ABSTRACT
This chapter examines three chief pillars of tsarist society: the system of serfdom that lasted to 1861, the institution of the autocracy that was reestablished and refined in the 1600s and persisted until 1906, and the nature and function of the Orthodox Church, although its role under Soviet rule has been much diminished. It looka at the territorial expansion of Russia in its continuing search for security and at the development of closer relations with the West, which had a portentous initial impact on Russian thought and society. In the 1600s as the restored autocracy increased its centralized power, so also the might and authority of the Russian Orthodox Church expanded. But two events, occurring about the same time in the third quarter of the century, greatly weakened the Church and prepared the way for its complete subjugation to the state by Peter Mogila the Great in the early 1700s.
