Place priority needing to be dealt with is a necessity. Though the Stroganovs ironically would be the MOST highborn guys Romanovs married into since short 1st marriage of Michael I.
WI: Alexei Alexeïevich (older brother to Feodor III and Ivan V) Survives
- Thread starter Kellan Sullivan
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Well, in OTL AI, when Miloslavski started making noises in Duma (IIRC, expressing his opinion regarding conduct of the war) explained to him publicly and using quite a few expletives who he is and what is his place on a totem pole. Of course, a high position could be granted and a lot of power given to a trusted person but this does not mean that everybody on the top is happy and that the lucky one is not going to be stabbed in the back at the first opportunity.
BTW, I’m not quite sure that in OTL Vasily Golitsin (with all his uncontested pedigree) was not set up when he was put in the head of the Crimean expeditions: everybody knew that he had zero experience as an army commander and that a serious military success against the Crimea is unlikely but most probably Sophia was persuaded that a military success is going to strengthen his and her positions.
This being said, the Stroganovs would be definitely better then Naryshkins.
Especially if you would be essentially dealing with a single guy (Pelagia's brother - this is a period of mass die out of Stroganov cadet branches which essentially made Grigory Stroganov the richest man in Russia by 1685 OTL) instead of huge clan (well, their Zlobin and Mescherski in-laws may be included).
I actually proposed it as one reason why there would be simply be a Naryskin-Miloslavski feud (feel free to suggest others). Natalya had a rather strong personality from what I could make out, which is bound to rub members of the Miloslavski faction the wrong way. Sure, it may not escalate into a palace revolution like OTL, but tensions are bound to simmer. Unless Alexei Jr has a strong enough personality to keep his wife in line (and based on dad, full brothers, I'm not sure he would).
Professional rivalry is still ongoing in most workplaces today, unless I'm mistaken. So I could see an AU version of this still happening.
Am I wrong in that Alexei II - with zero military training (unless he gets some once he becomes emperor, I could half see him being a Leopold I-type figure) - might be "tricked" into a similar mistake through bad/ambiguous advice?
So the winner of the bridal fair is Pelageia Dmitrïevna Stroganova (and let's just hope she has better fertility than OTL?
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When I did analysis for Mazarinettes, I came to this conclusion (astrology and math hobby included!).
And yes, this is likely.
Pelageia Dmitrievna, but otherwise yes.
Professional rivalry is a common thing but when the stake is one’s head (and a fate of the relatives) it may became a Russian roulette with one empty chamber. 😢
Now, as far as AII is involved, the “military training” of his father and grandfather did not amount for too much because things like archery were hardly critical for a monarch and none of them had been taught what passed at that time for a military science. In that sense PI was much better educated because he at least passed through a (crash) artillery course and was competent enough to write (or at least competently edit) the military and naval regulations. Commanding an army was not Tsar’s duty even if he could be present on the theater if he chose so: there were voyevodas responsible for conduct of the operations. Presumably, Tsar was expected to get enough knowledge from his advisors to be able to understand a general conduct of a warfare and there was a well-developed military bureaucracy responsible for the logistics leaving Tsar with pretty much appointments of the top commanders (actually, a tricky and litigious process) and ...er... “grand strategy”. Even burden of these two functions he would share with the boyars (whom he always could blame for the bad results).
Now, Vasily Golitsin could be tricked into taking a charge of a high-risk campaign, position for which he was ill prepared (I’m not saying that this was the case, just stating a possibility). But he was a minister of a very insecure regime facing a very strong opposition. AII is a Tsar and his position is secure (Century of the Guards is not there, yet). Person giving a bad advice may plan to bring down his favorite but he can’t bring down him and while implementation of the bad advice may cost unlucky favorite a head or a disfavor, the same things may happen to the advisor if Tsar decides to blame him. Tsar may easily lost a war because it is always somebody else’s fault (as was the case with Shein after Smolensk War, AI was much more lenient to his losing generals).
Did you notice that as soon as the conversation narrows down to who is marrying whom it is dying? ☠️😪
How about the broader domestic and foreign issues?
Granted, not too many good things can be said about Naryshkin family (it seems that during its history it did not produce a single outstanding person even if its males quite often occupied reasonably high positions due to the links to Romanovs) but it was strong first thanks to Matveev and then Natalia was backed up by a powerful clique that included Patriarch, Prince Romodanovsky, Prince Boris Golitsin, Golivin, etc. I’m not sure if she played a truly leading (or just important) role outside family matters. After Sophia’s removal it seems that the “reactionaries” (probably Patriarch) won in the ideological sphere to a certain degree but was there a real return to the forgotten past? Military units of the “new style” survived until Peter’s military reforms and the people not compromised by a close association with Vasily Golitsin (like Bruce and Vilnius) retained their position.
