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SUMMARY OF GEOFFREY HOSKING,RUSSIA AND THE RUSSIANS. A
HISTORY (SECOND EDITION;
CAMBRIDGE 2011).
2016 – 2017, Semester I
BACHELOR YEAR II
Lisa Jurrjens
,Summary Hosking, Russia and the Russians (2011)
Contents
Introduction: geopolitics, ecology, and national character....................................................................2
Part I Pre-Imperial Rus and the Beginnings of Empire............................................................................9
Chapter 1 Kievan Rus, the Mongols, and the rise of Muscovy............................................................9
Chapter 2 Ivan IV and the expansion of Muscovy.............................................................................22
Part II The Troubled Building of Empire................................................................................................33
Chapter 3 The turbulent seventeenth century.................................................................................33
Chapter 4 Peter the Great and Europeanization...............................................................................43
Part III Russia as European Empire.......................................................................................................51
Chapter 5 State and society in the eighteenth century....................................................................51
Chapter 6 The reigns of Paul, Alexander I, and Nicholas I.................................................................56
Part IV Imperial Crisis............................................................................................................................64
Chapter 7 Alexander II’s uncertain reforms......................................................................................64
Chapter 8 The rise of nationalism.....................................................................................................70
Part V Revolution and Utopia...............................................................................................................74
Chapter 9 Social change and revolution...........................................................................................74
Chapter 10 War and Revolution.......................................................................................................80
Chapter 11 Social transformation and terror....................................................................................88
Chapter 12 Soviet society takes shape.............................................................................................94
Part VI The Decline and Fall of Utopia................................................................................................101
Chapter 13 Recovery and Cold War................................................................................................101
Chapter 14 Soviet Society under “Developed Socialism”...............................................................108
Chapter 15 From Perestroika to Russian Federation......................................................................114
Lisa Jurrjens 1
,Summary Hosking, Russia and the Russians (2011)
Introduction: geopolitics, ecology, and national character
Russia divides into four bands of terrain, running from west to east. In the south is desert,
broken only by oases along the rivers which run off the mountains along the southern and
eastern rims. Then comes steppe, lightly watered country with a thin and variable covering of
grasses and scrub, again broken intermittently by oases, gullies, and river valleys. Farther
north is a belt of coniferous forest, interspersed toward its southern edge with deciduous trees.
Finally comes the tundra: frozen wastelands and swamp, with broad rivers flowing through
them to the Arctic Ocean, itself frozen for much of the year.
The southern two ecological bands, and especially the steppe, were classic nomadic
country. The sparse vegetation, low precipitation, and open terrain rendered these regions
difficult to exploit for settled agriculture, even though much of the soil was very fertile. So,
inner Eurasia had to interact with Outer Eurasia. Only by honing their military skills and
raiding adjacent civilizations could pastoral nomads provide properly for their own way of
life.
To defend their terrain and herds, clans would form confederations and devote much
attention to the training of horses and riders.
However, though nomads were supremely skilled warriors, they were inept state-
builders. The first major East Slavic polity was founded in Kiev, the second in Moscow. Both
sites afforded some protection form nomadic raids, Moscow more effectively than Kiev,
which probably explains its ultimate ascendancy.
The first East Slavic state was able to establish itself thanks above all to trade,
standing as it did athwart north-south routes from Scandinavia to Byzantium intersecting with
east-west routes from Persia, India, and China to western Europe. These routes were
precarious, for they depended on the nomads’ willingness to keep them open.
However, once a major state, as distinct from a tribal confederation, was established in
Inner Eurasia, there were many reasons why it should prove durable. They could retreat
virtually without end, recover from devastating setbacks and reverses, bide their time almost
limitlessly, and probe the weaknesses of their neighbours without being fatally undermined by
their own.
At the same time, that heartland had its own grave drawbacks. Most of it was
relatively infertile, cut off from the sea and thus from easy contact with the outside world, and
hampered by very difficult internal communications.
This paradoxical combination of colossal strength hand almost crippling weakness has
imparted to the Russian Empire its most salient characteristics.
[1] Territorially, Russia has been the most extensive and by far the most labile of the
world’s major empires. Its boundaries have shifted thousands of miles over the plains in one
direction and another.
