Russia (24 page)

The major parties were exhausted by the time peace talks began in 1666, yet these were as hard-fought by the diplomats as the war was by the soldiers. It was finally agreed that Russia would keep Smolensk, Chernigov and part of Vitebsk province, and that Ukraine should be divided: the west for Poland; the east for Russia, which would also hold Kiev for two years (but in the event was able to hold it permanently). Both parties were to cooperate against the Turks. The Tsar’s steadfastness had at least secured half of Ukraine.
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He was by no means the only hero of the hour, however. There were also peasant boys hectored by foreign officers until they learned how to slow march, handle a musket, fire it to order, and face the enemy (for to turn tail involved greater risks from the officers stationed at the rear); the poor gentry, who spent most of their income on maintaining their horses and equipment in a state of battle-readiness, and who fought for nothing except the free labour of a couple of serfs; and the ancient veterans who bore the scars of a dozen desperate fights on dangerous frontiers.

Artemii Shchigolev was an example — a professional serviceman who began to serve at Livny in his youth, helping to guard the steppe frontier. He was transferred to Bronnitsy just outside Moscow for a time, but was wounded and taken prisoner at Orel during the Time of Troubles and spent over two years as a prisoner in Poland. On his return he was enlisted
as a mounted musketeer and sent to Ufa in the far south-east. He spent the next twenty-five years there, at first relatively quietly, but then in the 1630s the Kalmyks burst into the Ufa region, launching themselves into a ruthless campaign of plundering and burning. Shchigolev was among those who faced them in battle. He killed two men, but was wounded by an arrow which passed right through his chest. In another battle he rode in the van of an attacking force alongside his two sons. One of them was killed in the action, and he himself received another arrow in the chest. For ‘his many services, the blood he had shed, his wounds and the blood shed by his sons’ he was eventually rewarded with a small gift of money and a modest service estate.
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The Kalmyks were new and unwelcome arrivals, not only to the Russians but also to other peoples between the Urals and the Caucasus. They had come from Tibet via Central Asia and, though Buddhists, were as ruthless as any of the steppe predators who had preceded them — and contemptuous of the Russians when they attempted to come to terms. Yet before long the Kalmyks were to become allies. This achievement was due in part to Moscow’s powers of diplomacy, and its deep understanding of the Kalmyks’ wants and psychology; in part to its ability, in the old imperial tradition, to divide and rule, playing them off against neighbouring Nogais, Kabardinians and Crimean Tatars;
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but chiefly to Russia’s success towards the end of the century in capturing the Turkish citadel of Azov. And so the Kalmyks were finally persuaded to co-operate. That said, Moscow’s diplomatic skills were as important as force in shoring up and extending Russia’s new position in Eurasia.

Effective diplomacy depends on accurate intelligence and knowledge of an opponents past as well as present condition, dealings and ambitions. Though Westerners often scorned Russians as barbarians, Moscow’s external-affairs department was already proving itself to be more effective than some of its Western counterparts. This may seem surprising, since Russian diplomacy is often, and rightly, characterized as hidebound and slow rather than brilliant. But unlike Poland’s diplomats, who were noble amateurs, Russia’s were humble professionals, trained by endlessly copying diplomatic correspondence and by listening silently, and watching closely, when their betters engaged in the often tedious formalities of governmental exchange. They recorded everything, and they maintained their records for future reference.
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This was the basis of Russia’s superior system of intelligence. But it
was supplemented by the collection and transcription of news-sheets
(Flugschriften)
, the forerunners of modern newspapers, which the Tsar ordered from his factors in western Europe. Summaries of their more important reports and digests of intelligence gathered from merchants and monks, diplomats and emigres kept the Tsar and his top officials up to date on foreign military and political news, and apprised them of any unusual events. Occasionally the Tsar would ask for a report on something abroad which had sparked his curiosity, and so the department came to be as well informed about the topography of Venice and the Florentine theatre as about the hopes and fears of the Habsburg Emperor, the policies of Denmark’s king, and the commercial pursuits of the English and the Dutch. And it was accurate intelligence about Polish politics that prompted the Tsar to send funds - through Benjamin Helmfeldt and the Marselis brothers, his agents in Germany - to support Prince Liubomirski’s rebellion of 1666,
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hoping it would help to soften the negotiating line of the Polish government at Andrusovo.

