The Glory Days of the Empire: Peter, Catherine, Alexander I

The seventeenth century was initially a period of recovery and reconsolidation for the Russian state, which faced both continuing revolts in its borderlands and major threats in the northwest (Sweden), west (Poland), and south (Crimean Tatars).

During the century, however, Russia expanded westward at the expense of Poland. First, Smolensk and its region were recovered. Next and crucially, after throwing off Polish rule, the Cossack elites in what is now called Ukraine allied themselves to Moscow, accepting the tsar's overlordship. Ukraine's subordination to the tsars was not finally assured until 1709 with the decisive defeat of the Mazeppa rebellion and its Swedish protectors. Even then, for many decades the so-called Ukrainian Hetmanate retained a separate identity and considerable autonomy under the tsar's scepter. But in time the acquisition of Ukraine was to be a huge boost to Russian imperial power.^[2250]

In the year 1709, Ukraine's fate was decided by Peter the Great's defeat of the Swedes at the Battle of Poltava.^[2251] Though the war dragged on for 12 more years, Sweden never recovered from this disaster. As a result of the war, Russia acquired the entire Baltic coastline from the new capital of Saint Petersburg in the east to the provinces of Estland and Livonia in the west. All Europe's rulers woke up to the reality that a powerful new empire now dominated the eastern Baltic region and could play a key role even in central Europe. Peter triumphed partly by exploiting to the full the Muscovite polity's system for mobilizing men and resources in the pursuit of power. Serfdom was tightened, taxation was increased, a formidable new system of military conscription was created, and even nobles were forced to serve in the state's armies or bureaucracy for the whole course of their adult lives. New military and civil institutions, but also new ideas and values, were imported from Protestant Europe to serve the cause of the state's power.

Of course, as is always the case, success to some extent legitimized Peter's efforts. But it is also important to remember that unless Peter's strategy of Europeanization had enjoyed significant support among Russian elites, it would not have survived his demise.^[2252]

The system of rule consolidated by Peter was the basis of Russian imperial power down to the Great Reforms of Alexander II in the 1860s and even to some extent down to the monarchy's fall in 1917. At its core was the alliance between the theoretically absolute monarchy and the landowning and service elite, which until well into the second half of the nineteenth century was one and the same group. Apart from the reigning dynasty itself, the greatest beneficiaries of this alliance were the small circle of aristocratic families who dominated the imperial court and the higher reaches of government in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. To them flowed much of the proceeds of the enormous growth of Russian wealth and territory in these centuries. Closeness to the monarch was the initial source of most of this private wealth, but it was then preserved within the aristocratic elite through inheritance via a dense network of marriage alliances.

The court aristocracy was not, however, a closed caste. Especially in the eighteenth century, imperial favoritism and distinguished service in the army and bureaucracy allowed a number of families from the provincial landowning gentry to join the aristocratic elite and thereby acquire great wealth and status. This possibility was one of the attractions of the autocratic regime for the gentry class. When members of the court aristocracy attempted to impose constitutional limitations on the monarchy in 1730, for example, representatives of the landowning gentry helped the Empress Anna to defeat their efforts. Most provincial nobles had no wish to see the channels to promotion and wealth offered by state service controlled by the patron-client networks of a small ring of aristocratic clans.

In addition, the Time of Troubles had left indelible memories of how the unchecked rivalries between aristocratic families could undermine political stability and Russia's power and independence. Eighteenth-century Russians saw similar processes at work in contemporary Poland. Preference for autocracy was therefore entirely rational.^[2253]

The provincial landowning class provided most of the officers of the state's army and many of its civil officials. Given partible inheritance and the smallness of most gentry estates, this was an essential source of noble income. The army was also the ultimate guarantor of social stability and of the landowners' property in land and serfs. The provincial landowners in turn were the state's key agents for maintaining the systems of direct taxation and military recruitment in the countryside. Even in the seventeenth century, though possession of gentry estates was in principle conditional on performing military service, it was de facto taking on the aspect of outright property. This process was finalized in the eighteenth century. Released in 1762 from compulsory lifetime service in the army or bureaucracy, the gentry came to play the key role in the new provincial and local institutions of government created by Catherine II in the 1770s and 1780s.^[2254]

Although the symbiotic relationship between the monarchy and Russia's landowning nobility was the core of the tsarist system, the crown also possessed other sources of power. Among them was its tight control over the Orthodox Church and its historically very great wealth. In Catholic Europe the church usually preserved its lands into the modern era. In Protestant countries ecclesiastical property was mostly confiscated during the Reformation and subsequently fell into the hands of the aristocracy. In Russia, by contrast, the state expropriated the church's lands in the eighteenth century and mostly kept them for itself. These lands and the millions of so-called state peasants who worked them formed a key element in the increasingly formidable military-fiscal machine which underlay Russian imperial power.^[2255]

This machine originated in the Great Russian heartland, which always bore the greatest burden as regards sustaining the imperial state.

