living constitution essay

The University of Chicago The Law School

The living constitution.

Do we have a living Constitution? Do we want to have a living Constitution? A living Constitution is one that evolves, changes over time, and adapts to new circumstances, without being formally amended. On the one hand, the answer has to be yes: there's no realistic alternative to a living Constitution. Our written Constitution, the document under glass in the National Archives, was adopted 220 years ago. It can be amended, but the amendment process is very difficult. The most important amendments were added to the Constitution almost a century and a half ago, in the wake of the Civil War, and since that time many of the amendments have dealt with relatively minor matters.

Meanwhile, the world has changed in incalculable ways. The nation has grown in territory and its population has multiplied several times over. Technology has changed, the international situation has changed, the economy has changed, social mores have changed, all in ways that no one could have foreseen when the Constitution was drafted. And it is just not realistic to expect the cumbersome amendment process to keep up with these changes.

So it seems inevitable that the Constitution will change, too. It is also a good thing, because an unchanging Constitution would fit our society very badly. Either it would be ignored or, worse, it would be a hindrance, a relic that keeps us from making progress and prevents our society from working in the way it should.

On the other hand, there seem to be many reasons to insist that the answer to that question-do we have a living Constitution that changes over time?-cannot be yes. In fact, the critics of the idea of a living constitution have pressed their arguments so forcefully that, among people who write about constitutional law, the term "the living constitution" is hardly ever used, except derisively. The Constitution is supposed to be a rock-solid foundation, the embodiment of our most fundamental principles-that's the whole idea of having a constitution. Public opinion may blow this way and that, but our basic principles-our constitutional principles-must remain constant. Otherwise, why have a Constitution at all?

Even worse, a living Constitution is, surely, a manipulable Constitution. If the Constitution is not constant-if it changes from time to time-then someone is changing it, and doing so according to his or her own ideas about what the Constitution should look like. The "someone," it's usually thought, is some group of judges. So a living Constitution becomes not the Constitution at all; in fact it is not even law any more. It is just some gauzy ideas that appeal to the judges who happen to be in power at a particular time and that they impose on the rest of us.

So it seems we want to have a Constitution that is both living, adapting, and changing and, simultaneously, invincibly stable and impervious to human manipulation. How can we escape this predicament?

The good news is that we have mostly escaped it, albeit unselfconsciously. Our constitutional system, without our fully realizing it, has tapped into an ancient source of law, one that antedates the Constitution itself by several centuries. That ancient kind of law is the common law. The common law is a system built not on an authoritative, foundational, quasi-sacred text like the Constitution. Rather, the common law is built out of precedents and traditions that accumulate over time. Those precedents allow room for adaptation and change, but only within certain limits and only in ways that are rooted in the past. Our constitutional system has become a common law system, one in which precedent and past practices are, in their own way, as important as the written Constitution itself. A common law Constitution is a "living" Constitution, but it is also one that can protect fundamental principles against transient public opinion, and it is not one that judges (or anyone else) can simply manipulate to fit their own ideas.

The bad news is that, perhaps because we do not realize what a good job we have done in solving the problem of how to have a living Constitution, inadequate and wrongheaded theories about the Constitution persist. One theory in particular-what is usually called "originalism"-is an especially hardy perennial. Originalism is the antithesis of the idea that we have a living Constitution. It is the view that constitutional provisions mean what the people who adopted them-in the 1790s or 1860s or whenever-understood them to mean. (There are different forms of originalism, but this characterization roughly captures all of them.) In the hands of its most aggressive proponents,originalism simply denies that there is any dilemma about the living Constitution. The Constitution requires today what it required when it was adopted, and there is no need for the Constitution to adapt or change, other than by means of formal amendments.

There is something undeniably natural about originalism. If we're trying to figure out what a document means, what better place to start than with what the authors understood it to mean? Also, as a matter of rhetoric, everyone is an originalist sometimes: when we think something is unconstitutional-say, widespread electronic surveillance of American citizens-it is almost a reflex to say something to the effect that "the Founding Fathers" would not have tolerated it. And there are times, although few of them in my view, when originalism is the right way to approach a constitutional issue. But when it comes to difficult, controversial constitutional issues, originalism is a totally inadequate approach. It is worse than inadequate: it hides the ball by concealing the real basis of the decision. But if the idea of a living Constitution is to be defended, it is not enough to show that the competing theory-originalism-is badly flawed. You can't beat somebody with nobody. So I will describe the approach that really is at the core of our living constitutional tradition, an approach derived from the common law and based on precedent and tradition.

The Common Law

Pick up a Supreme Court opinion, in a constitutional case, at random. Look at how the Justices justify the result they reach. Here is a prediction: the text of the Constitution will play, at most, a ceremonial role. Most of the real work will be done by the Court's analysis of its previous decisions. The opinion may begin with a quotation from the text. "The Fourth Amendment provides . . .," the opinion might say. Then, having been dutifully acknowledged, the text bows out. The next line is "We"-meaning the Supreme Court-"have interpreted the Amendment to require . . . ." And there follows a detailed, careful account of the Court's precedents.

Where the precedents leave off, or are unclear or ambiguous, the opinion will make arguments about fairness or good policy: why one result makes more sense than another, why a different ruling would be harmful to some important interest. The original understandings play a role only occasionally, and usually they are makeweights or the Court admits that they are inconclusive. There are exceptions, like Heller, the recent decision about the Second Amendment right to bear arms, where the original understandings take center stage. But cases like that are very rare.

Advocates know what actually moves the Court. Briefs are filled with analysis of the precedents and arguments about which result makes sense as a matter of policy or fairness. Oral argument in the Court works the same way. The text of the Constitution hardly ever gets mentioned. It is the unusual case in which the original understandings get much attention. In constitutional cases, the discussion at oral argument will be about the Court's previous decisions and, often, hypothetical questions designed to test whether a particular interpretation will lead to results that are implausible as a matter of common sense.

The contrast between constitutional law and the interpretation of statutes is particularly revealing. When a case concerns the interpretation of a statute, the briefs, the oral argument, and the opinions will usually focus on the precise words of the statute. But when a case involves the Constitution, the text routinely gets no attention. On a day-to-day basis, American constitutional law is about precedents, and when the precedents leave off it is about common sense notions of fairness and good policy.

What's going on here? Don't we have a Constitution? We do, but if you think the Constitution is just the document that is under glass in the National Archives, you will not begin to understand American constitutional law. Our nation has over two centuries of experience grappling with the fundamental issues-constitutional issues-that arise in a large, complex, diverse, changing society. The lessons we have learned in grappling with those issues only sometimes make their way into the text of the Constitution by way of amendments, and even then the amendments often occur only after the law has already changed.

But those lessons are routinely embodied in the cases that the Supreme Court decides, and also, importantly, in traditions and understandings that have developed outside the courts. Those precedents, traditions, and understandings form an indispensable part of what might be called our small-c constitution: the constitution as it actually operates, in practice.That small-c constitution-along with the written Constitution in the Archives-is our living Constitution.

The Two Traditions

There are, broadly speaking, two competing accounts of how something gets to be law. One account-probably the one that comes most easily to mind-sees law as, essentially, an order from a boss. The "boss" need not be a dictator; it can be a democratically-elected legislature. According to this theory, the law is binding on us because the person or entity who commanded it had the authority to issue a binding command, either, say, because of the divine right of kings, or-the modern version-because of the legitimacy of democratic rule. So if you want to determine what the law is, you examine what the boss, the sovereign, did-the words the sovereign used, evidence of the sovereign's intentions, and so on.

Originalism is a version of this approach. As originalists see it, the Constitution is law because it was ratified by the People, either in the late 1700s or when the various amendments were adopted. Anything the People did not ratify isn't the law. If we want to determine what the Constitution requires, we have to examine what the People did: what words did they adopt, and what did they understand themselves to be doing when they adopted those provisions. And we have to stop there. Once we look beyond the text and the original understandings, we're no longer looking for law; we're doing something else, like reading our own values into the law.

The command theory, though, isn't the only way to think about law. The common law approach is the great competitor of the command theory, in a competition that has gone on for centuries. The early common lawyers saw the common law as a species of custom. It would make no sense to ask who the sovereign was who commanded that a certain custom prevail, or when, precisely, a particular custom became established. Legal systems are now too complex and esoteric to be regarded as society-wide customs. But still, on the common law view, the law can be like a custom in important ways. It can develop over time, not at a single moment; it can be the evolutionary product of many people, in many generations.

Similarly, according to the common law view, the authority of the law comes not from the fact that some entity has the right, democratic or otherwise, to rule. It comes instead from the law's evolutionary origins and its general acceptability to successive generations. For the same reason, according to the common law approach, you cannot determine the content of the law by examining a single authoritative text or the intentions of a single entity. The content of the law is determined by the evolutionary process that produced it. Present-day interpreters may contribute to the evolution-but only by continuing the evolution, not by ignoring what exists and starting anew.

Characteristically the law emerges from this evolutionary process through the development of a body of precedent. A judge who is faced with a difficult issue looks to see how earlier courts decided that issue, or similar issues. The judge starts by assuming that she will do the same thing in the case before her that the earlier court did in similar cases. Sometimes-almost always, in fact-the precedents will be clear, and there will be no room for reasonable disagreement about what the precedents dictate. But sometimes the earlier cases will not dictate a result. The earlier cases may not resemble the present case closely enough. Or there may be earlier cases that point in different directions, suggesting opposite outcomes in the case before the judge. Then the judge has to decide what to do.

At that point-when the precedents are not clear-a variety of technical issues can enter into the picture. But often, when the precedents are not clear, the judge will decide the case before her on the basis of her views about which decision will be more fair or is more in keeping with good social policy. This is a well-established aspect of the common law: there is a legitimate role for judgments about things like fairness and social policy.

It is important not to exaggerate (nor to understate) how large a role these kinds of judgments play in a common law system. In any well-functioning legal system, most potential cases do not even get to court, because the law is so clear that people do not dispute it, and that is true of common law systems, too. Even in the small minority of cases in which the law is disputed, the correct answer will sometimes be clear. And-perhaps the most important point-even when the outcome is not clear, and arguments about fairness or good policy come into play, the precedents will limit the possible outcomes that a judge can reach.

Attitudes, not algorithms

This description might seem to make the common law a vague and open-ended system that leaves too much up for grabs-precisely the kinds of criticisms that people make of the idea of a living constitution. When, exactly, can a case be distinguished from an earlier precedent? What are the rules for deciding between conflicting precedents? What are the rules about overturning precedents?

For the most part, there are no clear, definitive rules in a common law system. The common law is not algorithmic. The better way to think about the common law is that it is governed by a set of attitudes: attitudes of humility and cautious empiricism. These attitudes, taken together, make up a kind of ideology of the common law. It's an ideology that was systematically elaborated by some of the great common law judges of early modern England. The most famous exponent of this ideology was the British statesman Edmund Burke, who wrote in the late eighteenth century. Burke, a classic conservative, wrote about politics and society generally, not specifically about the law. But he took the common law as his model for how society at large should change, and he explained the underpinnings of that view.

The first attitude at the basis of the common law is humility about the power of individual human reason. It is a bad idea to try to resolve a problem on your own, without referring to the collected wisdom of other people who have tried to solve the same problem. That is why it makes sense to follow precedent, especially if the precedents are clear and have been established for a long time. "We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own stock of reason," Burke said, "because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations." The accumulated precedents are "the general bank and capital." It is an act of intellectual hubris to think that you know better than that accumulated wisdom.

The second attitude is an inclination to ask "what's worked," instead of "what makes sense in theory." It is a distrust of abstractions when those abstractions call for casting aside arrangements that have been satisfactory in practice, even if the arrangements cannot be fully justified in abstract terms. If a practice or an institution has survived and seems to work well, that is a good reason to preserve it; that practice probably embodies a kind of rough common sense, based in experience, that cannot be captured in theoretical abstractions. To quote Burke again: "The science of government being . . . so practical in itself, and intended for such practical purposes, a matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any person can gain in his whole life, . . . it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice, which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society."

Originalism, the common law, and candor

Originalism's trump card-the principal reason it is taken seriously, despite its manifold and repeatedly-identified weaknesses-is the seeming lack of a plausible opponent. "Living constitutionalism" is too vague, too manipulable.

But if the living Constitution is a common law Constitution, then originalism can no longer claim to be the only game in town. The common law has been around for centuries. In non-constitutional areas like torts, contracts, and property, the common law has limited judges' discretion and guided the behavior of individuals. And while the common law does not always provide crystal-clear answers, it is false to say that a common law system, based on precedent, is endlessly manipulable.

A common law approach is superior to originalism in at least four ways.

• The common law approach is more workable. Originalism requires judges and lawyers to be historians. The common law approach requires judges and lawyers to be-judges and lawyers. Reasoning from precedent, with occasional resort to basic notions of fairness and policy, is what judges and lawyers do. They have done it for a long time in the non-constitutional areas that are governed by the common law.
• The common law approach is more justifiable. The common law ideology gives a plausible explanation for why we should follow precedent. One might disagree, to a greater or lesser extent, with that ideology. Perhaps abstract reason is better than Burke allows; perhaps we should be more willing to make changes based on our theoretical constructions. Sometimes the past is not a storehouse of wisdom; it might be the product of sheer happenstance, or, worse, accumulated injustice. But there is unquestionably something to the Burkean arguments. And to the extent those arguments are exaggerated, the common law approach has enough flexibility to allow a greater role for abstract ideas of fairness and policy and a smaller role for precedent.