By the time Alexis died, early in 1676, Russia had made its mark as a European power. Denmark wanted it to join in a coalition against Sweden; Poland wanted its aid against the Tatars; the Emperor wanted it to join in coalition against the Turks. But in 1682 the unexpectedly early death without issue of his successor, his eldest son, Fedor, raised doubts about Russia’s political stability once again. Of the two obvious candidates to succeed Fedor, Ivan, Alexis’s surviving son by his first wife, was handicapped, and Peter, Alexis’s son by his second wife, though healthy and intelligent, was only eight years old. This exacerbated the tensions which already existed at court between the old guard, including the last tsar’s chief minister, Artamon Matveyev, and ambitious younger men like Vasilii Golitsyn and Ivan Khovanskii.
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This might not have mattered if two domestic problems had not now come to a head.

Discontented elements came to the fore, each with its own agenda but united against innovation. Religious conservatives had been outraged by the confirmation in 1666 of changes to the liturgy. The ‘Old Believers’ would not be reconciled to them. At the same time there was widespread concern in the ranks of traditional army units, including the privileged musketeer corps, about modernization of the army. Many soldiers saw this as a threat; and many of them were also Old Believers, armed and stationed in the Kremlin. Their commander was the ambitious Ivan Khovanskii. The upshot was rebellion. On 15 May 1682 — the anniversary of the death of the Tsarevich Dmitrii at Uglich nearly a century before — false rumours spread that Ivan, the rightful tsar, had been murdered. Three days of
blood-shed followed in the seat of government itself Matveyev was butchered; so were the Kremlin’s foreign doctors, along with other foreigners. The mob’s attentions may seem to have been indiscriminate, but all the victims represented modernization in one or another of its forms. When order returned, Ivan and Peter reigned jointly, with Alexis’s eldest daughter, Sofia, as regent. After an interval, Khovanskii and others involved in the rebellion were executed, and leading Old Believers were burned at the stake. The attempt to reverse the modernization policies was thwarted; the government’s attention returned to foreign affairs.

The first priority was to establish a permanent peace with Poland. This was done in Moscow in the spring of 1686. The Poles ratified all the territorial transfers they had conceded at Andrusovo. They also ceded Kiev permanently to Russia in return for a payment of less than 150,000 rubles. Poland’s king, Jan Sobieski, the ‘hero of the siege of Vienna’ only three years earlier, tried to avoid ratifying the treaty, but had to sign in the end. Russia’s only concession apart from the money was a promise to attack the Crimea. Two campaigns in successive years were failures, but that did not alter the fact that Russia had replaced Poland as the predominant power in the region; and the success was due in no small measure to superior diplomatic methods, and to a succession of particularly able professional functionaries.

Although the political direction of foreign affairs in the later 1600s had been overseen by a succession of able ministers — Afanasii Ordyn-Nashchokin, Artamon Matveyev, Vasilii Golitsyn — their success was based largely on the strength of the support they received from those below. By the 1680s the Foreign Office had a staff of over forty translators and interpreters working in a variety of languages, chiefly Latin, Tatar, German and Polish, but also Persian, Swedish, Dutch, Greek, Mongol and English.
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There was an even bigger cohort of clerks, and, above them were the senior officials. The permanent secretary at the time of the Andrusovo negotiations rejoiced in the name of ‘Diamond Johnson’ (Almaz Ivanov), ‘Diamond’ being his family name; his family were business people. He began his association with government in the 1620s, supervising the liquor outlets, and in the late 1630s he was in charge of customs and the liquor monopoly. He subsequently became Secretary in the state’s main fiscal department before entering the Foreign Office in 1646. He served on embassies to Sweden and to Poland in the early 1650s, before being promoted to membership of the cabinet
(duma
— by now essentially a committee of the Tsar’s chief ministers) as professional head of the Foreign Office. At the same time he was given responsibility for the State Printing Office. This was a particularly sensitive job in that it involved publishing
translations of foreign books which contained essential expertise which Russia needed, but which were viewed with horror by most Russians, who, perhaps rightly, imagined that such learning threatened their faith.

