Succession to the Throne in Early Modern Russia

The Transfer of Power 1450–1725

Paul Bushkovitch

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781108479349
• eBook ISBN: 9781108786737
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Eastern European History
• Index: History

This revisionist history of succession to the throne in early modern Russia, from the Moscow princes of the fifteenth century to Peter the Great, argues that legal primogeniture never existed: the monarch designated an heir that was usually the eldest son only by custom, not by law. Overturning generations of scholarship, Paul Bushkovitch persuasively demonstrates the many paths to succession to the throne, where designation of the heir and occasional elections were part of the relations of the monarch with the ruling elite, and to some extent the larger population. Exploring how the forms of designation evolved over the centuries as Russian culture changed, and in the later seventeenth century made use of Western practices, this study shows how, when Peter the Great finally formalized the custom in 1722 by enshrining the power of the tsar to designate in law, this was not a radical innovation but was in fact consistent with the experience of the previous centuries.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Succession to the Throne, Autocracy, and Absolutism
• 2 Designation and Heredity 1450–1533
• 3 Benediction to Election 1533–1598
• 4 Election and Heredity 1598–1645
• 5 Succession and the New Culture of the Court 1645–1689
• 6 Peter the Great and Succession 1690–1719
• 7 Peter’s Heirs and Feofan Prokopovich 1719–1725
• Epilogue and Conclusion
• References
• Index