Originalists, by contrast, do not have an answer to Thomas Jefferson's famous question: why should we allow people who lived long ago, in a different world, to decide fundamental questions about our government and society today? Originalists do not draw on the accumulated wisdom of previous generations in the way that the common law does. For an originalist, the command was issued when a provision became part of the Constitution, and our unequivocal obligation is to follow that command. But why? It is one thing to be commanded by a legislature we elected last year. It is quite another to be commanded by people who assembled in the late eighteenth century.

• The common law approach is what we actually do. Originalists' America-in which states can segregate schools, the federal government can discriminate against anybody, any government can discriminate against women, state legislatures can be malapportioned, states needn't comply with most of the Bill of Rights, and Social Security is unconstitutional-doesn't look much like the country we inhabit. In controversial areas at least, the governing principles of constitutional law are the product of precedents, not of the text or the original understandings. And in the actual practice of constitutional law, precedents and arguments about fairness and policy are dominant.
• The common law approach is more candid. This is an important and easily underrated virtue of the common law approach, especially compared to originalism. The common law approach explicitly envisions that judges will be influenced by their own views about fairness and social policy. Common law judges have operated that way for centuries. This doesn't mean that judges can do what they want. Judgments of that kind can operate only in a limited area-the area left open by precedent, or in the circumstances in which it is appropriate to overrule a precedent. But because it is legitimate to make judgments of fairness and policy, in a common law system those judgments can be openly avowed and defended, and therefore can be openly criticized.

Originalism is different. An originalist claims to be following orders. An originalist cannot be influenced by his or her own judgments about fairness or social policy-to allow that kind of influence is, for an originalist, a lawless act of usurpation. An originalist has to insist that she is just enforcing the original understanding of the Second Amendment, or the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, and that her own views about gun control or religious liberty have nothing whatever to do with her decision.

That is an invitation to be disingenuous. Originalism, as applied to the controversial provisions of our Constitution, is shot through with indeterminacy-resulting from, among other things, the problems of ascertaining the original understandings and of applying those understandings to the modern world once they've been ascertained. In the face of that indeterminacy, it will be difficult for any judge to sideline his or her strongly held views about the underlying issue. But originalism forbids the judge from putting those views on the table and openly defending them. Instead, the judge's views have to be attributed to the Framers, and the debate has to proceed in pretend-historical terms, instead of in terms of what is, more than likely, actually determining the outcome. Having said all that, though, the proof is in the pudding, and the common law constitution cannot be effectively defended until we see it in operation. But for that, you'll have to read the book.

David Strauss's book, The Living Constitution, was published in 2010 by Oxford University Press, and this excerpt has been printed with their permission. Strauss is the Gerald A. Ratner Distinguished Service Professor of Law.

University of Virginia School of Law

Originalism Versus Living Constitutionalism: The Conceptual Structure of the Great Debate

This Essay explores the conceptual structure of the great debate about “originalism” and “living constitutionalism.” The core of the great debate is substantive and addresses the normative question, “What is the best theory of constitutional interpretation and construction?” That question leads to others, including questions about the various forms and variations of originalism and living constitutionalism. Originalists argue that the meaning of the constitutional text is fixed and that it should bind constitutional actors. Living constitutionalists contend that constitutional law can and should evolve in response to changing circumstances and values. This Essay advances a metalinguistic proposal for classifying theories as originalist or living constitutionalist and suggests that some constitutional theories are hybrids, combining elements of both theories.

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Originalism versus living constitutionalism: the conceptual structure of the great debate.

Lawrence B. Solum , Georgetown University Law Center Follow

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Publication date.

This Essay explores the conceptual structure of the great debate about “originalism” and “living constitutionalism.” The core of the great debate is substantive and addresses the normative question, “What is the best theory of constitutional interpretation and construction?” That question leads to others, including questions about the various forms and variations of originalism and living constitutionalism. Originalists argue that the meaning of the constitutional text is fixed and that it should bind constitutional actors. Living constitutionalists contend that constitutional law can and should evolve in response to changing circumstances and values. This Essay advances a metalinguistic proposal for classifying theories as originalist or living constitutionalist and suggests that some constitutional theories are hybrids, combining elements of both theories.

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Northwestern University Law Review, Vol. 113, Issue 6, April 2019, 1243.

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Solum, Lawrence B., "Originalism Versus Living Constitutionalism: The Conceptual Structure of the Great Debate" (2019). Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works . 2230. https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/2230

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Living Constitutional Theory

Arizona Legal Studies Discussion Paper No. 16-25

29 Pages Posted: 14 Aug 2016

Andrew Coan

University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law

Date Written: August 12, 2016

Recent work has questioned the dichotomy between living constitutionalism and originalism on the ground that our understanding of what is “original” is itself a changing phenomenon. It is not just understandings of constitutional history, however, that evolve over time. It is also understandings of the role that history ought to play in constitutional interpretation and adjudication. Indeed, the two evolutionary processes are intertwined in complex ways. In this Essay, I sketch a brief, stylized narrative explaining how this dynamic has played out in U.S. constitutional theory over the past five decades. The upshot is that constitutional theory, no less than constitutional doctrine or constitutional history, lives. On some level, everybody understands this. But at any given time, it is far from the forefront of consciousness for most constitutional theorists. This Essay is a reminder and a call for greater self-consciousness.

Keywords: living constitutionalism, originalism, history, interpretation, constitutional theory

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Andrew Coan (Contact Author)

University of arizona, james e. rogers college of law ( email ).

P.O. Box 210176 Tucson, AZ 85721-0176 United States

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Concept of Living Constitution in “Essential of American Government: Root and Reforms” a Book by O’Connor, Yanus and Sabato Essay

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Constitutional Amendments

Works cited.

O’Connor, Yanus and Sabato, in their book ( Essential of American Government: Root and Reforms ), described the concept of the ‘living constitution’ as a document that is flexible and has the ability to change. During the development of the constitution, there was need to consider the changing society over time.

Therefore, the constitution had to be made in such a way as to allow its evolution in order to accommodate the needs of the society. It is also argued that the constitution was written intentionally to be flexible and broad. This was in order to allow for technological and social changes that occur over time.

Thomas Jefferson argued that institutions and laws must not lag behind as changes occur in the human mind. He suggested that people become more enlightened and more developed. New discoveries are made and new ideas and truths unfolded. Therefore, there was need to accommodate these changes of circumstances in order to keep pace with them (Scalia and Gutmann 133). He explained how it was impossible for a grown man to fit into the coat that he once wore as a boy.

The constitution may be described as a living document in three ways. Firstly, it may be viewed as living due to the way in which formal amendment are made. It could also be said to be living based on the informal amendment process. The custom, tradition and usage of the constitution also make it a living document. The formal amendment process describes how changes are made to the document.

There are two ways in which an amendment may be proposed and two ways in which it may be ratified. These methods have been highlighted in Article V of the constitution (Goldford 150). This section has played an important role since it has allowed Congress to enact an amendment. Since a three-fourths majority of the votes is required for the amendment to be approved, it ensures that the Congress remains honest. This has also kept it constantly growing.

Informal amendments can also be made on the constitution in various ways. Congress may pass them as basic legislations. They can also result from court decisions or executive agreements. The Congress may pass legislations as it desires.

Executive agreements, which are contracts made between the head of state and head of foreign states, are used by the president when he needs to deal with foreign issues (Rehnquist 473). Court decision have for a long time been used to make constitutional changes in that they have led to the coming up of new laws.

The customs, traditions and the various ways in which the constitution was used in the past have greatly shaped the activities today. An example of a custom that has dictated how certain things are done today is the delivering of the State of Union Address annually. It is usually done at almost the same time every year.

However, there is nowhere in the constitution where the individual responsible should do it at a particular time and in the presence of the press. However, it has traditionally been done that way and it has become a custom. Changes have also arisen from the use of certain portions of the legislation. A good example is the War Powers Resolution of 1973. It has never been formally enforced. Only parts of it have been used occasionally. Not a single president has stood completely by the resolution’s provisions.

Another application of the living constitution may be in the reference made by the Supreme Court (James 49). In the eighth amendment, it talks of ‘evolving standards of decency’. It defines the constitution in broad terms. Therefore, it states that the court shall interpret the situation with the current societal conditions in mind. It recognizes that the society is constantly changing and so are the standards of decency.

O’Connor, Yanus and Sabato also discussed the several amendments to the U.S. constitution (350). Some of these amendments were not passed due to one reason or the other. One the amendments proposed to the U.S. Constitution was the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). This amendment was proposed with the promise of guaranteeing equal rights for the women (Nicholson 254). It was meant to take effect two years after its ratification.

It was originally composed by Alice Paul and was brought to the Congress. Several decades after it was first introduced to the Congress, it passed both houses of Congress (Moore 78). It was then taken for ratification in the state legislatures. However, it failed to get the required number of ratifications before the deadline. In addition to this, conservatives opposed the Equal Rights Amendment (Mansbridge 79). Therefore, it failed to be adopted.

I would support this amendment since I believe in gender equality. I believe that men and women should be treated equally unless there is a sound biological reason to warrant different treatment. The government should provide equality in law and ensure that there is equality when it comes to social situations. Both men and women should have equal democratic rights.

In terms of employment, both should also be paid equally for equal work and have the same opportunities when it comes to growth (training) and promotions. Women should also be allowed to pursue careers and get into positions that have always been occupied by the men. In many countries, women have been allowed to serve in the army. Some work in the police force and fire departments. Women should also have equal opportunities when it comes to the occupation of political positions or top management positions in organizations.

Gender equality should be observed in all aspects including the home setting. For example, activities such as cleaning, childcare and nursing should not be considered as exclusively the women’s. Men are equal to the task and should take responsibility. The Equal Rights Amendment should have been passed in order to ensure equality of both men and women.

The Every Vote Counts Amendment was another proposed amendment in the U.S. It was meant to change the way in which the president and the vice president are put into power. It provided for the popular election of the two individuals (Bugh 32). Therefore, this would mean that an electoral system is used in place of the Electoral College (Edwards 122).

The two positions would be filled by the individuals who gunner the most votes from the citizens. Citizens from the different states and the district would elect a leader of their choice. The Electoral College have for a long time elected the president and vice president of the United States.

I favour the passing of this amendment because the process in which the president and vice president are put in power is credible and appropriate. The choice of the leaders of a particular country should be made by the individuals to be led. This means that the citizens are the ones to select their own leaders.

The Electoral College is made up of few individuals who may not necessarily represent the desires of the entire population. Therefore, all the citizens should be given the opportunity to vote in the leaders of their choice. This way, they would be responsible for the kind of leadership that the elected persons exercise. Voting should be regarded as the right of every individual.

The American government was initially thought to be run under the system of federalism (Kelly, Harbison, and Belz 321). This is a term that was derived from the Federalists. It expressed the idea that the governmental power was divided between different units. These included the central government (national authority) and the states. There are several forms of federalism described by O’Connor and her colleagues. Some of them include cooperative federalism, fiscal federalism, dual federalism, new federalism and creative federalism.

Dual federalism

This is the theory of shared power in the U.S. government. The federal constitutional law assumes that power is divided into two different spheres. One of the spheres of power is in the possession of the federal government. The other belongs to each of the states.

Both spheres are equally powerful and are limiting to the other. In this case, the provisions of the constitution are interpreted and applied differently in such a way as to give authority to the governments within the particular sphere (O’Connor, Yanus and Sabato 247). However, it also works in such a way as to limit its power over the other.

Fiscal Federalism

This involves the division of the functions of the public sector and funds among the various parts of the government. There is an emphasis on the need for improved performance of the public sector.

Proper alignment of the fiscal instruments is also required. A focus and the maximization of welfare are important to the optimization of jurisdictional authority. However, economic considerations only cannot be enough to ensure optimal jurisdictional authority. Political considerations must also be considered since it helps shape the fiscal relations between governments in most of the federations.

Creative Federalism

This form of federalism was popular during the 1960s. One of its characteristics was that the federal government was responsible for the determination of the states’ needs (Lowi 147). During this period, the federal government served the state directly and provided its needs, which included social services. There was need for liaison between federal government and the state government in order to plan how to achieve the set objectives.

Cooperative Federalism

This form of federalism assumes that the state and federal governments have equal power. The local, state and national governments work together to solve common issues (Hills 907).

New Federalism

This was created in order to ensure devolution of power. This form was deemed necessary after the state governments lost power. Loss of power was associated with the enforcement of civil rights in U.S. and President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal (Zavodnyik 166).

There was a push and pull between the states and the federal government and this prompted for some change in policies. It led to the transfer of power back to the local and state governments. It involved the provision of block grants by the federal government. Revenue sharing was also returned to the lesser governments.

