A Short History of Russia's First Civil War: The Time of Troubles to the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty - Brossura

Dunning, Chester S. L.

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0271024658 ISBN 13: 9780271024653

Casa editrice: Pennsylvania State Univ Pr, 2004

Riassunto

Upon publication in 2001, Russia&;s First Civil War by Chester Dunning was greeted by scholars as a &;historical tour de force,&; the first major post-Marxist reassessment of the Time of Troubles. Now available in an abridged paperback, A Short History of Russia&;s First Civil War is ideally suited for classroom use.

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Informazioni sull?autore

Chester S. L. Dunning is Associate Professor of History at Texas A&M University. He is editor and translator of The Russian Empire and Grand Duchy of Muscovy by Jacques Margeret (1983).

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A SHORT HISTORY OF RUSSIA'S FIRST CIVIL WAR

The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov DynastyBy Chester S. L. Dunning

The Pennsylvania State University Press

Copyright © 2004 The Pennsylvania State University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-271-02465-8

Contents

List of Illustrations and Maps.......................................................................viiIntroduction.........................................................................................11 A Comparative Approach to the Problem of Origins of the Civil War..................................52 Long-Term Origins: The Growth of Autocracy and Imperialism.........................................143 Ivan the Terrible and Russia's Slide into Crisis...................................................284 The Rise of Boris Godunov, the Uglich Tragedy, and Enserfment......................................405 The Southern Frontier and the Cossacks.............................................................496 The Beginning of the Time of Troubles and the Great Famine.........................................637 What Triggered the Civil War?......................................................................758 The Pretender Dmitrii Ivanovich....................................................................839 Dmitrii's Invasion and the Beginning of the Civil War..............................................9110 Tsar Boris Strikes Back and the Civil War Widens..................................................11111 The Death of Tsar Boris and Dmitrii's Triumph.....................................................12612 The Short Reign of Tsar Dmitrii...................................................................13813 Assassination of the Tsar.........................................................................15014 Vasilii Shuiskii Seizes Power and Rekindles the Civil War.........................................15915 The Beginning of the "Bolotnikov Rebellion".......................................................17516 The Civil War Widens and the Rebels Advance to Moscow.............................................18817 The Siege of Moscow...............................................................................19918 Retreat from Moscow, the Siege of Kaluga, and the Rise of Tsarevich Petr..........................21619 Collapse of the Siege of Kaluga and the Beginning of Tsar Vasilii's Offensive.....................22820 The Siege of Tula and the Resurrection of "Tsar Dmitrii"..........................................24021 Tsar Vasilii's Struggle Against the Tushino Impostor..............................................25522 Foreign Intervention and the Formation of the National Liberation Movement........................27023 The End of the Civil War and the Election of Mikhail Romanov......................................28524 Tsar Mikhail and the End of the Time of Troubles..................................................30025 Disturbing Legacy.................................................................................314Index................................................................................................329

Chapter One

A Comparative Approach to the Problem of Origins of the Civil War

Russia's first civil war (1604-5, 1606-12) was in many ways similar to othercivil wars of the early modern period. Of all the forms of early modern collectiveviolence, civil wars were notable for plunging states into the lengthiest andmost severe conflicts, for splitting the traditional political order most deeply,and for producing rebel forces capable of defying or defeating temporarily eventhe most powerful monarchies. Social participation in them was very broad,involving to some extent all social strata and at least enough elite participationto signify serious defection from the regime. Goals and targets of the insurrectionistsoften revealed a massive societal reaction to the growth of state powerand the burdens it imposed on its subjects. Early modern civil wars generallyproduced broad movements creating well-developed ideologies and politicaland military organizations to facilitate resistance. They were long-lasting primarilybecause of the participation of a significant percentage of the elite, who providedessential political and social leadership capable of legitimizing revolt and drawingthe masses into rebellion against royal authority. In fact, the strength ofearly modern civil wars was significantly enhanced by the absence of radicaldemands for alteration of the social structure or for significant redistributionof power and wealth. Early modern civil wars often included strong elementsof both agrarian and urban rebellion, which were usually characterized by cooperationamong social groups against an unpopular regime rather than by classantagonism and were provoked by conjunctures of circumstances rather thansimply by social inequality. Early modern civil wars also often included, grewout of, and were profoundly affected by provincial rebellions-uprisings innewly acquired territories not yet fully integrated into the state structure.Provincial rebellions themselves were usually characterized by broad social participation,including local elites in leadership roles, and by fierce resistance tothe growth and intrusion of state power in the region that violated traditionalliberties and customary lifestyles.

Equally complex were the causes of early modern civil wars. Comparativestudy of those popular upheavals quickly yields the insight that no monocausalexplanation is satisfactory and that it may be impossible to develop a generalcausal theory for such complex phenomena in which so many major and minorvariables are at work. Instead, a multicausal explanation is called for. Severaldifferent factors operated simultaneously and sometimes synergistically toincrease the likelihood of revolt or revolution.

