Source Book for Russian History from Early Times to 1917, Vol. 2: Peter the Great to Nicholas I

321 Pages·1972·9.874 MB·English

by  George Vernadsky

A Source Book for Russian History from Early Times to 1917

A SOURCE BOOK FOR RUSSIAN HISTORY
FROM EARLY TIMES TO 1917
VOLUME 2
Peter the Great to Nicholas I
George Vernadsky, SENIOR EDITOR
Ralph T. Fisher, Jr., MANAGING EDITOR
Alan D. Ferguson
Andrew Lossky
Sergei Pushkarev, COMPILER
New Haven and London: Yale University Press
1972
Copyright © 1972 by Yale University.
All rights reserved. This book may not be
reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form
(except by reviewers for the public press),
without written permission from the publishers.
Library of Congress catalog card number: 70-115369.
ISBN: 0-300-01625-5 (3-volume set); 0-300-01286-1 (vol. 1);
0-300-01602-6 (vol. 2); 0-300-01612-3 (vol. 3).
Designed by John O. C. McCrillis
and set in IBM Press Roman type.
Printed in the United States of America by
The Murray Printing Co., Forge Village, Mass.
Published in Great Britain, Europe, and Africa by
Yale University Press, Ltd., London.
Distributed in Canada by McGill-Queen’s University
Press, Montreal; in Latin America by Kaiman & Polon,
Inc., New York City; in Australasia and Southeast
Asia by John Wiley & Sons Australasia Pty. Ltd.,
Sydney; in India by UBS Publishers’ Distributors Pvt.,
Ltd., Delhi; in Japan by John Weatherhill, Inc., Tokyo.
CONTENTS VOLUME 2
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xi
Guide to Main Topics xiii
List of Items by Chapters xvii
List of Abbreviations xxv
X. Russia under Peter the Great, 1689-1725 309
XI. Between Peter I and Catherine II, 1725-1762 375
XII. The Reign of Catherine II, 1762-1796 393
XIII. Paul, Alexander I, and the Decembrists 471
XIV. Nicholas I, 1825-1855 531
Bibliography xxvii
Permissions xlüi
CONTENTS VOLUMES 1 AND 3
Volume 1 : Early Times to Late Seventeenth Century
I. Pre-Kievan Beginnings
II. Kievan Russia, Tenth to Twelfth Centuries
III. The Russian Lands (except Novgorod and Pskov) from the Late
Twelfth through the Fourteenth Century
IV. Novgorod the Great and Pskov, Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries
V. The Lithuanian-Russian State (the Grand Duchy of Lithuania)
from the Fourteenth to the Mid-Sixteenth Century
VI. Muscovy in the Fifteenth Century
VII. Muscovy in the Sixteenth Century
VIII. Muscovite Russia in the Seventeenth Century
IX. The Ukraine, Poland-Lithuania, and Russia in the Late Sixteenth
and Seventeenth Centuries
Volume 3: Alexander II to the February Revolution
XV. Alexander II, 1855-1881
XVI. Alexander III and Nicholas II, 1881-1906
XVII. The Duma Monarchy, 1906-1914
XVIII. The War and the Road to Revolution, 1914-1917
PREFACE
Our purpose in this book is to provide, in English, an illustrative sample of the
wealth of primary source material that exists for the study of Russia from early
times to 1917.
Source books in American and general European history have existed in
abundance. They have proved their value as teaching tools to supplement a com­
prehensive textbook. The need for source books in Russian history has been felt
by a great many teachers, to judge from those who offered suggestions to us. It
was thanks in large part to their encouragement that we pushed ahead.
As we worked we have had in mind the teacher and especially the purposeful
student—the student who is seeking not merely entertainment or native color but
solid information as well; the student who does not want to have interpretations
handed to him ready-made, but likes to do some evaluating for himself.
Accordingly, in the introductory notes we have avoided either summarizing the
document or repeating the background that a text would provide, but we have
tried to identify the source and to give enough data to enable the reader to place
the document in its historical setting and to figure out what sorts of questions the
selection helps to answer.