Civil Rights and Liberties

O’Connor, Yanus and Sabato mentioned the rights and liberties enjoyed by every American. However, some have been jeopardized today. One of the rights of the American people that have been jeopardized recently is the rights to privacy (communications privacy). This may be seen in the way the private communications of innocent citizens are intercepted by law enforcement agents. The USA Patriot Act, in particular has led to such violations.

The act came about in response to the September 11 th terrorist attacks. This act reduced the restrictions placed on agencies as they gathered intelligence within the United States. It also allowed for the deporting and detaining of immigrants who were thought to have terrorist intent. Therefore, there was an enhanced domestic security against terrorism. This led to the enhancement of surveillance procedures by the particular bodies. Surveillance and wiretapping were extensively used and at some point caused conflict.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, for example, opposed the surveillance of packet switched networks. This is because the content in the address information would be exposed. There was also expansion in search warrants as the FBI could access voicemails. Only a search warrant was required in order for one to get access. The agents could also perform a ‘sneak and peek’ search. This was to be done without prior notice. This notice also prevented anyone from resisting any search even if it was wrongfully done.

These practices threatened the citizen’s individual liberties since they thought it was ironic that their freedom was shacked and yet the main terrorists (such as Osama) walked freely. I chose to discuss this issue because it is controversial. From the book by O’Connor, Yanus and Sabato, I have learnt that the efforts of the government to safeguard the United States from terrorism have come with a cost and the citizens are the ones to pay. Going through people’s voicemails and emails infringes the right to privacy and this should not be the case.

Another right that has been in jeopardy is the freedom of speech. The Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections Act (DISCLOSE) was opposed by several parties since it jeopardised the citizen’s rights and liberties (Kiang and Murray 41).

This bill was introduced in order to prohibit foreign corporations from influencing the election results through campaigns (Kolodny 154). This meant that the corporations were not allowed to make political contributions or provide access to certain information (financial) to its members or the public.

This, in a way, restricts some institutions from exercising their rights (free speech). Just as the American citizens were starting to express their rights to free speech, the democrats geared up for a vote on the new bill that would undermine the First Amendment. With the amendment of the bill, the playing field would not be levelled since the opposition would have been literally silenced. The funny thing is that the amendments were to be made only five months to the elections.

This bill was opposed and criticised by the American Civil Liberties Union. This was due to its ability to cause unnecessary damage to the freedom of speech rights (Warburton 176). In addition to this, it did not consider protecting the privacy of the citizens. One of the negative impacts that would have been caused by this is the lack of donor anonymity.

Some opposed it arguing that it would violate the principle of fairness and equality. I chose to discuss this case since freedom of speech should be enjoyed by every citizen in the United States of America. From what I have learnt from the course, I can rightfully say that laws that act in such a way as to prevent free speech should not be passed.

Bugh, Gary. Representation in Congressional efforts to amend the presidential election system . Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishers, 2010. Print.

Edwards, George. Why the electoral college is bad for America (second edition). New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011. Print.

Goldford, Dennis. The American constitution and the debate over originalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Print.

Hills, Roderick. “The political economy of cooperative federalism: Why state autonomy makes sense and dual sovereignty doesn’t.” Michigan Law Review 64.4 (1998): 813-944. Print.

James, Leanoard. The Supreme Court in American Life. Chicago: Scott Foreman, 1964. Print.

Kelly, Alfred, Winfred Harbison, and Herman Belz. The American constitution: Its origins and development (7 th ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1991. Print.

Kiang, Mathias, and Andrew Murray. Human rights in the digital age. New York: Routledge, 2005. Print.

Kolodny, Robin. The Several elections of 1824 – Congress & the Presidency. Washington, D.C.: American University, 1996. Print.

Lowi, Teri. The end of the republican Era. Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006. Print.

Mansbridge, Jane. Why we lost the ERA. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Print.

Moore, John. Congressional Quarterly’s guide to U.S. Elections. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly. Inc., 1985. Print.

Nicholson, Zoe. The hungry heart – A woman’s fast for justice. Newport Beach: Lune Soleil Press, 2004. Print.

O’Connor, Karen, Alixandra Yanus, and Larry Sabato. Essential of American Government: Root and Reforms, 2011 Edition (10 th ed.). New York: Longman, 2011. Print.

Rehnquist, William. “The notion of a living constitution.” Texas Law Review 693.54 (1976): 344-511. Print.

Scalia, Antonin, and Amy Gutmann. A matter of interpretation: Federal courts and the law. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. Print.

Warburton, Nigel. Free speech: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.

Zavodnyik, Peter. The rise of the federal colossus: The growth of federal power from Lincoln to F.D.R . Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011. Print.

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The first amendment, on originalism in constitutional interpretation.

by Steven G. Calabresi

Originalism is a theory of the interpretation of legal texts, including the text of the Constitution. Originalists believe that the constitutional text ought to be given the original public meaning that it would have had at the time that it became law. The original meaning of constitutional texts can be discerned from dictionaries, grammar books, and from other legal documents from which the text might be borrowed. It can also be inferred from the background legal events and public debate that gave rise to a constitutional provision. The original meaning of a constitutional text is an objective legal construct like the reasonable man standard in tort law, which judges a person’s actions based on whether an ordinary person would consider them reasonable, given the situation. It exists independently of the subjective “intentions” of those who wrote the text or of the “original expected applications” that the Framers of a constitutional text thought that it would have. 

Originalism is usually contrasted as a theory of constitutional interpretation with Living Constitutionalism. Living constitutionalists believe that the meaning of the constitutional text changes over time, as social attitudes change, even without the adoption of a formal constitutional amendment pursuant to Article V of the Constitution. Living constitutionalists believe that racial segregation was constitutional from 1877 to 1954, because public opinion favored it, and that it became unconstitutional only as a result of the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) – a case in which they think the Supreme Court changed and improved the Constitution. In contrast, originalists think that the Fourteenth Amendment always forbade racial segregation—from its adoption in 1868, to the Supreme Court’s erroneous decision upholding segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), to the decision in Brown in 1954, down to the present day. Living constitutionalists think racial apartheid could become constitutional again if social attitudes toward race evolve. Originalists disagree and think race discrimination will always be unconstitutional unless the Fourteenth Amendment is repealed.

Originalism is grounded in the two-century-long movement toward constitutionalism, and it is behind the U.S. Constitution itself. Consider the following ten purposes that underlie the U.S. Constitution. Critically, all of these counsel in favor of an originalist rather than a living constitutionalist interpretation of the text of the Constitution, which would undermine the accomplishment of these purposes at every turn.

1. Set Up or Constitute the Institutions of the National Government— A first purpose that clearly underlies the U.S. Constitution as an historical matter was to set up or constitute the institutions of the national government. Before 1789, there was no presidency, no Senate or House of Representatives, and no Supreme or inferior federal courts. By creating ex nihilo these institutions, the Framers did get constitutional politics going, as living constitutionalists acknowledge, but they also did quite a bit more to constrain and channel the constitutional politics they started. The Framers in 1787 put in place powerful institutional actors who would become constitutional interpreters, and they set rules on when and how those actors could be selected. The Framers’ decision in 1787 to establish a six-year electoral cycle with House elections every two years, presidential elections every four years, and Senate elections every six years, with one third of the Senate turning over in two-year intervals, completely shapes our public life to the present day. This basic electoral framework rule guarantees that we do not have one winner-take-all election in the U.S. roughly every five years as Britain does. It guarantees that for a political movement to prevail nationally, it must win more than one election. To replace a majority of the Supreme Court, political movements in the U.S. may have to win three to six elections over a six- to twelve-year time period. In Britain or Canada, in contrast, constitutional change can occur by winning just one election. Even when a political movement wins a majority on the Supreme Court, as the advocates of Jim Crow race discrimination did between 1877 and 1954, the real original meaning of the Constitution does not change. The Supreme Court instead decides cases for a time in a way that is itself unconstitutional.

The Framers’ choice of electoral rules sets a rhythm to our politics and promotes gradualism and Burkean change rather than French revolutionary style changes. In this respect, we think a better metaphor for the Constitution than a skeletal framework is that of a sea anchor. A sea anchor is a large parachute filled with water that drags behind a boat and slows enormously its movement in any direction even though the anchor never touches bottom. It can hence be used in the middle of the ocean where the water is too deep for a normal anchor. A first purpose of the U.S. Constitution is to set up the electoral cycle to slow change the way a sea anchor does in the middle of the ocean.

The six-year electoral cycle set up by the Constitution serves other purposes as well as slowing down change. It guarantees that the popular will in the U.S. is sampled not in one election every five or so years but in multiple elections held every two years over a six-year cycle. The U.S. method of sampling the popular will is superior to the British method in the same way that a daily tracking poll is superior to a one-time poll. Multiple samplings lead to greater accuracy. The fact that the U.S. samplings of the popular will occur in geographically different congressional districts—states (for the Senate), and the nation (for the presidency)—adds to the accuracy of our system.

2. Divide and Allocate Power— A second obvious purpose of the Constitution is to divide and allocate power in four different ways. First, the Constitution divides and allocates power between We the People, who are sovereign, and the government, which is given only limited and enumerated powers. Second, the Constitution divides power horizontally among the Congress, the President, and the federal courts. Third, the Constitution divides power vertically between the national government and the states. And, finally, the Constitution protects certain enumerated and unenumerated individual rights from government intrusion at all levels.

This function of dividing and allocating power in so many different ways again goes somewhat beyond just the creation of a skeletal framework or the getting going of politics. The Framers’ Constitution set in motion a whole Newtonian system of planets orbiting around the sun of the sovereign people, each exerting gravitational force on one another. The Madisonian system of checks and balances is, as Michael Kammen has described it, “a machine that would go of itself.” To be sure there are build-outs in structural constitutional law. At the margins, presidential, congressional, and federal judicial power have been made concrete by practice. One cannot understand presidential power in foreign affairs, or the political question doctrine, or the case and controversy limitation without making reference to practice. But again, the basic divisions and allocations of power made in the period between 1787 and 1791 still govern with the vital additions of the Reconstruction and Progressive Era Constitutional Amendments adopted through the amendment process set out in the original document.

3. Serve as a Gag Rule— A third purpose served by the Constitution is that it functions as a gag rule: it takes certain subjects off the table of discussion in ordinary politics. The Framers of the Constitution meant to do this at the national level when they forbade a national established church, protected the free exercise of religion, and forbade religious tests for holding office. These three prohibitions were meant to prevent a repeat of the English civil wars of the seventeenth century by taking the subject of religion and removing it entirely from ordinary politics. The Framers’ effort was a complete success. Religious strife has been greatly reduced. The authors of the Reconstruction Amendments, perhaps inspired by the Framers’ success, tried to take the subject of racial discrimination off the table by forbidding laws that distinguish citizens by race.

4. Restrain the Passions of the Moment— A fourth purpose of the Constitution historically was that it was meant to restrain the passions of the moment. Tying ourselves to the constitutional text was to be like Ulysses lashing himself to the mast of his ship so he could listen to, but not heed, the alluring and deadly songs of the sirens. The Framers deliberately designed the Madisonian system of checks and balances to prevent temporary passions, which might engulf the body politic, from being legislated immediately into law. This guaranteed that change would be slow and incremental. The U.S. Constitution has been highly successful in this respect. That is one reason we have had so much economic growth and liberty as compared with other democracies around the world.

5. A Framework for Private Ordering— A fifth purpose that is served by the Constitution is that it serves as a framework to promote private ordering because it makes change of all kinds slow and incremental. This is the case not only because of the Madisonian system of checks and balances and the divisions and allocations of power alluded to above, but also because Article V makes it very difficult to amend the Constitution while the Senate filibuster (a build-out) makes it hard to pass even ordinary laws. The net result is that the United States has a very entrenched legal system: It is not just hard to amend the Constitution; it is also very hard to pass an ordinary law. The U.S. legal system is thus super-entrenched and that leaves people a lot of room to make their own choices in terms of economics and personal liberties. One goal of a constitution is to guarantee credibly that if you write a book today you will not be prosecuted for what you said in it twenty years from now. Similarly, if you start a business or build a factory today, it will not be taken away from you without just compensation being paid twenty years from now. The U.S. Constitution accomplishes these goals of promoting private ordering because it is so hard to pass laws and even harder to amend the Constitution. This is why the United States is the freest and most prosperous nation on earth. The Framers did not say in so many words that they wanted to promote private ordering, but they did make it clear that they wanted to protect life, liberty, and property. Obviously, they succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.

6. A System of Intergenerational Lawmaking— A sixth purpose of the Constitution is one that the Framers could only have hoped for rather than expected: the successful creation of a real working system of intergenerational lawmaking. Law can create a freedom or power in people that would not exist if it were not there. This insight is at the bottom of contract law. By giving up the “freedom” to breach their contracts, citizens gain a power to make more certain arrangements in the future, which is liberty- and prosperity-enhancing. Ironically, perhaps, agreeing to be bound by a contract is empowering.

