Early Life and Reign
Born in Moscow on 8 March 1629, the son of Tsar Michael and Eudoxia Streshneva, Alexei acceded to the throne at the age of sixteen after his father's death on 12 July 1645. He was committed to the care of the boyar Boris Morozov, a shrewd and sensible guardian sufficiently enlightened to recognize the needs of his country, and by no means inaccessible to Western ideas.
Morozov's foreign policy was pacificatory. He secured a truce with Poland and carefully avoided complications with the Ottoman Empire. His domestic policy was scrupulously fair and aimed at relieving the public burdens by limiting the privileges of foreign traders and abolishing a great many useless and expensive court offices. On 17 January 1648 Morozov procured the marriage of the tsar with Maria Miloslavskaya, himself marrying her sister, Anna, ten days later, both daughters of Ilya Danilovich Miloslavsky (1594–1668).
Morozov was very unpopular however, regarded as a typical self-seeking 17th-century boyar, and was generally detested and accused of sorcery and witchcraft. In May 1648 the people of Moscow rose against them in the so-called Salt Riot, and the young Tsar was compelled to dismiss them and exile Boris to the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery. Suffering from the forced separation, Alexei sent many tender letters to his mentor, and urged the guards to treat him as civilly as possible.
The popular discontent demonstrated by the riot was partially responsible for Alexis' 1649 issuance of a new legal code, the Sobornoye Ulozhenie.
Read more about this topic: Alexis Of Russia
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or reign:
“It is not too much to say that next after the passion to learn there is no quality so indispensable to the successful prosecution of science as imagination. Find me a people whose early medicine is not mixed up with magic and incantations, and I will find you a people devoid of all scientific ability.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“They think how one life hums, revolves and toils,
One cog in a golden singing hive:”
—Stephen Spender (1909–1995)
“Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature’s monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.”
—Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918)