Another top functionary, Dementy Bashmakov had a different sort of career. His early experience was as a scribe registering state lands in the north-west and as an under-secretary on the palace staff. On the outbreak of war, however, he was promoted to run the Tsar’s campaign treasury, then to help administer the territory conquered in Lithuania. Soon afterwards he became secretary of the Tsar’s new private office, and then ‘Secretary in the Sovereign’s Name’, which gave him special powers to sign authorizations on the Tsar’s behalf. He was given ministerial
(duma)
rank to run the Muster Office, before his appointment to the Foreign Office in 1671. He also served three spells in charge of the Printing Office, ran the Ukraine Office for a time in the 1670s, and, as an experienced trouble-shooter, continued to serve spells in various financial ministries, in the Petitions Office, and on commissions of inquiry - notably that into monetary problems after the copper riots.

The official most concerned in achieving the 1686 treaty with Poland, Emelian Ukraintsev, had a more conventional career in foreign relations. Nevertheless, he served a seven-year apprenticeship in a financial department before taking up post in the Foreign Office. His rise was meteoric. Sent on a low-grade mission to Sweden and Denmark in 1672, he became senior under-secretary in the department the same year, was promoted to the rank of full secretary in 1675, and joined the
duma
in 1681. A specialist in the affairs of the north-west, he had served in the department administering the most north-westerly province of Novgorod, and also in that administering Ustiug in the far north — where he watched the Swedish border provinces closely, as well as Sweden’s court. But after his triumph of 1686 (for which he was awarded estates, hereditary as well as service-obligated) he carried major responsibilities for Ukraine and its neighbours. He accompanied the expeditionary forces to Crimea in the late 1680s. His last recorded service was as ambassador extraordinary to Turkey in 1699.
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Outsiders were also given diplomatic missions from time to time. Robert Menzies, a Catholic Scot by birth, was sent to the Pope; the Romanian known as Spafarius (who at least was Orthodox) advised Regent Sofia’s Foreign Minister, Prince Golitsyn. But the backbone of the service was Russians like Ivanov, Bashmakov and Ukraintsev. Though senior Foreign Office functionaries, they were all experienced in domestic affairs too, not least in financial matters. They had been trained to see things in the round and to understand the implications, broad as well as
narrow, of the moves they and others made. In addition to guiding Russia’s relations with foreign powers from Spain to China, their knowledge of the outside world — so rare among Russians of that period — meant that they were in demand to handle any matter involving foreigners or foreign things. They were therefore concerned not only with diplomatic dealings, but also with the foreign doctors who served the tsars — indeed, with all the many foreigners who served Russia. They advised on foreign books, helped procure foreign armaments, negotiated foreign trade, and administered territories with sensitive frontiers. And, since so much of the work involved the West, they played a crucial role in the country’s modernization, in laying the foundations of Russia’s ‘Westernizing’ policies that became increasingly evident from the 1650s.

By 1700 Russia had not only recovered from the collapse at the beginning of the century, but was poised for two centuries of almost uninterrupted empire-building. That story begins in the eighteenth century, but the launch pad for the brilliant series of advances had been constructed in the 1600s.

