Introduction
A potential reader of the April 1703 edition of Vedomosti Moskovskie, Russia’s newly established newspaper, going through a litany of reports from various corners across the globe, could hardly have missed an announcement concerning the Khanate of Khiva on its front page. Commissioned just months earlier by the Russian ruler Peter I (r. 1689–1725), this newspaper was intended to keep the Muscovite public informed about developments both within Russia and abroad.Footnote 1 One of the most prominent items in the issue of 5 April 1703 concerned developments in Khiva:
The Khivan Khan sent his envoy to the Great Sovereign [of Russia Peter I] with a petition, requesting that the Great Sovereign might deign to accept him, the Khan, including all possessions under his rule, under his royal high-power hands in eternal subjecthood (v vechnoe poddanstvo). Upon said plea our Sovereign [=Peter I] has graciously bestowed his grace and [furthermore] deigned to dispatch his own envoy to the Khivan KhanFootnote 2
As the announcement reveals, a diplomatic emissary of a ruler of the Khanate of Khiva, a relatively small Islamic polity in Central Asia, had recently arrived in Moscow and submitted a petition on behalf of his sovereign to Tsar Peter I of Russia. According to the report, the Khivan ruler requested admission, along with his subjects and possession, into what was called as “an eternal subjecthood” – vechnoe poddanstvo – of the Russian tsar.Footnote 3 This appeal, the newspaper informed its readers, was accepted.
To a reader of Vedomosti such an announcement would perhaps resonate with familiar political idioms. The acceptance by Muscovite rulers of pledges of loyalty or oaths of fealty from a variety of political groups and regional potentates was a well-established feature of Muscovite governance. Since at least the sixteenth century, bringing non-Christian populations under the tsar’s protection had formed an important element of Muscovite policy along its southern and eastern frontiers. This practice extended to groups such as the Bashkirs,Footnote 4 Kalmyks,Footnote 5 Circassians,Footnote 6 various Siberian ethnic groupsFootnote 7 and even Christian populations, such as the Don Cossacks.Footnote 8 As Gregory Afinogenov has observed, “the oath-making technology of loyalty … turned out to be a key technology of Russia’s state building.”Footnote 9 Michael Khodarkovsky further notes that the Russian state tended to codify its relationship with the people on its expanding frontiers only in terms of a suzerain-subject modus operandi.Footnote 10 Against this backdrop of what might be described as a continuing “parade of oath-taking ceremonies,” yet another report of a distant ruler’s submission to the Russian tsar would not have seemed particularly unusual. Yet the case of Khiva was somewhat distinct, for a number of reasons.
First, by the turn of the eighteenth century, the frontiers of the Muscovite state still lay a thousand of miles away from those of Khorezm and interactions between the courts seem to have been sporadic, primarily conducted through ad hoc diplomatic and mercantile ventures.Footnote 11 Never before in over a century of diplomatic interactions with Khiva had Muscovite rulers sought to formalize the Khivan khans’ status as their subjects. Although they did not address their Khivan counterparts as “brothers” or/and “masters of all eastern lands,” as was often the case, for instance, with Safavid shahs or Mughal emperors,Footnote 12 Muscovite diplomatic nomenclature nevertheless clearly distinguished and recognized the khans of Khiva as sovereign rulers (vladetel’ samovlastnyi).
Furthermore, neither before 1700 nor for much of the period that followed, up to the Russian military takeover of the Khanate of Khiva in 1873, did Khivan rulers seek to place themselves under the tsar’s protection.Footnote 13 Moreover, any real or perceived moves by the Russian side to undermine the status of the Khivan rules were treated with sensitivity, if not outright hostility, by Khivan elites. This was clearly illustrated a few years later in 1714–1717, when the fate of a Russian military-cum-diplomatic expedition to Khiva, aimed inter alia at “inclining the Khan of Khiva toward loyalty and allegiance [to the Russian tsar],” showed just how reluctant the Khivan authorities were to submit to Russian protection.Footnote 14
Why, then, did the language of subjecthood enter Russian-Khivan relations at precisely this moment? This essay addresses that question through an examination of the alleged pledge of subjecthood submitted in 1700 to Tsar Peter I on behalf of Shāh Niyāz Khān of Khiva by his envoy Dostak Bahādur. Although the episode has attracted scholarly attention, it has generally been approached either as a chapter in Russian–Khivan relations or as a problem of diplomatic language and translation.Footnote 15 The present study sets out to situate this ‘pledge of allegiance’ within the broader dynamic of Eurasian politics and diplomacy. More specifically, I consider the episode alongside a series of contemporaneous developments, including the Russian-Ottoman negotiations in Istanbul, competition within Muscovy’s foreign-affairs administration, and Peter I’s own imperial ambitions.
As mentioned above, from the sixteenth century onwards Russian officials had increasingly sought to structure their relations with Islamicate societies along their southern and eastern frontiers in hierarchical terms. One of the principal mechanisms through which such relationships were articulated was the oath-taking ceremony known as shert (from Arabic sharṭ, “clause” or “condition”), which meant not a reciprocal treaty but an act of allegiance to the Muscovite sovereign.Footnote 16 Depending on the circumstances, such arrangements might also involve the payment of tribute (iasak) or the provision of hostages (amanaty).Footnote 17 At the same time, these practices were not applied in any uniform way and did not necessarily imply the involvement of a full set of such practices. Some agreements incorporated only certain elements of this political repertoire, while others involved none at all.Footnote 18
Scholars have long noted that such agreements could be interpreted quite differently by the parties involved. As Michael Khodarkovsky has shown, shert and related forms of agreement were often understood differently by Russian officials and their counterparts on the frontier.Footnote 19 Gregory Afinogenov, in turn, argues that for local groups these rituals often signified a temporary and non-exclusive form of alliance, even as Russian officials tended to read them as a more durable acceptance of vassalage.Footnote 20 Much of the existing literature, has therefore emphasized the asymmetry of understanding that accompanied such encounters. This perspective implies that the opposing parties, remained largely unaware of the meanings and consequences that Russian authorities sought to attach to such agreements and their accompanying rituals.Footnote 21
The Khivan case of 1700 examined in this essay, however, points to a more complex dynamic. As we hope to be able to show, the parties involved did not simply misunderstand one another, nor were they operating with entirely incompatible assumptions. One may observe instead a situation in which both sides seem to have been aware of the meanings their counterparts sought to attach to such arrangements. However, this did not remove uncertainty; quite to the contrary, it left a room for ambiguity, within which different claims could be advanced without being brought into a fixed and binding interpretation.
To explore how such ambiguity operated in practice, it is necessary to look beyond the wording of the petition itself and examine the circumstances in which it was produced. To reconstruct this process, the essay focuses on the actions and motivations of individual participants - Dostak Bahādur, Prince Boris Golitsyn, and intermediaries such as Mikhail Zamanov - against the backdrop of court rivalries and institutional competition in the closing years of the seventeenth century. It was through these interactions that the language of submission entered Russian-Khivan relations around 1700.
Did Khiva Submit? Historiographical Perspectives
The episode of the Khivan Khan’s alleged act of submission to Peter I has long attracted scholarly interest since at least the nineteenth century.Footnote 22 Interest in the topic has been further facilitated owing to the survival of the relevant textual outputs. Many of the documents related to the Khivan embassy of 1700 have been published, including the Persian-language petition submitted by the Khivan envoy Dostak Bahādur in 1700, its contemporary Russian translation, and some items of correspondence exchanged between the courts of Khiva and Muscovy.Footnote 23
Drawing on this body of sources, much of the existing scholarship, including that dating back to the Russian imperial era, seems to have reached a certain consensus regarding the case. As the majority of authors have concluded, in 1700 the Khivan Shāh Niyāz Khān did submit a pledge of loyalty through his envoy – Dostak Bahādur – and this plea was accepted by Peter I. However, as the conclusion further goes, this vassalage was largely formal in character and did not entail any far-reaching political implications for either party.Footnote 24
More recently, however, the historian Artem Andreev has offered a different interpretation of the episode. Through a detailed reconstruction of Dostak Bahādur’s embassy in Moscow and a close comparison of the Persian petition with its contemporary Russian translation, Andreev arrived at two principal conclusions.Footnote 25 First, that the Russian translation presents a corrupted rendering of the Persian text, because the Persian petition contains no explicit request for subjecthood, while the Russian translation introduced precisely such a claim. Second, that this distortion resulted not from accidental error on the part of the translators but rather was a purposeful “forgery” (podlog) orchestrated by Prince Boris Golitsyn, one of the most influential statesmen at the Russian court.Footnote 26
Andreev, however, does not entirely exclude the possibility that the idea of submission may have been present in a less direct form. He assumes that the Persian formulaic expression employed in the petition “to be a friend of the Great Padishah [Peter I]’s friends and an enemy of his enemies” (ba dost-e pādishāh-e buzurg dost shodan va ba dushmanash dushman shodan), potentially could have been understood as implying a hierarchical political relationship.Footnote 27
Andreev’s observations draw attention to an important problem: the apparent gap between the Persian petition and the meaning later ascribed to it by Muscovite officials. At the same time, his analysis remains grounded in a careful reading of the petition and its translation. Such perspective, however, captures only part of the story. Like many diplomatic texts of the early modern world, the petition emerged through a chain of interactions involving the envoy, translators, courtiers, and ruler, each operating within their own political horizons and institutional constraints. The circumstances surrounding the embassy, the individuals involved, and the setting in which the document was produced seems to deserve equal attention. The pages that follow therefore shift attention to the broader political, and bureaucratic context of this encounter. This helps to shift the question from whether the petition was in fact a forgery to how it came to be understood as an act of submission.
Before Submission: Dostak Bahādur’s Embassy to Muscovy, 1699–1700
Despite their differing interpretations, both Andreev and earlier scholarship associate the first appearance of the language of Khivan submission with the embassy of Dostak Bahādur to Moscow in 1700. It is therefore worth examining more closely the circumstances surrounding the arrival of the Khivan diplomatic emissary in Russia and the course of his subsequent sojourn. Such an inquiry is made possible thanks to a sophisticated form of diplomatic record-keeping introduced by the early modern Muscovite bureaucracy. More specifically, a category of records known as stolptsy (or stolpy priezdov) is helpful to trace the progress of the embassy from its arrival on the imperial frontier to its audiences in Moscow and eventual departure.Footnote 28
In keeping with established practice, a distinct stolpets related to the embassy of Dostak Bahādur opens with a report sent 28 February 1699 by the governor (voevoda) of Astrakhan, the principal gateway for the Central Asian envoys to Muscovy. The report informed Moscow about the arrival of a certain Dostak Bahādur, at the helm of a fifty-person strong diplomatic mission and recorded the first formal reception accorded to the delegation.Footnote 29 Received “according to diplomatic custom” (po-posol’skomu obychaiu), the envoy presented his credentials as emissary of Shāh Niyāz Khān of Khiva and outlined the purposes of his mission. Interestingly, during this meeting the Khivan envoy mentioned nothing about his sovereign’s intention to pledge submission. This omission seems surprising, for such a declaration could have potentially elevated the status of the mission and secured more favourable conditions for its stay in Muscovy, something that every Khivan ambassador would have eagerly sought to achieve.Footnote 30 Yet the subsequent exchange between Astrakhan and Moscow does not offer any indication of the Khivans’ intentions to take such action.
Nor is there any reference to the prospective submission in the first months of Dostak Bahādur’s stay in Moscow, where he arrived on 21 January 1700.Footnote 31 Soon after his arrival in the capital, the Khivan envoy presented Russian officials with a letter from his sovereign. This khanal missive again did not express any intention to pledge submission to the Russian tsar. Instead, the Khivan ruler highlighted the customary purpose of sending envoys to the Muscovite state, which was to inquire about the well-being of his Russian counterpart. The letter further emphasized the continuation of this practice, with the khan stating that he was personally sending his envoy to Moscow for the purpose of inquiring about the well-being of the reigning tsar and to facilitate trade between their respective realms:
“the previous Khans used to send their envoys to the Muscovite State so as to inquire about [good] health of the Great Sovereign [of Russia]. In compliance with these previous practices, I am now myself sending my envoy to the reigning city of Moscow to inquire about the well-being of the Great Sovereign [of Russia] … and for the purpose of facilitating trade between our countries”Footnote 32
From January through March 1700, Dostak Bahādur remained in active communication with Muscovite officials on a variety of matters, most of them routine in nature. For instance, his petitions concerned such practical issues as accommodation and trade. Since no space was initially available at the Ambassadorial Compound (Posol’skii dvor) in Kitai-gorod, the Khivan delegation was lodged in a private household; in March, the envoy successfully petitioned for a transfer to the official diplomatic quarters.Footnote 33 He also sought permission for himself and the merchants accompanying the embassy to conduct various commercial transactions.Footnote 34 None of these exchanges, however, contained any indication that the mission had arrived in order to place Khiva under Russian rule.
It was not until May 1700, some eighteen months into his stay in Muscovy, that Dostak Bahādur presented the Persian-language petition that came to be regarded as Khiva’s pledge for submission. Even then, the document itself was primarily concerned with commercial matters. Centring on three separate clauses (maṭlab), it sought to improve conditions for Khivan and Bukharan merchants trading in Muscovy. Among other requests, the envoy asked for a reduction in customs duties on imported goods from one-tenth to one-twentieth and for permission to import and export a number of commodities subject to official restrictions.Footnote 35 As such, the proposals of Dostak Bahādur did not significantly differ from requests made by his predecessors, other Khivan envoys.Footnote 36
Particular attention should be paid to the opening clause of the petition. Translated literally from the Persian, it reads as follows:
The reason of composing this writings is that on the 22nd of the blessed [month of] Shavval, in the year 1114 [A.H.], the humble supplicant Dostak Bahādur, envoy, having come before the exalted Prince Boris Alekseevich [Golitsyn], after performing due attendance, conveyed the verbal statements of Shāh Niyāz Khān, according to the latter’s command, to the noble hearing of Prince Boris Alekseevich, so that it might be reported to the illustrious attention of the benefactor [the Great Sovereign of Russia]. So, he presented the petition of his khan, as outlined in details below [as follows:] our Khan sent his humble servant as an envoy for the sake of friendship and unanimity, and [ensuring] the passage of the merchants on both sides, back and forth, and [ensuring] the safety of the routes, and [also being willing] to be a friend to the Great Sovereign’s friends and an enemy to his enemies…. The matters are as follows. First point: our Khan requests from the Great Sovereign [of Russia] for the sake of friendship, unanimity, and mutual exchange …Footnote 37
The Russian translation prepared shortly thereafter, while providing an adequate word-by-word translation of the remaining clauses, offered a more expansive interpretation of this opening clause. It reads as follows:
Translation from the Persian of the clauses submitted to Prince Boris Alekseevich [Golitsyn] by the Khivan envoy, which states as follows: in the current year of 1700, on 1 April, while he, the envoy, was in Moscow at the office of [epithets] Boyar and Prince Boris Alekseevich, he conveyed what was orally told to him by Shāh Niyāz Khān […] At the beginning, he reported that my Khan instructed me to ask you, Boris Alekseevich, to convey his [Khan’s] requests to the Great Sovereign [of Russia]: Firstly, to be in his [=Tsar’s] subjecthood. Secondly, to be a friend of his, Great Sovereign’s friend and an enemy of his enemy …Footnote 38
It is difficult to overlook the discrepancy between the opening clauses as presented in the Persian and Russian texts, which seems substantial. Whereas the Persian wording points to the Khan’s intention to maintain friendship and mutual trade, which seemed fully consistent with the proposals of the Khivan authorities during previous missions, the Russian version presents the passage in completely different terms. It portrays the Khivan ruler as expressing a willingness to enter the tsar’s subjecthood.
Both versions of the document further reveal that the petition’s contents had already been communicated orally by Dostak Bahādur during meetings with Prince Boris Golitsyn at the latter’s private estate in April 1700. Moreover, as both texts highlight, it was Prince Golitsyn who urged the Khivan envoy to commit these proposals to writing and present them in the form of a formal petition.
The contents of the petition, or, more likely, its Russian translation, were subsequently reported to Peter I. Whatever ambiguities may have existed in the Persian original, they do not appear to have shaped the tsar’s understanding of the document. On 6 June 1700, Peter granted an audience to Dostak Bahādur,Footnote 39 and several weeks later, on 30 June, entrusted him with a reply addressed to Shāh Niyāz Khān. In this letter, the Russian ruler informed his Khivan counterpart that his request had been granted and that he was henceforth “graciously commanded to remain in the subjecthood of Our Great Sovereign Tsar Majesty.”Footnote 40 Corresponding instructions were also sent to the authorities in Astrakhan. The provincial voevoda was directed to assist members of the embassy and merchants arriving from Khiva and Bukhara in recognition of the khan’s newly established relationship with the Russian crown. Dostak Bahādur’s mission was also exempted from customs duties on its merchandise.Footnote 41
Clearly, in the eyes of the Russian ruler, the meaning of the petition was hardly in doubt.
Prince Golitsyn’s Bid for Diplomatic Authority
For more than a century prior to the episode under consideration, all dealings with foreign rulers and their emissaries fell within the primary jurisdiction of the Posol’skii prikaz (the ambassadorial chancellery). Throughout the seventeenth century, this institution served as the principal organ of Muscovite diplomacy, overseeing the reception of foreign embassies, the dispatch of Russian envoys abroad, and the conduct of diplomatic correspondence. It functioned as the locus of all diplomatic exchanges: this institution was where all diplomatic correspondence took place, whether incoming or outgoing, and where relevant information was centralized, produced, copied and preserved.Footnote 42
Central Asian affairs were by no means exceptions to the same pattern. Envoys travelling between Muscovy and the khanates of Khiva and Bukhara ordinarily conducted their business through the Posol’skii prikaz and its personnel. For instance, the embassy of ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Azhizov in 1689–1691– the last Khivan mission before the arrival of Dostak Bahādur – was handled in this manner, as were most preceding diplomatic exchanges with the region.Footnote 43
Given the long-established primacy of the Posol’skii prikaz in Muscovite foreign affairs, it is all the more noteworthy that Dostak Bahādur’s mission in 1699–1700 was handled not by that office but another one – the Chancellery of the Kazan Palace (Prikaz Kazanskogo Dvortsa) or, simpler, Kazanskii prikaz (Kazan Chancellery). This office had been mostly known for governing the inner territories of Muscovy, primarily along the middle and southern Volga region.Footnote 44 At the turn of the eighteenth century, however, and for reasons discussed below, the chancellery seems to have come to play an increasingly prominent role in dealings with polities situated along Russia’s southern frontier and, in particular, with the Khanate of Khiva.
The increased authority of Kazanskii prikaz seems to have been closely tied to the growing prominence of its head, Prince Boris Alekseevich Golitsyn (1654–1713). It is therefore worth taking a closer look at Golitsyn’s role, not least because Dostak Bahādur was in direct contact with him before submitting the petition that later became the focus of controversy.
A scion of one of Muscovy’s most distinguished aristocratic families, Prince Boris Alekseevich Golitsyn was drawn into court politics at an early age.Footnote 45 In 1683 he was appointed head of the Prikaz Kazanskogo Dvortsa (Chancellery of the Kazan Palace; often abbreviated as Kazanskii prikaz) an office he would hold for much of his subsequent career.Footnote 46 Golitsyn’s career received a major boost from his close association with Peter I, then a juvenile co-ruler of Russia. According to some evidence, in 1680s Golitsyn served as diad’ka, that is, a tutor or guardian to the young tsar.Footnote 47 His support for Peter I seems to have been unfailing during what was arguably the most precarious period of the young tsar’s life. In the late 1680s, Peter I found himself violently at odds with his half-sister and the regent Sophia Alekseevna and her favourite – Prince Vasilii Golitsyn, a cousin of our Boris Golitsyn. Even his kinship ties with the mightiest courtier did not avert Boris Golitsyn from providing unanimous support to Peter I.Footnote 48 In 1689, Prince Boris seems to have played a key role in helping Peter I to eventually overthrow the regency of his half-sister and her mighty favourite.Footnote 49
Golitsyn’s loyalty during Peter’s struggle against Sophia Alekseevna seems to have been richly rewarded once the young tsar consolidated full regnal authority. Although technically Golitsyn retained his position as the head of the Kazan Palace Chancellery, his influence soon extended far beyond its official remit. By the 1690s, together with Lev Naryshkin, Peter’s maternal uncle, he ranked among the most powerful statesmen at court.Footnote 50 As one biographer has observed, Golitsyn had become “a key man of the new regime.”Footnote 51
Johan Georg Korb, secretary to the Habsburg mission in Moscow, reported that relations between Golitsyn and Naryshkin, the two leading courtiers, were frosty, as both men were “inflamed with mutual competition and pursue each other with mutual hate … each of them express claims to each other’s remits.”Footnote 52 The rivalry was especially evident in matters of foreign politics. The Ambassadorial Chancellery was entrusted to Lev Naryshkin, although some authors noted that his authority was largely nominal, and that in fact all real work at the office was conducted by Emel’ian Ignat’evich Ukraintsev (1641–1708).Footnote 53 Be that as it may, Golitsyn, however, was unwilling to acknowledge the institution’s monopoly over diplomacy. As Korb remarked, the prince “did not recognize any superiority of the Ambassadorial Chancellery” in matters of foreign relations.Footnote 54
By the closing years of the seventeenth century, however, the balance of power at court had begun to shift.Footnote 55 Increasingly dissatisfied with the established boyar elite, the tsar began to distance himself from several of his senior advisers and rely less more on a narrower circle of trusted associates.Footnote 56 Although Golitsyn and Naryshkin formally retained their positions, the tsar started making major decisions without consulting them, especially in matters of foreign politics.Footnote 57
One indication of this shift came from Peter’s negotiations with the Danish envoy Paul Heins over a coalition between Russia, Denmark, and Poland against Sweden. The initial talks with the Danish emissary began in late 1698 and continued into the following year.Footnote 58 Conducted between late 1698 and 1699, these talks took place without the participation of either Golitsyn or Naryshkin, for that matter. The reports indicate that Golitsyn was excluded to such an extent that he did not even know where and when some of the meetings were being held.Footnote 59 Furthermore, as the talks progressed, Peter I made another significant decision, reportedly without consulting with Golitsyn. On 2 April 1699, he ordered the dispatch of Emel’ian Ukraintsev, the factual head of Posol’skii prikaz, to Istanbul to negotiate a new truce with the Ottoman sultan.Footnote 60
Golitsyn could hardly have welcomed these developments. As reports go, he was highly jealous if not outrightly angered with Peter’s private negotiations with the Danish diplomat.Footnote 61 Once among the most influential figures at court, Golitsyn now found himself largely confined to matters that while they were important, were nonetheless secondary, such as to holding talks with Kalmyk chieftains regarding their participation in upcoming campaigns led by Peter I. This was a far cry from his former role. Yet if anyone understood the opportunities and dangers of life at Peter’s court, it was Golitsyn. Having served as the young tsar’s tutor and political ally, he knew how quickly favour could shift. As the Danish envoy Georg Grund remarked, Peter I displayed an “extraordinary inclination to change his attitude toward those around him,” readily revising his intentions and, above all, showing a pronounced tendency “to elevate those who could propose new agendas or lend an appearance of legitimacy to particularly risky undertakings.”Footnote 62
It was likely under these circumstances that the arrival of the Khivan envoy Dostak Bahādur on Russia’s southern frontier first came to Golitsyn’s attention.
The Road to Submission
We lack precise information about the circumstances under which Boris Golitsyn first became acquainted with the Khivan envoy Dostak Bahādur. Johan Georg Korb noted that in May–June1699, Golitsyn undertook a brief visit to Astrakhan.Footnote 63 At the same time, the Khivan envoy was also present in the city, as his ambassadorial log makes clear. The coincidence of these timelines makes it plausible that the two men may have met during Golitsyn’s visit in Astrakhan, providing an initial point of contact for the exchanges that followed, even if the language of submission entered the relationship only later, in Moscow.
Meanwhile, Emel’ian Ukraintsev, then de facto head of the Russian Ambassadorial Chancellery, departed for Istanbul.Footnote 64 Following a brief meeting with Peter I in Voronezh, he arrived at the Ottoman capital on 6 September 1699. Around the same time, the Khivan envoy Dostak Bahādur departed from Astrakhan for Moscow.
In light of the forthcoming arrival of the Khivan envoy in Moscow, and Ukraintsev’s absence in Russia, Prince Golitsyn seems to have succeeded in persuading Peter I to place relations with polities to the south, including Khiva, under his supervision. How exactly he secured this mandate remains unclear. It is possible, however, that he already referred to the Khivan khan’s alleged willingness to enter the tsar’s allegiance. Golitsyn could also point to precedent. Just two years prior, on 17 July 1697, he had concluded an agreement with Ayuki-Khan, a Kalmyk leader. As Michael Khodarkovsky has observed although the document was, in effect, “an agreement between two equal powers,”Footnote 65 the Russian officials interpreted it as confirmation of Ayuki Khan’s subject status.Footnote 66 In this context, Peter I may have had little reason to doubt Golitsyn’s assurances concerning the prospects of a similar arrangement with Khiva.
Further evidence that Prince Golitsyn justified the extension of his remit by referring to Dostak Bahādur’s upcoming arrival in Moscow can be found in an edict issued in the name of Peter I on 5 January 1700, on the very eve of the envoy’s arrival. The wording of the edict makes this connection explicit:
On 5 January 1700 conveying the order of the Tsar Petr Alekseevich, the Great Sovereign and Autocrat of all Russias, from the Kazan Palace to Ambassadorial Chancellery: the Great Sovereign instructed that all [records] pertaining to arrival of envoys, couriers and state merchants sent from the Khans of Khiva-Urgench, or Shemakhi, or all other neighbouring polities up to the Persia[n border], upon personal edict of the Great Sovereign [of Russia] are to be transferred from the Ambassadorial Chancellery to the Kazan Palace under its jurisdiction…. And the Khivan envoy [Dostak Bahādur] will soon be in MoscowFootnote 67
As the document makes clear, the anticipated arrival of the Khivan envoy was directly invoked as a reason for transferring all diplomatic files in the possession of the Posol’skii prikaz concerning Russia’s previous dealings with some polities –“Khiva, Urgench, Shemakha, and other polities, bordering Persia” – to the jurisdiction of the Kazan Chancellery. The reason was stated explicitly: “the Khivan envoy will soon be in Moscow.”
As a clerk’s note indicates, the order was implemented without delay: by 20 January, the Ambassadorial Chancellery forwarded the relevant materials to the Kazan Chancellery, under Prince Golitsyn’s leadership.Footnote 68 Meanwhile, the explicit reference in the edict to the transfer of authority over polities “up to the Persian border” provides sufficient grounds to suggest that Golitsyn succeeded in persuading Peter I to formalize this expansion of the Kazan Chancellery’s jurisdiction. At the very least, the document suggests that the Khivan embassy served as the immediate occasion for a significant reallocation of diplomatic responsibilities.
The timing of Golitsyn’s manoeuvre seems to have been particularly favourable. While the Khivan envoy was making his way to Moscow in the autumn and early winter 1699, the Ambassadorial Chancellery was in a weakened position. Emel’ian Ukraintsev, the principal administrator of the institution, was abroad on a diplomatic mission in Istanbul and reportedly lacked the trust of Peter I as well.Footnote 69 For several months, from Ukraintsev’s departure in September 1699 until Feodor Golovin’s appointment in February 1700,Footnote 70 no comparable figure stood at the head of Russia’s foreign-affairs chancellery. It was during this interval that Golitsyn succeeded in extending the jurisdiction of the Kazan Chancellery over relations with the southern frontier.
