ROMANOV DYNASTY (RUSSIA)

ROMANOV DYNASTY (RUSSIA). The Romanov family was one of the old boyar families in Moscow, but its fortunes really began in 1547, when Anastasiia Romanovna Iur'eva married Tsar Ivan IV. Her relatives remained prominent boyars throughout the reign and suffered little from Ivan's suspicions and resultant executions. Anastasiia's nephew, Fedor Nikitich Romanov, received boyar rank in 1586 and played a major role in the politics of the court of Ivan's successor Fedor. The election of Boris Godunov as tsar in 1598 was a defeat for the Romanovs, and in 1600 Boris sent Fedor Romanov and his wife into exile. They were forced to enter monastic life, taking the names Filaret and Marfa. During the Time of Troubles Filaret as metropolitan of Rostov helped overthrow the first False Dmitrii (ruled 1605–1606) and fought against Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii (ruled 1606–1610). He supported the election of Władysław, the son of King Sigismund III of Poland, to the Russian throne. When negotiations with Poland broke down in 1610, Sigismund threw Filaret in prison.

Back in Russia Marfa looked after their son Michael (born 1596) in Kostroma. The defeat of the Poles in 1612 led to the calling of an Assembly of the Land in 1613, which elected Michael tsar. He ruled until his death in 1645, at first under the influence of his mother and then after 1619 of his father Filaret, who was elected patriarch of Moscow on his return in that year.

In the reign of Tsar Michael Russia slowly recovered from the devastation of the Time of Troubles, repopulating the center and west of the country and expanding settlement south and east. The government returned to normal and slowly expanded in size, aided by the relative peace at court among the boyar factions. An unsuccessful attempt to regain losses to Poland in the Troubles was balanced by the successful construction of extensive fortifications and garrisons on the southern frontier that guarded against Crimean raids.

Michael's son Alexis Mikhailovich (ruled 1645–1676) was far more successful. The long war with Poland brought back the lost territories and also the Ukrainian Hetmanate as an autonomous unit within Russia. Internal disputes in the church led to much reform but also to the schism of the Old Belief by 1667. For most of his reign Alexis was content to balance the boyar factions and rule by consensus, a system interrupted by the ambitions of Patriarch Nikon (reigned 1652–1658), which led to Nikon's eventual downfall. By the end of the reign Alexis relied more and more on his favorite, Artamon Sergeevich Matveev.

The male children of Alexis by his first wife Mariia Miloslavskaia, whom he married in 1648, were not a healthy lot. The first heir Alexis died in his teens, and his brother Fedor was ill (probably with scurvy) from childhood. A younger son, Ivan, was also sickly and partly blind. The daughters flourished, but according to Russian custom could not rule. The second marriage of Tsar Alexis in 1671, to Nataliia Naryshkina, produced another daughter but also a healthy son, the future Peter the Great.

At Alexis's death in 1676 the throne went to Fedor, who was too young and sickly to rule until 1680, two years after which he died. After the revolt of the musketeers in 1682, Alexis's daughter Sofiia ruled as regent for the young Peter and his brother Ivan. Peter and his allies at court overthrew her in 1689, inaugurating thirty-six years of deep transformation of the Russian state and Russian culture. By his death in 1725 Peter had made Russia a major regional power, built a European absolutist state, and brought Russia into the circle of European culture. He did not, however, secure the succession. The conflict in 1718 with his son Alexis led him to decree that the tsar could choose his successor, but he did not do so. Thus on his death the Russian elite chose his wife to rule as Catherine I.

The death of Catherine I in 1727 threw the succession back to Peter II, the son of the unfortunate Alexis Alekseevich. Peter II died suddenly of smallpox in 1730, and the elite this time chose Anna, the daughter of Peter the Great's co-tsar Ivan and widow of the duke of Courland, to be the empress. She ruled with the help of her Courland favorite Ernst Johann Bühren (known in Russia as Biron) until 1740. As she had no children, the succession was again in question. Anna's desire was to leave the throne to her infant grand-nephew in the maternal line, Ivan VI, the son of the duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. The inevitable regency was unpopular, and in 1741 the ruling elite and the guards overthrew Ivan and his family and placed on the throne Peter's daughter Elizabeth.

Elizabeth restored a sense of legitimacy to the throne and the dynasty. She reestablished harmony at the court by returning Anna's enemies from exile and pursued the building of the Russian state, economy, and culture, including the founding of Moscow University in 1755. Russia's armies defeated Frederick the Great of Prussia in the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). Elizabeth's secret morganatic marriage to Aleksei Razumovskii produced no heirs, so she arranged the succession of the duke of Holstein-Gottorp, the son of Peter the Great's daughter Anna. As Peter III he took the throne on Elizabeth's death in 1762, but he was soon overthrown in favor of his wife, Catherine II.

Catherine, born Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, ruled from 1762 to 1796 and was one of Russia's greatest rulers. Her defeats of the Ottomans, the attendant conquest of the north Black Sea coast, and the partitions of Poland made Russia a great power in Europe. At the same time her rationalization of provincial and town administration, with the granting of limited participation to merchants and gentry, strengthened legal order and added new dimensions to Russian administration. The Charter of the Nobility (1785) for the first time spelled out the rights and obligations of the gentry. Her promotion of education and Enlightenment culture spread new political ideas among the gentry. Later liberal opposition to the monarchy sprang from these ideas.

In her memoirs Catherine said that it was her first lover, Sergei Saltykov, rather than Peter III, who was the father of her son Paul. Paul came to the throne in 1796 during the European crisis sparked by the French Revolution. Alarmed by its success, Paul briefly joined the anti-French coalition and reversed many of his mother's reforms. Elite discontent led to his murder in March 1801. Ironically, his succession decree of 1797 allowed for an orderly succession to his son, Alexander I, for the first time in over a century.

See also Alexis I (Russia) ; Anna (Russia) ; Autocracy ; Boris Godunov (Russia) ; Catherine II (Russia) ; Elizabeth (Russia) ; Michael Romanov (Russia) ; Nikon, patriarch ; Old Believers ; Orthodoxy, Russian ; Paul I (Russia) ; Peter I (Russia) ; Russia ; Russian Literature and Language ; Russo-Polish Wars ; Russo-Ottoman Wars ; Sofiia Alekseevna ; Time of Troubles (Russia) .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alexander, John T. Catherine the Great: Life and Legend. Oxford, 1989.

Ansimov, Evgeny V. Empress Elizabeth: Her Reign and Her Russia 1741–1761. Trans. by John T. Alexander. Gulf Breeze, Fla., 1995.

Hughes, Lindsey. Peter the Great: A Biography. New Haven and London, 2002.

Longworth, Philip. Alexis, Tsar of all the Russias. New York, 1984.

McGrew, Roderick E. Paul I of Russia 1754–1801. Oxford, 1992.

Paul Bushkovitch