It turns out that many of the tasks and dilemmas facing post-Marxist historiansof the Time of Troubles are, not surprisingly, the same as those facingrevisionist scholars studying early modern Western revolutions. There is currentlya certain degree of disarray in the historiography of the French and EnglishRevolutions produced by the decline of traditional interpretations that focusedon long-term social, economic, and structural processes and that emphasizedthe primacy of "absolutism," capitalism, and class conflict as explanatory factors.Revisionist scholars studying those early modern revolutions now emphasizesuch things as short-term causes, historical contingencies, ideas, belief systems,and other unique social, cultural, and institutional characteristics of each country.Similar approaches can help us understand some of the causes of Russia'sfirst civil war. For example, historians have long focused on the dynastic crisisproduced by the death of Tsar Fedor in 1598 as a principal cause of the Timeof Troubles. That crisis sharpened the split within the ruling elite and contributedto the pretender Dmitrii's success in 1605. The terrible famine of1601-3 was also a contributing factor to the civil war, sharpening Russia's alreadydeveloping social crisis and contributing to the delegitimization of Tasr BorisGodunov. The existence and activities of the pretender Dmitrii were obviouslyof great significance, as was his assassination in 1606.

What about long-term causes or preconditions? Perhaps trying to avoid thepitfalls of developing comprehensive interpretive theories to replace the Marxistparadigm, some revisionist scholars of early modern Western revolutions havegone so far as to argue against searching for any long-term causes. That strikesme as too extreme, as an unfortunate and unsatisfactory leap from sociologicaldeterminism to what might be called the "contingent and unforeseen" schoolof history. As will be demonstrated in later chapters, there is certainly much tobe gained by a focus on short-term causes or immediate triggers, but exploringlong-term causes or preconditions can also be valid and useful.

Although there is no longer a consensus that the Time of Troubles was causedprimarily by serfdom, there is still general agreement that a principal contributingfactor was the catastrophic decline of the Russian economy by the 1570s,which led to massive flight of peasants and urban taxpayers, many of whom soldthemselves as slaves, became bandits, or ran away to the southern frontier. Theresult was a huge loss of state revenue and a steep decline in the gentry's peasantlabor force. Eventually, the Russian government (dominated by Boris Godunov)was forced to take drastic steps to shore up the declining militia and to rebuildthe tax base. In the 1590s the peasants were enserfed, townspeople were boundto their taxpaying communities, and short-term contract slavery changed to realslavery. All these harsh measures failed to solve the problems of the governmentand the gentry, but they did help turn Russia into a rigidly stratified, caste-likesociety and contributed to the outbreak of civil war. A number of scholars believedthat Boris Godunov was able to straighten out state finances and that Russiaunderwent a period of "recovery" in the 1590s. In fact, Russia did not emergefrom the crisis that actually deepened in the 1590s, leading to even more emptyvillages and vacant land in much of central Russia. Although some peripheralareas showed signs of increased activity, continued depopulation and decline ofthe agricultural economy kept Russia in crisis at the end of the sixteenth century.Some so-called signs of recovery, such as a decline in grain prices, were actuallybecause of a decline in demand and a reversion to a natural economy. That inturn proved disastrous for many already depopulated and hard-pressed towns thatlost rural markets at the same time that urban taxes were rising and the taxpayingpopulation was shrinking. Many Russian towns actually became ghosttowns in the 1590s. At the same time, a sharp increase in labor demands on someserfs, the growth of land-based taxes, and the lack of innovation in agricultureacted as a brake on any possible recovery of the agricultural economy. Many morepeasants fled from the tax rolls, and huge amounts of land continued to fall outof production, devastating an already failing agricultural economy. Among otherthings, that meant the government faced an increasingly critical shortage of landwith peasants to distribute to already hard-pressed, land-hungry gentry and theirsons. That in turn deepened a developing crisis of the gentry militia servicesystem-one of the main preconditions of Russia's first civil war. The continuingeconomic crisis also sharply reduced state income, and the fiscal crisis lastedright into the Time of Troubles.

What caused the catastrophic decline of the Russian economy in the late sixteenthcentury that provoked such a severe crisis? It was due to many factors,some unique to Russia. For example, the constant threat of Tatar attacks and slaveraids contributed to the militarization of Russian society and an increase in socialstratification by the end of the sixteenth century. Unique characteristics of Russianautocracy and Russian Orthodox culture produced a service state that greatlyimposed on its subjects and that exacerbated most of the problems common toearly modern agrarian absolute monarchies. Russian autocracy certainly facilitatedthe culturally driven imperialism of Ivan IV, Boris Godunov, and others.That in turn produced the staggering expansion of Russia, which tripled in sizeduring the sixteenth century. Such expansion far outstripped the country's resourcesand greatly overburdened its people and economy along the way. It is also wellknown that Ivan IV's costly and disastrous Livonian War (1558-83) contributedto the catastrophic decline of the economy and the destabilization of Russiansociety. Tsar Ivan's dreaded oprichnina (a state within the state, under the tsar'spersonal control) and the devastation associated with it also contributed to thecrisis. On the other hand, too much focus on Ivan IV's personality and policiescan lead to a gross underestimation of the impact on Russia of forces not uniqueto that society such as weather-related crop failures, famines, and terrible epidemics.It is worth noting, for example, that remarkably similar problems developedat the same time in neighboring Lithuania. Even though a case can be madefor blaming Tsar Ivan for actions that helped precipitate serfdom and a severestate crisis, it is important to remember that the development of serfdom throughoutEastern Europe was due at least in part to the same destabilizing factors thatwere operating inside Russia: population increases, price inflation, famines andepidemics, and primitive agricultural technology and low grain yields in an eraof increasingly unreliable weather. As it turns out, a number of important causesor preconditions contributing to Russia's severe crisis may be detected by comparativestudy of early modern Eurasian societies.