O
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22 October 1721, at a ceremony in the new but unfinished city of St Petersburg which he had founded, Tsar Peter I, son of Alexis, was offered a new title by the Senate which he had created: ‘Father of the Fatherland, Emperor of All Russia, Peter the Great’. In explaining the award, the Chancellor, Peter’s long-standing confidant and sometimes bawdy correspondent Gavrilii Golovkin announced that Peter had ‘brought us out of the darkness of ignorance on to the world stage of glory; from non-existence, as it were, to existence, and on to terms of equality with the political nations’.
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Ever since, not only most of the outside world but many Russians themselves have believed that Peter created Russia. The myth was at least in part a deliberate construction, the work of Peter’s acolytes and successors, not least of Catherine the Great, Voltaire, Daniel Defoe (albeit anonymously) and a dozen other hired publicists. As a result, no other European ruler before Napoleon was to be branded more deeply into the consciousness of future generations.

Peter’s size (he was over six and a half feet tall) and his immense energy, curiosity and informality all contributed to his mythic status. Even so, and discounting Golovkin’s hyperbole, the Petrine legend has a core of truth. It was in his reign that Russia came to be universally regarded as a great power. He won famous victories, including one which most military experts count as one
of
the ten most decisive battles in European history. He founded new institutions, including an Academy
of
Sciences. He Westernized the dress of the elite, developed industries, and Europeanized institutions and manners to some extent. He also served in the ranks of one of his own regiments, always regarded himself as the servant of the Russian state, and has a genuine claim to be regarded as an enlightened monarch
avant la lettre.

Yet, far from inventing Russia, he built on foundations laid by others. He suffered crushing defeats as well as winning famous victories. He opened a window on the West, and advanced down the shores of the Caspian Sea, but was ultimately thwarted in his attempts to break through
to the Black Sea and into Central Asia. And Russia’s advance to the Pacific, completed in his reign, would have happened anyway

For Russians, Peter remains the most popular of historical heroes, but in the West his image is tarnished by the massive wastefulness which was the by-product of his imperial ambitions. Quite apart from casualties in his wars and in his suppression of rebellions, tens of thousands of labourers, prisoners of war, convicts and servicemen — Russians and non-Russians — perished in the building of St Petersburg and his ambitious canal-cutting projects to link the Neva to the Volga and the Volga to the Don, the latter begun in 1701, but never finished. And Peter could be as cruel as any of his predecessors. He participated in the investigation under torture of his son and heir for treason, and was present when the young man died of his injuries. No one could say that the Emperor shirked his responsibilities.

In formal terms Peter’s reign began in 1682, when he became tsar jointly with his older but less able and less energetic half-brother Ivan. The mutiny which followed was directed against members of Peter’s mother’s family, the Naryshkins, and against Westernizing ministers and foreigners, some of whom were lynched. Though Peter and Ivan reigned, power was now in the hands of Peter’s half-sister Sofia and her ministers. Chief among these was Vasilii Golitsyn, who directed two major campaigns against the Crimea. Both failed, and the failure precipitated another regime change and yet more violence. When calm returned and Sofia had departed, the seventeen-year-old Peter was at last free to exercise his autocratic powers. Yet he preferred instead to prolong his adolescence.

His childhood games came to be played on an ever larger scale, and more realistically. They involved bigger and bigger boats — even the building of seagoing ships — and real soldiers rather than toy ones, with live ammunition and real casualties. So when the twenty-two-year-old Peter eventually went to war in 1694, marching as a bombardier with his own artillery train, he was no stranger to military pursuits.

Peter’s target in the campaigns of 1695 and 1696 was Azov, the formidable Turkish citadel which blocked Russia off from the Black Sea and the western flank of the Caucasus. The attempt of 1695 was not successful, but Peter was as yet a strong, young Sisyphus and he cheerfully resolved to try again next year, encouraged by his now being a member of an anti-Turkish coalition that included the Habsburg Emperor, who promised to help with engineering and explosives expertise, the King of Poland and the Doge of Venice, one of whose subjects, an expert in building and handling galleys,
Peter was soon to commission as vice-admiral in his service. Intelligent as well as persistent, Peter already understood that battles and storms were the lesser part of war: that thorough preparation, careful planning and good logistics were the bases of success. And so we find him inspecting the arms-manufacturing base at Tula at the conclusion of the campaign, and early the following year he was at Voronezh, upriver from Azov, building a fleet of galleys and barges which was to neutralize the Turkish fleet. He also planned to build frigates in the yards there to exploit victory when it came.

