Seventeenth-century Russia remained a remote and mysterious land for western and even central Europeans, who had few direct contacts with the tsar’s dominion. Knowledge of Russia came mainly from occasional travelers who had visited Muscovy and sometimes wrote accounts of what they saw. The most famous of these accounts—Travels in Muscovy—was by the German Adam Olearius (ca. 1599—1671), who was sent to Moscow by the duke of Holstein on three diplomatic missions in the 1630s. Published in German in 1647 and soon translated into several languages (but not Russian), Olearius’s unflattering study played a major role in shaping European ideas about Russia.
The government of the Russians is what political theorists call a “dominating and despotic monarchy,” where the sovereign, that is, the tsar or the grand prince who has obtained the crown by right of succession, rules the entire land alone, and all the people are his subjects, and where the nobles and princes no less than the common folk — townspeople and peasants — are his serfs and slaves, whom he rules and treats as a master treats his servants. . . .
If the Russians be considered in respect to their character, customs, and way of life, they are justly to be counted among the barbarians. . . . The vice of drunkenness is so common in this nation, among
People of every station, clergy and laity, high and low, men and women, old and young, that when they are seen now and then lying about in the streets, wallowing in the mud, no attention is paid to it, as something habitual. If a cart driver comes upon such a drunken pig whom he happens to know, he shoves him onto his cart and drives him home, where he is paid his fare. No one ever refuses an opportunity to drink and to get drunk, at any time and in any place, and usually it is done with vodka. . . .
The Russians being naturally tough and born, as it were, for slavery, they must be kept under a harsh and strict yoke and must be driven to do their work with clubs and whips, which they suffer without impatience, because such is their station, and they are accustomed to it. Young and half-grown fellows sometimes come together on certain days and train themselves in fisticuffs, to accustom themselves to receiving blows, and, since habit is second nature, this makes blows given as punishment easier to bear. Each and all, they are slaves and serfs. . . .
Although the Russians, especially the common populace, living as slaves under a harsh yoke, can bear and endure a great deal out of love for their masters, yet if the pressure is beyond measure, then it can be said of them: “Patience, often wounded, finally turned into fury.” A dangerous indignation
The brutality of serfdom is shown in this illustration from Olearius's Travels in Muscovy. (University of Illinois Library, Champaign)
Results, turned not so much against their sovereign as against the lower authorities, especially if the people have been much oppressed by them and by their supporters and have not been protected by the higher authorities. And once they are aroused and enraged, it is not easy to appease them. Then, disregarding all dangers that may ensue, they resort to every kind ofviolence and behave like madmen. . . . They own little; most of them have no feather beds; they lie on cushions, straw, mats, or their clothes; they sleep on benches and, in winter, like the non-Germans [natives] in Livonia, upon the oven, which serves them for cooking and is flat on the top; here husband, wife, children, servants, and maids huddle together. In some houses in the countryside we saw chickens and pigs under the benches and the ovens.
Questions for Analysis
1. In what ways were all social groups in Russia similar, according to Olearius?
2. How did Olearius characterize the Russians in general? What supporting evidence did he offer for his judgment?
3. Does Olearius’s account help explain Stenka Razin’s rebellion? In what ways?
4. On the basis of these representative passages, why do you think Olearius’s book was so popular and influential in central and western Europe?
Source: G. Vernadsky and R. T. Fisher, Jr., eds., A Source Book for Russian History from Early Times to 1917, 3 vols., vol. 1, pp. 249-251. Copyright © 1972. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Yale University Press.
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