholarly
interest in the arts or sciences
Page 3 of 40 A Level History
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, Russia 1645-1741
Legislation of serfdom 1649
The 1649 Law code
• Alexis had inherited a budget de cit which Morozov took Code of precedence: You
steps to reduce had to have the same rank or
• Morozov tried to reduce the budget de cit by taking cost- higher than your father - led
cutting measures to high levels of animosity by
• He withheld allowances of o cials and musketeers the boyars due to tensions
• He tried to raise money from duties not the sale of tobacco
(o cially outlawed by the Orthodox Church) and increased
indirect taxes
• The salt tax rose for times in 1646
• It was repealed in 1647 but the government was already bombarded with complaints
and appeals from servicemen against landowners stealing their peasants
• In 1648 there were riots in Moscow which had begun to spread to other towns
• Published on January 29th, 1649, the Law Code of the Assembly of Land was a
systematic attempt, set out in 967 articles arranged into 25 chapters
Terms of the code
• Serfdom was upheld
• If any boyar owners harboured fugitives after serfs had ed to seek better conditions,
they faced sti penalties
• Those who failed to get justice in the patriarch’s court were able to appeal to the secular
courts
• The Monastery Department was created, whose secular o cials could try any priest
below the rank of patriarch in civil suits
• Expansion of church lands were limited
• Some of the church’s prosperities also lost their tax-exempt status (ongoing erosion
of the church’s economic power)
Impacts
• The tsar’s subjects were judged accruing to the particular law and in the particular court
appropriate to their social status
• The new code observed the old social hierarchies
• Lawbreakers could expect harsh punishments (including beatings, slitting nostrils,
cutting o hands and feet, burying alive and death by re and drinking molten metal)
• Women who killed their husbands were buried in the ground up to their necks and left
Progressive Backward
• The printed volume was made available in • There was no independant judiciary
all government o ces • O cials still demanded bribes and requisitions
• Before 1649, it was hard to get justice • This caused going before the law to be a
because o cials frequently couldn’t hazardous process
locate copies of relevant statutes • Torture of both defendants and witnesses
• The 1649 code remained Russia’s basic continued to be the approved method of
legal structure until the 1830s taking evidence
• Serfs still had no alternative and continued to
settle their disputes or be tried either through
their communes or by their landlords
Page 4 of 40 A Level History
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