Historians have long been puzzled by the waves of revolutions, rebellions,and civil wars observable across Eurasia in the early modern period. Comparativestudy of those crises reveals common patterns that cannot be explained awaysimply as coincidences. The existence of those common patterns led in the1950s to the development of the very popular theory of a "general crisis" of theseventeenth century. Unfortunately, proponents of the general crisis theory havebeen better at identifying the existence of crises than at explaining them.Nonetheless, scholarship on this topic has produced some interesting ideas aboutthe basic and deep-seated destabilizing influences that were at work on allEurasian societies in the early modern period. Among those influences were adoubling of the overall population of Eurasia during the sixteenth century anda correspondingly severe period of price inflation-often called a "price revolution."Some crisis theory proponents focused on the significance of a sharpincrease in wars and the growth of armies and war-related taxation in a era ofprice inflation. Others focused on the growth of state power and the unprecedentedincrease in fiscal demands placed on populations, demands that couldand sometimes did precipitate revolts. Still other crisis theory proponents havefocused on the general cooling of the global climate in the early modern period(the "little ice age"), relating it to a widespread subsistence crisis marked byfamines, mass migrations, and peasant revolts.

In Roland Mousnier's comparative study of early modern Eurasian revolts,he focused on Russia's Time of Troubles using an essentially Marxist frameworkand the traditional social revolutionary interpretation of the period. Nonetheless,he offered useful comments. In Mousnier's view, revolts in the Time of Troubleswere directly related to the growth of state power and military expenses beyondthe resources of Russian society. A later study by Peter B. Brown also emphasizedthe likelihood of crisis growing out of the Russian ruling elite's militaryambition and the consequent growth of state power, taxes, and a royal bureaucracy.That is a good beginning, but we need to take a closer look at the issuesraised by crisis theory proponents and other recent scholarship in comparativehistory in order to gain a better understanding of the origins of the Time ofTroubles.

Michael Roberts developed the idea of a "military revolution" of the earlymodern period-a revolution in military technology, tactics and strategy, thesize of armies, and the cost of war-that resulted in greatly increased burdenson governments and taxpayers. Subsequent scholarship on this topic has focusedon its profound, even "revolutionary" impact on governments and societies.War was the single greatest expense of the early modern state and forced rulersand bureaucrats to seek revenues with zeal. It helped increase the power ofcentral state authority and could, on occasion, trigger crises or rebellions.Acknowledging the importance of the military revolution but dubious of howits impact has been incorporated into studies of the vague concept of "absolutism,"John Brewer and Nicholas Henshall have identified the growth of a"fiscal-military state" geared to war and survival. Development of such a statemeant imposition and collection of more taxes, government interference in theeconomy in an effort to increase revenues, and the creation and developmentof bureaucracies independent of existing elites. The result was the same whetherruling groups wished to expand their state or were forced to build up their militaryforces because of international competition and the aggression of neighboringstates. In either case, excessive military spending could trigger a fiscalcrisis. Brian Downing developed similar ideas about military modernizationand the mobilization of domestic resources leading to the emergence of whathe referred to as "military-bureaucratic absolutism," a highly bureaucratizedand militarized central state that in effect subjugated even the elites and pushedroyal power far beyond its customary limitations.

A good case can be made that the unified Russian state that emerged in theearly sixteenth century was a somewhat primitive but highly effective versionof the fiscal-military state geared to war and survival. It is well known that earlymodern Russia was a service state in which the performance of duties thatdirectly or indirectly bolstered the country's security were required from virtuallyeveryone. Nowhere else in Europe was the principle of service to the statepressed so far as in Russia. In addition, the tsar's bureaucrats were free to extractdomestic revenues with no concern about or understanding of the impact oftheir actions on the economy. Among other things, they imposed taxes withzeal, which the lords then ruthlessly collected. For many Russians taxes rose sixhundred percent (adjusted for inflation) over the course of the sixteenth century,almost all due to increases in military-related expenses.

Continues...

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Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Pennsylvania State Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2004
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0271024658
• ISBN 13: 9780271024653
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 342
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile