THE SECLUSION OF ELITE MUSCOVITE WOMEN

Author(s): NANCY SHIELDS KOLLMANN

Source: Russian History , 1983, Vol. 10, No. 2, WOMEN IN MEDIEVAL RUSSIA (1983), pp.
170-187
Published by: Brill

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 RUSSIAN HISTORY/HISTOIRE RUSSE, 10, Pt. 2 (1983), 170-87.

NANCY SHIELDS KOLLMANN (Stanford, Calif., U.SA.)

THE SECL USION OF ELITE MUSCO VITE WOMEN

The female sex of the Muscovite state is not

schooled in letters, and that is not the custom; by
native abilities it is simple-minded, and dull and shy in
response to others. Because from youngest years to
their marriage women live in their fathers' homes in
secret rooms and no outsider except the very closest
relatives can see them nor they others.
Grigorii Kotoshikhin1

One of the most remarkable features of Muscovite society was that the
elite secluded its women. The wives and daughters of princes and boyars
lived in quarters separate from men, did not mix socially with men, and were
shrouded by curtains or closed carriages in their rare public appearances.
Admittedly, all women in Muscovy, regardless of social class, suffered from
constricted public roles and misogynistic attitudes.2 But only in the elite, as
far as we can tell, were Muscovite women confined so completely and their
public lives limited so severely. So rigid a regime of social control deserves
exploration.
Historians have generally not known what to make of Muscovite women's
seclusion, and few have addressed the problem. It is as if they accepted
Kotoshikhin's dictum that Muscovite women were secluded because they
were stupid. Historians often dismissed the subject as yet further evidence of
Muscovy's barbarous social mores.3 But such an attitude does not help us

1. Grigorii Kotoshikhin, O Rossii v tsarstvovanie Alekseia Mikhailovicha, 4th ed. (St.

Petersburg: tip. Glavnogo upravleniia udelov, 1906), p. 57.
2. On misogynistic writings, see George P. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind. Vol.
II: The Middle Ages: Thirteenth-Fifteenth Centuries (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ.
Press, 1966), pp. 71-78; Suzanne Janosik McNally, "From Public Person to Private Pri
soner: The Changing Place of Women in Medieval Russia," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
State University of New York at Binghamton, 1976, pp. 116-24.
3. Women's seclusion is linked to the degradation of Russian morals: S. M. Solov'ev,
lstoriia Rossii s drevneishikh vremen, 29 vols, in 15 bks. (Moscow: Sotsial'no-ekonomi
cheskaia literatura, 1959-66), bk. 1, vol. 1, p. 78; Nikolai [I.] Kostomarov, Ocherk
domashnei zhizni i nravov velikorusskogo naroda v XVI i XVII stoletiiakh, 3rd ed., in
idem, Istoricheskie monografii i issledovaniia, 20 vols, in 13 pts. (St. Petersburg: Tip. M.
M. Stasiulevicha, 1872-89), XIX (1887), 152; S. S. Shashkov, lstoriia russkoi zhenshchiny

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THE SECLUSION OF ELITE MUSCOVITE WOMEN 171

understand a complex phenomenon that surely was related t

social patterns and cultural attitudes. This essay examines
elite Muscovite women to discover what the practice may
relations in the elite.

Historiography
Historical comment on elite women's seclusion in Muscovy has been too
broadly argued to be of much help to our inquiry. Historians have tended to
see women's seclusion in the wide sweep of East Slavic history from pagan
times to Muscovy, and their discussions of it reveal more about their overall
interpretations than about Muscovite society. A common interpretation
suggests that pagan East Slavs enjoyed a free society and that those freedoms
gradually degenerated in stages represented by Kiev Rus', Novgorod and
Pskov, and finally the nadir of Muscovite autocracy.4 Women's status de
teriorated with this erosion of primeval Slavic democracy. Women's seclusion
has also been attributed to the influence of Byzantine misogynistic writings,5
to the Mongol "'yoke,"(> to the harsher climate of northeast Rus',7 to the
patrimonial structure of Muscovy,8 and finally to the destruction of traditional
society effected by the creation of the state.9
Such explanations disappoint, not only since they are shaped by their

in idem, Sobranie sochinenii v dvukh tomakh, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: O. N. Popova, 1898),
I, cols. 753-55, 807; Entsiklopedicheskii slovar', 41 vols, and 2 addenda (St. Petersburg:
G. A. Brokgaus i 1. A. Efron, 1890-1906), S.v. "Zhenshchina," p. 878.
4. Representative interpretations: Solov'ev, Istoriia Rossii, bk. 1, vol. 1, pp. 78, 247,
261 ;bk. 2, vol. 3, pp. 71-72; bk. 2, vol. 4, pp. 482-84; bk. 3, vol. 5, p. 346 ; bk. 8, vol. 15.
p. 88; Ivan Zabelin, Domashnii byt russkikh tsarits v XVI i XVII St., 3rd ed. (Moscow:
Tovarishchestvo tipografii A. 1. Mamontova, 1901), p. 92; la. Orovich, Zhenshchina v
prave (St. Petersburg: la. Kantorovich, 1895), pp. 56-63; Entsiklopedicheskii slovar',
"Zhenshchina," pp. 877-78; C. Claus, Die Stellung der russischen Frau von der Einführung
des Christentums bei den Russen bis zu den Reformen Peter des Grossen (München:
Mikrokopie Gesellschaft für angewandte Mikrographie m.b.H.; 1959); Dorothy Atkinson,
"Society and the Sexes in the Russian Past," in D. Atkinson, A. Dallin and G. W. Lapidus,
eds., Women in Russia (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1977), pp. 3-38; McNally,
"From Public Person."
5. Kostomarov, Ocherk domashnei zhizni, p. 146; Zabelin, Domashnii byt russkikh
tsarits, p. 92; Orovich, Zhenshchina v prave, pp. 62-63; Shashkov, Istoriia russkoi zhen
shchiny, cols.740-51; Entsiklopedicheskii slovar', "Zhenshchina," p. 877; Claus, Die
Stellung, pp. 44-45; McNally, "From Public Person," pp. 204-05.
6. Kostomarov, Ocherk domashnei zhizni, p. 146; Shashkov, Istoriia russkoi zhen
shchiny, cols. 751-52; Atkinson, "Society and the Sexes," pp. 13-14; McNally, "From
Public Person," p. 146; Claus, Die Stellung, p. 46.
7. Solov'ev, Istoriia Rossii, bk. 1, vol. 1, p. 78.
8. Orovich, Zhenshchina v prave, pp. 58, 62-63; Shashkov, Istoriia russkoi zhenshchi
ny, cols. 730^0.
9. McNally, "From Public Person," pp. 92-101, 204-06.

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172 RUSSIAN HISTORY/HISTOIRE RUSSE

authors' general analyses of Russian history, but also

ical scope is wide and their social focus indiscriminate.
of applying the same interpretation to women in pre-
society, Kiev Rus', in Novgorod and Pskov, in Polish-L
East Slavic territories, and in Muscovy, since all these
value and social structures. The bond of East Slavic eth
basis to posit a shared experience in so broad an are
Similarly, one should be cautious of generalizing acros
of these societies: elite women's experience differs fro
peasant women. To avoid such problems this essay will
in the elite in Muscovy, from the period when Mos
expand its regional power in the fourteenth century u
Peter I.

Characteristics and Origins of Seclusion

Elite women's position in Muscovy had several ch
thing, men and women lived separately. Jacques Marg
early seventeenth-century Moscow, noted: "Russian wo
close supervision and have their living quarters separa
husbands."10 Women and their children lived in high
of Muscovite houses and in the grand-princely palace.
called pokoi in Muscovite sources, but nineteenth-cent
red the term, terem, which in folklore refers to the
Kievan heroines kept vigil for their absent warrior hu
synonymous with the seclusion of elite women.11 Wom
female servants, and at home did not ordinarily so
shikhin noted: "And [a] host's wife and the wives of [h
with the men except at weddings, unless the guests are
and no outsiders are present. Then they eat together."
that a host's wife rarely appeared to greet a male guest
considered a sign of great respect.13

10. Jacques Margeret, "Jacques Margeret's State of the Ru

Duchy of Muscovy. A Translation," trans. Chester S. K. Dun
dissertation, Boston College, 1976, pp. 109-10.
11. Kotoshikhin, O Rossii, pp. 15, 148; cf. p. 17 ("v verkh
ferred to living quarters: I. I. Sreznevskii, Materialy dlia slova
po pis'mennym pamiatnikam, 3 vols. (St. Petersburg: Imp. A
III, cols. 950-51.
12. Kotoshikin, O Rossii, p. 148.
13. See evidence of this tale in Margeret, "Jacques Marger
Olearius, The Travels of Olearius in Seventeenth-Century Rus
H. Baron (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1967), pp. 42
Weber, The Present State of Russia, 2 vols. (London: W. Taylor, W
1723), I, 148. See also Kotoshikhin, O Rossii, pp. 147-48.

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THE SECLUSION OF ELITE MUSCOVITE WOMEN 173

Separate living quarters themselves are not unusual in the

elite women in medieval Frankish society lived in separate
some Middle Eastern women today. A second characteri
elite women's position is similarly not unique: Muscovite w
and in all strata were subject to marriage arrangements m
ents.14 This custom is encountered widely in medieval
European history, and in many other societies. A third asp
Muscovite women could not hold power independent o
This too is not unique to Moscow, but the degree to which
there was. In European and Byzantine history, for exampl
recorded of women assuming the throne in the absence
Frankish Europe women were also crowned along with the
they entertained political entourages. In Muscovy, on the ot
were given public responsibility only when their husbands
were too young to inherit, and even then it was titular. In
widows were made regents, although they most likely rem
through whom the established court factions continued to r
The only public power that women held was that of pro
Women owned their dowries, although their husbands man
property. Widows in the elite with children were allowed to
on behalf of their deceased husbands and their children.15 W
hold responsibility on their own as founders and admi
vents.16 But secular women enjoyed no such administr
authority.

14. Many foreign travellers comment on this practice: Sigmund von Herberstein, De
scription of Moscow and Muscovy. 1557, ed. Bertold Picard, trans. J. B. C. Grundy (New
York: Barnes and Noble, 1966), pp. 39-40; Giles Fletcher, The English Works of Giles
Fletcher, the Elder, ed. Lloyd E. Berry (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1964), pp.
286-89; Olearius, Travels of Olearius, pp. 164-68. Peter I tried to legislate freedom of
choice in marriage partners, but the tradition of parental control continued, especially
among peasants: M. F. Vladimirskii-Budanov, Obzor istorii russkogo prava, 3rd ed. with
additions (Kiev and St. Petersburg: Izd. knigoprodavtsa N. Ia. Ogloblina, 1900), pp. 419
20; V. I. Sergeevich, Lektsii i issledovaniia po istorii russkogo prava (St. Petersburg: tip.
i khromolitografiia A. Transhelia, 1883), pp. 931-34.
15. On family and women's property rights, see Vladimirskii-Budanov, Obzor, pp.
440-57, 473-509, and S. B. Veselovskii, Feodal'noe zemlevladenie v severo-vostochnoi
Rusi, 1 vol. in 2 pts. (Moscow-Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1947), pt. 1, chs. 2-3. On women's
juridical independence, see Entsiklopedicheskii slovar', s.v. "Zhenshchina v grazhdan
skom prave," and Vladimirskii-Budanov, Obzor, pp. 366-68. Women dispersing property:
Akty sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoi istorii severo-vostochnoi Rusi kontsa XIV-nachala XVI
v. (hereafter ASEI), 3 vols. (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1952-64), I, Nos. 54, 56, 58, 64, 82, 90,
91, 100, 102, 103, 127, 129, 131-32, etc., and Akty russkogo gosudarstva 1505-1526 gg.
(hereafter ARG) (Moscow: Nauka, 1975), Nos. 1, 26, 36, 45, 67, etc.
16. Marie A. Thomas, "Managerial Roles in the Suzdal'skii Pokrovskii Convent during
the Seventeenth Century,"Russian History, 7, Pts. 1-2 (1980), 92-112, esp. 92-99; Claus,

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 174 RUSSIAN HISTORY/HISTOIRE RUSSE

Elite women were studiously excluded from public lif

had no access to male political entourages. They had n
did not control the budget of their household, and
medieval Frankish queens used to build independen
Muscovite grand princesses were not crowned and did
their husbands until Catherine I was crowned as co-ru
Sofiia Alekseevna broke with tradition in 1682 by assu
though the widow Nataliia Naryshkina, Peter I's moth
have been regent with her son, did Muscovite politics a
independent role. But even then it was under the guise
The most extreme characteristic of female seclusion in the Muscovite
elite was its physical control over women's lives. Peasant and town women
moved in public relatively freely,18 but elite women rarely appeared in public,
usually only to visit kinsmen or attend church. In one instance it is recorded
that royal women were shrouded in curtains as they walked between churches
in the Kremlin; at other times they rode in closed carriages.19
The treatment of women in the elite in Muscovy, then, resembled in
many ways the restricted status of women in other comparable societies, but
it subordinated women's public life to their husband's status and limited
their public freedom of movement to a far greater extreme than in other
classes in Muscovy and in elite classes in the medieval West. Although
Muscovite elite women had some property rights and were allowed freedom
of activity if shorn in a convent, seclusion barred them from public life.
This suggests that seclusion had political implications, since the elite whose
women were secluded constituted the economic and political leadership of
the state.

