Cossacks and the Russian Empire

Cossacks and the Russian Empire,

1598-1725

Thi s book explores the ways in which the Russians governed their empire in Siberia from 1598 to 1725. Ru ssian control over Siberia was ex traordinary, dependent on a handful of men at a vast distance from the centre of imperial pow er, with no regular armed force and a ca sh-starved economy. It raises important questions conc erning the nature of the Russian autocracy in the early modem period, investigating the hitherto neglected relations of a vital part of the empire with the metropolitan centre, and examining how the Ru ssian authorities were able to control such a vast and distant fronti er given the limited mean s at their disposal. It is argued that, despite this great phy sical distance, the represe ntation s of the tsar 's rule in the syrn bois, texts and gestures that permeated Sibe rian instituti ons were close at hand, thus allowing the prom otion of political stability and favourabl e term s of trade . Particular attention is paid to investigating the role of the Siberian Cossacks, and explaining how the institutions of empire facilitated their position as trader s via the sharing of cultural practices, attitud es and expectation s of behavi our across vast distance s among the members of organizations or personal networks. Overall, this book is a thorough apprai sal of how the institutions of Russian imperial government functioned in seventeenth century Siberia.

Christoph Witzenrath is Assistant Lecturer at Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. Hi s research interests include medieval, early modem European, Ru ssian and Soviet history.

of the Siberian Cossacks, and explaining how the institutions of empire facilitated their position as trader s via the sharing of cultural practices, attitude s and expec-

Routledge studies in the history of Russia and Eastern Europe

1 Modernizing Muscovy Reform and social in sevenreenth-century Russia Edited Iarmo Kotilaine and Marshall Poe 2 The USA in the Making of the USSR The Washington conference, 1921-1

and 'uninvited Russia'

Paul Dukes

3 Tiny Revolutions in Russia Twentieth-century Soviet and Russian history in anecdotes Bruce Adams

4 The Russian General Staff and Asia, 1800-1917 Alex Marshall

5 Soviet Eastern Policy and Turkey, 1920-1991 Soviet policy, and communism Bident

6 The History of Siberia Igor V. Naumov (Edited

David N. Collins)

7 Russian Military Intelligence in the War with Japan, 1904-05 Secret operations on land and at sea Evgeny

,'PY'UP"lI

8 Cossacks and the Russian Empire, 1598-1725 Manipulation, rebellion and expansion into Siberia Christoph Witzenrath

Cossacks and the Russian Empire, 1598-1725 Manipulation , rebellion and expansion into Siberia

Christoph Witzenrath

First 2007 by Routl edge Park Square, Mil ton Park, Abi ngdon, axon OX 14 4RN Simultaneousl y published in th e USA and Canada Routledge Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint cf the Taylor & Francis Group, an irforma business Thi s editi on publ ished in the Taylor & Franci S e-Library, 2007. "To purchase your own copy of th: s or any of'Tayl or & Franci S or Routl edge's collection of'thousands of elsooks please go 10 www.elsookstore.tandf.co.uk." © 2007 Christoph Witzenrarh reserved. No or reproduced or i n any form or electroni c, 111 ech ani cal, or 0 ther means, now known or hereafter invented, photocopyi ng and or in an y i nformati on storage or retri eval system, wi thout in fro m the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for

Library c F "'~H

""000

is avail abl e from the Bri tish Library

Cataloging in Publication Data

Cossacks an d the 1598-1725: manipul ati on, rebelli on and expansi on into Siberi a I Christoph Wi tzenrath. cm. studi es in of Russi a and Eastern Europe; 8) Includes bibl i ographi cal refer en ces and 7 ,",-V"",, ",-.,621-4 (hardback 1 Siberia (Russi aj2. Power sci encesj-Russi a

(F~~~:;'~~~~l;-r~ll~t~l~~; 3. (Federati on )-Siberi aG relati 0 ns. 4. Central-local government relarioris-Russi a (Federati onj-Siberi a-Histcry-l ttb century. 5. Russi a-Politi cs an d government-Tlth century. 1 2007 957'.07-dc22 2006031616 ISBN 0-203-96290-7 Mastere-book ISBN

