Peter the Great

Some communities, tired of waiting, crowded together—men, women and children—into their wooden churches, barricaded the doors and, singing the old liturgies, burned the buildings down over their own heads. In the far north, the monks of the powerful Solovetsky Monastery won over the garrison of soldiers to fight for the Old Beliefs (in part by stressing the Nikonian ban on drink). Together, monks and soldiers endured an eight-year siege, repelling all the might that the Moscow government could send against them.

Thousands of people who refused to accept the reforms became known as Old Believers or Schismatics. Because the state was supporting the church reforms, revolt against the church widened into revolt against the state, and the Old Believers refused to obey either authority. Neither persuasion by the church nor repression by the government could move them.

The foreigners were bringing the Devil’s works to Russia: tobacco (“bewitched grass”), representational art and instrumental music.

Nikon’s legacy was the opposite of that he had intended. Never again would a patriarch wield such power; thereafter the Russian church would be clearly subordinate to the state.

special privilege and to fight only when and where they wished, the poor performance as soldiers

Streltsy, the two Azov campaigns had conclusively demonstrated to Peter how inferior

forced to take a new name as a nun, Helen. Later in Peter’s life, she

razor and with his own hands began shaving off their beards. He began with Shein, the commander

thirty years of age, with a dark complexion, proud and grave, and with an expressive countenance

The city walls were constructed just inside the outermost canal so that the canal itself made a natural moat.