The same form of intergenerational lawmaking occurs in constitutional law. There are some problems that are just so big that no one generation can or should have to deal with them on its own. Thus, for example, the U.S. government borrowed a lot of money from future generations to win World War II and the Cold War. The generations that won those wars could not have won them without borrowing from the future. And it made sense to borrow from future generations because those very future citizens would themselves benefit from winning the wars in question. The Constitution similarly allows us, in exchange for giving up our freedom to scrap it, the security of being bound by some pretty sensible rules that have persisted over two hundred years. By agreeing to be bound by our great-great-grandparents’ Fourteenth Amendment, we also gain the power to bind our great-great-grandchildren with some new amendment. Constitutional originalism thus acknowledges that the present has obligations both to the past and to the future, and that just as every individual is not an island all by himself, every generation is not an island all by itself. We honor our parents when we give their laws a presumption of validity while reserving the means to change them in a consensus-based way.

7. Promote the Rule of Law— A seventh purpose of the Constitution is to promote the rule of law and not of individual men or women. As Robert’s Rules of Order say at the outset, “where there is no law and where every man does what is right in his own eyes there is the least of real liberty.” The original Constitution is an ingenious effort to promote the rule of law because, as James Madison explained in The Federalist No. 51 , it does not rely on mere parchment barriers for enforcement, but instead sets in play a mechanism by which ambition is made to counteract ambition. Ultimately, We the Sovereign People enforce the Constitution over the six-year electoral cycle.

8. Promote Democracy— An eighth purpose of the Constitution is to promote democracy. As much as they believed in and talked about checks and balances, the Framers were determined to set up a democratic system of government and not an English-style monarchy or aristocracy. The Constitution provides for popular ratification and for popular election of representatives, senators, and, indirectly, Presidents. Judges, whose selection is removed from the people, are picked by the President and Senate and thus indirectly by the people. Even the six-year electoral cycle, described above as a series of biannual tracking polls, is an effort to discern what the people really want, as opposed to what they might impulsively vote for in one election.

9. Certainty from Getting Things in Writing— A ninth purpose of the Constitution is to make it easier to find the law by getting it down in writing. The Framers grew up with the British unwritten constitution, and they obviously thought it was very important to get constitutional constraints in writing so as to eliminate uncertainty about the law and, in Jefferson’s words, to bind down government officials in the chains of the Constitution. The Framers were skeptical about the ability of people to agree on unwritten constitutional commands, and this skepticism seems well warranted. The writtenness of the Constitution reflects the Framers’ desire to make concrete the meaning of our fundamental law.

10.  Lead to Good Consequences— The tenth and final purpose of the Constitution is aspirational and consequential. The Constitution itself describes its purposes aspirationally and consequentially in the Preamble. The Framers say the purposes of the Constitution include forming a more perfect Union, establishing Justice, ensuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, and securing the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity. The Constitution aspires to promote these ends so as to produce good consequences, and the Preamble describes the promotion of these ends as being a purpose of the document.

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Home — Essay Samples — Law, Crime & Punishment — Constitution — The Living Document: An Ongoing Constitutional Debate

The Living Document: an Ongoing Constitutional Debate

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Published: Jun 13, 2024

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Originalism: anchoring to the past, living constitutionalism: adapting to the present, the impact of constitutional interpretation on society.

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Russian Revolution of 1905

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Russian Revolution of 1905 , uprising that was instrumental in convincing Tsar Nicholas II to attempt the transformation of the Russian government from an autocracy into a constitutional monarchy . For several years before 1905 and especially after the humiliating Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), diverse social groups demonstrated their discontent with the Russian social and political system . Their protests ranged from liberal rhetoric to strikes and included student riots and terrorist assassinations . These efforts, coordinated by the Union of Liberation , culminated in the massacre of peaceful demonstrators in the square before the Winter Palace , St. Petersburg , on Bloody Sunday (January 9 [January 22, New Style], 1905).

(Read Leon Trotsky’s 1926 Britannica essay on Lenin.)

In St. Petersburg and other major industrial centres, general strikes followed. Nicholas responded in February by announcing his intention to establish an elected assembly to advise the government. But his proposal did not satisfy the striking workers, the peasants (whose uprisings were spreading), or even the liberals of the zemstvo s (local government organs) and of the professions, who by April were demanding that a constituent assembly be convened .

The revolt spread to non-Russian parts of the empire, particularly to Poland, Finland , the Baltic provinces, and Georgia, where it was reinforced by nationalist movements. In some areas the rebellion was met by violent opposition from the antirevolutionary Black Hundreds , who attacked the socialists and staged pogroms against the Jews. But the armed forces joined in on the side of the revolt as well: army units situated along the Trans-Siberian Railroad line rioted, and in June the crew of the battleship Potemkin mutinied in the harbour at Odessa.

The government decree on August 6 (August 19) announcing election procedures for the advisory assembly stimulated even more protest, which increased through September. The rebellion reached its peak in October-November. A railroad strike , begun on October 7 (October 20), swiftly developed into a general strike in most of the large cities.

The first workers’ council, or soviet , acting as a strike committee, was formed at Ivanovo-Vosnesensk; another, the St. Petersburg soviet, was formed on October 13 (October 26). It initially directed the general strike; but, as social democrats, especially Mensheviks, joined, it assumed the character of a revolutionary government. Similar soviets were organized in Moscow, Odessa, and other cities.

The magnitude of the strike finally convinced Nicholas to act. On the advice of Sergey Yulyevich Witte , he issued the October Manifesto (October 17 [October 30], 1905), which promised a constitution and the establishment of an elected legislature ( Duma ). He also made Witte president of the new Council of Ministers (i.e., prime minister).

These concessions did not meet the radical opposition’s demands for an assembly or a republic. The revolutionaries refused to yield; even the liberals declined to participate in Witte’s government. But some moderates were satisfied, and many workers, interpreting the October Manifesto as a victory, returned to their jobs. This was enough to break the opposition’s coalition and to weaken the St. Petersburg soviet.

At the end of November the government arrested the soviet’s chairman, the Menshevik G.S. Khrustalev-Nosar, and on December 3 (December 16) occupied its building and arrested Leon Trotsky and others. But in Moscow a new general strike was called; barricades were erected, and there was fighting in the streets before the revolution was put down. In Finland order was restored by removing some unpopular legislation, but special military expeditions were sent to Poland, the Baltic provinces, and Georgia, where the suppression of the rebellions was particularly bloody. By the beginning of 1906 the government had regained control of the Trans-Siberian Railroad and of the army, and the revolution was essentially over.

The uprising failed to replace the tsarist autocracy with a democratic republic or even to convoke a constituent assembly, and most of the revolutionary leaders were placed under arrest. It did, however, force the imperial regime to institute extensive reforms, the most important of which were the Fundamental Laws (1906), which functioned as a constitution, and the creation of the Duma , which fostered the development of legal political activity and parties.

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Lenin’s implementation of Leninism in Russia and the changes made

While looking at the background information on the Russian revolution and the change to a Communist state in Russia, we have already touched on many of the curriculum's remaining questions, but we will now examine them in more detail.

Lenin’s Political policies, 1917-1921

Bolshevik Reforms

Following the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin and his new communist government initiated many reforms. They took land from the Tsar, the church, nobles and other landlords, and redistributed it among the peasants in order to reform the agricultural sector and reward the peasants for their loyalty during the Revolution.

Labour conditions were improved with working hours limited to a maximum of eight hours a day, and forty hours a week. The capitalists who had always owned the factories and farms had been profit driven, neglecting basic human rights of workers.

Exploitative working conditions existed with no work breaks or time off. Children born to parents from the working class were not allowed to attend schools. They began working at an early age, and before 1921, child exploitation and abuse in Russian factories and industrial areas was common. Many women also suffered miscarriages due to insufficient health facilities.  Under the new rule factories were placed under the control of elected committees of workers.

Lenin realised that the people who had helped him overthrow the provisional government were mostly poor and could not afford to pay for their education. He embarked on providing free education, especially for adults. In the past, education had been reserved for the nobility and a few members of the middle class. He realised that adults had been denied being able to read and write, so Lenin introduced evening classes for workers. This education included a strong component on communism.

A Women's Rights Department, headed by Alexandra Kollontai , a former exile member of the Bolshevik Central committee, was also launched. This department addressed issues like the employment and education of women.

Women were not allowed to occupy senior positions, as these were reserved for men. Women had not been allowed to educate themselves during the rule of the Tsar, and Lenin wanted to see this changed by having both women and men attending classes together and sharing the same philosophy.

During this reform period the Bolshevik Party changed its name to the Communist Party, and established measures to restrict political opposition. All newspapers that were not state controlled were banned to minimise criticism of government policies.

Leaders of the main opposition Liberal Party, a party that had launched most of the communist leaders, were banned. Lenin had also started his political career in the Liberal Party before his resignation as a result of the teachings of Karl Marx. The Constitutional Democrats were also banned, and its leadership arrested.

A commission to fight counter-revolution and espionage, called Cheka, was also established. Cheka was a secret police force that reported directly to Lenin on all illegal activities against communism.

This body ensured that people who did not support communism were recommended for expulsion from Russia or imprisoned for life. Its workforce grew to 30 000 members in a bid to crush all opposition. Moscow became the new capital city in a move based in the belief that it was more central than Petrograd. The Communist Party adopted the calendar , which was followed by many countries in Western Europe.

Activity: Write an essay (extended writing) on the positive and negative elements of Lenin's political reforms.

1. Demonstrate the ability to work independently, formulating enquiry questions and gathering, analysing, interpreting and evaluating relevant evidence to answer questions.

2. Synthesise information about the past to develop, sustain and defend an independent line of historical argument, and communicate and present information reliably and accurately in writing and verbally.

For some tips on how to improve your extended writing skills visit this link: www.seelb.org.uk

War Communism

White Army: The name given to the counter-revolutionary army that fought against the Bolshevik Red Army in the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1921. The officer core of the army, the White Guard, was made up of monarchists. It was supported by representatives of many other political movements: democrats, social revolutionaries, and others who opposed the Russian Revolution.

Civil war broke out immediately after Lenin took over government. The White Army and the Red Guards, which was renamed the Red Army under the commandership or leadership of Leon Trotsky, clashed. 

The White Army was opposed to the rule of the Tsar and to communism, and wanted a democracy, but the Red Army was victorious.  Members were carefully placed to control large industries and cities such as Moscow and Petrograd. The White Army suffered from a lack of discipline and corruption in the ranks.

By 1921, the Communist Party had secured its power and crushed resistance. However, the Russian economy was in tatters. Lenin survived the civil war because his party placed political representatives of the communist party in each army unit to avoid mutiny. This led to the introduction of 'War Communism', as a measure to achieve economic stability.

The civil war caused shortages of food, fuel, raw materials for manufacturing and labour. Workers also left the cities to grow their food on farms in the countryside, shrinking the labour force. Faced with an economic crisis, the communist government in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) introduced War Communism in an effort to take charge of the economy, and to establish a structured socialist economy.

Nationalisation: The transfer of land and equipment from private ownership to government ownership

The Red Army and industrial workers were fed with food confiscated from capitalists. Major industries, businesses employing more than 10 people, and all banks and communication companies were nationalised to provide employment for the Red Army. All private trade was banned, strikes were declared illegal and workers were strictly controlled.

War communism did not help to solve the Russian economic crisis. Instead trade came to a halt. Industrial production fell by 40% and food shortages led to the migration of people away from the cities. The government was blamed for the worsening situation and opposition to its economic policies grew.

The New Economic Policy (NEP)

War communism was especially unpopular among peasant farmers and overwhelming opposition to Lenin's economic policy forced him to change it. Lenin wanted to regain the trust of the peasants and established the New Economic Policy.  Farmers were now allowed to sell their additional products on the open market, but land still remained the property of the state. All the products were taxed and the state determined all prices.

Agricultural production increased, and to mirror this growth in industry workplace incentives and bonuses were introduced. Heavy industries were still under the government's control, but foreign trade and investment were encouraged. A state bank, which was established in 1921, lent money to emerging developers and merchants and, in the same year Lenin established the state planning commission, the Gosplan in order to direct the financial activities of the country.

The main task of the Gosplan was to devise a single economic plan for the USSR, and to develop the methods and order for implementing it. It also had to coordinate the production programmes and planning proposals for various economic institutions, devise state measures for developing the knowledge, and organizing research necessary for implementing a state economy. Another task was to deploy and train the necessary personnel to achieve its goals.

Russia prospered economically until it reached the same economic level as Britain, France, Japan and the United Sates of America (USA). Gosplan's initiatives also ensured that Russia could successfully compete in the Second World War and emerge as one of the strongest superpowers in the whole world, along with the USA. The introduction of this economic policy saved the Russian economy. Peasants were encouraged to increase food production for the reward of becoming Kulaks.

Kulaks: Richer peasants in the Soviet Union who employed other peasants.

The New Economic Policy had many faults, despite its success in bringing economic relief in Russia. It aimed to address the social imbalances within the economic framework of Russia, but failed to do so.

A new class of business people called Nepmen owed their success to the NEP. They emerged due to the flaws within NEP, which was meant to be an economic policy derived from socialistic ideology. The Nepmen controlled the forms of production and owned farms, factories and industries. They proved that, even with strict economic policies and true socialism implemented as advocated by Karl Marx, Russia had a potential of being wealthy.

These capitalists enjoyed their moments of glory in Russia between 1921 and 1929.Joseph Stalin put to end to their dominance in Russia by taxing them heavily and expelling those who resisted paying taxes to Siberia.

Lenin's death in 1924 brought the NEP to an end. Stalin criticised it for creating many capitalist groups in Russia and reviving class divisions. The NEP remained official policy until 1928.

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CHAPTER ONE Russia in the Age of Peter the Great By LINDSEY HUGHES Yale University Press Read the Review I

I. RUSSIA IN 1672

Russian Bethlehem, Kolomenskoe, You delivered Peter to the light! You the start and source of all our joy, Where Russia's greatness first burned clear and bright.

Peter Alekseevich Romanov was born in or near Moscow at around one in the morning on Thursday 30 May 1672. A patron saint's `measuring' icon of the apostle Peter made shortly after his birth showed the infant to be nineteen and a quarter inches long. The future emperor's exceptional height was clearly prefigured, but the time and place of his birth, like much else in his life, have been the subject of controversy. For want of concrete evidence locating it elsewhere, the event may be placed in the Kremlin in Moscow, but legends persist, as in the verse by the poet Sumarokov above, that Peter was born in the village of Kolomenskoe to the south of Moscow, where his father had built a wooden palace, or even in Preobrazhenskoe, which later became Peter's favourite retreat and the base for his new guards regiments, formed from the `play' troops of his boyhood. As for the date, most sources accept 30 May, as did Peter himself by honouring St Isaac of Dalmatia, whose feast falls on that day. But at least one record gives 29 May, following the old Russian practice of starting the new day not at midnight but at dawn.4 In those countries which had adopted the Gregorian calendar (which Russia did only in 1918) the date was ten days ahead of those which still followed the older, Julian calendar, and 30 May fell on 9 June. Contemporary Russian chroniclers (using not arabic numerals but Cyrillic letters with numerical equivalents) recorded the year of Peter's birth as not 1672 but 7180, following the Byzantine practice of numbering years from the notional creation of the world in 5509 BC. The year 7181 began on 1 September 1672, which, following the usage of Constantinople, marked the start of the Muscovite new year.

    These peculiarities of time and record keeping provide a foretaste of the different customs observed in the Russia where Peter was born and the West into which he was later to forge a `window'. On the eve of the new century, in December 1699, Peter himself decreed that official records would henceforth adopt calendar years from the birth of Christ in the manner of `many European Christian nations'. When he died on 28 January 1725, there were no arguments about how the date should be recorded. It is appropriate that questions of time and chronology should arise at the outset of Peter's life, for he was to be obsessed with time and its passing, believing that `wasted time, like death, cannot be reversed'. Traditionalists denounced the tsar for tampering with `God's time' by changing the calendar. There were even rumours that the Peter who was to adopt the title `emperor' in 1721 was not the Peter who had been born in 1672. We shall return to these matters later, but let us take a closer look at the Russia into which Peter was born.

    Peter's parents had been married for less than eighteen months when he arrived. On 22 January 1671 nineteen-year-old Natalia Kirillovna Naryshkina married forty-two-year-old Tsar Alexis (Aleksei) Mikhailovich, whose first wife Maria Miloslavskaia had died in 1669 at the age of forty-three after giving birth to her thirteenth child, a girl who did not survive. Given a more robust set of male half-siblings, Peter might never have come to the throne at all. His father's first marriage produced five sons, but in 1672 only two were still alive. The heir apparent, Fedor, born in 1661, had delicate health, while Ivan, born in 1666, was mentally and physically handicapped. There were six surviving half-sisters: Evdokia, Marfa, Sophia, Ekaterina, Maria, and Feodosia, ranging in age from twenty-two to ten. They were not regarded as direct contenders for power: no woman had ever occupied the Muscovite throne in her own right, and the policy of keeping the royal princesses unmarried minimized the complications of power-seeking in-laws and inconvenient offspring through the female line. The practice of keeping well-born women in virtual seclusion also meant that they were unknown to the public.

    When Tsar Alexis died at the age of forty-seven in January 1676, Fedor succeeded him without the formal appointment of a regent, even though he was only fourteen. (Rumours of attempts to place three-year-old Peter on the throne in his stead may be discounted.) Twice in the next six years Peter narrowly escaped being pushed further down the ladder of succession. Fedor's first wife, Agafia Grushetskaia, and her newborn son Il'ia died in July 1681. His second wife, Marfa Matveevna Apraksina, was left a widow after only two months of marriage, by Fedor's death in April 1682. Rumours that she might be pregnant proved unfounded. But this is to leap ahead. In 1672 there was every prospect of Tsar Alexis continuing to rule for many years, and a fair chance, given infant mortality rates, that Peter would not survive for long. Modern readers will treat with scepticism the intriguing story recorded by one of Peter's early biographers to the effect that the royal tutor and court poet Simeon Polotsky predicted Peter's rule and future greatness by the stars on the supposed day of his conception, 11 August 1671.

    Many pages of print have been devoted to Peter's childhood and adolescence. His first two decades will be considered here only briefly, in order to give a context for the changes which he later forced upon Russia--the main subject of this book. I will begin by dispelling a few misconceptions, such as that Peter's early environment was closed and stultifying, dominated solely by Orthodox ritual and concepts. In fact, seventeenth-century Romanov childrearing practices did not exclude `modern' elements. For example, Peter's interest in military affairs was stimulated in the nursery, where he, like his elder brothers before him, played with toy soldiers, cannon, bows and arrows, and drums. Military affairs were the right and proper concern of a tsar almost from the cradle. His father had gone to war with his troops, as Peter was well aware and was proud to recall in later life. On the other hand, Peter's prowess as a soldier, virtually from the cradle (a contemporary compared him to the young Hercules, who strangled serpents), has been greatly exaggerated. The myth that Peter was already a cadet at the age of three has been refuted: in fact, at that age, Peter still had a wet-nurse. Toy weapons were supplemented by spades, hammers, and masons' tools, which no doubt fostered Peter's love of mechanical crafts. The fiercest of Peter's boyhood passions--his love of ships and the sea--is at first sight harder to explain. Why should a boy raised in a virtually land-locked country with no tradition of seafaring have developed such a passion? It is even said that as a boy Peter had a dread of water. But Russia's naval inexperience should not be exaggerated. Most major Russian towns were situated on rivers, which small craft plied. Russians may not have been expert sailors on the high seas, but they knew how to navigate inland waters, and Russian peasant navigators had long sailed the northern coastline. Peter did not see the open sea until he was twenty-one, but there was no lack of stimuli to the imagination closer to hand: toy boats, maps and engravings, and, what he himself identified as the spark which lit the flame, the old English sailing dinghy, the `grandfather of the Russian fleet', which he discovered in the outhouse of a country estate. The fact that it should have found its way to Moscow is not so surprising when one considers that English sea-going vessels had been docking on the White Sea since the 1550s, and that Tsar Alexis had commissioned Dutch shipwrights to build a small fleet on the Caspian Sea in the 1660s.

    In some respects, however, Peter's introduction to the wider world actually lagged behind that of his half-siblings. His brothers Fedor and Alexis (who died in 1670), and even his half-sister Sophia, were taught by the Polish-educated monk Simeon Polotsky, who gave instruction in Latin, Polish, versification, and other elements of the classical syllabus. Polotsky died in 1680, before he had the chance, had it been offered, to tutor Peter. His protege, Silvester Medvedev, was at daggers drawn with the conservative patriarch, Joachim, who, as adviser to Peter's mother, would scarcely have recommended a suspect `Latinizer' as the tsarevich's tutor. Peter thus received indifferent tuition from Russians seconded from government chancelleries; they included Nikita Zotov and Afanasy Nesterov, an official in the Armoury, whose names first appear in records as teachers round about 1683. Not only did Peter's education lack scholarly content; it also seems to have been deficient in basic discipline. His prose style, spelling, and handwriting bore signs of lax methods for the rest of his life. It should be added that there was no question of Peter receiving his education from a Muscovite university graduate or even from the product of a local grammar school or its equivalent. There were no universities in Muscovite Russia and no public schools, apart from some training establishments for chancellery staff in the Kremlin. In fact, clerks ( d'iaki and pod'iachie ) and clerics were the only two orders of Muscovite society who were normally literate, many parish priests being only barely so.

    The inadequacies of Peter's primary education were later offset by practical skills learned from foreigners, whom he was able to encounter in Moscow thanks to the policies of his predecessors. Foreigner-specialists first started arriving in Muscovy in significant numbers during the reign of Ivan IV (1533-84). Their numbers increased when Peter's grandfather, Tsar Michael (1613-45), reorganized certain Russian infantry regiments along foreign lines. In 1652 Tsar Alexis set aside a separate area of Moscow called the `New Foreign' or `German' Quarter to accommodate military, commercial, and diplomatic personnel. It was here that Peter encountered officers such as Patrick Gordon, Franz Lefort, and Franz Timmerman, his teachers and companions in the 1680s and 1690s. Residents of the Foreign Quarter also made their mark on Russian elite culture. From the 1650s several foreign painters were employed in the royal Armoury workshops. Alexis is the first Russian ruler of whom we have a reliable likeness, his daughter Sophia the first Russian woman to be the subject of secular portraiture. It was the Foreign Quarter which in 1672 supplied the director and actors for Russia's first theatrical performance. Unlike portraiture, however, which quickly became more widespread, theatricals were discontinued after Alexis's death. During Sophia's regency (1682-9) Huguenots were offered sanctuary in Russia, Jesuits were admitted to serve Moscow's foreign Catholic parish, and invitations were issued to foreign industrialists and craftsmen. In the 1670s and 1680s foreigners were no longer a rarity on the streets of Moscow, and were also well represented in commercial towns on the route from the White Sea port of Archangel.

    Of course, Moscow was not the whole of Russia, any more than a few relatively outward-looking individuals in the Kremlin were representative of Moscow society as a whole. Most Muscovites, from the conservative boyars who rubbed shoulders with them to the peasants who rarely encountered one, regarded foreigners as dangerous heretics, and viewed foreign `novelties' and fashions with intense suspicion and even terror. During the reign of Peter's immediate predecessors, foreigners were still in Russia on sufferance, tolerated as a necessary evil. The building of the new Foreign Quarter in 1652 was actually an attempt to concentrate foreigners and their churches in a restricted locality, away from the city centre, where they had lived previously. Patriarch Joachim urged that mercenaries, the most indispensable of foreign personnel, be expelled, and non-Orthodox churches demolished. Russian culture was prevented from falling further under foreign influence by strict controls. For example, publishing and printing remained firmly in the hands of the Church. It is a striking statistic that in the whole of the seventeenth century fewer than ten secular titles came off Muscovite presses, which were devoted mainly to the production of liturgical and devotional texts. There were no Russian printed news-sheets, journals or almanacs; no plays, poetry or philosophy in print, although this lack was partly compensated by popular literature in manuscript, a flourishing oral tradition, news-sheets from abroad (albeit restricted to the use of personnel in the Foreign Office), and foreign books in the libraries of a few leading nobles and clerics. Presses in Kiev, Chernigov, Vilna, and other centres of Orthodoxy supplemented the meagre output of Moscow printers. Russians were still clearly differentiated from Western Europeans by their dress, although a number were tempted by Polish influence to don Western fashions in private. According to Tsar Alexis's decree of 1675, `Courtiers are forbidden to adopt foreign, German ( inozemskikh i nemetskikh ) and other customs, to cut the hair on their heads and to wear robes, tunics and hats of foreign design, and they are to forbid their servants to do so.'

    The `courtiers' to whom this warning was addressed formed the upper echelons of Russia's service class. Sometimes loosely referred to as `boyars', roughly the equivalent of the Western aristocracy, they belonged to noble clans residing in and around Moscow. The upper crust were the `men of the council' ( dumnye liudi ), the so-called boyar duma, which in the seventeenth century varied in number from 28 to 153 members. Those in the top rank were the boyars proper ( boiare ), next the `lords in waiting' ( okol'nichie ), followed by a smaller group dubbed `gentlemen of the council' ( dumnye dvoriane ), and a handful of `clerks of the council' ( dumnye d'iaki ). All enjoyed the privilege of attending and advising the tsar. Membership of the two top groups was largely hereditary. Unless there were contrary indicators (e.g., serious incapacity or disgrace) men from leading families generally became boyars in order of seniority within their clan. Their numbers were swelled by royal in-laws (marrying a daughter to the tsar or one of his sons usually boosted a family's fortunes) and by a handful of men of lower status who were raised by royal favour. The council's participation in decision making is indicated by the formula for ratifying edicts: `the tsar has decreed and the boyars have affirmed' ( tsar' ukazal i boiare prigovorili ). Nobles immediately below the `men of the council' (often younger aspirants to the grade) bore the title `table attendant' ( stol'nik ), a reference to duties which they had once performed and in some cases still did. Below them were `attendants' ( striapchie ), Moscow nobles ( dvoriane moskovskie ), and `junior attendants' ( zhil'tsy ). In peacetime Moscow nobles performed a variety of chancellery and ceremonial duties. In wartime they went on campaign as cavalry officers. On duty, be it military or civil, they bore their court ranks: boiarin, okol'nichii, stol'nik and so on; there was no differentiation by office.

    In 1672 commissions, appointments, and other placings, such as seating at important banquets, were still in theory governed by the code of precedence, or `place' system ( mestnichestvo ), which determined an individual's position in the hierarchy of command by calculations based on his own and his clan's service record and his seniority within his clan. It was considered a great dishonour to be placed below someone who, regardless of ability, was deemed to merit a lower `place'. Such an insult gave grounds for an appeal to the tsar. Increasingly, mestnichestvo was suspended in order to allow the Crown a freer hand in appointing officers. For some campaigns it was ordered that military rolls be drawn up `without places' ( bez mest ).

    With the exception of members of the elite sent to serve as provincial governors ( voevody ), outside Moscow the ruler relied on a larger group of the `middle servicemen', provincial gentry ( gorodovye dvoriane ), and `junior servicemen' ( deti boairskie , literally and misleadingly `children of boyars') to perform policing duties and swell the ranks of the army in wartime. All the categories described above, it should be repeated, were counted among the elite and enjoyed certain privileges, the first of which was exemption from tax and labour burdens ( tiaglo ). The second was the right to land and serfs. Most of the Moscow elite owned both inherited estates ( votchiny ) and service lands ( pomest'ia ), the latter, in theory, granted and held on condition of service, but increasingly passed from generation to generation. The peasants living on both votchina and pomest'e holdings were serfs, the property of their landlords, who could freely exploit their labour (in the form of agricultural work and other duties) and collect dues (in money and kind). It should be noted, however, that nobles were not automatically supplied with serfs. Some of the top families owned tens of thousands of peasants distributed over dozens of estates, whereas many in the provincial deti boiarskie category owned only one or two peasant households, and in some cases worked their own plots. The Muscovite Crown also deployed non-noble servicemen ( sluzhilye liudi po priboru ). Men in this category were subject to a service, not a tax requirement, but they could not own serfs. They included the strel'tsy (`musketeers'), who formed army units in wartime and did escort and guard duty in peacetime, carrying on small businesses and trades when off duty; artillerymen ( pushkari ), and postal drivers ( iamshchiki ). Civilian personnel in the non-noble service category included secretaries and clerks ( d'iaki, pod'iachie ), the backbone personnel of the government chancelleries.

    Most of the non-noble residents of Russia's towns were bound to their communities by tax obligations, apart from a handful of chief merchants ( gosti ), who dealt in foreign trade. Including merchants of the second and third grades ( gostinnye and sukonnye sotni ) and the mass of clerks, artisans, and traders, or `men of the posad ' ( posadskie liudi ), the total registered male urban population in the 1670s has been estimated at 185,000. In addition, substantial numbers of peasants resided temporarily in towns, which also had shifting populations of foreigners and vagrants, but lacked many of the native professional categories--bankers, scholars, scientists, doctors, schoolteachers, lawyers, and actors--to be found in most contemporary Western European towns of any size.

    If townspeople were less numerous and played a less prominent role in Muscovy than they did in Western European countries, the opposite was probably true of church personnel. The Russian clerical estate was divided into `white' (secular) and `black' (monastic) clergy, the former group, consisting of parish priests and deacons, who were obliged to marry. The prelates--the patriarch, metropolitans, bishops, and abbots of monasteries--were drawn from the celibate black clergy, who also formed the monastic rank and file. The ecclesiastical estate enjoyed considerable privileges. Apart from the royal family and the nobles, only they could own serfs (although, strictly speaking, peasants were attached to monasteries and churches, not individuals). They were exempt from taxation. They had access to church courts. But the rural clergy, like the lesser rural gentry, were often barely differentiated in wealth and education from the mass of the population.

    This brings us to the masses themselves: rural dwellers engaged in working the land-- pashennye liudi . Roughly 50 per cent were serfs or bonded peasants, living on lands owned by the royal family ( dvortsovye ), nobles ( pomeshchichie ), or the Church ( tserkovnye ). The rest were `State' peasants ( gosudarsvennye ), not bound to any one landlord, but obliged to pay taxes to the State and perform labour duties as required--for example, by providing transport and carrying out forestry and road work. All were eligible for military service, which freed them from obligations to their former owners. Another group of `unfree' persons were slaves, who entered into contracts of bondage with richer people (usually, but not invariably, nobles) in return for loans and support. It has been calculated that as much as 10 per cent of the population may have fallen into this category.

    Thus, in 1672, it was possible to divide the great majority of people in Muscovy into those who performed service ( sluzhilye liudi ), those who paid taxes ( tiaglye liudi ), and those who served the Church ( tserkovnye liudi ). They included the tsar's non-Russian subjects: various tribespeople who rendered taxes in the form of tribute ( iasak , often in furs) or did occasional military service. Some of the tsar's subjects fell outside these estates: these included socalled wandering people ( guliashchie liudi ) unattached to any locality or category, who were either incapable of performing service or paying taxes--for example, cripples and `fools in Christ'--or who wilfully escaped obligations--runaway serfs, deserters, and religious dissidents, of which the biggest category were the Old Believers, protesters against Nikon's church reform of the 1650s. A number set up communities in remote localities out of reach of the government. Cossack communities, consisting originally of refugees from the long arm of government, maintained a variety of links with Moscow, being either bound in service, like the registered Cossacks of Ukraine, intermittently loyal, like the Cossacks of the Don, or persistently hostile, like the Host of the Zaporozhian Sich.

    This, then, was the Russia into which Peter was born, a country, on the one hand, deeply rooted in tradition and in many ways very distinct from Western Europe, where Russia was still regarded as a `rude and barbarous' kingdom, on the other, increasingly open to the influence of Western people and ideas. In the year 1672 the birth of a Russian prince went more or less unnoticed in the rest of Europe, of which Russia was at best a fringe member. There would have been scarcely any speculation about the new prince's eligibility as a marriage partner, since the Muscovite royal family was known to be uninterested in such foreign involvements, although this had not always been the case. The concept of the European community as `a single, integral system of mutually interdependent states', which came into being after the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, rested on a Protestant-Catholic balance of power in which Orthodox countries barely figured. But Russia was poised to play an increasingly active role in world affairs. In the reign of Alexis, during the socalled First Northern War (1654-60), it entered the wider sphere of international relations when it was pitted against its old enemies Poland and Sweden. War with Poland began in 1654, as a result of Moscow's provocative acceptance of the allegiance of Ukrainian (Little Russian) Cossacks under their leader Bogdan Khmel'nitsky, who were formerly Polish subjects, and ended in 1667 to Russia's advantage, with Left Bank Ukraine (to the east of the River Dnieper) and Kiev brought under the tsar's rule. But there was no progress during the shorter conflict of 1656-61 with Sweden, which had blocked the way to the Baltic since the 1617 Treaty of Stolbovo removed Moscow's narrow foothold on that sea. At the time Sweden's King Gustav Adolph boasted that Russia could not even launch a rowing boat on to the sea without Sweden's permission. When Peter was born, Russia's only seaport was Archangel, on the White Sea. In the south, Russia and Poland vied for possession and domination of the steppes with the Turks and the Crimean Tatars, who barred Russia from the Black Sea. Direct conflict was usually with the Tatars, who exacted a heavy toll of prisoners and livestock, as well as demanding and receiving annual tribute, known as `gifts'. In 1672 the Turks and the Tatars seized parts of Polish (Right Bank) Ukraine, and threatened incursions across the Dnieper into Muscovite territory. It was this crisis which prompted Tsar Alexis to send envoys all over Europe seeking aid for an anti-Turkish league. In 1676 his son Fedor found himself at war with the Turks and the Tatars. After losing the fort at Chigirin on the Dnieper, and fearing a Turkish attack on Kiev, Moscow made an uneasy twenty-year truce with the Tatars at Bakhchisarai, in January 1681.

II. SOPHIA: THE 1680s

On 27 April 1682 Fedor died childless. The same day, Peter, a month short of his tenth birthday, was declared tsar, on the grounds that his elder half-brother Ivan was `weak-minded'. Matters might have rested there. Ivan's afflictions evidently precluded him from taking an active role in civil or military affairs. There was no written law of succession to rule out the accession of a younger brother under these circumstances. Observance of primogeniture was a matter of custom rather than constitution. Peter's accession had the support of the patriarch, who intervened in such matters in the absence of mature royal males. But Peter's maternal relatives, the Naryshkins, and their hangers-on, who could expect to enjoy considerable power in Peter's minority and to retain key government posts when he came of age, had not reckoned on a lethal combination of unrest among Moscow's armed guard, the strel'tsy, and the fury of the affronted Miloslavskys, kinsmen of Tsar Alexis's first wife, led by Ivan's sister Sophia, that `ambitious and power-hungry princess', as a contemporary described her.

    The Miloslavskys succeeded in harnessing the strel'tsy, who were ultrasensitive to rumours of abuses in high places as a result of a series of disputes over management, pay, and conditions dating from Fedor's reign. After two weeks of negotiations, during which the new Naryshkin government made concessions, to the extent of handing over unpopular officers to strel'tsy mobs, a rumour that Tsarevich Ivan had been strangled by his `ill-wishers' brought rebel regiments to the Kremlin. There on 15-17 May, the strel'tsy settled personal grudges by butchering commanding officers and unpopular officials, and, at the instigation of the Naryshkins' rivals, singled out members of the Naryshkin clan and their associates as `traitors', and slaughtered them. The victims included Peter's uncle, Ivan Naryshkin (who was accused of trying on the crown), and his mother's guardian, the former foreign minister Artamon Matveev, who was accused of plotting to murder Ivan. In all, about forty persons fell victim to axe and pike. The role in all this of Sophia, Peter's twenty-five-year-old half-sister, has been widely debated. Although there is little hard evidence that she had the `Machiavellian' tendencies attributed to her by some writers, still less that she plotted to kill Peter and his mother (who remained unharmed, despite being the easiest of targets), the events of April-May 1682 undoubtedly allowed her to champion the legitimate claim to the throne of her brother Ivan and to emerge as regent over a joint tsardom, with Ivan as senior tsar and Peter as junior.

    No attempt will be made here to chart the further outbreaks of strel'tsy unrest after the dynastic question had apparently been settled, or to examine the role of Prince Ivan Khovansky in the events of May-September 1682, sometimes referred to as the `Khovanshchina', which were complicated by the activities of Old Believers, who enjoyed some support from the strel'tsy. We shall be concerned only with those events and features of Sophia's regency which had relevance for Peter's future policies and reforms. The most immediate consequence of the seven-year regency on Peter's own circumstances was that he was by and large relieved of ceremonial duties, which Sophia was happy to have performed at first by Ivan, who was thus given a prominent, active role in the public eye, and later by herself. It is difficult to overestimate the significance of these seven years for Peter's development. They may be regarded as a sort of `sabbatical' from the routine burdens of rulership, which allowed him to pursue his own interests (military games and sailing) and to build up a circle of friends and assistants at a slight distance from traditional clan networks. Members of the boyar elite predominated in Peter's circle, but foreigners and men of lower rank appeared in greater numbers than in the past. Ivan's role as Orthodox figure-head meant that Peter had less contact with the church hierarchy. It should be emphasized that Peter was neither banished nor persecuted. As for the charge that Sophia `stifled Peter's natural light', rather the opposite was true, although some contemporaries believed that lax supervision and too much contact with foreigners and `low' types ruined the tsar's character. On occasion he was still required to do ceremonial duty--for example, at ambassadorial receptions and important family anniversaries--but by and large his being out of Moscow suited him as much as it did Sophia. If it had one unfortunate effect, it is that it further alienated Peter from Sophia's chief minister and reputed lover, Prince Vasily Vasil'evich Golitsyn (1643-1714), a man with the sort of talent and vision that Peter could have used, had not hostility towards his sister made it impossible later to employ someone so close to her. Under Golitsyn's direction, the Foreign Office pursued policies which provided both foundations and lessons for Peter's future programme. The major achievement was the 1686 treaty of permanent peace with Poland, which ratified the secession of Kiev and its Right Bank hinterland to Moscow (which had been in dispute since the 1667 Treaty of Andrusovo), and Russian rule over Smolensk, Dorogobuzh, Roslavl', and Zaporozh'e. In return, Russia was to pay the Poles 146,000 roubles indemnity `out of friendship', to sever relations with Turkey and Crimea `on account of the many wrongs committed by the Muslims, in the name of Christianity and to save many Christians held in servitude', and to wage war on Crimea. Other clauses included a ban on the persecution of Orthodox Christians in Poland by Catholics and Uniates (thus allowing the tsar a pretext for intervention), permission for Catholics in Russia to hold divine worship (but only in private houses), recognition of royal titles, encouragement of trade, and a pledge to seek the aid of `other Christian monarchs'. Russian suspicion of Catholics was exploited by Prussian envoys in Moscow, who induced Golitsyn and Sophia to offer sanctuary to Protestant exiles from France. In 1689 commercial treaties were signed allowing Prussia trading rights in Archangel, Smolensk, and Pskov, thereby laying the foundations for future Russo-Prussian co-operation during the 1710s.