And this time the operation did succeed. The pasha commanding Azov surrendered it in July. Since Ivan had died two months before this, Peter returned to Moscow as sole tsar and autocrat. Yet Moscow was not to detain him long. In March 1697 he began his famous, and in part notorious, tour of Europe, sometimes presenting himself as the young ruler of the new power of the north, sometimes travelling incognito. He visited states in central Germany, England, Venice and Vienna, but his particular goal was Holland, where he set out to master all the secrets of modern shipbuilding. He was already intent on making Russia not only a great European power but a great sea power, and to do this he had to achieve what Ivan IV and Alexis had both failed to achieve: a breakthrough to the Baltic.

Arriving in Moscow in October 1696 he found that another revolt of musketeers had been suppressed in his absence. He felt obliged to supervise the interrogation of those involved, and, following his principle that no subordinate should be ordered to do anything that the Tsar himself was not prepared to do, whether in carpentry, battle, hammering sheet iron, or execution, he himself took part in the proceedings, which involved torture and killing. High treason was not, after all, a crime for which it was politic to show clemency. The proceedings were not to be concluded until 1705. Meanwhile, once a long-term truce with the Turks was in the offing, Peter turned impatiently to drive Sweden, the strongest power of the north, away from the eastern shoreline of the Baltic.

He did so in coalition with the kings of Denmark and Poland, and with the promised support of a fifth column of Swedish subjects in Livonia, headed by a local baron called Patkul, who, like others of his class, was enraged by recent and extensive transfers of land and peasants from the private domain to the Swedish crown. Tens of thousands of Russian troops were prepared for the campaign, ready to march as soon as news should arrive of the signing of an agreement with the Turks. It came in August 1700, but by that time Peter’s coalition had fallen to pieces. Denmark,
which had begun aggressively by invading Swedish Holstein, had been forced to seek peace and withdraw from the war. The Polish king had begun well, sending his Saxon troops in against Riga, but the attack failed. The Russians had therefore to fend for themselves.

Still, their prospects looked reasonably good. Peter had over 60,000 troops ready to descend on Narva, which, if he could take it, would give him the access he needed to the Baltic Sea. Its walls were strong but its garrison was relatively small, and so the siege began — and with it a trial of strength between the two rival monarchs. Peter was twenty-eight years old and fresh from victory against the Turks. His opponent, Charles XII, was ten years his junior and virtually untried. On the other hand Sweden had long been recognized as a power to be reckoned with, while Russia was still regarded as a neophyte. The struggle between them would decide the supremacy of northern Europe.