Having successfully secured an expansion of the Kazan Chancellery, Golitsyn still had to prove the value of this new arrangement before the tsar. One way of doing so was to demonstrate that the transfer of southern affairs to his office could produce political results. This consideration may help explain how the project of Khivan submission began to take shape through a series of meetings between Golitsyn and the Khivan envoy, reportedly held at Golitsyn’s estate in the Moscow of Dubrovitsy in April 1700.Footnote 71 Following these talks, on 3 May 1700 Dostak Bahādur submitted a petition that was subsequently interpreted as a pledge of submission on behalf of the Khivan khan.
There are noteworthy parallels between the chronology of these talks at Dubrovitsy and the contemporaneous negotiations conducted by Emel’ian Ukraintsev in Istanbul. Dostak Bahādur submitted his petition on 3 May 1700, shortly after Ukraintsev’s negotiations with the Ottoman authorities had reached an advanced stage.Footnote 72 On 3 June 1700, Ukraintsev concluded a thirty-year truce with the Ottoman Empire. Three days later, Peter granted an audience to the Khivan envoy and soon confirmed the acceptance of the Khivan khan into his subjecthood. This is not to suggest that developments unfolding in Istanbul directly shaped the course of talks between Golitsyn and Dostak Bahādur. Yet the coincidence is nonetheless noteworthy. By the spring of 1700, reports of Ukraintsev’s progress in negotiations with the Ottoman authorities were reaching Moscow, and the successful conclusion of his mission promised to enhance his standing. For Golitsyn, whose relations with Ukraintsev had not always been straightforward,Footnote 73 and who had only recently secured an expansion of the Kazan Chancellery’s authority at the expense of the Ambassadorial Chancellery into an area traditionally associated with the latter, the appearance of a diplomatic success of his own making would have been especially valuable.
However, events soon shifted Peter’s attention elsewhere. At that particular juncture, his attention was already shifting to developments on the opposite flank of the empire, where preparations were underway for war with the Kingdom of Sweden over control of the Baltic coastline. On 30 August 1700, shortly after receiving news of Ottoman truce, Peter declared war on Sweden and departed for Narva.Footnote 74 These new developments left little room for concerns about Khiva. Only in 1702, after the situation on the Baltic front had begun to stabilize,Footnote 75 did Khiva again attracted attention in Moscow. In the closing months of that year, Dostak Bahādur reappeared on Russia’s borders, now representing a new Khivan ruler, Ārang Muḥammad Khān.Footnote 76 In all other respects, the subsequent course of events followed a familiar pattern.
Once again, the Ambassadorial Chancellery was ordered to transfer all relevant materials to the Kazan Chancellery.Footnote 77 Once again, Dostak Bahādur met with Golitsyn at Dubrovitsy before submitting a petition to the tsar.Footnote 78 And once again, a Persian text concerned primarily with friendship, cooperation, and trade was rendered in Russian as a declaration of the Khivan khan’s submission to Peter I.Footnote 79 The petition was accepted, and the news of another ruler entering the tsar’s allegiance was reported in the Moskovskie vedomosti, as noted in the opening section of this essay.
Mikhail Zamanov. Broker of Submission
While the historical reconstruction presented here seems plausible, it still lacks a crucial piece of the puzzle. Given the hierarchical culture of the Muscovite court, it is difficult to imagine sustained negotiations between Boris Golitsyn and a Khivan envoy of comparatively modest rank having proceeded without mediation. If contact was first established in Astrakhan and later continued in Moscow, there must have been individuals who connected the two men and helped maintain the relationship.
A small piece of evidence found in the records pertaining to Dostak Bahādur’s embassy, points to a certain individual who seems to have played a salient role in this diplomatic encounter. One of the few traces of his involvement appears in Peter I’s letter to the Khivan ruler Shāh Niyāz Khān confirming his acceptance into the tsar’s subjecthood. The letter was prepared in both Russian and Persian versions, and a marginal note added by a chancery clerk identifies the compiler of the Persian text as a certain Mikhailo (Mikhail) Zamanov.Footnote 80
At first glance, Zamanov seems little more than a translator employed in the production of diplomatic correspondence. A closer examination of his career and connections, however, suggests that his involvement extended beyond the preparation of texts and may help explain how contacts between Golitsyn and the Khivan envoy were established and maintained.