    Thus Russia joined the Holy League against the Turks, formed in 1684 with papal backing, between Austria and Poland, both of which had lands bordering on the Ottoman Empire, and Venice, Russia's rival at sea, following the relief of the Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683. Russian ambassadors were dispatched all over Europe with appeals for assistance and closer alliance--to Holland, England, Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, France, Spain, Florence, Austria, and Venice. In 1687 and 1689 Vasily Golitsyn led huge armies south to Crimea. On both occasions logistical problems forced the Russian armies to withdraw, on the second occasion with huge losses of men and horses, from thirst and epidemics. Golitsyn's return to Moscow in the summer of 1689, where he was feted as a hero on Sophia's instructions, gave his opponents an opportunity to undermine both him and Sophia, whose public appearances Peter (prompted by his maternal relatives) had begun to criticize. Peter was well into his majority (Fedor, it will be recalled, was tsar without a regent at the age of fourteen); he was married (in January 1689), and his wife, Evdokia Lopukhina, was pregnant; he had troops at his disposal, notably his own `play' regiments and foreign officers; and he had the support of the patriarch. In fact, Sophia's rule was doomed from the start, because it could be perpetuated indefinitely only by disposing of Peter. This she seems never seriously to have contemplated, despite ample opportunities. Even the crisis of August 1689, when Peter believed that the strel'tsy were coming to kill him and fled to the Trinity monastery, may have been engineered by Peter's own supporters in order to force a confrontation between Peter and Sophia which they knew she was unlikely to win, given dissatisfaction with the Crimean campaigns, and which Peter, too wrapped up in his own interests, could not be relied upon to precipitate. August-September saw a stand-off between Sophia and her fast-dwindling forces in the Kremlin and Peter's supporters, massed at the Trinity-St Sergius monastery. The brief clash ended in late September, when Vasily Golitsyn was exiled to the north of Russia, and Sophia was locked up in the Novodevichy convent, were she remained until her death in 1704.

    For the rest of his life Peter associated Sophia with the dark forces of opposition, even if he blamed most of the active wickedness on her male supporters. The perpetrators of the so-called Tsykler plot to kill Peter in 1696-7 were executed over the exhumed coffin of Ivan Miloslavsky, identified by several contemporaries as the master-mind behind the 1682 rebellion. `The seed of Ivan Miloslavsky is sprouting,' wrote Peter, when called back to Russia to deal with another strel'tsy revolt in 1698. He apparently recognized Sophia's `great intelligence', but thought it was overshadowed by `great malice and cunning'. Engraved portraits depicting her wearing a crown and carrying royal regalia were sought out and destroyed, but many copies survived, along with painted portraits set against the background of the double-headed eagle bearing the seven Virtues on its wings, eloquent testimony both to Sophia's political aspirations and to the new cultural trends which she encouraged. At least one of Peter's successors did not share his view. Catherine the Great wrote of Sophia: `Much has been said about this princess, but I believe that she has not been given the credit she deserves ... she conducted the affairs of the Empire for a number of years with all the sagacity one could hope for. When one considers the business that passed through her hands, one cannot but concede that she was capable of ruling.'

III. THE MAKING OF A SOVEREIGN: THE 1690s

There are good reasons for devoting some space to the period between the overthrow of Sophia and Golitsyn and the declaration of war against Sweden in August 1700. The fact that these years have generally been regarded as merely a `prelude' to reform has condemned the 1690s to neglect in general histories, which tend to confine themselves to such selected highlights as the Grand Embassy and the Azov campaigns. Yet this decade is vital for understanding both the man and his Russia, the moulding of Peter's priorities and the clarification of the options open to him, both at home and abroad. For a start, a closer examination of the early 1690s reveals the error of assuming an unbroken line of developing `Westernization' from the 1680s into the new century. The 1690s were not merely a bridge between the cautious modernization of the Sophia-Golitsyn regime and Peter's full-blooded post-1700 variant. Some new trends--in art and architecture, for example--continued and flourished, while others were suspended. The 1690s saw a continuing struggle, to use a cliche, between the `old' and the `new', personified in the figures of the two ruling monarchs: `pious' Ivan making stately progress in his heavy brocade robes and `impious' Peter clad in German dress dashing from shipyard to military parade.

    In a letter to Tsar Ivan, written between 8 and 12 September 1689, Peter wrote: `And now, brother sovereign, the time has come for us to rule the realm entrusted to us by God, since we are of age and we must not allow that third shameful personage, our sister the Tsarevna S.A., to share the titles and government with us two male persons.' In fact, Peter showed little inclination to `rule the realm'. His preoccupation with his own interests for the first few years, then his prolonged absences, first at Azov, then in the West, ceded the centre to others, to the extent that some of the first actions of the new regime appeared to turn back the clock, taking advantage of the removal of Vasily Golitsyn, the `friend of foreigners', to annul concessions made during Sophia's regency and to adopt closer supervision of foreigners in general, in order to stem the spread of heresy from across the borders. Patriarch Joachim was the prime mover. On 2 October 1689 the Jesuit fathers Georgius David and Tobias Tichavsky were expelled. Sanctions were imposed against Jesuits in particular, not Catholics in general, probably because there were some influential foreign Catholics close to Peter, and Russia was still allied to Catholic powers. A decree of 1690 allowed two priests to serve the foreign Catholic community, but the authorities were to take precautions to ensure that they did not try to convert Russians, visit them in their homes, carry on foreign correspondence or turn out to be Jesuits in disguise. In October 1689 the Protestant mystic Quirinus Kuhlman was burned on Red Square together with his works. P.I. Prozorovsky, governor of Novgorod, was warned to take care that `such criminals should not enter the country and that foreigners who in future arrive from abroad from various countries at the border and in Novgorod the Great and claim that they have come to enter service or to visit relatives or for some other business in Moscow, should be questioned at the border and in Novgorod and detained and not allowed to proceed to Moscow until you receive our royal instructions'. All foreign travellers were to be interrogated and asked to provide certificates and passes, and transcripts of such interrogations were to be made. Just before his death in 1690, Patriarch Joachim called a church council to consider the recantation of the monk Silvester Medvedev, who was accused, among other things, of propagating a Catholic view of transubstantiation. Copies of Medvedev's book Manna were seized and burnt, and its author was defrocked and beheaded in 1691. Another whiff of Old Russia comes from a report of the uncovering in 1689 of a sorcerers' conspiracy, master-minded by Andrei Bezobrazov, who allegedly attempted to undermine the health of Peter and his mother by casting spells `on bones, on money and on water'. The ring-leaders were beheaded or burnt, other `conspirators' flogged and banished. For a few months after Sophia's overthrow the atmosphere was so oppressive that Peter's friend, the Scottish mercenary General Patrick Gordon, contemplated leaving Russia.

    But in the midst of this resurgence of the old, the new was asserting itself with unprecedented vigour. Despite the Church's dire warnings about the dangers of contamination by heretics, Peter himself was spending more and more time in the company of foreigners. The Foreign Quarter was only a few miles from the Preobrazhenskoe palace, where Peter spent much of Sophia's regency. Peter became a frequent visitor at the homes of Lefort and Gordon, and soon got to know other foreign soldiers and merchants, attending banquets, weddings, and funerals. Lefort's palace, with a splendidly appointed ballroom added, was turned into a semi-official residence for the sort of reception which it was still difficult to hold in the Kremlin, accompanied by `debauchery and drunkenness so great that it is impossible to describe it'. At about this time Peter probably learned Dutch (from Andrei Vinius, a government official of Dutch descent), and also took lessons in dancing, fencing, and riding. In February 1690 the birth of Peter's first child, Alexis, was celebrated not only with the customary church services and bells but also with cannon-fire and drum-beats. Foreign-led infantry regiments were drawn up in the Kremlin, presented with gifts and vodka to mark the occasion, and ordered to fire off rounds of shot, `disturbing the peace of the saints and ancient tsars of Moscow'. Over the next few days there were firework displays, more gun salutes, banquets, and feasts. Conservatives took retaliatory action. On the patriarch's orders, a banquet on 28 February was held without the now customary foreign guests, who were banned; but the next day the tsar dined with Patrick Gordon. Then in March Joachim died. His `Testament', which denounced the policy of hiring foreigners and deplored toleration of other faiths, has been described as the `last gasp' of Old Russia:

May our sovereigns never allow any Orthodox Christians in their realm to entertain any close friendly relations with heretics and dissenters--with the Latins, Lutherans, Calvinists and godless Tatars (whom our Lord abominates and the church of God damns for their God-abhorred guile); but let them be avoided as enemies of God and defamers of the Church.

Joachim's successor was Adrian, consecrated on 24 August 1690. He was to be Russia's last patriarch, his office left vacant after his death in 1700, and abolished altogether in 1721.

    As long as Tsar Ivan was alive, the old guard still retained a figure-head in the Kremlin. After the overthrow of Sophia and Golitsyn, the old Muscovite court life, with its liturgical emphasis, was resumed with a vengeance, cleansed of the `unseemly' female variants introduced by Sophia. Festivals gave special prominence to the history of the Russian Orthodox Church, celebrating earlier hierarchs who had assumed a strong political role, such as Metropolitans Philip and Alexis, and paying homage to the ruling dynasty with requiems for departed royalty (such as Tsarevich Alexis Alekseevich, whose death had not been marked in previous years). Old palace protocols persisted, on paper at least; for example, the practice of listing in order of rank all the nobles `in attendance' ( za nimi Velikimi Gosudariami ) on the tsars at such occasions as summer outings ( pokhody ) to country residences and monasteries. The Church continued to make its contribution to the business of warfare and government: in April 1695 General Avtamon Golovin was issued with icons of the Saviour, the Mother of God, and St Sergius and ten pounds of incense to carry in the campaign to Azov. In September 1697 Prince M. Ia. Cherkassky, the new governor of Tobol'sk, received a set of instructions, the first of which was to go to the Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom and hear prayers for the tsar and his family read by Metropolitan Ignaty of Siberia. A few months later Patriarch Adrian issued a long instruction to churches and monasteries on priorities and procedures.

    Despite the apparent vigour of tradition, the keepers of the palace records could not conceal the fact that one of the tsars was opting out of the usual rituals. Nowhere is the spirit of the new better illustrated than in an entry recorded shortly after Joachim's death. On 27 April 1690 (April was traditionally the start of the royal pilgrimage season) `the Great Sovereign Peter Alekseevich deigned to visit Kolomenskoe'. For his trip a rowing boat was got up to look like a sailing ship; the boyars followed in two boats and strel'tsy went in front in seven, and `as they sailed along the water there was firing from cannon and hand guns'. The `play' regiments, Peter's private troops, went along in smaller craft. Tsar Ivan travelled by land. Thus we see two tsars, one firmly rooted in old Russia, the other looking to new horizons. (Thirty-four years later, in 1724, Peter again travelled to Kolomenskoe along the river, in a small flotilla with Russian and foreign guests who had gathered in Moscow for the coronation of his second wife, Catherine. The interior of the old wooden palace, it seems, had been preserved exactly as it was in the tsar's youth.) In May 1690 we find Peter making a tour of monasteries, but more often than not Ivan carried out such duties alone. This turn of events was noted by contemporaries. Boris Kurakin records: `First the ceremonial processions to the cathedral were abandoned and Tsar Ivan Alekseevich started to go alone; also the royal robes were abandoned and Peter wore simple dress. Public audiences were mostly abandoned (such as were given to visiting prelates and envoys from the hetman, for which there were public processions,); now there were simple receptions.'

    Many of Peter's unofficial activities are recorded in the diary of Patrick Gordon, which provides a secular alternative to the old records which were so deeply rooted in the religious calendar. We learn that on 30 May 1690 Peter spent his birthday at Preobrazhenskoe enjoying gun salutes and target practice. On 19 January 1691 Peter visited P. V. Sheremetev, and the next day Gordon had such a dreadful hangover that he could not get out of bed until the evening. A dinner at Boris Golitysn's on 16 May had similar consequences. And so on. Royal account books for 1690-1 show numerous entries for orders for `German dress' in the royal workshops, made from materials bought from foreign merchants and intended for Peter and members of his play regiments. Peter's enthusiasm for things foreign is indicated by the motley collection of foreign goods shipped to Archangel in 1692: mathematical instruments, two globes, a large organ, four large clocks, five barrels of Rhine wine, and a barrel of olive oil.