Die Stellung, ch. 8; McNally, "From Public Person," pp. 124-35. Convents offered even
broader opportunities to Western medieval women: Karl Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an
Early Medieval Society. Ottonian Saxony (London: Edward Arnold, 1979), ch. 6;
Suzanne Foney Wemple, Women in Prankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister, 500 to
900 (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), chs. 6-8.
17. On European medieval women's domestic responsibilities, see JoAnn McNamara
and Suzanne Wemple, "The Power of Women through the Family in Medieval Europe,
500-1100," in Clio's Consciousness Raised: New Perspectives on the History of Women,
ed. Mary Hartman and Lois W. Banner (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1974), pp. 103
18; Janet Nelson, "Queens as Jezebels: The Careers of Brunhild and Bathild in Mero
vingian History," in Derek Baker, edMedieval Women (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978),
pp. 30-77; and Wemple, Women in Frankish Society, pp. 61-69, 97-99.
18. Contemporary observers commented that strict control was limited to the elite:
Olearius, Travels of Olearius, pp. 161-64, 169; Augustin Baron de Mayerberg, Relation
d'un voyage en Muscovie, 2 vols. (Paris: Librairie A. Franck, 1858), I, 140. See also
Shashkov, Istoriia russkoi zhenshchiny, cols. 702-06, 714, 752.
19. Herberstein, Description of Moscow, p. 40; Olearius, Travels of Olearius, pp. 73,
164, 168-69; Mayerberg, Relation d'un voyage, II, 116-18.

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THE SECLUSION OF ELITE MUSCOVITE WOMEN 175

One can only speculate on the beginnings of the regim

in the elite. Historians have suggested that it was ado
fifteenth century,20 since grand princesses in the fift
Vitovtovna and Sofiia Palaeologa, in particular-are c
active political roles: Sofiia Palaeologa received foreign
1490, for example.21 This contrasts sharply with the
mund von Herberstein, an envoy from the Holy Roman
court. Herberstein, referring to the 1520s, wrote: "N
the street is deemed chaste or respectable. Thus wealth
keep their women so shut up that no one can see or s
historians postulate a radical change in women's status
It is unlikely, however, that so rigid a system of cont
would have been adopted so suddenly. The impression
created by the activities of Sofiia Vitovtovna and Sofii
also mention Elena of Moldavia as well may be illus
and Elena of Moldavia were widows in charge of minor
mentioned in chronicle sources formulaically as reg
metropolitan and boyars. Few corroborating sources r
three forces controlled the regency council. Elena Gli
appears in much the same light in sources of the 1530
account suggests that seclusion was already practiced
more, each of these women was of foreign birth; the
ditions might have inspired them to take a more acti
behalf of their sons, if, indeed, such activity can
late source does suggest that Sofiia Vitovtovna int
betrothal,23 but, as we shall see, involvement in m
traditionally was allowed to women.
Royal women in the fifteenth century may have be
independent than their seventeenth-century counterp

20. Shashkov, htoriia russkoi zhenshchiny, cols. 752-53; Ent

"Zhenshchina," p. 877; McNally, "From Public Person," pp. 92
and the Sexes," pp. 13-18. Zabelin disagrees: Domashnii byt ru
21. Contarini, an Italian emissary, reports that Sofiia Pala
Rome, received him: Barbaro i Kontarini o Rossii: K istorii ital
ed., intro., and trans. E. Ch. Skrzhinskaia (Leningrad: Nauka,
such reception in 1490: Pamiatniki diplomaticheskikh snoshen
vami inostrannymi. Pt. 1: Snosheniia s gosudarstvami Evropeis
iu. Vol. I: 1488-1594 (St. Petersburg: tip. II-ogo Otd. sobst.
1851), col. 30.
22. Herberstein, Description of Moscow, p. 40.
23. The sixteenth-century Nikon chronicle: Polnoe sobranie
after PSRL), 38 vols, to date (St. Petersburg-Moscow-Lenin
1841-1982), Xll (1901), 17 (6941).

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 176 RUSSIAN HISTORY/HISTOIRE RUSSE

still restricted to women's quarters and to roles subor

status. The fact that women are mentioned in Muscovite sources from the
fourteenth through the seventeenth century in about the same ways suggests
that the regime of seclusion was not founded at any one moment but rather
that it either existed throughout Muscovite times or developed gradually in
the fourteenth or fifteenth century. Chronicles, for example, depict women
in the same ways whether in the fourteenth or sixteenth centuries. When
elite women are mentioned in chronicles, it is always in conjuction with their
husbands' political fates—they are captured as hostages in war, for example,24
or they are mentioned as widows and regents.25 Throughout the Muscovite
period sources mention wives and daughters of boyars in attendance on the
grand princess at court in the separate quarters reserved for them.26 Sources
from the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries mention women venturing
out in public on ceremonial occasions.27 All these references suggest that
elite women's mobility and status were limited in the entire Muscovite period.
Evidence concerning such women's public appearances does suggest that
the regimen of seclusion intensified over time, although the lack of comparable
source evidence for the period before the seventeenth century and for the
seventeenth century itself makes such generalization necessarily circumspect.
Seventeenth-century sources describe women and royal children in proces
sions as shrouded; an account of princess Elena Ivanovna's trip to Lithuania
in 1495 for her wedding with Aleksandr, grand duke of Lithuania, on the
other hand, makes no particular mention of Elena's or her female attendants'
garb or travelling conditions.28 The strictures on public appearances may
have intensified over the Muscovite period, for reasons we will discuss later.
In sum, Muscovite sources do not suggest a sudden change in women's status,
but perhaps an intensified tendency to limit women to non-political public
roles and to female society. Despite some similarities in court life for women

24. Troitskaia letopis'. Rekonstruktsiia teksta thereafter TL), ed. M. D. Priselkov

(Moscow: AN SSSR, 1950), p. 385 (6875); TL, p. 457 (6912); PSRL, XX (1910), 258
(6953);PSRL, XXV (1949), 250-51 (6941);PSRL, XXIX (1965), 39 (7048).
25. PSRL, XXVI (1959), 225 (6977); PSRL, XXV, 299 (6981);PSRL, VIII (1859),
287 (7043); PSRL, VIII, 290 (7043).
26. TL, p. 449 (6906)-,PSRL, XXIV (1921), 232 and V. I. Buganov, ed., Razriadnaia
kniga 1475-1598 gg. (hereafter RK) (Moscow: Nauka, 1966), p. 17; PSRL, VIII, 234
(7005); PSRL, XXIX, 22-23 (7044). On the seventeenth century, see Zabelin, Domashnii
byt russkikh tsarits, chs. 4-5.
27. TL, p. 448 (6905); TL, pp. 451, 452 (6907); PSRL, XXVI, 199 (6954); PSRL,
XXVI, 245 (6980); PSRL, VIU, 285-86 (7042).
28. Sbornik Imp. russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva (hereafter SbRIO), 148 vols.
(St. Petersburg-Petrograd: various publishers, 1867-1916), XXXV (St. Petersburg: tip.
Th. Eleonskogo, 1882), No. 35, pp. 182-88. On shrouding in the seventeenth century,
see note 19.

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THE SECLUSION OF ELITE MUSCOVITE WOMEN 177

in Muscovy and in médiéval Europe—separate quarters for

political roles primarily as regents—Muscovite elite women
the mobility, varied opportunities and personal develo
European counterparts possessed.29
It is difficult and beyond the scope of this essay to dete
Muscovy borrowed these attitudes and strictures on wome
culture. One might suggest that the source was Byzanti
medium of Kiev Rus\ since Byzantine royal women lived in
But, on the other hand, Byzantine elite women enjoyed m
for political and cultural activity than did Muscovite wom
more women in Kiev Rus' itself appear to have been freer
The example of the late Mongol court might have ins
grand princes and boyars to seclude their women and cons
Social attitudes and practices subordinated women to m
Mongols as strictly as amongst the Muscovites, but royal M
seem to have been more politically active than Muscovite w
ment of women in the Near Eastern Islamic royal courts wi
traded was similar to that seen in Muscovy,32 and may perh
inspiration.
These are all conjectures on possible influences. What is significant is that
while other societies might have provided a model, only the elite's own needs
in Muscovy would have prompted a borrowing.33 It is possible that a strict
regimen of control over women was a native response to the development o,
elite society ; as we shall see, its utility in the political context and its compat*
ibility with Russian Orthodox values about women might themselves be tb
origin of the phenomenon.

29. See McNamara and Wemple, "The Power of Women"; Pauline Stafford, "Sons
and Mothers: Family Politics in the Early Middle Ages," in Baker, ed., Medieval Women,
pp. 79-100; Nelson, "Queens as Jezebels"; Leyser, Rule and Conflict, chs. 5-6; Wemple,
Women in Frankish Society, chs. 3-5.
30. Royal women had separate quarters in Byzantium: Charles Diehl, Byzantine
Empresses, trans. Harold Bell and Theresa de Kerpely (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1963), ch. 1. See also Jose Grosdidier de Matons, "La femme dans l'empire Byzantin," in
Pierre Grimai, ed., Histoire mondiale de la femme, 4 vols. (Paris: Nouvelle libraire de
France, 1966-68), III (1967), 1144.
31. Nomadic Mongol women of all classes were not secluded but were stringently sub
ordinated to their husbands. B. Ia. Vladimirtsov, Obshchestvennyi stroi mongolov.
Mongol'skii kochevoi feodalism (Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1934), pp. 55-56; Lawrence
Kräder, Social Organization of the Mongol-Turkic Pastoral Nomads (The Hague: Mouton,
1963), pp. 26, 38-41, 339, 345-49. A royal consort from Kazan' greeted in Moscow:
PSRL,XXIX, 20-23 (7044).
32. Nada Tomiche, "La femme en Islam," Histoire mondiale de la femme, III, 97-156.
33. Sir Hamilton Gibb argues that cultures borrow only that which they need and
that which is also compatible with their cultures: "The Influence of Islamic Culture on
Medieval Europe," The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 38 (1955-56), 82-98.

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 178 RUSSIAN HISTORY/HISTOIRE RUSSE

Seclusion in Other Societies

Since sources on women's position in Muscovy are so limited, one might
look to comparative data to deepen our understanding of the utility and
symbolism of women's seclusion in other societies. These insights might in
turn stimulate us to inquire whether seclusion in Muscovy served similar
purposes or had similar meanings.
We might look, for example, at the practices of veiling, separation of
sexes and control over women's activities in some Hindu, Islamic, and Medit
teranean societies. Anthropologists have perceptively analyzed how these
strictures for women illuminate other characteristics of the social classes
that practiced them.34 Veiling and female seclusion, for example, have been
linked to family honor and high economic position: "Severe veiling and
seclusion were signs that a man could afford to have servants . . . and that
he occupied an economic position that allowed him to protect the honor of
his family from abuse."35
The economic utility of such practices is great: in such a regime, women's
fundamental value is associated with her marriageability and her procreative
capability.36 Families can use a daughter's marriage to promote a strategy
of economic, political or status advancement. Seclusion not only allows
control over a woman's marriage choice, it also protects her value as a mar
riage partner, since it assures her husband's family that her issue represents
its blood line. Because of its utility in promoting family strategies in social
groups, endogamy, or marriage within a social stratum, is often associated
with societies that strictly control women.37 As we have noted, arranged
marriages allow a male-dominated society to manipulate family politics and
economy particularly effectively. Without it, in western Europe, for example,
elite women developed broader social opportunity, became the objects of
secular literature of courtly love and eventually benefitted from loosened
controls on marriage.