ISBN ISBN ISBN ISBN

10: 0-415-4162-4 13: 978-0-415-41 10: 0-203-96290-7 13: ~!~-lh:lJj-~IJ,,~lJ-~

For Friederike, Werner and Elisabeth

Contents

IX XI Xlll

Introduedon

1

Aims and 1 Siberia in the seventeenth century 6 and 20 Sources 27

1 The Cossack group rule and the leader 34 Inteeration through institutional . advice and the Cossacks 49 Inrerrnortiarv ranks 55 The voevoda and the Personenverband 58

31

2 The economics of Siberian service Corflict and negotiation 70 trade and service 78

62

3 Integration of the trading frontier: the sovereign's affair Siberia in the seventeenth century a vast military camp? 86 The limited public and Cossack litigation 87 The regalian salutation 97 The :5 word and cfair 99 Conclusion 119

85

viii

Contents

4 Kormlenie and bribery: local influence and administration Cultural blindness or 130 Conclusion 138

122

5" Local and central power in the Baikal region 1689-1720 r t ''l"."vpr around Lake Baikal 141 Sedentarization and rebellion 150 alliance on the 152 164 Trade and rebellion 167 Conclusion 180

139

Conclusion

Notes Index

182 189 192 228 247

Preface

I had become involved in the of this book when Ludmila in a friendly manner, redirected my interest in modern Russian town rebellions to Siberia. I was struck by their and their sense of purpose, something I had but not in Russia. From this first, rather strange encounter, my own purpose has been to reconcile this with 15C1IC1'11 views on the relations of the tsar and the in Russian history or vice versa. I had to learn two in the process: that military history could not be evaded and is actually quite and that can make use of an of the all-powerful ruler in ways that seem to defy the very idea of tsarism, From military history and I have learned that Cossacks can best be described as a form of group the economic and defensive efficiency of the temporary primary group, which is among the main reasons for Cossack successes and adaptability to frontier environments. A combination of military, cultural and trade of Siberian Cossack activities the power resources wielded and to which the tsars had to accommodate. Particularly during the first half of the seventeenth century, Moscow crucially on the Siberian fur riches to finance its military reforms, imports and Western However, to cultivate reliability in a politically volatile environment and open the way to Moscow and the markets of Western , the Siberian Cossacks swore an oath to the tsar and never failed in their claims to staunchly defend his interests. Service became the centre of their life and imperial culture the medium through which they themselves and the terms of trade. A if limited, public allowed reassuring thernsel ves of mutu al assistance and forming alliance s. At the heart of my analysis is the insight that an institution like the tsar's or affair or the oath has two principal effects: by its claims on time immemorial or divine it makes actions and reliable, which was immensely valuable for trade in a frontier area one-twelfth of the world's territory. However, those with the necessary power resources could interit in various ways according to their needs, notwithstanding the requisite loyalty. A petition claimed to defend the interest of the tsar while it explained the need of the governor in the same terms, and it united the undersigned Cossacks behind this purpose. In such a way, the of unity camouflaged

