@Walter Hinteler,
In something i read here, or heard on the radio, a commentator was talking about the invasion of the Crimean peninsula in the 18th century. This is an example, actually, of a shallow knowledge of history, probably a quick trip to Wikipedia.
The first Romanov Tsar was Mikhail Feodorovitch, who was chosen by a national aristocratic assembly in 1613--he was just 16 years old. He was succeeded by his son Aleksey Mikhailovitch. Although the West tends to think of his youngest son, Petr Alexeevitch (Peter the Great) as having introduced western ideas to the country, it was actually Aleksey who brought foreigners to Moscow and introduced western ideas to Russia. Under the influence of his chief adviser, Boris Morotsov (sp?). He established a foreigners' quarter where chiefly German and Dutch merchants resided, exempt from heresy strictures and free to practice their religions. This would have a profound influence on Petr, who spent as much time as he could in the quarter, and became fluent in German and Dutch (although his pronunciation and accent were considered indifferent).
Aleksey's first wife was Maria Miloslavskaya, who gave him his sons Fyodor and Ivan, and his daughter Sophia. The Miloslavskys were therefore influential at court and grew rich. Because of his exposure to western influences, he also became close friends with Artemon Matveyev, who was to become a diplomat as his father had been. This increased the interest in western ideas in Aleksey's court. Matveyev spent most of his public career in the Ukraine, fighting the Poles and negotiating with them, and trying to hold back the Crimean Tatars, who raided "Little Russia" (the Ukraine) every year, carrying off the populace to be sold as slaves in the Turkish markets at Constantinople.
When Maria Miloslavkaya died, Matveyev soon introduced him to Natalya Narishkina, whose father was already known to Aleksey as a military commander. Throughout the reigns of the Romanovs, there were rebellions, and both Matveyev and Narishkin served the Tsar by putting down rebellions. Petr Alexeevitch (Peter the Great) was the son of Natalya Narishkina. When she married Aleksey, the Narishkins took over the places of influence which the Miloslavskys had occupied. Aleksey died just five years later, and was succeeded by his son Fyodor III. Fyodor was an intelligent and energetic man, who suffered, however, from poor health. He did manage to prevent feuding between the Miloslavskys and the Narishkins. He died six years later, and an assembly of boyars (aristocrats) chose the then ten-year-old Petr to succeed him, even though his half-brother Ivan was older. The Miloslavskys were having none of that, and intriged with the Streltsy (a
strelets was a soldier/colonist, a group created by Ivan the Terrible, and proved to be just as worthless as almost all other soldier/colonist who have been tried of the last few thousand years). The Streltsy rebelled, and marched on the Kremlin. In Red Square (the name has nothing to do with communism), they demanded to see the Tsar--ten-year-0ld Petr. Horribly frightened, Natalya brought both boys, Petr and fouteen-year-old Ivan, out onto the porch of the Red Palace. Matveyev, a former commander of Streltsy, managed to calm the men down, when one of Natalya's brothers, an arrogant whelp, demanded that the Streltsy return to their district and threatened them with beatings and executions. The Streltsy responded by hacking him to pieces in front of the horrified Natalya and the boys. They then turned on Matveyev, and hacked him up, too. After that, they roamed through the Kremlin hunting down Narishkins. The final settlement, very likely what the Miloslavskys had planned, was the Sophia was made regent for the two boys.
Sophia sent two expeditions into the Ukraine to put an end to Tatar depredations, and both expeditions were disastrously defeated. This finally lead to enough public sentiment against Sophia and her lover (who commanded both debacles) that a wide array of important people, not just the Narishkins, moved to make Petr the Tsar. He wasn't stupid, even though he was no older than his father or grandfather when he came to power, and he kept Ivan as his co-Tsar. Ivan performed the ceremonial functions, and Petr got busy ruling the country--which suited them both. Ivan was a sickly as his brother Fyodor had been. Ivan died in 1696, and Petr began to carry out his plans for Russia.
First he made an agreement with Poland, by which the Poles evacuated Kyiv, and Petr agreed to attack the Tatars and the Turks. This he did by trying to take Azov, then the principle port in he region. His first attempt failed, so in an incredible effort, he built a fleet over the winter, sailed it down the Don, and cut off Azov, which fell to the Russians because the Turks could no longer supply them from the Black Sea. In 1698, he established a naval base at Taganrog, to the East. The Streltsy had proven almost worthless in these campaigns, and constantly grumbled because they were actually expected to fight. Peter increasingly relied upon his two showcase regiments, the Preobrazhensky Guard and the Semyonovksy Guard, and his new regiments created from Russian levies on the western model. When Petr was returning from his tour of western Europe, he came to an agreement with Augustus the Strong, the elected King of Poland, to attack the Swedes--Petr wanted the Baltic, too. Rebellion was never far from the Russian mind, and as he travelled back to Moscow, he learned that the Streltsy had risen against his government--mostly because he had sent them off to the Ukraine to remote garrisons facing the Turks. Once again, they thought it a bit much that they should be actually expected to act like soldiers. Their rebellion was easily crushed by the new western regiments, and Petr then interrogated them, with torture, and executed more than a thousand of them. Sophia was sent to a nunnery, and some of the boyars suddenly disappeared. The Streltsy were disbanded.
To fight the Great Northern War against the Swedes, Petr needed peace with the Turks. He concluded an agreement with them ceding Taganrog to them (he kept Azov) and agreeing to remove Russian naval forces from the Black Sea. In return, the Turks agreed to keep the peace (which they did) and to withdraw their support for the Tatars. Petr moved western-style regiments into the Ukraine, the first permanent Russian military presence there, and the Tatar reign of terror was ended.
He also sent the first embassy to the Chechens, and the Chechens promptly murdered every man of them. King Charles XII foolishly and disastrously invaded the Ukraine in 1708, relying upon military aid from the Cossacks (he apparently didn't understand that there was more than one Cossack nation, and he was expecting tens of thouands of allies--in the event, he got 2000, and he had to feed them, too). Petr, after crushing the Swedes at Poltava in 1709, separated the loyal Cossacks from the rebels, rewarding the former and hunting down the latter, and increased the Russian military presence in the Ukraine. It would await Catherine II (Catherine the Great) more than 90 years after Petr's first campaign, for the Russians to invade the Crimean, but Petr had effectively drawn the Tatar fangs before 1700. The entire episode, from Sophia's ill-considered, incompetently-conducted and disastrous campaigns to Petr's final treaty with the Turk also lead the Russians to basically occupy the Ukraine militarily.
History ain't simple, and certainly not in the cut-and-dried manner that journalists like to portray it.