It dealt with threatening vacuums on its frontiers by exploiting the relative weakness
of disorganized nomadic clans and tribes, and even of larger ethnic groups, to invade and
absorb their territories.
[2] Russia has usually been a multi-ethnic empire without a dominant nation, ruled by
a dynasty and a heterogeneous aristocracy. Unparalleled in its ethnic and religious diversity, it
Lisa Jurrjens 2
,Summary Hosking, Russia and the Russians (2011)
has normally kept order by means of a multi-ethnic ruling class drawn from many of its
subject nationalities.
[3] It has been an economically underdeveloped empire, situated in a region of
extreme temperatures, and after the fifteenth century remote from the world’s major trade
routes. Economic growth was generated more by expanding territory than by capital
accumulation or technological innovation.
[4] The Russian empire has been permanently situated between two or, arguably, three
ecumenes. In its administrative structures it has been an Asian empire, building upon or
adapting the practices of China and the ancient steppe empires. In its culture it has been
European for at least three centuries, borrowing heavily from both Protestant and Catholic
countries. In its religion it is Byzantine, derived from an East Roman of Greek Christian
ecumene which no longer has a separate existence with its own heartland, but which has left
enduring marks on the landscape of Europe.
In combining these legacies Russia has frequently offended the sensibilities of its
neighbours.
Internally, because of its size and vulnerability, Russia needed the structure of an
authoritarian state, but in practice, because of the extent of the territory and backwardness of
the economy, that state could not directly control the lives of most of the population. Having
to improvise structures often urgently and in adversity, it has tended, therefore, not to create
enduring laws or institutions, but rather to give official backing to existing personal power
relationships.
The result has been strong, cohesive structures at the apex and the base of society, but
in between them weak and labile institutions which have depended largely on personalities.
Politically, socially, and economically, Russia is still best understood as a network of
interlocking patron-client relationships.
Russia has been surrounded by other, usually smaller but still often formidable
heartlands or core areas: [1] the Scandinavian world, dominated first by the Vikings, then by
Denmark, then by Sweden; [2] Poland; [3] Turkey/the Ottoman Empire; [4] Persia; and [5]
China.
Against a strong power, Russia has tended to adopt a closed-border policy, intended to
keep the other side out and to make possible stable and peaceful trading and diplomatic
relations. A weak power on the borders, on the other hand, is both a threat and an opportunity:
a threat because it creates a potential vacuum or centre of turbulence which can easily degrade
or even destroy the border, but also an opportunity because it offers the possibility of
expansion.
Agriculture, habitation, and diet
One requirement of a heartland is that it afford a strong economic base with good internal
communications. As we have seen, the Eurasian heartland is not ideal in this respect. It has
always been an unpromising, though not quite hopeless, environment for human development.
Until the eighteenth century, then, nearly all Russian peasants lived in the forest or at
least close to an abundant source of timer. For that reason most of their artefacts were
wooden.
Lisa Jurrjens 3
,Summary Hosking, Russia and the Russians (2011)
Even towns were almost entirely constructed of wood till the eighteenth century. Even
many nobles’ townhouses, palaces and some churches were made of wood.
One compensation for the poor quality of the land was its relative abundance. It was
natural, then, that cultivation should be extensive rather than intensive. There was little or no
surplus left over for error, misfortune, or the vagaries of the short, unpredictable Russian
summer.
Epidemics went together with famine and were intensified by population movement
on the open Eurasian plain. These epidemics were especially severe in the cities, where
extreme congestion combined with poor sewage facilities and a partially contaminated water
supply.
All this amounted to a highly risk-prone environment, especially if one also considers
the constant hazard of fire in villages and towns built almost entirely of wood. That is why
Russian peasants have tended to arrange their social and economic life in such a way as to
minimize risk and provide mutual re-insurance.
The mainstay of the peasant diet was grain, above all rye, which grows reliably in cool
and damp soils, even if its yields are not high. All kinds of grain were widely used to make
dumplings and pancakes and to thicken soups and stews.
Considering the importance of grain to the people’s diet, the Russian state did
remarkably little to regulate its quality or price. Nothing was done, perhaps because storage
was a problem, perhaps because the great landowners favoured high grain prices.