The first clash of arms came in November, when Charles led a Swedish force to the relief of Narva. Though outnumbered three to one, he immediately took the initiative, launching an attack which wrong-footed the Russians. The day ended with a stinging rout for Peter’s forces, although the Tsar was not present in person, having returned to Moscow for Christmas. The Russian losses were serious: 8,000 men and nearly 150 guns. That encounter and the long struggle which followed reflected the two monarchs’ quite disparate military talents. Charles, by far the superior field commander, was master of the unexpected. Peter, having no talent as a tactician, depended on his generals (in the case of du Croy, whom he left in command at Narva, a rather careless one). In fact, given his reliance on councils of war, it could be said that this Russian autocrat governed military operations by committee. Peter’s strength lay as an organiser and ener-giser. The virtual destruction of his northern army galvanized him into raising another. Fortunately for him, Russia was able to meet all his demands for men and resources. And fortunately, too, he and his generals developed a talent for exploiting the adversary’s difficulties.
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Charles had wanted to follow up his victory at Narva by advancing immediately against Pskov and from there into the heart of Russia. He was thwarted, however, by the need to secure his lines of communication against the Poles and Saxons. So he decided to occupy Courland and develop it as a base for his army. Eventually (in 1706) he forced Poland to abandon its alliance with Russia, but meanwhile Peter was able to capture Narva and send forces down the river Neva to snatch the unpromising marshes near its mouth. It was there, in 1703, that he began to build a fort which was to become the nodal point of a new city he called St Petersburg.
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The decision to develop St Petersburg rather than expand Narva was taken in the light of long experience going back to Ivan IV and with an eye to long-term strategic advantage. The new settlement was less exposed than Narva or any other point along the southern Baltic. Moreover, it gave access to Russia’s river system, so that, with the development of relatively few canals, it could become an organic part of a single communications system. It also gave access to Western merchantmen, and Peter lost no time in selling them the idea of the makeshift settlement (as it remained for several years) as a profitable new trading port in the making.

Once set on his radical strategy to solve Russia’s Baltic problem, Peter would not contemplate abandoning it, even though the great maw of this infant St Petersburg swallowed resources on a gargantuan scale. Indeed, he would happily have surrendered Narva and his other gains around the Gulf of Bothnia, and made other concessions, had Charles only been prepared to cede that small piece of uncertain ground. But Sweden was not content for Russia to have any outlet to the Baltic at all, and so the struggle had to be played out to a violent finish. In terms of resources, Russia had the advantage, though greater difficulties in mobilizing its forces, but Sweden had the better military machine. In 1707 matters moved towards a climax.

The Russian staff expected a Swedish offensive, but not in the direction from which it came - across the Masurian Marshes, to establish a new forward base at Mogilev in Belarus. However, a defeat in Estonia led the Swedes to abandon plans for an amphibious operation against St Petersburg. So far the Russians had suffered more damage than the Swedes in action, but neither side had gained a decisive advantage. Then the weather intervened. Heavy rains turned the roads along the Swedish line of supply into a quagmire, and with the Russians burning crops in the dry areas Charles was soon facing a problem of feeding his army If the Swedish general Lewenhaupt had arrived earlier, according to plan, bringing supplies, all would have been well for the Swedish offensive into west Russia. But Lewenhaupt was delayed too long, and the Russians used the time to fire the villages and crops along what would have been the Swedes’ line of march eastward. In September the thwarted Charles led his army south towards Ukraine. Soon afterwards the news came that Lewenhaupt had been defeated. The die had been cast.

The outcome of the war was turning not on the size and the leadership
of
armies, but on logistics. The Swedish had the better army, but had to feed it. The Russians understood their enemy’s difficulty, and exploited it to their own advantage. This forced the Swedes to change their strategy. Rather than taking a direct approach against St Petersburg or Moscow, they
decided to move south to Ukraine to secure supplies and join forces with Russia’s enemies.

Charles had good reason to hope that the Turks, Tatars, Poles and Ukrainian Cossacks — though subject to the Russian crown — would all join him in the fight against Peter. In the event only Hetman Ivan Mazepa of Ukraine did so, and even he could not bring all his Cossacks over with him. Soon after he had declared for Sweden, a Russian force descended on his base at Baturin, sacking the place and massacring many of its inhabitants. Still, the Swedes had the prospect of wintering in food-rich country with some local support and a less inclement climate. But then the weather intervened again. Winter came early that year, and some Swedish soldiers froze in the saddle that Christmas. The Russians may have sustained many more casualties from exposure to the elements, but they could be replaced. The Swedes could not make good their losses. Spring came, and the Russians destroyed the Zaporozhian Sech, eliminating any chance of a widespread popular movement in support of Mazepa. Then, in June 1709, having for so long avoided a major battle, they offered it. But, true to form, it was Charles who attacked.