34. Books and articles on this theme include Nur Yalman, "On the Purity of Women
in the Castes of Ceylon and Malabar," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute,
93 (1963), 25-58; J. K. Campbell, Honour, Family and Patronage: A Study of Institu
tions and Moral Values in a Greek Mountain Community (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1964); Hanna Papanek, "Purdah: Separate Worlds and Symbolic Shelter," Comparative
Studies in Society and History, 15 (1973), 289-325; Bette S. Denich, "Sex and Power in
the Balkans," in M. Z. Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, eds., Woman, Culture and Society
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1974), pp. 243-62; Rosaldo, "Theoretical Over
view," in Woman, Culture and Society, Nikki Keddie and Lois Beck, "Introduction," in
idem, eds., Women in the Muslim World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1978),
pp. 1-34.1 am grateful to Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer for introducing me to some anthro
pological literature on this topic.
35. Keddie and Beck, "Introduction," p. 8.
36. Papanek, "Purdah," p. 304; Keddie and Beck, "Introduction," p. 23.
37. Papanek, "Purdah," p. 299.

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THE SECLUSION OF ELITE MUSCOVITE WOMEN 179

Veiling, the seclusion of women and control over thei

reflect cultural attitudes in the social strata that practice t
societies express a deep fear of female sexuality, assumin
women share a spontaneous sexual attraction which necessit
control of women.38 Otherwise, a woman's adultery would
line of her husband's family, and her promiscuity would ups
arranged marriage alliances of both her natal and husban
origins of such misogynistic attitudes may be in the econom
control over women, but such value systems endure indepen
Control over women in the modern Middle East, for examp
both by upper classes for reasons of family strategy and also
to protect the family from dishonor.39
An exaggerated deference to the honor of the male line is,
found to be a paramount concern in societies that seclude w
and seclusion enhance a patriarchal family's honor by illustra
siveness of its women, by protecting its blood line, by preven
public to its women and thus avoiding insult to the family.40
We will find that Muscovite elite society illustrates som
family strategies and some of the same attitudes as these so
intend to suggest any causal link between these societies an
to point out common attributes of similar social systems. To
that seclude women may tend to have a heightened cons
honor of kin groups within them; they may use such contr
a family's reputation; they may oversee women's marria
sociations to construct alliances with other kin groups.
women, far from being an exotic curiosity, can be seen as an
a cohesive set of social attitudes.

Muscovite Politics
Having seen that seclusion of women in other societies is associated with
arranged marriages, patrimonial families and heightened deference to family
honor, our attention is turned to these aspects of Muscovite elite society. It
is possible that the seclusion of Muscovite women played a role in family
strategies in the political elite. Similarly, its possible intensification by the
seventeenth century could relate to change in the nature of politics at court.

38. Ibid., p. 316.

39. Observers comment that men who cannot make their women behave lose face in
the eyes of the community: Papanek, "Purdah," p. 317; Jane Fishburne Collier, "Women
in Politics," in Rosaldo and Lamphere, eds., Woman, Culture and Society, pp. 89-96;
Denich, "Sex and Power," pp. 254-55; Keddie and Beck, "Introduction," pp. 18-19.
40. Campbell, Honour. Family and Patronage', Papanek, "Purdah," pp. 292-93, 317;
Denich, "Sex and Power," pp. 254-55; Keddie and Beck, "Introduction," pp. 18-19.

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180 RUSSIAN HISTORY/HISTOIRE RUSSE

If we examine the Muscovite elite, we see readily so

tics that in other societies correlated with strict contr
for example, that the family unit, the clan, was f
organization. This is illustrated in military organiz
Thousand from 1550 some military units were organ
members of the same clan appear to have had hereditar
positions in grand-princely or ecclesiastical service. In
the Church decreed that if a boyar in service to a bis
should be replaced by a member of his own family.41
elite society is also illustrated by the keeping of gene
these compendia meticulously recorded the male mem
clans.42 Clan importance in the elite is also illustrated
members of a clan had to repurchase family land sold
see also that the honor of the clan was jealously guar
elite. Members of clans avidly sued to protect family
litigations and in suits over injured honor.44
We also see that the elite used marriage alliances to
egies, as best it could, given that marriage in a monog
was a somewhat inflexible device. Muscovite source
attention to marriage within the political elite. Fo
attendants at royal weddings were considered so imp
they were preserved and were later included in the o
books. Similarly, Kotoshikhin devoted the first chapte
Muscovite political system to the tsar's wedding cere
able attention to the favors bestowed on the tsar's in-l

41. A. A. Zimin, Tysiachnaia kniga 1550 g. i Dvorovaia te

(Moscow-Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1950), pp. 55, 57, 61 (Obolens
skie), 55, 57, 62-63 (laroslavskie). On inheritance of positio
stave dvortsovykh uchrezhdenii Russkogo gosudarstva kontsa XV i XVI veka," Istori
cheskie zapiski, 63 (1958), pp. 182, 189, 194, and S. B. Veselovskii, Issledovaniia po
istorii klassa sluzhilykh zemlevladel'tsev (Moscow: Nauka, 1969), pp. 442-49. On church
positions, see Stoglav, [I. Dobrotvorskii, ed.], 2nd ed. (Kazan': Tip. Imp. universiteta,
1887), ch. 69, pp. 150-51 and p. 197.
42. On genealogical books, see M. E. Bychkova, Rodoslovnye knigi XVI i XVII vv.
kak istoricheskii istochnik (Moscow: Nauka, 1975) and Nancy Shields Kollmann, "Ro
doslovnye knigi," in The Modem Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, 31 vols,
to date (Gulf Breeze, Fl.: Academic International Press, 1976-), XXXI (1983), 126-29.
43. On the right of repurchase, see the Sudebnik of 1550, arts. 25 and 26: B. D.
Grekov, ed., Sudebniki XV-XVI vekov (Moscow-Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1952), pp. 147
48; also see note 15 above.
44. On mestnichestvo, see A. I. Markevich, Istoriia mestnichestva v Moskovskom
gosudarstve v XV-XVI veke (Odessa: Tip. "Odesskogo Vestnika," 1888). On dishonor,
see Horace W. Dewey, "Old Muscovite Concepts of Injured Honor (Bezchestie)," Slavic
Review, 27, No. 4 (Dec. 1968), 594-603.
45. RK, pp. 9-14; Kotoshikhin, O Rossii, ch. 1.