In the same spirit, we have retained the use of many Russian terms, especially
where there is no direct or specific English equivalent, as in the case of territorial
divisions, terms of office, and units of measure and money. We believe the hard­
ship this causes to some will work to the net advantage of all of the book’s readers-
including even the beginner, especially if he is persistent enough in turning to the
Dictionary of Russian Historical Terms compiled by Mr. Pushkarev.*
In our choice of selections we have sought to achieve a balanced mixture of
various types of sources. Along with spirited first-person accounts, there are of­
ficial documents and other sober fare which require intensive reading. We have
included representative samples of the sources that are important enough to be
alluded to in the standard textbooks. Often our excerpts are shorter than we would
have preferred if expense were no problem, but they are, we think, not too short
to convey significant points to the thoughtful reader who is alert to the uses of
various kinds of historical evidence.
In response to the wishes of our colleagues, we have emphasized sources not
previously published in English translation. About 81 percent of our selections were
in that category in 1956 when we began. That proportion is now down to around
75 percent, owing to the new translations that have appeared in recent years. We
have cited these new translations in our reference notes for the pertinent items
(about 6 percent of our total), so that the reader may locate them easily for further
study. About 8 percent of our selections came from publications in English which
* A companion volume to this set, the Dictionary of Russian Historical Terms from the Eleventh Century
to 1917 was published by Yale University Press in 1970.
vii
viii PREFACE
we simply reproduced. Most of these are English in origin, from Richard Chancellor
in the sixteenth century to Sir James Buchanan in the twentieth. The remaining
selections, about 12 percent, are from sources that had been translated into English
but for which we used both the original language and the published translation to
produce the version included in this book. In some cases we revised the previous
translation only slightly—in other cases, considerably. Our reference notes explain
how much.
Scope and coverage. Although our excerpts represent about seven hundred
distinct sources (the number could be raised or lowered depending on how one
decided to count certain kinds of documents of various dates grouped under one
heading), these are of course only a minute fraction of the published sources
available. Our original prospectus had to be sharply cut. And although we in­
corporated about two hundred items from among the additions to our prospectus
that were suggested by the letters of our teacher-colleagues, their suggestions
totaled around three times that many. It is obvious, then, that much that is worth­
while could not be included here and that many of our choices had to be made on
the basis of convenience and availability. At the same time our selections were
guided by certain general principles, and these we should explain.
We have felt it necessary to exclude the vast realm of belles lettres, despite its
vital importance for the historian. We did not see any way of doing justice to it
within the scope of this work. Fortunately that category of source material is wide­
ly available in anthologies as well as in translations of individual works.
We have given relatively little space to documents in foreign relations. While we
have included some documents bearing on Russia’s territorial expansion or on Rus­
sian views of certain questions beyond the frontiers, we have generally shunned
diplomatic documents which, falling within the scope of general European or world
history, are available already in English or are so well summarized in most texts that
the marginal gain from an excerpt would be slight.
We have tried to provide sources for political and social history in the broad
sense, and have therefore included numerous selections from such fields as intel­
lectual history, church history, economic history, and legal history. We have fol­
lowed the practice of most textbooks in focusing primarily on the dominant Great
Russians, even though by the late nineteenth century they constituted not much
over half of the population. We have allotted space to other peoples and areas
especially during those periods when they were being brought into the empire. We
have not systematically followed the fate of each national element or geographical
region thereafter, but have provided occasional illustrations and reminders of the
multinational nature of the empire and the problems resulting therefrom.
We have held to a fairly narrow definition of “primary,” resisting the tempta­
tion to include historical writings that, although “primary” as expressions of the
attitudes of their own time, would not generally be classified as such. Our intro­
ductions give enough data to enable the student to discern varying degrees of
primariness.
In our chronological divisions we have followed the prevailing practice of in­
creasing the coverage as we move closer to the present, but we have given more
than the usual emphasis to the 1500s and 1600s, believing, along with many of
PREFACE ix
our colleagues, that we should help to broaden the time span of Russian history
beyond that usually taught. On the contemporary end, some of our fellow teachers
wanted us to go beyond March 1917. We agree that this would make the book
more widely usable in survey courses, but so many sources for Russian history
since 1917 had already been translated that we believed such an extension would
not be justifiable.
