The Icon and the Axe

Typical qf_the new military-administrative leaders that helped transform Russian society during the weak reign of Michael Romanov was Ivan Cherkasky.135 His father was a converted Moslem from the Caucasus who had entered the service of Ivan the Terrible and served as the first military voevoda of Novgorod, where he married the sister of the future Patriarch Philaret and befriended the brilliant Swedish mercenary general de la Gardie. Young Ivan was brought up as a soldier with his loyalty to the Tsar uncomplicated by local attachments. He studied the military methods of the nearby Swedes and collaborated with them in mobilizing Russian opinion against the Poles during the Time of Troubles. His military activity earned for him (along with the co-liberator of Moscow, Dmitry Pozharsky) elevation to boyar rank on the day of the Tsar's coronation in 1613. By amassing personal control over a number of Moscow chanceries, including a new, semi-terrorist organization known as the "bureau for investigative affairs," he became probably the most powerful single person in the Muscovite government until his death in 1642.13‹i Throughout his career, his use of (and friendship with) Swedish and Dutch military and administra-* tive personnel was indispensable to his success. He hailed the Swedes and the alliance "of the great tsar and the great king" against "the Roman faith of heretics, papists, Jesuits,"137 He insisted that the Russians, like the

Swedes, should defend their "sovereign nature" against new Roman pretensions to universal Empire. He emulated the Swedes and Dutch (who showered him with gifts often more lavish than those given the Tsar) by introducing secret writing into Russian diplomatic communications.138

In 1632 the Dutch built the first modern Russian arms plant and arsenal at Tula; and in 1647, printed in the Netherlands the first military manual and drill book for Russian foot soldiers, which was also the first Russian-language book ever to use copper engravings.138 French Huguenot fortification specialists were put to work, and the building of the first fortified line of defense in the south spelled the end to the traditional vulnerability to pillaging raids from that direction.140

A final by-product of the Russian links with their more distant "Ger- ., man" alEesfwas the turning of Russian eyes at last toward the sea. The/\j-eastern Baltic (and indeed some of the lakes and rivers of the north) had become areas of contention in which the Swedes had exercised humiliating advantages over the landlocked Muscovites; and the southward movement of Russian power down the Volga and Don confronted Russia with Persian and Turkish naval power at the point where these rivers entered the Caspian and Black seas respectively. Thus^ the period from the late sixteenth to the late seventeenth century-which also saw the opening of Siberia and j% the Russian drive to the Pacific-witnessed a series of efforts to build a I "' Russian^ navy. The Russians received aid and encouragement in this en-deavor from the Danes (who were anxious to strengthen Russia against the j ~%› Swedes) and even more from the English and Dutch (who were anxious to protect trade routes from their respective ports of Archangel and Khob- mogory on the White Sea through Russian rivers to the Orient). Ivan IV was the first to think about a navy; Boris Godunov, the first to buy ships for sailing under the Russian flag; Michael Romanov, the first to build a river fleet; and Alexis, the first to build an ocean-going Russian warship.141

The fateful feature of this Russian orientation toward the North European Pr6testant countries was that it was so completely military and administrative in nature. Muscovy took none of the religious, artistic, or educational ideas of these advanced nations. Symptomatic of Muscovy's purely practical and military interest in secular enlightenment is the fact that the word nauka, later used for "science" and "learning" in Russia, was introduced in the military manual of 1647 as a. synonym for "military skill."142 The scientific revolution came to Russia after the military revolution: and naturaTscience was for many years to be thought of basically as a servaffl^rthe^lniritary establishment.

The long military struggle which led to the defeat of Poland in the war of 1654-67, and of Sweden a half century later, produced a greater