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THE SECLUSION OF ELITE MUSCOVITE WOMEN 181

political alliances for the Muscovite sovereign and neighbo

1390, for example, Vasilii, son of Dmitrii Donskoi, married
Vytautus, grand duke of Lithuania, and in 1495 Ivan Ill
married Aleksandr, the grand duke of Lithuania.46 Con
could be proscribed to enhance a family's power or to dim
daughters throughout the seventeenth century were not m
occasionally even controlled the marriages of his boyars. Ma
example, that the first False Dmitrii permitted the ma
boyars who had been forbidden to marry by Boris Goduno
ulation of marriages determined hierarchies of status and
Boyar families similarly used marriage to make alliances, a
were stepping stones to political power. Boyars at court
married. For example, in the 1490s, the leading boyars inc
Iur'evich Patrikeev, his son Vasilii and his son-in-law Seme
polovskii; another distant relation, Prince Fedor Ivanov
prominent new arrival at the court. A decade later the rulin
boyars Ivan and Vasilii Andreevich Cheliadnin and Prince V
Obolenskii; Agrafena, the niece of Prince Vasilii Obolenski
Cheliadnin and later became the nurse of Ivan IV. Her brot
Fedorovich Telepnev-Obolenskii, was alleged to have been E
lover. Recent studies on court politics from the fifteenth
centuries have shown that marriage and kin alliances rema
in political position at court.49
Muscovite cultural values about women resembled those of other societies
that secluded women ; women were subordinated to men and their sexuality
was distrusted. Misogynistic essays by Byzantine and Russian authors enjoyed
wide circulation amongst the Russian Orthodox. Men and women in Russian

46. TL, p. 436 (6898); PSRL, XXIV, 212-13 (7002, 7003).

47. Kotoshikhin, O Rossii, p. 15. Royal princes and princesses, for example, Charle
magne's daughters, were often not allowed to marry: Stafford, "Sons and Mothers," pp.
95-97; Wemple, Women in Frankish Society, p. 79.
48. Margeret, "Jacques Margeret's State," pp. 143-44, 169. See also O. A. Iakovleva,
ed., Piskarevskii letopisets in Materialy po istorii SSSR, 7 vols. (Moscow: AN SSSR,
1955-59), 11 (1955), 114.
49. On such networks, see my dissertation, "Kinship and Politics: The Origin and
Evolution of the Muscovite Boyar Elite in the Fifteenth Century," 2 vols., unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1980, chs. 2-4: Robert O. Crummey, "The Re
constitution of the Boiar Aristocracy, 1613-1645," Forschungen zur osteuropäischen
Geschichte, 18 (1973), 198-201; idem, "Court Groupings and Politics in Russia, 1645
1649," ibid., 24 (1978), 218-19; Brenda Meehan-Waters, "The Russian Aristocracy and
the Reforms of Peter the Great," Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 8, No. 2 (Summer
1974) 293-96; idem, Autocracy and Aristocracy: The Russian Service Elite of 1730
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1982), ch. 5 ; and Robert O. Crummey, Aris
tocrats and Servitors (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1983), ch. 4.

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182 RUSSIAN HISTORY/HISTOIRE RUSSE

Orthodoxy as in other societies practiced rituals of imp

this value system: washing after sexual intercourse, ob
purification after childbirth, avoiding women during me
As in other societies that secluded women, Muscovite
marriage alliances to control the political landscape. Lim
could be used to prevent alliances in the elite from becom
the political network they formed became hopelessly en
Crummey has shown, this became increasingly a problem
century, when the elite was too large to be structur
links.51 The seclusion of women could then be used
liances. This gives us some clue about why the secl
control over their marriages may have intensified in th
sources suggest. Despite the paucity of sources, it w
public appearances of elite women in the seventeenth
strictly regulated than in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen
of seclusion—veiling in public and limitation of public
appear to have increased in this period. One might also
royal family significantly strengthened its control ove
in the seventeenth century. While through the reign of
ters in the ruling clan were married off for political a
teenth century the many Romanov daughters langui
married. Such practices simplified succession claim
political networks that the Romanov tsars were involved
were obligated. The political utility in this was probably
boyars' families in the seventeenth century followed su
yet been examined, but foreign travellers' accounts and
mony show that seclusion was widely practiced in the e
The evidence of the royal family's seclusion of wo
closely linked this practice was with the proper functio
system that heavily emphasized kin and marriage allian
might suggest that the seclusion of elite women dev
serve the needs of the developing royal autocracy and b
then could be found sometime in the gradual evolut
system from its founding in the fourteenth century.52

50. Heiberstein, Description of Moscow, p. 92; Margeret, "Jac

p. Ill; Olearius, Travels of Olearius, pp. 168, 172; Kotoshikh
On rituals of impurity, see also George P. Fedotov, The Russian
Kievan Christianity. Tenth-Thirteenth Centuries. (New York: H
pp. 189-93, 238-44.
51. Crummey, "Court Groupings and Politics."
52. Nancy Shields Kollmann, "The Boyar Clan and Court Pol
the Muscovite Political System," Cahiers du monde russe et s
vier-Mars 1982), 5-31.

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THE SECLUSION OF ELITE MUSCOVITE WOMEN 183

may well have intensified as patrimonial clans tried to mainta

their political fortunes in the expanding elite of the seventee

Women's Roles

Since elite women's lives in Muscovy were so strictly controlled and

diverted from the primary activities of their class, i.e., politics, can we speak
at all of a political role for Muscovite elite women? Muscovite women did
have a role in the political order, one that they did not control directly but
which was crucial for the functioning of the elite. Women were essential as
links between groups. By their presence in their husband's family, women
symbolized the personal links that held political life together. More im
portantly, in their associations with other women in the elite, they carried
information, were involved in marriage making, and they helped smooth
the tensions that arose in intermarried clans.
We know that women associated with other women in their separate
quarters at home; boyars' wives and female relations visited one another.5-3
Elite women also met each other in the female quarters of the Kremlin.
Women in the sovereign's kinship network lived here, including the tsaritsa,
the tsar's widowed mother if she were alive, the tsar's unmarried sisters,
daughters, nieces and other female kinsmen, the tsaritsa's mother and her
unmarried female kin.54 The wives of some of the most important boyars
lived in the royal palace or in palaces adjacent to the tsar's home in the
Kremlin.55 It is not clear how many boiaryni lived in the Kremlin women's
quarters with the royal women; certainly some did.56 Others lived at home