Beyond the problem of achieving a suitable mixture of kinds of sources and a
suitable topical and chronological distribution is the at least equally vexing prob­
lem of which excerpts to select when, as in most cases, a source is far too long to
be included in its entirety. Here, as elsewhere, we have tried not to be unduly in­
fluenced by our own preconceptions and have sought to include a wide spectrum
of viewpoints from among the voices of the past.
Arrangement, form, style. Our goal in arranging the material has been to make
it easy to use this source book along with any textbook in Russian history. Our
chapter units thus follow traditional lines. Within them we have arranged the items
in a combination of chronological and topical groupings, much as a text might
treat them. Particularly where one document touches several topics, our placement
has had to be arbitrary. Occasionally—as in the case of the early chronicles-we
have broken one source down into separate excerpts by date and topic, but we did
not want to overdo this, lest we deemphasize the distinct nature of each source.
This means that while it is possible to read the book straight through like a narra­
tive, we have expected, rather, that most users would be reading it by sections or
groups of documents, in conjunction with a text or after becoming generally
familiar with the period in question. In order to assist both teacher and student in
adapting these source readings to any lesson plan, we have provided a Guide to
Major Topics.
Our reference notes acknowledge the works we have used as the basis for each
item; they are by no means a catalog of all available sources for the same selection.
All dates are in the old style or Julian calendar unless labeled N.S. Spaced ellipsis
dots indicate that passages in original documents have been omitted in this book;
closed-up ellipsis dots represent ellipses contained in the original; double-length
dashes represent lacunae-mutilated or otherwise illegible passages—in the original.
Unless a selection is identified in our introductory note as a full text, it is an ex-
ceipt.
All translators of nonmodem materials understand the compromises required
between modern English usage and older expressions which have their counter­
parts in the Russian of various periods of the past. We felt it unreasonable, in work­
ing with so many different kinds of documents, to strive for complete uniformity
of style. But even in seeking accuracy we were forced into decisions that will not
fully satisfy everyone. Take the example of tsarskii, the adjective formed from
“tsar.” The common rendering, “tsarist,” may properly be condemned as now
having in English a pejorative connotation that is inappropriate to our uses. But
after considering such possibilities as “tsarly” (on the model of “kingly”), “tsarial”
(after “imperial”), or “tsarish” (used as “czarish” a few generations back), we re­
turned to “tsarist”-not without dissent in our own ranks. The similar problem of
rendering adjectives especially when used as proper names is one familiar to every
X PREFACE
translator. (Should it be “Resurrection Chronicle” or “Voskresensk Chronicle”?
And what about the full adjectival ending and the gender?) We have tried in such
cases to follow what seems to be common usage in college textbooks, even though
this has led to inconsistencies that may annoy the specialist.
Some of the most frequently used Russian terms have been Anglicized: soft
signs have been dropped and plurals have been formed with “s” (for example,
“dumas”). In the majority, however, the soft sign and Russian nominative plurals
have been retained (pomest’ia, strel’tsy). Sometimes this produced results irritat­
ing to the Russian speaker, especially when numbers are followed by a nominative
case. But the use of genitive forms would have complicated matters unduly for the
student who has had no Russian. Where, as an aid to those who have studied Rus­
sian, we have added transliterations of Russian words in brackets after the English,
we have made some changes toward the modem orthography. But where no con­
fusion would occur we have simply transliterated a term as it stood, thereby pre­
serving changes in spelling, sometimes even within the same document. Our trans­
literations follow the Library of Congress system with minor modifications.
Family names and patronymics have been simply transliterated. First names
have been transliterated except when the English equivalent is very widely used
for the person in question (e.g. Tsar Paul). Place names have been transliterated,
except where English substitutions are current (Moscow, Archangel). One political­
ly touchy problem is that of rendering place names in the non-Great-Russian parts
of the empire. We have in general chosen the solution, favored by English-language
texts, of using the Russian form, but we have often added the other names in
parentheses.