x

conflict, stability and an of events, limited though it was locally, temporary, or by social group. But this was more than it was a efficient device of 1111'''0rn·ino- the multi-ethnic has demonstrated that it was not exclusivelv by force and a bureaucratic but often by ~h:;'r'1TlOpower with native elites. Below the level of ethnic custom and law remained untouched, and ruled their and tribes on their own account, as as Moscow regularly received tributes. Hi This study poses similar quesbut them to a different of the and a different social group, the Siberian Cossacks. The main question is whether, in the Muscovite empirevpopulations had access to the tsar and the chancelleries only via high-ranking intermediaries, and could therefore influence political decisions only this channel if at all. The Siberian Cossacks are a particularly useful social group for the purposes of this investigation. Unlike the ethnopolitical cases and Slezkine studied, they were predominantly though not exclusively Russians, and were never co-opted into the court nobility in the same way as many native elites.'? At the same time, Siberian Cossacks regularly travelled to Moscow and were received at the chancellery and sometimes by the tsar. Analogous to Kappeler's questions, this study asks how the custom and laws of the Siberian Cossacks could be made compatible with the institutional culture of the Muscovite Unlike cases, however, the who were mostly of Russian therefore had grown up with the institutional culture of the empire ingrained within them. Thus, unlike the native elites, they were not learning about something This is an interestrebels: the point, especially because of the reputation of Cossacks as reason they fled to the frontiers, it is widely supposed, is because they wished to escape the restrictions of the Muscovite system. The Cossacks are renowned for an intimate their 'free spirit' .18 Yet this book shows that these 'rebels' knowledge of how to manipulate the imperial culture to their own advantage. Also, unlike Kappeler's ethnopolitical cases, ordinary Siberian Cossacks maintained direct contacts with the court without intermediaries and were relatively

4

Introduction

frequently received in Moscow. The Cossacks in adhered to established procedures to be awarded the opportunity to go to Moscow, where they also traded but also breached these quite often to the point of disobeying and even the tsar's and their official commander, the voevoda, Cossacks are famed for their love of freedom and a 'democratic' process, but historians have failed to put this observation into an analytical framework. Thus, important are not addressed: how could democratic institutions fit into the framework of autocracy, especially in where historians more military command structures? How could a 'free' co-exist with service to the tsar, and reconcile its rations to the of the tsar's voevodas nobles and landowners from the central areas of Muscovy? This study what happened when the reach of its most effective coercive means of had to on a group of of non-nome. underm-ivilecerl who had grown up with the imperial culture and were able to work institutions to their own advantage. In an rebellious attitude of the from Siberia constituted a seriou s problem for the court. In some of the century's major in the c apital, Siberian did take for in 1648, when the tsar had to sacrifice his to the rebels .19 In most cases, the Siberian rebels found it more to within the boundaries of established institutions and nevertheless to press home their which included important elements of their Cossack customs. This ambivalence of institutional permanence and constitutes one of the important areas of invesUlS'lU\J'l1 throu ghout this book. Institutional analysis applied in history has received considerable attention recently, especially at the Dresden of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinby the transformations in schcft, 'Institutionality and History', Eastern and elsewhere. While there is a common notion of institutions as per se stable and the Dresden has the ways in which institutions become and the mechanisms of their transformation. Institutionality is paradoxically, by both permanence and '-1"UllS'~, since the quest for social stability is basic for its analysis .21 Responding to the need for reliability and social order on which most people build their institutions are established, although the y, as any means for perpetuating are more likely to break down than to remain stable. Therefore, the main effort in maintaining institutions is to adhere to and to fuel the illusion of institutional stability and permanence. However, since empire is dynamic and quickly in Russia due to the modem Military Revolution and expansion institutions had to answer to this . In the literature on the Russian empire, however, institutional has so far not been high on the d!!,t;UU,tt.·· As institutions are part of the cultural and social processes that result in '-l1'UllS'~, institutional is part of the rise and fall of empires. To uphold the vital illusion of permanence and stability, institutionality has to accommodate '-1"UllS'~' Siberian like other agents of empire chancelleries, boyars,