53. Scattered references support this conclusion. Kotoshikhin suggests that boyars'
wives and daughters-in-law lived together: O Rossii, pp. 147-48. Olearius implies a wo
man's female relations could live with her in her husband's home: Travels of Olearius, p.
42. Kostomarov implies that boyars' households were as broadly extended as the tsars':
Kostomarov, Ocherk domashnei zhizni, pp. 53-54. A study of a widow's household re
veals that she lived with ten to twelve "boiaryni," but had no sons to share the household
with her: A. I. Zaozerskii, "Boiarskii dvor. Stranichka iz istorii odnogo boiarskogo doma,"
Russkii istoricheskii zhurnal. No. 8 (Petrograd: 1-ia Gos. uchebnoprakticheskaia shkola
tipografiia, 1922), p. 96. Architectural studies indicate that boyars' homes were as capa
cious as the tsars', providing room for married sons' families and unmarried relations: P.
Gol'denberg and B. Gol'denberg, Planirovka zhilogo kvartala Moskvy XVII. XVIII i XIX
ne. (Moscow-Leningrad: Glavnaia red. stroitel'noi literatury. 1935), pp. 32-39.
54. Kotoshikhin, O Rossii. pp. 15, 32-33; Zabelin, Domashnii byt russkikh tsarits,chs.
4-5.:, ....•■■■
55, Kostomarov, Ocherk domashnei zhizni, p. 26; Istoriia Moskvy, 6 vols
(Moscow: AN SSSR. 1952-59), 1,66,70-71, 104-05, 178, 187-88.
56, Kotoshikhin frequently mentions boiaryni "who live with-the tsar's s
Rossii, p. 5), or who serve the royal children (p. 17), or who "frequent and
tsaritsa's chambers" (p. 32). Olearius mentions that several boyars lived in ho
Kremlin: Travels of Olearius, pp. 112-13. Other boiaryni clearly lived at their
and visited or attended the tsaritsa in ceremonial affairs: Kotoshikhin, O Rossii

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 184 RUSSIAN HISTORY/HISTOIRE RUSSE

but served the tsaritsa or visited her.57 Women in th

mixed with male political leaders, but they were expo
in Kremlin politics in these settings.
In their courts and quarters Muscovite elite wom
mation to pass on to their husbands. Anthropologists
seclude women frequently comment that women's
influence men's actions, despite the strictures and pre
against women openly participating in public affairs.5 8
Similarly, in their associations with other women, b
and daughters could physically represent their family
even when their husbands had died. Women in such p
keep the continuity of their clan in politics as the men
grew older. One thinks, for example, of the Cheli
mentioned in honored places as boiaryni in royal c
three decades of the sixteenth century.59 Widows, as
argued, enjoyed particular respect in Muscovite politics
Women could also lobby with other boyars' wive
favor or for the favor of the tsar, most notably in ho
riage alliance with a powerful family. We know fr
accounts that elite mothers and daughters were involv
marriage strategies. They interviewed prospective

34-35, 147-48; Olearius, Travels of Olearius, p. 73. See Zabelin'

seventeenth century: Domashnii byt russkikh tsarits, pp. 3
30.
57. For other references to boiaryni, see PSRL, XXIX, 20
passim; TL, p. 449 (6906); PSRL, VIII, 234 (7005); M. E. Bychkova, "Rodoslovie Glin
skikh iz Rumiantsevskogo sobraniia," Zapiski Otdela rukopisei Gosud. biblioteka im.
V. /. Lenina, No. 38 (1977), p. 121, and passim. See also Kotoshikhin, O Rossii, p. 34.
58. Campbell, Honour, Family and Patronage-, Barbara C. Aswad,"Key and Peripheral
Roles of Noble Women in the Middle Eastern Plains Village," Anthropological Quarterly,
40, No. 3 (July 1967), 139-52; Ernestine Friedl, "The Position of Women: Appearances
and Reality," Anthropological Quarterly, 40, No. 3 (July 1967), 97-108. Reference is
often made to the influence of women's groups: Louise Lamphere, "Strategies, Coopera
tion and Conflict among Women in Domestic Groups," in Rosaldo and Lamphere, eds.,
Woman, Culture and Society, pp. 97-112; Keddie and Beck, "Introduction," p. 19;
Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, "Rituals of Gender Identity: Markers of Siberian Khanty
Ethnicity, Status, and Belief," American Anthropologist, 83, No. 4 (Dec. 1981), 855-58;
Aswad, "Key and Peripheral Roles," pp. 149-50; Rosaldo, "Theoretical Overview," pp.
38-39. See also McNamara and Wemple, "The Power of Women"; Stafford, "Sons and
Mothers"; Wemple, Women in Frankish Society, chs. 3-5.
59. PSRL, XXIX, 20-23 (7044); RK, p. 9 (7034); Bychkova, "Rodoslovie Glinskikh.'
60. Edward L. Keenan, "Ivan the Terrible and His Women, II: Dowagers, Nannies and
Brides," unpublished MS, Cambridge, Mass., 1981.

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 THE SECLUSION OF ELITE MUSCOVITE WOMEN 185

discussed the choice with male kinsmen.61 In one instan

family the sister of the future grand prince Vasilii 111, Ele
grand duke of Lithuania, was asked to survey prospectiv
brother. Similarly, a female cousin of the powerful boy
Iur'evich Patrikeev, in 1480 helped arrange the betrothal of
son.62
Some anthropologists maintain that the intensity of strictures over women
is proportionate to the real degree of influence they wield over men, whether
publicly acknowledged or not. Scholars such as Mary Douglas argue that sepa
ration of sexes and misogynistic attitudes, especially concerning sexual activi
ty, express male society's fear of the power women possess by their sexuality
and by their communications with other women.**3 In such societies married
women have behind-the-scenes family influence. By the same token, older
widows and old women in general frequently have high social esteem, ritual
roles and matriarchal power, because they are freed of the ability to pollute
the family line or impugn its honor through sexual indiscretion.64
One need not accept Douglas's interpretation of the underlying attitudes
in societies that seclude women to note that in Muscovite elite society widows
were accorded public respect and, at least in the report of Sigmund von Her
berstein, contemporaries were aware of the women's potential to affront
family honor. Herbeistein commented: "The women are rarely allowed to go
to church and much less often to visit friends, unless they have grown so old
as to be beyond attention and suspicion."65 Similarly, dowagers had honored
places at court, widows controlled property and, interestingly enough, the

