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Updated: June 13, 2025
“Gaze,” said Robak, “at that threatening form, and guess whose it is.” All looked with curiosity. “That is a great man, an emperor, but not of the Muscovites; their tsars have never used tobacco.” “A great man,” cried Cydzik, “and in a long grey coat? I thought that great men wore gold, for among the Muscovites any sort of a general, sir, fairly shines with gold, like a pike in saffron.”
The Russian Tsars found the German barons far more serviceable tools than the Russian boiars. In a previous age one Emperor after another had been removed by a rebellious aristocracy. The highest nobles in the land had been implicated in the Decabrist conspiracy at the end of Alexander I.’s reign.
Its real independence had long since ceased to exist, and now the last spark of the old spirit was extinguished. The Tsars could not suffer even a shadow of political independence to exist within their dominions.
He explored old convents, examined their dark recesses, the blackened pictures of the saints and martyrs; his imagination interpreted old Russia for him better than the lectures of his professors. The tsars, monks, warriors and statesmen of the past filed before him as they lived and moved. Moscow seemed to him to be a miniature tsardom.
As they did so Rasputin, apparently unconscious of their presence, cried in a loud voice: "O God! in Thy gracious bounty give unto our Imperial House of Romanoff a son one who shall in due time wear the glorious crown of the Tsars and become the Sovereign Defender of All the Russias against our enemies.
From the Nonconformist point of view, Peter had very strong claims to be considered Antichrist. He had none of the staid, pious demeanour of the old Tsars, and showed no respect for many things which were venerated by the people.
To protect the agricultural population of the Steppe against the raids of these thieving, cattle-lifting, kidnapping neighbours, the Tsars of Muscovy and the Kings of Poland built forts, constructed palisades, dug trenches, and kept up a regular military cordon. The troops composing this cordon were called Cossacks; but these were not the "Free Cossacks" best known to history and romance.
The Noblesse were long ago violently forced out of their old groove by the reforming Tsars, and since that time they have been so constantly driven hither and thither by foreign influences that they have never been able to form a new one. Thus they easily enter upon any new path which seems to them profitable or attractive.
Russia would tolerate no influence but her own and had begun in fact the same policy she afterwards developed in Serbia. From that date 1832 the office of Gubernator was abolished. Imitation is the sincerest flattery. The Petrovitches began to model themselves on their patrons, the Tsars, and strove for absolutism. Petar II ranks high as author and poet.
It was in the barn that I took my seat among a great crowd of folk at two long, narrow tables. Round about us on the walls were a multiplicity of brightly coloured ikons, pictures of the abbot, of Tsars, of miraculous happenings and last judgments. On the tables at regular intervals were large iron saucepans full of soup, platters of black bread, and flagons of red wine.
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