Wisdom and Redemption in the Evolving Multi-faith Empire: Liberation and Slaving in Sixteenth to Seventeenth Century Muscovite Steppe Exchanges

Muscovite state agents used particular cults and literatures to react to the challenges of the multi-faith empire, while pragmatically including those who served the tsar. Benefiting from Church organization, Muscovy made a clear choice in favor of Orthodoxy. Steppe trade suffered from insecurity triggered largely by the demand for slaves legitimated in religious terms. Since steep career paths opened to some in the Ottoman Empire, those returning encountered ambivalence: Redeemed by law and church regulations, they were also suspicious – a variability in common with Ukrainian Cossacks and church hierarchs opting for the tsarist card at various seventeenth century conjunctures. Theatre plays, speeches allegedly delivered at Pereiaslav 1654 and recommendations by Patriarchs in the Ottoman Empire shared reference to Divine Wisdom and biblical Exodus, representing Orthodoxy’s liberating solidarity. Concomitantly, Muscovites had no qualms enslaving those who were neither Orthodox nor served the tsar. While some Tatars, even Poles might be eligible for ransom, Fins and Lithuanian subjects were made to feel the double-edged concept of Wisdom, regulating slavery and depicted in the Kremlin’s Golden palace murals. Some Cossacks eventually denounced the tsar, in the same terms, as “worse oppressor than the Ottomans”.