"The Duty of Perfect Obedience": The Laws of Subjecthood in Tsarist Russia

"The Duty of Perfect Obedience"The Laws of Subjecthood in Tsarist Russia Sean Pollock (bio) Sometime between 1666 and 1667, Grigorii Kotoshikhin, a former long-serving undersecretary (pod´iachii) in Muscovy's Ambassadorial Chancellery, Swedish spy and defector, composed what the historian Marshall Poe has characterized as "a tell-all description of Russian politics."1 The Swedes, having accepted Kotoshikhin into state service and granted him a salary in 1666, commissioned him to write a book focused on Muscovite statecraft, "to describe," in Kotoshikhin's words, "the whole Muscovite state."2 To explain how the Muscovite state worked, Kotoshikhin organized the book around questions and answers, many of which throw light on a neglected dimension of Russian state formation—namely, the political subjectification of the country's population, or what Russian law beginning in the second half of the 17th century referred to as poddanstvo. Question: Why does the Muscovite tsar write to Christian states using his full long title, [including] after "ruler [of all the northern lands]": "sovereign of the Iberian lands of the Kartlian and Georgian tsars, and [End Page 753] of the Kabardinian lands of the Circassian and Mountain princes, and heir through his fathers and forefathers, and sovereign and possessor, of many eastern and western and northern realms and lands"; whereas to the Mohammedan states he does not write these titles? What is the reason for this? Answer: The Iberian, Kartlian, and Georgian states are under the authority of the Persian shah and [owe him] the greatest obedience; and the tsar writes to other [Christian] states [using these titles] in order to glorify himself, without good reason; and in those [Caucasian] states it is the custom, when writing to the tsar, to humble oneself and to exalt him, and to call oneself his slave, just as in other states it is the custom, when one lord writes to another, to refer to oneself as his obedient servant. But [the Muscovites] interpret their humble language as if it were really true that they are [permanent] subjects (vechnye poddannye); but this is not true…. As for the Circassian and Mountain princes of the Kabardinian land, they are indeed his subjects (pod ego poddanstvom), but it is awkward for [the tsar] to use these titles in writing to the Shah of Persia without the others. And if he used all those titles with which he writes to the Christian states, all the Mohammedan states would make war on him on this account. And if the Shah of Persia learned truly about the sovereigns from those realms who address [the tsar] as his slaves, he would order them and their realms to be devastated and utterly ruined. And for this reason those titles are not used in writing to Mohammedan sovereigns.3 Clearly, much was at stake in claiming Caucasian peoples as Muscovite subjects: the power and prestige of Muscovy's ruler; the quality of relations with its Christian and Muslim rivals; and the political status of its diverse peoples—indeed, their very lives and livelihoods.4 As a former Russian diplomat, Kotoshikhin was ideally positioned to understand the ins and outs of Russian subjecthood, a central though underexamined institution of tsarist governance.5 Since Kotoshikhin's time, the institution of Russian subjecthood has remained central to state-sponsored accounts of Russian state formation. Some three centuries later, for example, Soviet historians set out to [End Page 754] provide the country with a "new imperial history" avant la lettre, using Kotoshikhin's account and other evidence from the tsarist period to justify historically the incorporation of diverse peoples on territory claimed by the Russian (and by extension the Soviet) state.6 More recently, having outlived the state in which it was forged, the Soviet myth of the voluntary incorporation of non-Russian peoples into the Russian Empire has been pressed into service by the Russian ruling elite. In 2006, Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin issued edicts marking the 450th anniversary of the "voluntary incorporation" into Russia of present-day Adygeia, Karachaevo-Cherkessiia, and Kabardino-Balkariia. In 2007, Putin traveled to Bashkortostan to celebrate the 450th anniversary of its incorporation, and while in the republic's capital, Ufa, laid flowers at...