But while during Sophia’s regency the clique was seemingly reactionary, when after Natalia’s death Peter finally was forced to start ruling, the same people readjusted themselves with a remarkable ease. Could it be that the whole thing was just about access to the wealth and power? Romodanovsky became a head of Preobrazensky Prikaz and Peter’s official substitute/head of the government when he was absent in the capital. Boris Golitsin got Prikaz of Kazansky Palace - control over the South-Eastern part of the Tsardom, etc.
To make the long story short, I’d assume that, matrimonial issues aside, the general policy would be a continuation of one of the previous reign with, in an absense of a Peter-like figure on the throne, a steady even if slow modernization. Needless to say that the reign of AI was not too good economically so, unless there is a protracted period of peace, economic situation is still on a lousy side but, to be fair, in OTL it was reasonably good only during the reign of CII and improved again under AIII.
In OTL FIII got involved in a war with the Crimea and Ottomans but that war was started by his father so probably no changes there militarily and politically: The Ottomans/Khanate acknowledge border by the Dnieper with a demilitarized zone on both it’s banks and Tsardom promises to give regular “presents” to the Khan.
Would government of AII get involved into the Great Ottoman War?
In OTL Sophia as a regent entered alliance in 1686: Tsardom got Kiev permanently under the obligation to participate in a war to which it was ill-prepared (as was demonstrated by the Crimean Campaigns of V. Golitsin and to a great degree by Peter’s Azov campaigns as well). Understandably, Sophia was looking for strengthening her regime and Kiev as a token acquisition was important bonus (squandered by the Crimean adventures). But would a more stable regime of AII inclined to do so even if the same Vasily Golitsin is playing an important role in Tsardom’s foreign policy (which probably would be the case taking into an account his pedigree, obvious talents and the high positions he already held). In OTL V. Golitsin was promoting closer relations with the PLC as a way to secure Tsardom against the Ottomans/ Crimea but was an offensive military alliance inevitable when the Turks had their hands already full fighting half of Europe? In the purely practical terms switching from a temporary to a permanent possession of Kiev was not critically important and while the Ottomans had been busy, Tsardom could keep improving his military system and perhaps economy as well.
What would be policy on the Western border? August is still Russian candidate of a preference but would he (or rather Patkul) be able to convince a stable-minded Russian monarch to participate in the OTL adventure? It seems that Peter was looking for some war and because he was afraid to fight the Ottomans alone, he jumped to the offered opportunity.
Can we envisage a scenario under which Tsardom is not engaged in a major war for the next few decades and if yes, then how the things could proceed?
Let's see. Alexis II is still going to inherit the war, but would get more involved in these affairs. Even if he had no military training/experience, his advisors did.
Maybe even leaving capital to travel to Sevsk in person in observatory capacity during the war, broading his experience. Given he would be 22, and not 14, when the thing happens, it would be an interesting thing to learn.
Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy would be founded a bit earlier than OTL. In absense of second marriage for AI we can see somebody other than Joachim elected Patriarch.
OK, not that his personal presence close to the theater changes things too much, but getting some idea regarding the war could be helpful (in the case of Alexander III it resulted in a strictly pacifistic position so we can at least speculate about this experience being positive). Probably conditions of a resulting peace treaty are approximately the same but AI started the whole mess more or less as a preventive war against possible Ottoman attack on the Russian Left Bank Ukraine so recognition of that border is a favorable outcome. The question is how to strengthen this peace: in OTL within few years Sophia’s government was afraid of a possible Ottoman attack and hence the PLC alliance. Could the Ottomans and especially Crimea be relied upon as far as a prolonged peace is involved? OTOH, up to which degree the Ottoman belicosity was real? They did not retaliate after the Crimean campaigns (and it seems that, in general Tsardom/ Empire had a considerable freedom of action in dealing with the Crimea, the Ottomans practically were not a factor there, except for the naval presence, during Munnich’s Lacy’s campaigns in the Crimea and even during the 1st Ottoman War of CII) and did not went on the offensive after Peter got bogged down into the GNW: Azov was returned only after Peter’s failed offensive Prut Campaign. So perhaps a protracted peace was possible.
