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land had to be returned to their former landlords; that peasants could no longer
leave their lands at all, abolishing the St. George's Day exception; that all peas-
ants and their children would be considered as serfs; and imposing heavy fines
on those who sheltered runaway peasants. Although there was an important
link between serfs and the land they worked, by the end of the century enough
loopholes had crept into the system that serfs could be bought, sold, and willed
to others—very much as slaves.
Aleksei's reign also witnessed a schism within the Russian Orthodox Church.
Although there were deep-rooted issues related to the relationship between
church and state, and between the church leadership and the, mostly peasant,
congregation, the immediate cause behind the schism of the 1660s was the set
of reforms introduced by the ambitious Patriarch Nikon. Over the centuries
changes had come into the practice and theology of the Russian Orthodox
Church. Nikon wanted to bring the Russian Orthodox Church in line with ear-
lier Byzantine practices. Thus, his reforms centered around issues such as how
to cross oneself (Nikon wanted to use three fingers as in the Greek Church), the
return to pure Greek texts, and the spelling of the word
Jesus.
Nikon's opponents
maintained that since the church possessed revealed truth, such changes
amounted to heresy. Even though Nikon overreached when arguing that the
church leadership should take precedence over secular leadership and was
deposed during the Church Council of 1666-67 and subsequently exiled, the
church adopted his reforms. Those who opposed them broke off into various
sects, most notably the Old Believers and other sectarian groups. One of the Old
Believer leaders was Archpriest Avvakum, who was imprisoned and burned at
the stake in 1682. Prior to his death, Avvakum composed his autobiography, a
moving account of his own faith and one of the early gems of Russian literature.
Both Old Belief and sectarianism were movements with a strong popular base,
and the church lost a lot of popular support and vitality after the schism. Peter
the Great's reforms of the church leadership, including the abolition of the
Patriarchate, would further weaken the church as an institution.
Aleksei died in 1676, at the age of 47 like his father, and was succeeded by
his son Feodor (r. 1676-82), who was 14 at the time. Although well educated,
Feodor was in poor health, and most of his short reign was characterized by
fighting between relatives of his father's two wives. One important change,
however, was the final abolition of the system of
mestnichestvo
(precedence) in
1682, shortly before Feodor's death. The system had become so cumbersome
with its attempts to keep track of all family records of any kind of service, priv-
ileges, and so on, and it did not reflect current conditions—that advancement
relied as much on favoritism and increasingly on talent as on one's record of
past service. In addition,
mestnichestvo
made military assignments increasingly
impossible to adjust according to ability. A Muscovite army consisted of five reg-
iments: the big or main regiment, the right arm, the left arm, the forward regi-
ment, and the rear guard. In the honor of command, the main regiment came
first, then the right wing; the advance and rear guards were considered equal;
then the left wing. Mestnichestvo made the calculations of who took command
over which wing very difficult and had little to do with ability, so that a talented
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