Russia

Tsardom, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great

Early Modern Era · ~1500 – ~1800

Russia in the early modern era grew from the Grand Duchy of Moscow into a vast multi-ethnic empire stretching across northern Eurasia. In 1547 Ivan IV was crowned the first tsar, and the Tsardom of Russia expanded east into Siberia and south along the Volga. After a period of civil war and foreign invasion, the Romanov dynasty took the throne in 1613 and ruled until 1917.

Peter the Great, who ruled from 1682 to 1725, rebuilt the army and navy, reorganised the state, founded Saint Petersburg and in 1721 took the title of emperor. Catherine the Great, who reigned from 1762 to 1796, extended the empire to the Black Sea and into Poland-Lithuania, and patronised the ideas of the Enlightenment while strengthening the nobility's hold over the serfs. Together these reigns made Russia one of the great powers of Europe.

Things happened, and the rest is history

Ivan IV is crowned tsar
Event
What happened
In January 1547 the sixteen-year-old Grand Prince Ivan IV of Moscow is crowned in the Kremlin's Dormition Cathedral with the title tsar of all Russia. He is the first Russian ruler crowned with this title. In the 1550s his armies take Kazan (1552) and Astrakhan (1556) from the Tatar khanates.
The rest is history
The conquests brought the whole Volga river under Moscow's control and made the state home to large Muslim and non-Russian populations. This was the start of Russia's growth into a multi-ethnic empire. Ivan's later reign, including the Livonian War from 1558 and the violent rule of the oprichnina from 1565, drained the country. When his line ended in 1598 the state fell into crisis.
Sources
1. BookMadariaga, Isabel de. Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
2. BookMartin, Janet. Medieval Russia, 980-1584. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Yermak and the opening of Siberia
Event
What happened
In the early 1580s a Cossack band led by Yermak Timofeyevich crosses the Urals, funded by the Stroganov merchant family. It defeats the forces of Khan Kuchum of Sibir around 1582. Yermak dies in 1585, but Russian forts and settlements keep spreading east.
The rest is history
Over the next decades Russian traders, soldiers and fur collectors reached the Pacific, with Okhotsk founded in 1647. The tribute paid in furs became an important source of income for the state. Siberia made Russia a land empire across Asia, and its native peoples came under Russian rule.
Sources
1. BookForsyth, James. A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia's North Asian Colony 1581-1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
2. BookKhodarkovsky, Michael. Russia's Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500-1800. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.
The Time of Troubles and the first Romanov
Event
What happened
After Tsar Feodor I dies childless in 1598, the Rurik dynasty ends. Famine in 1601 to 1603, rival claimants known as False Dmitrys, and Polish and Swedish intervention follow, and Polish troops occupy Moscow from 1610. A volunteer army led by Kuzma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky drives them out in 1612. In 1613 an assembly of the land elects Mikhail Romanov tsar.
The rest is history
The Romanov dynasty then ruled Russia for just over three centuries, until 1917. The Troubles left the state weak, but they also strengthened the alliance between the tsar and the nobility. The Law Code of 1649 bound peasants to the land and made serfdom hereditary, with lasting social effects.
Sources
1. BookDunning, Chester. Russia's First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001.
2. BookHellie, Richard. Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971.
The church schism and the Old Believers
Event
What happened
In the 1650s Patriarch Nikon introduces changes to Russian Orthodox rites and service books to bring them into line with Greek practice. Many believers reject the changes. A church council in 1666 to 1667 condemns the opponents, among them the priest Avvakum, who is later burned at the stake in 1682.
The rest is history
The resisters became known as the Old Believers and survived despite persecution. Some fled to remote regions, and others took part in revolts. The split left a lasting divide in Russian religious life, and it shows how far the state and church were bound together before Peter's reforms.
Sources
1. BookHosking, Geoffrey. Russia: People and Empire, 1552-1917. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Peter the Great and the Great Northern War
Event
What happened
Peter I becomes sole ruler in 1696 and in 1697 to 1698 travels through western Europe to study shipbuilding and technology. In 1700 Russia goes to war with Sweden and is beaten at Narva. In 1709 Peter wins a decisive victory at Poltava, and in 1703 he had already begun founding Saint Petersburg on the Baltic coast.
The rest is history
The war ended with the Treaty of Nystad in 1721, which gave Russia Livonia, Estonia and Ingria. Peter then took the title of emperor. Sweden's decline and Russia's rise changed the balance of power in northern Europe. Saint Petersburg became the capital in 1712.
Sources
1. BookHughes, Lindsey. Russia in the Age of Peter the Great. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
2. BookAnisimov, Evgenii. The Reforms of Peter the Great: Progress through Coercion in Russia. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1993.
Peter's reforms of state and society
Event
What happened
Between about 1699 and 1725 Peter reorganises Russia. He builds a modern army and navy, with conscription, and replaces the old councils with a Senate in 1711 and administrative colleges from 1718. He subordinates the church to a Holy Synod in 1721, and in 1722 issues the Table of Ranks, which ties noble status to state service.
The rest is history
These measures made the state more centralised and better able to raise taxes and soldiers, and they pushed the nobility into service. A poll tax introduced in 1718 to 1724 weighed heavily on the peasantry. Historians debate how much was new and how much built on earlier Muscovite steps, but the reforms shaped the Russian state for generations.
Sources
1. BookCracraft, James. The Revolution of Peter the Great. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.
2. PrimaryTable of Ranks. Decree of Peter I, 1722. Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii.