Introduction

5

voevodas, and clerics answered to these ambivalences in and other documents, finding ways to harness the institutions to their specific needs. of the As is well known from the of peasantry that lost their to petition the tsar the century and succumbed to by no means all groups in the Muscovite succeeded influencing institutions whoever can influence the way in perceive institutions important powers, since others have on them and therefore to adapt to the established definition. I mvesugates how Siberian Cossacks and on which resources of power drew to influence the tsar's decisions and the institutional culture of the Chapter 2 discu sses the material of this position to what effect did Siberian Cossacks communicate and with the tsar, and how did maintain themselves? An implicit concern of these is also the contribution Siberian Cossacks made that led other agents of to adapt partially to their demands. 3 the symbolic forms of communication in the institutions, their and in the context of power relations established in the 4 explores the ways in which institutions and their structured adminthe istration, and the to which it can be called a extent of accountability and achieved in administration, one of the concerns of Chapter 3 whether, and to what communication, negotiations and the power resources at the disposal of Siberian Cossacks resulted in a public will loom One of the problems in Siberian history remains the question of how the tsar to squeeze at least 10 per cent of the state's budget out of this wild, remote, almost uninhabited and by all standards inaccessible territory, bereft of virtually all infrastructure a few wooden fortresses dotted around its vast expanses. The dilemma worsens if we consider that even states much better suited to the demands which the modern military revolution made on their had to on the structures they already found in sociwas surprised that not even the structures usually expected Peter I, to in Muscovite towns, such as the office of elder, existed in Siberia.2li explain how Muscovy managed its wealthy but unwieldy Siberian territories, Lantzeff and, following him, Dmytryshyn, have relied on the control the centralthis clear-cut of conbureaucracy exerted over Siberiaf? trol from above collides with the reality of frequent protest against misappropriation of funds by the tsar's in Siberia, and in 0 .... " ...."" with the well-established that bureaucracies work just as well as the of public scrutiny to which they are subjected, This was all the more the case since one of the generally accepted reasons for the relatively even functionof the administration, the considerable level of professionalization of the nobles who operated it, according to Lantzeff', did not apply in distant Siberia, where governors, as is often stressed, enriched themselves beyond all controls.28 Protest the enrichment of voevodas, therefore, seems to be one of the

6

Introduction

most likely candidates for an of how Muscovy extracted the riches of the Siberian furs. Historical studies, have not established a framework for the forms of that fuelled these that stands up to comparative one of the aims of this book is to establish the forms of I) and to the ways by organizaticn of Siberian Cossacks which made themselves heard. This book some of the results of the discussions of Haberrnas's of the public, which has been re-examined by historians more modem of the public than in pure ideal interested in the to a small, but very important section of the Muscovite population, the Siberian town the Siberian public does not fit readily into Habermas's theoretical While Habermas holds staunchly to his of the beurgeois public from the public' of the court, which 'did not the population but its own power to the population' ,51 these historians have pointed out that the public was rooted in forms of public that can best be understood as partitioned, based on face-to-face relations and primarily by particular of the population, though open to other groups; these early forms of public could even be thematically limited, unlike modem mass media, and did not on the framework of a tioned and thematically limited public to Muscovy is an that has not yet been Kivelson has established that the provincial gentry of the central areas and the nobility had a say in government although their influence was limited to the interstices of autocracy; but all the lower ranks are still considered excluded from political influence.sSince public imperial institutions and local are all intriinterconnected and only make sense in their mutual context, it is sensible to study and them in their environment as completely as the sources allow. A narrow local focus helps to manage the diverse and plentiful sources such an approach involves, and a micro-study is best suited to produce the kind of data needed and references between the elements of institutional culture. The last chapter will make use of a suitable body of sources drawing together the threads of the argument by concentrating on one major incident, the Selenga rebellion of 1696 and its on a detailed stud y of one particular rebellion, 5 applies the developed in the first four chapters to shed new light on this greatest Siberian Cossack of the century, and on the ways in which centre and periphery negotiated authority.

Siberia in the seventeenth century The forms of organization and the institutions that structured the complex relationship between Moscow and the Cossacks are related to the turns and twists of the history of the conquest of Siberia, showing that Moscow could not assert its power without compromising. In the early 1580s Ermak and his Cossacks conquered the khanate of Sibir ' in what is now called Western Siberia. After