As an observer AII, if he is intelligent enough, can find out the area of a further improvement without being distracted by the details of a personal involvement in the operations.
As far as education is involved, I agree that the process can start earlier and perhaps even with a lesser Church resistance: an older and stronger monarch was in a better position to deal with Patriarch than a child. Anyway, there was an available example of what can happen if a Patriarch is getting confused on who is the boss.
This is true. So, how might things like the two biggies of Pyotr's reign (the army and the church - we're leaving aside the GNW for now) progress? Obviously there would be a more stable progression along the lines of the Feodorian Reforms rather than the Feodorian Reforms>Double-Czar Period>Petrine Reforms. Not to mention that Alexei would presumably not grow up in the shadow of PTSD as Petya did (not saying Petya had PTSD, but I've seen it suggested that the coup of his early years did leave him with considerable mental scars).
Wasn't it Freud that said everything comes back to money/power and sex?
Well, August's election would still be reasonably far away, no? 1696 from a POD in 1670? Likely as not Wisniowiecki doesn't leave an heir and Sobieski still gets elected (@Jan Olbracht? @krieger?), since I'm not sure if Condé, Neuburg or Lorraine are likely candidates as early as 1674. Least, not without a secondary POD.
I like the sound of the protracted peace. In the words of Count Panin in the second season of Ekaterina "what Russia needs is twenty years of peace. No getting involved in wars in Europe. No poking around in Southern Seas". Of course, everyone politely ignores this, but I imagine that had it come out of the mouth of the tsar it would be "followed" no?
Maybe some low level border raids, but neither side really wanting to rock the boat too much with an all out declaration of war perhaps?.
I imagine - based on something someone (think it was @alexmilman) who posted it, that the Russian post-Petya was influenced much by the emperor's own "rough" speech. So, this would have effects on the development of the Russian language no? Not having an heir/emperor who spent the nights carousing in taverns and brothels (not to mention has a better education) will mean a different trajectory. More Polish/Latinisms than German loan words in Russian?
Agreed. Petya seems to have been nightmarishly micromanagerial in this regard, alternating with complete disinterest. He wasn't interested (this is my opinion) in finding out the "best" way to do something, but rather the quickest way to do something, which is not always the same thing. And anyone who might have had a different opinion to him about the method was called a "traitor" or a "reactionary" or whatever. Unless they were his drinking buddies, and even then it was questionable whether he'd listen.
Would there still be the question of whether to divide Siberia up into smaller "dioceses" (sorry, not sure what the Russian Orthodox equivalent is - it's late/early and my brain's fried)? And how might a different patriarch/tsar respond to that?
To address some of the issuse:
It is tempting to assume that the military reforms would continue more or less along the pre-Petrian lines. On one hand this means a gradual and more “natural” development in which more attention is paid to the national realities (*). It seems that Peter’s predecessors started with using the contemporary western dress for their new style regiments (no surprise because they predominantly consisted of the foreign mercenaries) and then evolved into some combination of the western and Russian features. Below is a painting of the soldier from Butyrsky regiment (Gordon’s regiment, one of few preserved by Peter): most of the costume is traditional Russian but the sword is Western.
But musicians of the same regiment look much more western.
In OTL Fedor III started military reform which involved creation of the military districts, special tax for supporting the new model regular troops and increased proportion of these troops in the Russian army. By the end of his reign they amounted to 4/5 of the total. It was/is argued that a considerable portion of these troops had been military settlers rather than a standing army but, to be fair, during the Petrian and post-Petrian times the regular troops were not necessarily spending all their free of war time in the intensive or even regular training and, IIRC, even at the time of Elizabeth I they usually lived in their own houses and had families.
So it is probably fair to assume that specifics of the ATL development would greatly depend upon the competence of the people in charge and willingness/ability of the government to spend big amounts of money on military development (in OTL quality of the new model troops deteriorated due to the inadequate financing). Fighting experience also would be important but we had been discussing obvious advantages of a protract3d peace so there is always a compromise.
As far as Siberia is involved, it is highly doubtful that it would be populated to a degree warranting the numerous bishops but, OTOH, this may become practical if government decides to launch an aggressive program of prozelitizing among its ‘pagan’ subjects. Probably a strong Tsar would be dominating Patriarch or even play Peter: example of Nikon already was there.