At one stage the government did hope to improve the people’s diet by introducing
potatoes, whose advantage was that they provided a higher level of nutrition by acreage than
grain. On the other hand, they required a greater and more continuous input of labour. The
peasants objected and in some cases rioted.
Yet, curiously enough, over the following decades, peasants in most parts of Russia,
especially the centre and north, peacefully introduced potatoes into their agricultural cycle and
their diets, without any compulsion.
The main vegetable crop for many centuries was the turnip. Beetroot and cabbage
were also common, both being used to make soups. Garlic and onion were often used to
flavour dishes.
Apples, pears, and plums were grown from early times. Berries were plentiful in the
forests, as were mushrooms.
The abundance of rivers and lakes ensured that Russians could usually rely on a good
supply of freshwater fish, which could be salted and preserved for long periods. Over the
centuries Russian peasants have kept few cows, and then (along with goats) mainly for their
milk.
During the fifteenth century the three-field crop rotation system was being widely
adopted in Muscovy, and it generated a considerable growth in grain production, leaving a
surplus to be converted into spirits.
While moderate consumption of alcohol did take place, for example in monasteries,
much brewing was done for public or family festivals, where there was the danger of excess.
By the sixteenth century the increase in the number of taverns worried the church,
which warned that they promoted licentious and immoral behaviour, sometimes associated
with pagan celebrations. By the nineteenth century, when serious sociological study of the
Lisa Jurrjens 4
, Summary Hosking, Russia and the Russians (2011)
problem started, it was clear that excessive consumption of alcohol led to crime and
hooliganism, and that it caused dependency which could easily undermine a peasant
household economy and lead to the breakup of the family.
Although the state shared the church’s concern, it never mounted a concerted
campaign to limit the sale of alcohol or to reduce drunkenness. The reason is not hard to find:
over the centuries far too high a proportion of its revenues derived from the proceeds of
selling liquor.
It was levied in different ways at different times. For several centuries the most
convenient procedure was to farm out kabaki, or taverns, to concessionaires who would pass
on a stipulated share of their income to the treasury.
At other times the government experimented with an excise levied directly on the
distillers of liquor, and at other still with a direct monopoly, but found that all these methods
were open to abuse and did little to alleviate public drunkenness. In any case, throughout the
eighteenth and much of the nineteenth centuries the landowners were the main producers of
strong alcohol, made a handsome profit from it by using serf labour, and had an
overwhelming interest in not losing the income derived from it.
The problem of public drunkenness arose not only because of the government’s fiscal
policies, but also from popular custom. Most likely it had to do with the overwhelming
importance of local community life.
Perhaps, then, it was a malign combination of popular custom, fiscal need, and
producers’ interests which generated the centuries-old momentum of Russian drunkenness.
An antidote to the heavy drinking of alcohol was provided by tea, which began to
enter Russia in quantity, mostly from China, in the late eighteenth century. Churchmen and
social reformers began to hope that it could provide a moderate stimulus and refreshment such
as would rival the attractions of vodka.
Another crucial element in the Russian diet, as elsewhere, was salt, partly as a
seasoning but mainly for its capacity to preserve perishable produce over protracted journeys
or through the long months when little could be grown in the fields. Since it is plentiful in
some parts of Russia and a relatively simple mineral to extract, its treatment became the most
important non-agricultural activity until the eighteenth century.
Mentalities – the key concepts: mir and pravda
At the height of sowing, haymaking, and harvesting, farmers had to work extremely hard for
brief periods: this was known as strada, or suffering. On the other hand, for six or seven
months of the year agricultural labour was impossible because of heavy frost or deep snow.
To make ends meet, it was essential for a peasant to have skills other than those of
agriculture: making furniture, clothes, or implements, for example, for household use or for
selling on the local market.
It must be added that any amount of work, whether intense or prolonged, might easily
fail to bring its reward. Russians tend to look to good fortune to help them, while always
fearing that ‘evil spirits’ may strike at any time.
Households had a better chance of survival if they could call on help in an emergency,
and they would expect to offer it in the event of a neighbour’s misfortune. The custom of
Lisa Jurrjens 5
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