Background
Aleksey Mikhailovich was born in Moscow on 29 March 1629. He was the son of Tsar Michael and Eudoxia Streshneva.
Aleksey Mikhailovich was born in Moscow on 29 March 1629. He was the son of Tsar Michael and Eudoxia Streshneva.
Alexis received a superficial education from his tutor Boris Ivanovich Morozov before acceding to the throne. As a child, Alexei Mikhailovich received a good musical education. Although his formal education had been rudimentary and had stopped when he was 10 years old, Alexis was actually well educated by Moscow standards and had literary pretensions, even trying his hand at writing poetry.
Alexis acceded to the throne at the age of 16.
Alexis bowed to the rebels’ demands and convened a land assembly (zemski sobor), which in 1649 produced a new Russian code of laws (Sobornoye Ulozheniye), which legally defined serfdom. Morozov’s place as the court favourite was taken first by Prince N. I. Odoyevsky and then by the patriarch Nikon.
Russia accepted sovereignty over the Dnieper Cossacks in January 1654 and, in the following May, entered into a drawn-out war with Poland. This also involved a conflict with Sweden from 1656 to 1661. By the Treaty of Andrusovo (January 1667), which ended the Polish war, Russia won possession of Smolensk, Kiev, and the section of Ukraine lying east of the Dnieper River.
A notable event of Alexis’ reign was the schism in the Russian Orthodox church. The tsar backed Nikon’s efforts to revise Russian liturgical books and certain rituals that during the preceding century had departed from their Greek models. Although before long he became estranged from Nikon, whose violent temper and authoritarian inclinations had earned him many enemies, the revisions that Nikon initiated were retained, and the opponents of the reform were excommunicated. After the disgrace of Nikon, A. L. Ordyn-Nashchokin was the tsar’s principal adviser until A. S. Matveyev took his place in 1671.
During the reign of Alexis the peasants were tied to the land and to the landlord and were thus finally enserfed; the land assemblies were allowed to fall into gradual disuse; and the professional bureaucracy and regular army grew in importance.
Because of Alexis’ encouragement of trade with the West, foreign influences also began to crack the hitherto fairly solid wall separating Russia from its European neighbours. Dissatisfaction with his reign centred in the cities (which chafed under the economic competition of foreigners) and among the peasantry (which was deprived of the last vestiges of freedom). This social dissatisfaction expressed itself in frequent rebellions, the most savage of which was the peasant uprising on the eastern borderlands led by Stenka Razin from 1667 to 1671.
Alexis died in 1676.
Aleksey Mikhailovich was the tsar of Russia from 12 July 1645 until his death, 29 January 1676. His reign saw wars with Poland and Sweden, schism in the Russian Orthodox Church, and the major Cossack revolt of Stenka Razin. Nevertheless, at the time of his death Russia spanned almost 2, 000, 000, 000 acres (8, 100, 000 km2).
Alexis Mikhailovich Romanov was an extreme conservative, a devoted churchman, and a firm believer in the divine origin of his power.
Virtually all the sources agree that Alexis was a gentle, warmhearted, and popular ruler. His main fault was weakness; throughout most of his reign, matters of state were handled by favourites, some of whom were incompetent or outright fools.
Unofficially titled "the Quietest One, " Alexis also displayed rougher characteristics. He often lost his temper and once slapped his father-in-law in the face, pulled his beard, kicked him out of the room, and slammed the door on him.
Alexey Mikhailovich's favorite entertainment was playing chess (and other table games close to him: tavlei, saki).
In adulthood, he composed church songs. Of these, only the sticherry "Worthy Is", written in the European, or "Venetian" (in the terminology of the 17th century) style, based on the Polish-Ukrainian tradition, where the leading part is played by basses, is preserved.
He was married twice, first to Mariya Ilinichna Miloslavskaya (with whom he had two sons, the future tsars Fyodor III and Ivan V, as well as several daughters), then to Natalya Kirillovna Naryshkina, whose son became Peter I the Great.
Alexei remarried on 1 February 1671, Nataliya Kyrillovna Naryshkina ( 1 September 1651 – 4 February 1694). She was brought up in the house of Artamon Matveyev, whose wife was the Scottish-descended Mary Hamilton.
Alexei's first marriage to Miloslavskaya was harmonious and felicitous. She bore him thirteen children (five sons and eight daughters) in twenty-one years of marriage, and died only weeks after her thirteenth childbirth. Four sons survived her, (Alexei, Fyodor, Semyon, and Ivan), but within six months of her death, two of these were dead, including Alexei, the 15-year-old heir to the throne.
(22 July 1596 – 23 July 1645)
(1608 – 18 August 1645)
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