Linguistic aspect is not exactly my area of interests but I’m skeptical about the Polish option. Peter was a short term confusing factor but in a reality adopting the Western technologies and practices almost inevitably meant adopting the terminology (**). Poland could offer very little in that sense so the borrowings should be minimal unless there is a prolonged and very intensive Polish cultural dominance as was the case with the Western Ukraine. BTW, the borrowings were not just German but also English and Dutch and later French.
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(*) The greatcoats had been introduced in the Russian army only by Paul I in 1796 (people ridiculing him tend to forget about that “trifle” but this was one of the first things he did) and the warm winter uniforms probably under Alexander I (at least I know that they did exist by 1812). All progressive Potemkin’s reforms left the soldiers and officers with the short capes (on the left; greatcoat of 1799 is on the right) and during Peter’s reign and well after the soldiers had been wearing shoes and stockings, you can imagine how well this worked during the winter.
(**) Just as the modern technological, business and other realities brought so many (more or less misspelled) Americanisms into the Russian language that watching the modern Russian movies I sometimes have difficulties to figure out what they are talking about. 😢
It was down to two instead of one (Tobolsk and Irkutsk instead of JUST Tobolsk to ensure the Eastern fringes of empire are properly managed, as what was ongoing was the conquistadorish bullshit with loss of Amur as the only realistic result) - yet it took abolishing Patriarchy altogether to get down to this.
A Tsar closer to the Stroganovs will be more aware of the matter as "the reason we're losing our Eastern region is because our own people behave in ungodly way among Pagans" (sadly the PoD is too late to butterfly away Khabarov).
AFAIK, the Nerchinsk Treaty was dictated mostly by the objective factors like inability to project enough power to the region and general attitude to the issue, a peaceful trade with China was considered more important than acquisition of a seemingly useless territory.
Unless the whole Russian policy is changed fundamentally, Tsardom/Empire would not have resources to start a serious war in the Eastern Siberia and, realistically, would not have a serious reason to do so. It took a real threat of the British attack (and a possible capture) on Petropavlovsk with a potential loss of some of the Pacific coast territories to reverse the existing paradigm and even then governor-general of the Eastern Siberia got Nicholas’ approval against opinion of the cabinet. Plus, by mid-XIX China as a military power was thoroughly discredited by the loss of Opium War. Not to mention increased population and military presence in the Eastern Siberia, better knowledge of both the Russian part of Siberia and Pacific coast (Russian naval expeditions had been doing a serious mapping, not to mention the work done by Cook and Laperuse) and much more serious Russian presence in the area: in 1682 Okhotsk had eight dwellings and five other buildings and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky was founded only in 1740. The same goes for the means of communication: in mid-XIX travel by the sea from Kronstadt to Petropavlovsk or Okhotsk was a prolonged but rather trivial expedition and there was already a permanent naval presence, Siberian Military Flotilla, established in 1731. In the late XVII the Russian “conquistadores” had been still using the river boats.
Plus, at the time of Nerchinsk Chinese attitude also was different. At Nerchinsk Chinese embassy arrived with 15,000 troops while Russian side had there approximately 600 (and had to deal with the uprising of the Buryats). A quality difference of the troops was not big enough to compensate for the numbers. OTOH, when Muraviev sailed down the Amur, the Chinese military presence in Aigun was minimal and a sight of a single armed steamer (the rest were conventional boats and barges) was enough to intimidate the local governor (and then the government) enough to cede a huge Amur region. Of course, after experience of the 1st Opium War the steamships and western-style troops had been scary and the Chinese government had plenty of time to find out that it has no idea what to do with the territories it got by the Treaty of Nerchinsk: beyond the right bank of Amur it did not have any noticeable military or administrative presence.
So, if we assume that the general policy of AII is switching from OTL trends to a serious Drang Nach Osten, then by the end of the XVII Russian military (and civilian) presence in Siberia is greater than in OTL, advance toward the Pacific becomes more realistic and there is a non-zero chance in a border on the Amur. However, in the absense of a navy the rationale for the effort is not quite clear: in OTL Amur provided a faster, if not reliable, communication with the ports on the Pacific but in the late XVII and, in an absence of the navy and access to the Baltic or the Black Sea you could not send non-existing ships from non-existing Kronstadt to the non-existing Pacific ports. Building ships on the Pacific coast was almost impractical: Bering spent a lot of effort to build two small ships there and one may only guess the cost and even in the late XVIII - XIX it was more practical to send the warships from the Baltic Sea than to build them locally. So what realistic advantage an earlier border on the Amur would have?