Tsarist Russia

1547-1721

Ivan the Terrible conquered lands and used terror against his people. The following Time of Troubles nearly finished Russia as an independent state. Stability came only with the new Romanov dynasty.

“The Donkey Walk of Tsar” by Vyacheslav Schwartz (1865)

Background
The 16th century saw the emerging of strong centralized states in Western Europe. The Habsburgs of Spain were the strongest. In Eastern Europe Russia became the dominant power and was constantly fighting Poland, Lithuania, Sweden and the Turks.

State and society
According to the Third Rome theory, the tsar was an absolute monarch with unlimited power who personally owned land and people of Russia.

Tsar Ivan the Terrible significantly diminished the power of the boyars. The most prominent of them formed the Boyar Duma. There was also a parliament called Zemsky Sobor (Assembly of the Land) whose role was limited to that of a rubber stamp.

Foreign relations
After the contradictory reign of Ivan the Terrible the Time of Troubles, Poland and Sweden nearly succeeded in occupying Russia.

With the new Romanov dynasty in 1613 a long, prosperous golden age followed. Russia’s expansion to the east as far as the Pacific Ocean was completed and a unique Russian culture developed in partial isolation from the rest of the world.

Culture
The Orthodox Church had a continuous influence in Russian everyday life. One of the defining events was the Schism (Raskol), which was followed by the church reform by Patriarch Nikon in 1653.