    The new was taking its place alongside the old. After the traditional blessing of the waters at Preobrazhenskoe on 1 August, for example, there was firing from guns. Tsaritsa Natalia's name-day celebrations on 27 August 1691 combined the usual church services, visits from churchmen and receipt and dispensing of gifts on the tsaritsa's behalf, with a reception of visitors by the tsaritsa herself (from which, however, foreigners were excluded), followed by gun salutes and fireworks. We must also look to the beginning of the 1690s for the origins of one of Peter's most controversial `institutions', the All-Drunken, All-Jesting Assembly or `Synod'. Sometimes dismissed as an adolescent aberration, in fact the Drunken Assembly flourished throughout Peter's reign. The new trends seemed to be growing inexorably, yet how easily it might all have changed. In November 1692 Peter fell ill, and for ten days was at death's door. There were rumours that many of his supporters were preparing to flee. His recovery signalled the resumption of the new life with a vengeance. In July 1693 Peter set off for Archangel to see the sea. This was an `outing' ( pokhod ) for which the record-keepers lacked the vocabulary. The clerks compromised by listing the courtiers in attendance on Peter in the usual manner, but without reference to their destination. Yet this historic journey had much in common with the royal outings of old. The accompanying retinue was listed according to rank, from boyars to secretaries. Peter travelled with a priest, eight choristers, two dwarfs and forty strel'tsy. During Peter's travels Tsar Ivan's activities were solemnly chronicled, and Peter's absences were sometimes noted--for example, at the requiem mass for the late Tsarevna Anna Mikhailovna on 24 July. Moscow was depleted of courtiers. More than ever, the life-style of the two courts diverged. For example, the Russian New Year on 1 September 1693 was celebrated in Archangel with gun salutes from both foreign and Russian ships in the harbour, while back in Moscow, Tsar Ivan, clad in robes of red velvet, `deigned to go from his royal chambers to the cathedral' to hear the patriarch celebrate the liturgy `according to the usual rites'. On occasion, Peter assumed a traditional role, visiting his father's favourite place of pilgrimage, the St Sabbas monastery at Zvenigorod, in May 1693; but after Tsar Ivan's death in January 1696, more and more rituals were enacted without any tsar at all. An old formula was adopted to cover for Peter's absence, be it on campaign or abroad, i.e., the appointment of a small group of deputies to attend services and ceremonials in his stead. An order to this effect was issued: from 2 April to 1 September 1697 `the tsarevichy, boyars, okol'nichie and gentlemen of the duma shall follow behind the holy icons in parades and services', although entries in the palace records reveal that the escort usually comprised only token representatives of these ranks. So, for example, the 1697 Epiphany ceremony was attended by Tsarevich Vasily of Siberia, boyar Prince P. I. Khovansky, okol'nichii S. F. Tolochanov, and Secretary Avatamon Ivanov.

    If the early 1690s were a time of exploration and game playing, they also saw the beginnings of serious activity. Peter's first chance to try out his strength came in 1694 when his mother died. The demise of Natalia Naryshkina, a useful figure-head for the leading men, whose power rested upon their relationship to the royal mother, threatened a new configuration of forces which could have worked to Peter's disadvantage. But any thoughts of, for example, using the strel'tsy again against Peter were discouraged by Peter's own forces, based upon the `play' ( poteshnye ) troops. The two regiments took their names from the adjacent royal villages at Preobrazhenskoe and Semenovskoe to the north of Moscow. Their organization--foreign ranks, training, uniforms--was modelled on the new-formation infantry regiments introduced in the 1630s. The story goes that in the 1680s Peter discovered about 300 men idle at a former royal hunting-lodge, and signed them up to play military games. Others were requisitioned from regular units: for example, a drummer and fifteen troopers from the Butyrsky infantry regiment in 1687. Young nobles who might once have served as gentlemen of the bedchamber and in other junior court posts were recruited alongside local lads from a variety of backgrounds. The Semenovsky regiment was formed from the overflow from the Preobrazhensky regiment. Officers and men were all said to be known to the tsar personally. By 1685 the embryonic guards had a scaled-down wooden fortress which Peter named Presburg, with barracks and stables adjacent to the Preobrazhenskoe palace. In deference to foreign expertise, Russians, including the tsar himself, served in the ranks or as non-commissioned officers. A list of officers ( nachal'nye liudi ) of both regiments for 1695 shows that they were all foreigners, although Russian names appear in the next year or so, mostly in the lower officer ranks.

    In September 1694 Peter staged the so-called Kozhukhovo manoeuvres, mock exercises which were `partly political in nature', in which some 30,000 men participated. The `campaign' presented Muscovites with a show of strength, as armies commanded by Fedor Romodanovsky, the `king of Presburg', and Ivan Buturlin, the `king of Poland', paraded through the city. The mock battle included an assault with explosives on a specially constructed fortress, which left twenty-four dead and fifteen wounded. Members of both the Lopukhin and the Naryshkin families were placed on the losing side, perhaps to make the point that Peter did not intend to be beholden to any of his relatives unless they proved their worth.

    Soon there were to be opportunities for real service. In the wake of the disastrous Crimean campaigns of 1687 and 1689, which attracted little allied support, Russia began to lose confidence in the Holy League, fearing exclusion from any future peace negotiations with the Turks. Even so, Peter was determined to continue the war in the hope of real gain and in 1695 he reopened hostilities in a campaign against the Turkish coastal fort of Azov at the mouth of the River Don, in an attempt to recover Russian prestige, gain a stronger bargaining position with his allies and ward off Turkish attacks on Ukraine. It was widely believed in 1694-5 that Peter was planning to make another assault on the Crimea, `march with a mighty army against the Crim Tartar, having an Artillery of 80 great guns and 150 Mortars', to bring relief to hard-pressed Poland, rumours which Peter was happy to encourage. In the event, he marched not to Perekop, but to Azov, a plan which may have been suggested by Patrick Gordon. Two armies were dispatched: the joint force of B. P. Sheremetev and the Ukrainian hetman Ivan Mazepa to the Dnieper, to deflect the Tatars from the mouth of the Don, and a smaller unit consisting of the Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky guards and strel'tsy on river craft down the Don.

    Peter wrote to Fedor Apraksin: `In the autumn we were engaged in martial games at Kozhukhovo. They weren't intended to be anything more than games. But that play was the herald of real activity.' In this, as in some subsequent campaigns, Peter ceded nominal command to others. The commander-in-chief was A. S. Shein, while the tsar marched as a bombardier in the Preobrazhensky regiment. The first Azov campaign was a failure, and the fortress remained in Turkish hands. Peter blamed this on multiple command, tactical errors, and technical deficiencies. Foreign engineering specialists were hired for the next campaign, in an effort to avoid such fiascos as mines planted on ramparts far away from the enemy blowing up 130 Russians without doing any damage to the Turks. The Turks, meanwhile, were able to replenish supplies from the sea, with no Russian ships to hinder them.

    This set-back has often been identified as the real beginning of Peter's career, when he was forced to `grow up' and discover `astonishing reserves of energy'. Such formulae should not simply be dismissed as part of a Petrine myth propagated by both tsarist and Soviet writers. Failure did indeed stimulate the implementation of a number of measures, characterized by what was to become the typically `Petrine' use of speed, mass recruitment, and command from above. The prime example was the preparation of galleys at Voronezh on the Don for a renewed campaign in 1696, a huge effort in which thousands of the tsar's subjects were expected to do their bit, from the leading churchmen and merchants, who reluctantly supplied the cash, to the hapless labourers drafted in to hack wood in terrible conditions. Both river craft and seagoing vessels were to support an army of some 46,000 Russian troops, 15,000 Ukrainian Cossacks, 5,000 Don Cossacks, and 3,000 Kalmyks. At the end of May 1696, Peter's land and sea forces laid siege to Azov. By 7 June a Russian flotilla was able to take to the sea and cut off access to Turkish reinforcements.82 Apart from the use of sea power, Russian success was aided by General Gordon's plan of a rolling rampart ('the throwing up a wall of earth and driveing it on the Towne wall') and the services of Austrian engineers. On 18 July the fortress surrendered.

    This victory prompted some striking manifestations of the new culture. In the past, military triumphs had been largely religious affairs, celebrated by parades of crosses and icons headed by chanting priests. Such displays of thanksgiving continued right to the end of Peter's reign--in Russia, as in every other European country, military victory and defeat were interpreted as inextricably linked with God's will--but from now on the religious processions were supplemented, and usually eclipsed, by secular parades bristling with `pagan' symbols. After Azov, triumphal gates of Classical design bearing the legend in Russian `I came. I saw. I conquered' gave a preview of the imperial Roman references and imagery which culminated in the festivities of 1721, when Russia became an empire. There were references to Christian Rome, too, and comparisons of Peter to the Emperor Constantine. In addition to the customary prayers, verses were chanted through a megaphone by State Secretary Andrei Vinius. Peter, wearing German uniform, marched in the parade behind the official heroes Admiral Lefort and General Shein, while the religious authority was parodied by `prince-pope' Nikita Zotov in a carriage. It is said that Peter had in mind not only Roman precedents but also the example of Ivan IV, who organized a similar parade after the conquest of Kazan in 1552. This was the first public display of the new manners, which until then had by and large been confined to semi-private indulgence at Preobrazhenskoe or in the Foreign Quarter. This new openness fanned growing popular disapproval of Peter's foreign ways, which expressed itself in full force in 1698, when the strel'tsy revolted.

    The 1690s saw interesting developments in art and culture. The semi-Westernized Moscow baroque style of the 1680s matured and spread beyond the capital, where masonry churches and civic buildings displayed decorative features such as Classical columns and carved stone and brick ornament inspired by Western Renaissance and baroque originals. Peter's maternal relatives commissioned so many churches in this style that it is often referred to as `Naryshkin baroque'. One of the finest examples, the Church of the Intercession at Fili, built for Lev Naryshkin in 1690-3, had icons which reflected family history--images of SS Peter and Paul, John the Baptist, Alexis Man of God, and St Stephen, the latter bearing a striking resemblance to the young Peter, who often visited the church. An even more remarkable church, commissioned by Prince Boris Golitsyn on his estate at Dubrovitsy in 1690, dispensed with the traditional cupolas (the tower is capped by an open-work crown) and had statues of saints over the parapets and Latin inscriptions inside.

    The painting of the 1690s also exhibits interesting `transitional' features. In January 1692 the Armoury received an order for eleven large pictures for Peter's residence at Pereiaslavl'-Zalessky (where he was experimenting with sailing), the subjects of which were the Saviour, the Mother of God, the martyr Natalia, Alexis Man of God, Alexander Nevsky, Peter and the martyr Evdokia. The family references (Alexander Nevsky, for example, was the patron saint of Peter's second son Alexander, born in October 1691) were almost certainly chosen by Peter's mother rather than Peter himself. But the commission reflected `modern' trends in so far as these were not traditional icon panels but paintings on canvas in frames. There are even more revealing indications of Peter's emerging individual taste: for example, his order in July 1691 for twelve German portraits ( person nemetskikh ) in gilt frames, to be taken to his apartments from the confiscated property of Prince Vasily Golitsyn. In August 1694 a team of painters in the Armoury received orders for twenty-three battle paintings for Peter's apartments, `after the German model', with frames also of German design. Four painters were to take four subjects each, and the rest were to be done by apprentices, `painting different subjects, making use of German pictures [as models]'. In June 1697, when Peter was abroad, the same team of Armoury painters was instructed to paint eight pictures on canvas depicting `troops going by sea, making use of foreign German pictures or engravings, employing the best workmanship'. Again, these were large canvases, evidently executed in some haste, given that the same painters were all dispatched to work in Voronezh in July, and the frames were ordered in August. Painters were called upon to do other jobs to meet new demands: for example, to decorate the new ships built at Voronezh in 1696-7. These few examples indicate clearly the emergence of a distinct secular culture from within the walls of the Moscow Armoury, that early `academy of arts' which housed a secular painting studio separate from the icon-painting workshops only since the 1680s.

    It is very difficult to assess the art of the 1690s because, like the 1696 triumphal gates, so few examples have survived. Accurate likenesses of Peter pre-dating the Grand Embassy are notable by their absence. Earlier engravings, such as Larmessen's double portrait of Peter and Ivan (ca. 1687), are mostly imaginative reconstructions. Evidently others existed but have disappeared; thus, in July 1695 an order was given for a printed `persona' of Peter to be stuck on to canvas and framed. Perhaps Peter's restless activity in the 1690s precluded sitting for portraits. Yet it is with portraits that we shall conclude our examination of the 1690s. The first is the most famous (once thought to be the only) image of the young tsar, painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller in London in 1698, now hanging in Kensington Palace in London. The startling contrast between this wholly Western depiction of a monarch and the few surviving images of Peter's father has often been pointed out, but is worth drawing attention to here: the bearded Orthodox tsar of the 1660s with traditional robes and pectoral and crown crosses gives way to the warrior in armour with a warship in the background. For Kneller, Peter was just another European monarch. All traces of Russian `exoticism' were expunged. Indeed, Kneller used the same set formula--column and crown to the left, warship in the background to the right, royal ermine, and armour--as in his 1680s portrait of James II. Yet there are other portraits of Peter from this period which remind us that the break with Old Russia was far from complete. One by the Dutch artist Pieter Van der Werff shows Peter dressed in the Polish style, while in an anonymous portrait now in the Rijksmuseum he wears Russian dress. A similar contrast may be observed in two much smaller images, produced a year later in an entirely different medium. In 1699 two experimental half-roubles were minted. The first, by Vasily Andreev of the Armoury, shows Peter full face, in icon style, wearing the Crown of Monomach. The second is wholly Western, showing the tsar as a Roman emperor in profile, with laurel wreath and mantle. On the reverse is a collar of St Andrew and a coat of arms. On the eve of the new century and the outbreak of the Northern War, the designers had, albeit unconsciously, expressed the contrast between old and new. Which of the two would prevail? In Peter's mind, at least, the contest was already decided, as were the means for augmenting national prestige and prosperity. The focus would shift from the Black Sea to the Baltic and the country which barred Russia's way, Sweden.

(C) 1998 Lindsey Hughes All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-300-07539-1