61. Fletcher, English Works, pp. 286-87; Olearius, Travels of Olearius, p. 164; Koto
shikhin, O Rossi, pp. 269-70.
62. SIRJO, XXXV, No. 77, pp. 442-43, 452-53 (1503-04). A female cousin of a lead
ing boyar, Prince Ivan Iur'evich Patrikeev, aided in the betrothal in 1480 of Ivan Ill's son
Ivan: SIRIO, XLI (St. Petersburg: tip. Th. Eleonskogo, 1884), No. 5, p. 23. On marriage
arrangements in the elite, see note 61.
63. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and
Taboo (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), p. 142; Rosaldo, "Theoretical Over
view," pp. 38-39. Balzer adopts this argument: "Rituals of Gender Identity," p. 855. This
interpretation complements arguments that stress the economic utility of male dominance
over women: Yalman, "On The Purity of Women."
64. See Denich, "Sex and Power," p. 253; Balzer, "Rituals of Gender Identity," p.
856; Keenan, "Dowagers, Nannies and Brides." On widows' greater status in public life
and power through their inheritance and sons, see Aswad, "Key and Peripheral Roles";
Collier, "Women in Politics"; Keddie and Beck, "Introduction," pp. 24-25; Balzer,
"Rituals of Gender Identity," p. 856; Stafford, "Sons and Mothers"; Wemple, Women in
Prankish Society, pp. 60-61.
65. Herberstein, Description of Moscow, pp. 40-41. Orthodoxy also enjoined widows
not to engage in sexual activity: Fedotov, Russian Religious Mind, II, 100.

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 186 RUSSIAN HISTORY/HISTOIRE RUSSE

Church prescribed that only widows over forty or f

allowed to bake communion loaves for churches.66
Women's roles in Muscovite politics and society, the
knowledged, but women were nevertheless significant
ed their value as brides and mothers, and their ability
families allowed kin groups to function as units in po
ships with other women gave them the opportunity
making and to supplement male communication netw
secluded, were integrated into the life of the elite.

Petrine Politics and Women

A final indication of how significant women's seclusion was for the proper
functioning of the Muscovite political system is the attention which Peter 1
gave to women's society in his attempts to change Muscovite politics. Peter's
reforms of the relations between the sexes are usually regarded as interesting
sidelights of his Westernization of Muscovite cultural life.67 But they had pol
itical implications as well. Peter gave the elite new relationships and new atti
tudes toward women that helped to change the way politics functioned.
Peter ended the separation of sexes in the elite by forcing elite families to
socialize in mixed company at public receptions, or "assemblies."68 This
undermined the authority over sexual relationships enjoyed by Muscovite
family heads. Peter further weakened their control over marital alliances by
requiring that couples be betrothed for six weeks before marriage, during
which time the affianced had the option to break off the engagement.69 This
lawdidnotendmarriagesbyarrangement, but it did further compromise family
control over youthful relationships.
Peter also acted to end another tool the boyar elite had used to manipulate
marriage alliances: the Spiritual Regulation of 1721 made it more difficult to
banish a wife to a convent, a common substitute for a divorce in Muscovite
times.70 Peter tried without much success to send women abroad for edu

66. See Keenan's suggestive essay, "Dowagers, Nannies and Brides." See also Vladimir
skii-Budanov, Obzor, pp. 367-68; McNally, "From Public Person," pp. 168-69. On com
munion bread bakers (proskurnitsy), see Stoglav, 2nd Kazan' ed., p. 43.
67. Solov'ev, Istoriia Rossii, bk. 8, vol. 15, p. 88; Entsiklopedicheskii slovar', s.v.
"Zhenshchina" and "Assamblei"; Shashkov, Istoriia russkoi zhenshchiny, cols. 808-15.
68. Polnoe sobranie zakonov rossisskoi imperii. Sobranie I: 1649- 1 ZDekabria 1825
(hereafter PSZ), 45 vols. (St. Petersburg: tip. Il-ogo Otd. sobst. ego imp. vel. kantseliarii,
1830), V (1713-1719), No. 3246, pp. 597-98. Entsiklopedicheskii slovar', s.v. "Assam
blei"; Meehan-Waters, Autocracy and Aristocracy, pp. 103-04.
69. Patriarch Adrian in 1693 had suggested such a change: Entsiklopedicheskii slovar',
s.v. "Zhenshchina," col. 878; Shashkov, Istoriia russkoi zhenshchiny, cols. 808-10; Mee
han-Waters,,4Mfocraey and Aristocracy, pp. 106-08.
70. The Spiritual Regulation of Peter the Great, trans, and ed. Alexander V. Muller
(Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 1972), pp. 72-73; Meehan-Waters, Autocracy and
Aristocracy, p. 123.

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THE SECLUSION OF ELITE MUSCOVITE WOMEN 187

cation; with greater success he decreed that they should dress

fashions.71 By crowning his wife in 1724, he gave women a pu
ledged political role. His desire to end royal succession by p
undermined the value of marriage alliances with the royal fami
encouraged Western ideas about love, marriage, and individualit
ed new values for a newly structured elite.
Of course, much of what Peter did to end the regime of seclus
and strict control over their behavior had been presaged by th
Sofiia Alekseevna, by the relatively more open life of Peter's m
Naryshkina, and by the broader cultural experience of the wom
the Kremlin in the seventeenth century.72 Just as mores in t
changing, the family-based politics of the Muscovite period was
for example, mestnichestvo, a practice that upheld family honor
necessity, was abolished in 1682. Peter's reforms further under
politics by offering cultural alternatives as well as new political

Study of the seclusion of elite women in Muscovy parts a cu

culture and society of the Muscovite elite. While elite women h
roles in public life, they had a social importance that should no
As marriage partners they helped to cement alliances between
procreators they perpetuated the politically significant families
Their seclusion allowed control over political relations between
court. At the expense of individual self-development, elite wom
in their seclusion made possible the functioning of traditional
politics in Muscovy.

Stanford University

71. PSZ, IV (/700-1712), No. 1887,p. 182. Weber, Present State of R

Meehan-Waters, Autocracy and Aristocracy, pp. 100-04.
72. On the court in the seventeenth century, see Zabelin, Domashnii byt
its, chs. 5-6; Claus, Die Stellung, pp. 114-34, 149-54;C. Bickford O'Brien
Two Tsars. 1682-1689: The Regency of Sophia Alekseerna (Berkeley a
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