But over the course of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the military-fiscal system and its foundations in serfdom were extended to most of the empire's European territories on the same terms as in Great Russia. Between 1725 and 1801 this system drafted more than two million recruits into the army, allowing Russia's rulers not just to field the largest army in Europe, but also to stock it with cheap, native conscripts rather than the expensive and often unreliable mercenaries who filled the ranks of so many European armies of the time. Even after conscription was extended to Ukraine, Belorussia, and the Baltic provinces in the second half of the eighteenth century, the overwhelming majority of the tsar's soldiers were Orthodox, the key determinant of mass identity and loyalty in that era. The discipline, endurance, and loyalty to their regiments of these veteran troops were legendary, which made Russian infantry formations exceptionally hard to break on the battlefield. From the mid-eighteenth century, regular cavalry and artillery arms equal to anything in Europe were developed on the back of the rapidly growing iron and horse-stud industries. While possessing all the advantages of a professional European army, Russia could also field a unique irregular cavalry drawn from the Cossack communities of the southern borderlands. As scouts, raiders and rearguards, Cossacks were matchless, not least because they could operate in climate and terrain which wrecked regular cavalry, as Napoleon found to his cost. This combination of disciplined infantry, formidable firepower, and many types of regular and irregular cavalry was often a feature of successful empire from ancient times.^[2256]

The landowning elites of conquered territories were absorbed into the imperial ruling class. Not merely was their property guaranteed, they also played a key role in local government. In addition, they were encouraged to enter the military and bureaucratic service of the crown.

Particularly successful in this respect were the German landowning nobility of the Baltic provinces, which were annexed from Sweden in 1721. The relatively small Baltic nobility and professional class played an enormous role in the Russian officer corps and civil administration.^[2257] Indeed the creation in the eighteenth century of a Russian army and bureaucracy on the European model would have been extremely difficult without them. Their Protestant education and work ethic were much appreciated by Russia's monarchs. But drawing on Balts and other non-Russian elements also made the monarchy less wholly dependent on the Russian aristocracy and its networks of patron-client relations. The non-Russian elites thereby contributed to the informal checks and balances within the tsarist system of power which helped to make it viable and dynamic in the eighteenth century.

The century between Peter's victory over Sweden and Alexander I's defeat of Napoleon were the glory years of the Russian Empire. Already in the 1750s Russia showed its potential to intervene decisively in central Europe during the Seven Years' War. Both the Austrians and the Prussians henceforth showed wary respect for Russian power and competed for Russian support. Catherine II used this to gain a free hand for her wars against the Ottomans in 1768-1774 and 1788-1792. Russia's crushing victories in these wars won her the rich grasslands of the southern Steppe, the Crimea, and the domination of the Black Sea. Colonists poured into the newly acquired region, the Russian economy boomed, and Russia overtook France to become Europe's most populous country. For Russia the sky appeared to be the limit. Catherine dreamed of restoring a Byzantine Empire to be reigned over by her grandson, Constantine, as Russia's permanent ally and dependency. During the American War of Independence, she formed and led a so-called League of Armed Neutrality to protect neutral rights against the British navy. Less than 20 years after her death, her grandson, Alexander I, led the Russian army all the way to Paris to destroy Napoleon's empire and restore the European balance of power. In 1812-1814, as the struggle with Napoleon reached its peak, over 650,000 men were conscripted into the army and a further 230,000 into the militia.^[2258]

<< | >>

↑

Source: Bang Peter F., Bayly C.A., Scheidel Walter (eds.). The Oxford World History of Empire. Volume Two: The History of Empires. Oxford University Press,2020. — 1352 p.. 2020

The Glory Days of the Empire: Peter, Catherine, Alexander I

More on the topic The Glory Days of the Empire: Peter, Catherine, Alexander I: