alternatehistory.com

The Great Russian Revolt was unsuccessful, but it marks a significant event in the development of the national identities of all three major nations that composed the Lithuanian kingdom of the time. For the Russians, it is the turning point when the regional identities of the nation's people began to break down in favor of a single, Russian identity. The All-Russian Council was the beginning of republicanism in the region - the first such development in Eastern Europe, actually. Despite his defeat, Ivan Kratkov is regarded as a Russian national hero. The Ruthenian peoples placed the first barrier between themselves and Russians, the old Kievan Rus' idea of a united East Slavic culture began to break down. While to the Lithuanians, the victory in Sychyovka resonated across their identity and culture for years to pass, almost as much as the Battle of Ilawa. As modern historians put it, "the peoples of Lithuania arrived to Sychyovka as inhabitants of dozens of former principalities and tribes and returned as three nations".

Of course, history is never so simple. It would take centuries before the concept of national identity would even arise as a serious idea, but this was a start.

After the restoration of order in Russia, there was a lot of free, unused land left, as it's original owners had fled the nation to settlements in the eastern steppes. Queen Sofija ordered the seizure of a large portion of this land, mostly the lands formerly held by nobles and dukes, to be converted into royal estates. The demand for grain, agricultural produces and timber in the West was steadily increasing, and the nations of Eastern Europe, being the closest suppliers, benefited from this - thus such an increase in royal estates was beneficial to the Queen, seeing as all the income from them would go directly to the Treasury. The rest of the land was divided between remaining serfs, loyal nobles, or in some cases just left abandoned. The situation in Russia was too critical for a few forgotten Voloks to be cared about - there was risk of famine, lots of work needed for restoration of order, as well as lone Russian rebel units who continued fighting even after the final defeat of the Rebellion and the dismissal of the All-Russian Council.

The Chronicles of Lithuania write of a few such engagements: a detachment of 600 Russian peasants near Belo Ozero, defeated in April of 1577; Russian forest fighters around the Ryazan area, fully eradicated by 1579; a holdout of 500 veterans in Kostroma, which pushed back superior Lithuanian units until finally destroyed in 1580. The Russian countryside eventually recovered from the devastation inflicted by looting and raiding during the Revolt, too, though sporadic outbreaks of hunger and disease continued well into the 1580s. It is not known how heavily Russia was affected by the Rebellion in terms of population loss, but many surviving written sources of the time mention that large portions were depopulated or at least heavily affected, suffering large population drops in just a few years.

This loss was so big, in fact, that Queen Sofija even ordered an official kingdom census in 1582 to help the Court determine just how many people were left and his many could he taxed. However, this wasn't an actual, head-counting census as the name would let one to believe. Borrowing the idea from the Union of Visegrad, the Lithuanians collected taxes based on dūmas. "Dūmas" is an ancient term for any house with a fireplace - since it was so central for any peasant home in Lithuania, it was the fireplaces that were counted and taxed, rather than people. Since each dūmas roughly corresponds to a home, which corresponds to a family living there (both peasantry and nobility were counted), dūmas censuses can be used to make a rough estimate for the population of the country.

The 1582 dūmai census was completed by local Voivodes and must be taken with a grain of salt when regarding accuracy, but it's results were these:

Lithuania Propria (Didžioji Lietuva - Eldership of Samogitia, Voivodeships of Vilnius and Trakai) - 168 391 dūmai

Lithuania Minor (Mažoji Lietuva - Voivodeship of Karaliaučius, East Prussian free cities) - 83 714 dūmai

Courland (Kuršas - autonomous Duchy of Courland) - 31 410 dūmai

Black Ruthenia and Podlachia (Juodoji Rusia, Palenkė - Voivodeships of Brest, Navahrudak and Podlasie) - 121 956 dūmai

White Ruthenia (Baltoji Rusia - Voivodeships of Polotsk, Vitebsk, Smolensk, Minsk and Mstislav) - 211 156 dūmai

Ruthenia Propria (Didžioji Rusia - Voivodeships of Kiev, Zhitomir, Lutsk and Chernigov) - 431 857 dūmai

Northern Ruthenia (Russia) (Voivodeships of Pskov, Novgorod, Tver, Yaroslavl, Ryazan, Kostroma, Vladimir and Nizhny-Novgorod) - 831 078 dūmai

Total: 1 879 562 dūmai, or ~13.1 million inhabitants (assuming an equivalent of 7 people per dūmas)

In addition to the nationwide dūmai census, there were inventories made for smaller regions of Lithuania, usually paviets, writing down the inhabitants of all villages and estates in the area. However, these were only made sporadically and often on the whim of the nobility, and their reliability was also questionable.

In the wider world, meanwhile, the Lithuanians caught up to a massive development that they missed while still busy with the Russian Revolt - the victory of Jean de Foix and the Flammantians in the Flammantian Wars, and the restoration of the nation of France after over 100 years of English rule. The point of the war which proved decisive to both sides was, interestingly enough, the declaration of the independence of the Netherlands Free State from the English yoke and their entry on the side of the French. English dominance over this burgher and merchant state had already proven to be a hindrance for them and their far-reaching ambitions, and the surprising defeat and almost complete destruction of the English fleet in the Battle of the Mont Saint-Michel Bay - catching the Englishmen off-guard while they were escorting a few transport ships with reinforcements. The following blockade of the Channel led to the defeat of the English army in the mainland in the Battle of the Loire in 1573, the capture of Henry IX of England-France, who obviously didn't kill enough Frenchmen to make God change his mind, it seems. In exchange for being released back to England, he agreed to relinquish his claims on all of France, ending the Flammantian Wars.

France was now free, and organized under the Estates-General as the governing body, the "Senate" of it's time. From the very start, the new France had to endure many problems both from inside and within - an attempt at a coup by a few military men, border clashes with Austria, crisises in the Estates-General and reconstruction after the disastrous war of independence, but France endured. Through this time, it looked at the Dutch as an example - since the creation of the Free State decades ago, it has been governed similarly, without a King and instead an assembly of representatives, a "parliament" if you will.

France became the vanguard state of a new, "king-less" type of government, while England went to a whole different direction - united by the bitter defeat, the peoples of the island nation saw the Parliament as more and more of a liability, especially when the King can do all the things it does more effectively, right?

Much like the French, the Lithuanians recovered from a long, cruel attrition war, but the situation was different - they were the "loyalists". Unlike England, they saved their empire and crushed the opposition. And yet the situation was so similar... A bitter, conquered nation with a larger population than the ruling class, led by an ambitious military man, with help from a foreign power that used to be the loyalist crown's rival...

Perhaps it's because the Russians were alone. They didn't have a "Netherlands" equivalent. But all of this is alternate history talk.

What we know is that Russia lost and France won. And Lithuania, meanwhile, was rebuilding with a goal in mind...