Introduction

7

their eventual Moscow's armies took over, and the first Russian fortresses were founded during the late 1580s and 1590s on the of the former khanate. In 1604, Tomsk was founded as an important to the east on the brink of the open east-west in 1608 the Tomsk Cossacks rebelled for the first time. 35 There were further rebellions in 1628, in 1633-4 and in 1636-8; in 1642 the town was embroiled in a rebellion Tukhachevskii's and in 1648-50 it was by rebellious Cossacks and their elected voevoda, This does not mean that the interwere calm. An drawn up by an enemy of the Tomsk voevoda Osip based on of the lost central archives, claimed as many as nine rebellions up to 164 7.3~ Such and concomitant of self-rule were , but locally limited. Nevertheless, concerned almost all Siberian towns at different times .37 Moreover, the Time of Troubles (1598-1613) meant a serious decline of Moscow's rule the Urals. such impediments to the tsar's control, in 1639 Cossack bands had reached the Pacific seaboard. Ru ssian intrusion into Siberia took two in the north a combination of in small the White Sea shore and river transport attracted merchants and from Northern Ru ssian towns. The late six teenth century pred om inance of merchants in this area ended in 1601, when voev odas and Cossacks sent by the tsar set up the town of on the river Taz as a centre and for the collection of the fur tribute. Other outposts were set up in Turukhansk in 1604 and Khantaisk in 1620 on the banks of the lower Enisei, In the south, another network of rivers the Irtysh, Ob, Enisei and nu"",,," led as far as Iakutsk (founded 1 on the river Lena and the Pacific ocean by various waterways. On the between the Ket and a tributary to the fort Makovskyi was founded in 1618, and Eniseisk in 1619 north of the confluence of the Enisei and rivers. To the south, movement was far slower, and restricted to some mountainous in the Altai, where Kuznetsk was established in 1618 south of Tomsk, and to Krasnoiarsk (1628), which remained an important but embattled outpost in the throughout the century. In the partly wooded lands on the rim of the open Russians encountered protracted nomad which they could not overcome until late Petrine times. During the 1640s the Buryats around Lake Baikal were subdued by Cossacks from Iakutsk and but the of the local Buryats meant that Irku tsk was founded only in 1661. 38 During a of internal Chinese unrest Cossacks established an independent territory on the Arnur, which, however, was forced to seek Muscovite support when the Manchus fought back to what they considered their dominion. The war lasted until the peace of Nerchinsk in 1689 returned the Amur to China in exchange for the promise of increased trade contacts. By the early 1650s, Muscovy had, in little over half a century, extended nominal control over the enormous territory between the Urals and the Pacific, albeit not yet all of what today is called Siberia. The conquest thus was rapid, that tod ay' s Siberia comprises abou t one -twelfth of the earth's

8

Introduction

landmass. that tsarist power also suffered serious this rapidity raises an important question. While military and the network of waterways contributed to this an is as to how the of capital in Muscovy, which could have this quick was overcome. After all, Muscovy to out-manoeuvre 's powerful Muscovy thwarted for a dominion over northern Russia and Siberia and a quest for direct trade with China all through the Time of by withholding information but not without commanding significant local I). This book asks how in a cash-starved country Muscovites to overcome distance in terms of power and economy and how this was politically and institutionally (Chapter 2).

The renewed interest of historians in Siberia following Perestroika and the break-uri of the Soviet Union concentrated on the natives. F"'r~"llh'~ challenge

to Soviet of a close of Russian and native lower classes has the contribution of brute force to the Siberian balance of power, the natives in particular the first of conquest. 40 In turn this elicited a new concern with the natives' own role in the economic of a sub-continent which was the fur resources. These studies have also the fact that the seventeenth century Russian power was restricted to the of rivers with the of the more populated western Siberian areas immediately surrounding Tobol'sk, with settled or semi-nomadic native populations. suffered from voevodas' efforts to resettle Russian to feed the Cossacks, ()('('l1n"111,O' native or hunting in another voevoda's district, often territorially with each other. However, collectors of the fur tax relied on native notions of taxes, which had developed under the Mongols. It was impossible regularly to tax nomadic hunters in the endless forests bare of infrastructure without them by some means. This meant that a strong element of barter had to be added to the vague promise of security made by the Cossacks. While this was unequal in terms of an ideal JlJalrc