Catherine takes the throne
Event
What happened
In June 1762 Catherine, the German-born wife of Emperor Peter III, takes power in a coup backed by the Guards regiments. Peter III, who had reigned only since January, is forced to abdicate and dies days later in custody. Catherine is proclaimed empress and rules until 1796.
The rest is history
Catherine presented herself as an enlightened ruler. She corresponded with Voltaire and Diderot, and in 1767 issued the Instruction for a law commission. In practice she relied on the nobility, and the 1785 Charter to the Nobility confirmed its privileges. Serfdom grew harsher in her reign, and the Pugachev rebellion of 1773 to 1775 shook the state.
Sources
1. BookMadariaga, Isabel de. Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.
2. BookAlexander, John T. Catherine the Great: Life and Legend. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Expansion to the Black Sea and Crimea
Event
What happened
Wars with the Ottoman Empire in 1768 to 1774 and 1787 to 1792 give Russia the northern Black Sea coast. The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774) makes the Crimean Khanate independent of the Ottomans, and Russia annexes Crimea in 1783.
The rest is history
These gains made Russia a Black Sea power and opened the fertile southern steppe to settlement. Potemkin governed the new lands, and Odessa was founded in 1794. The treaty also gave Russia a claim to speak for Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire, a claim that shaped later diplomacy. By 1800 Russia was one of Europe's great powers.
Sources
1. BookKohut, Zenon. Russian Centralism and Ukrainian Autonomy: Imperial Absorption of the Hetmanate, 1760s-1830s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1988.
2. BookFisher, Alan W. The Russian Annexation of the Crimea, 1772-1783. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Moscow, the Third Rome
Popular belief
The legend
After Constantinople falls to the Turks in 1453, a monk named Filofei is said to tell the Grand Prince of Moscow that Moscow is the Third Rome. Two Romes have fallen, a third stands, and a fourth shall not be. Russia is thus told to be the last true Christian empire.
The rest is history
Filofei of Pskov did write letters in the early 1500s with these ideas, but they were the private views of a monk and not state policy. Historians doubt that the idea was an official doctrine for most of the period. Later writers, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, made it famous as the key to Russian imperial thinking. The tsars did draw on Byzantine ceremony, and Ivan III married Sophia Palaiologina in 1472.
Sources
1. ArticleRowland, Daniel. "Moscow: The Third Rome or the New Israel?" Russian Review 55, no. 4 (1996): 591-614.
2. BookPoe, Marshall. A People Born to Slavery: Russia in Early Modern European Ethnography, 1476-1748. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000.
Potemkin villages
Popular belief
The legend
In 1787 Catherine the Great travels to Crimea. Her favourite, Grigory Potemkin, is said to have put up fake painted villages along the river banks, with cheerful peasants moved from place to place, to fool the empress and her guests.
The rest is history
The phrase Potemkin village became a byword for a false front. Historians find little evidence that fake villages were built in this way. The story spread mainly from accounts by foreign diplomats, such as the Saxon envoy Georg Adolf von Helbig, and from Potemkin's enemies. Potemkin did found towns and a Black Sea fleet in the new southern lands, and he was governor of New Russia. Simon Sebag Montefiore's biography treats the tale as a great exaggeration.
Sources
1. BookMontefiore, Simon Sebag. Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000.
2. BookMadariaga, Isabel de. Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.
Ivan the Terrible kills his son
Popular belief
The legend
In November 1581 Ivan IV, in a fit of rage, strikes his heir Ivan with his iron-tipped staff after quarrelling over the young man's wife. The blow is said to be fatal, and the grieving tsar is left with only his weaker son Feodor as heir.
The rest is history
The story is widely told and is the subject of Ilya Repin's famous painting of 1885. The prince did die in November 1581, and many contemporary and later sources, including the Jesuit Antonio Possevino, report that his father struck him. Russian sources of the time are less clear, and some historians have proposed illness or poison, after a 1963 examination of the remains found high levels of mercury. The question is still debated. Ivan IV died in 1584 and Feodor succeeded him, and the dynasty ended with Feodor's death in 1598.
Sources
1. BookMadariaga, Isabel de. Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
2. BookPossevino, Antonio. The Moscovia of Antonio Possevino, S.J. Account of 1580s, translated by Hugh Graham. Pittsburgh: University Center for International Studies, 1977.
Peter the Great as a carpenter in Holland
Folk tale
The legend
Peter the Great is said to have gone to Holland in disguise and worked as a shipwright's labourer at Zaandam, wielding the axe himself. Stories describe the tsar living in a small wooden cottage and mixing with ordinary workers.
The rest is history
The core of the tale is true. On his Grand Embassy of 1697 to 1698, Peter did work at the Dutch East India Company's shipyard in Amsterdam, and he stayed briefly at Zaandam in August 1697. He travelled under the name Peter Mikhailov, but his identity was no secret. The tiny cottage still stands and is a museum, and the stories grew into folk tradition. The visit gave Peter practical knowledge and he hired Dutch and other experts to take back to Russia.
Sources
1. BookMassie, Robert K. Peter the Great: His Life and World. New York: Knopf, 1980.
2. BookHughes, Lindsey. Russia in the Age of Peter the Great. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.

← Back to the outline

Things happened, and the rest is history

Ivan IV is crowned tsar

Yermak and the opening of Siberia

The Time of Troubles and the first Romanov

The church schism and the Old Believers

Peter the Great and the Great Northern War

Peter's reforms of state and society

Catherine takes the throne

Expansion to the Black Sea and Crimea

Moscow, the Third Rome

Potemkin villages

Ivan the Terrible kills his son

Peter the Great as a carpenter in Holland