There are some controversies regarding the identity of Mikhail Zamanov. Some scholars have identified him with Mamatagei Zamanov, a nobleman from Gilan who entered Muscovite service in 1674.Footnote 81 More recently, however, Elena Gusarova, drawing on Astrakhan administrative records, has suggested that Mamatagei Zamanov was in fact the maternal uncle of the Mikhail Zamanov, who appears in our sources. According to her reconstruction, the younger Zamanov followed his uncle’s path: he settled in Astrakhan and converted to Orthodoxy under the name Mikhail Borisovich Zamanov.Footnote 82 Like his uncle before him, he built a successful career and amassed a solid fortune.Footnote 83 Known for his skill as translator and intermediary, the younger Zamanov was regularly employed by the Astrakhan administration in negotiations with neighbouring peoples and polities. He frequently acted as a go-between for Russian officials, both central and provincial, and tribal leaders and local notables across the Lower Volga and the North Caucasus.Footnote 84
What is particularly noteworthy for the purposes of the present study is Zamanov’s close association with Prince Boris Golitsyn, the head of the Kazan Chancellery. According to some reports, Golitsyn acted as his godfather upon his conversion to Orthodoxy.Footnote 85 Golitsyn seems to have frequently relied on Zamanov’s services to carry out “the most delicate assignments” relating to affairs in the Lower Volga.Footnote 86 It is perhaps difficult therefore to regard Zamanov’s appearance in the records related to the Khivan submission as coincidental.
Given Zamanov’s connections with the Khivan community in Astrakhan,Footnote 87 and his close ties to Prince Golitsyn, it becomes easier to understand how he may have become involved in this diplomatic encounter. We may assume that Dostak Bahādur came into contact with him soon after envoy’s arrival in Astrakhan in late 1698. If so, Zamanov would have been well placed to introduce him to Prince Boris Golitsyn, his patron and godfather, during the latter’s visit to Astrakhan the following spring. Such a role would also help explain Zamanov’s subsequent involvement in further developments. He may have accompanied the envoy to Moscow, as he is known to have done in the case of other diplomatic missions,Footnote 88 and later assisted in the preparation of Persian-language documents connected with the embassy, including the petition submitted in Dostak Bahādur’s name.
While the idea of the Khivan submission seems to have emerged within a circle that included Dostak Bahādur, Mikhail Zamanov, and Prince Boris Golitsyn, it is difficult to determine who first advanced it and who ultimately stood to benefit most from it. Golitsyn may have been the driving force, particularly in light of his recent efforts to regain Peter I’s confidence. At that juncture, the prospect of bringing a distant ruler into the tsar’s allegiance could only enhance his standing. The initiative may however equally have come from Zamanov and Dostak Bahādur before reaching the Russian statesman. By that time, Zamanov had already spent years assisting Golitsyn in frontier affairs and had witnessed negotiations in which Russian officials treated various forms of agreement as evidence of subjecthood. Such reasoning therefore would hardly have been unfamiliar to him.
What can be established with greater confidence is that submission did not seem to have formed part of the embassy’s original agenda, given that no reference to it can be found in the records before May 1700. This points out that these negotiations remained open-ended and that the language of submission emerged only at a later stage. At certain point, perhaps against the backdrop of Ukraintsev’s diplomatic breakthrough in Istanbul or in response to other considerations, Dostak Bahādur’s requests were eventually set down in writing and presented as an appeal for submission. This move was not completely without effect. Albeit temporary, Golitsyn seems to have strengthened his position and extended his jurisdiction over southern polities, including those in Central Asia. He continued to exercise this authority in subsequent years, as evidenced by his dealings with the Khivan embassy of 1703 and the Bukharan mission of 1705.Footnote 89
Dostak Bahādur’s motives are more difficult to reconstruct. Was he unaware of the way in which his petition would be interpreted by Russian officials, or did he anticipate, and perhaps even accept, such a reading? An explicit acknowledgement of suzerainty of a Christian tsar would have would have been a hazardous step. Had Dostak acted without the khan’s approval, he risked serious consequences upon his return to Khiva. If, meanwhile, he made this move with the Khivan authorities’ sanctions, it could then trigger strong opposition from rival factions within Khiva and complicate relations with neighbouring Muslim polities and tribal confederations, including the Karakalpaks, Turkmens, and Kazakhs, whom the khans traditionally sough to keep in their gravitational pool.Footnote 90
This may help explain why Dostak Bahādur’s Persian petition contains no explicit declaration of submission.Footnote 91 In this context, his approach bears some resemblance to what Brian Boeck has termed in a different context “plausible deniability,” in which political actors advanced claims while preserving room to contest their formal implications.Footnote 92 And the petition seems to have offered precisely such a possibility. The language he employed did not require him openly to concede any diminution of the khan’s sovereignty, yet it allowed Russian officials to interpret his requests in precisely that manner. So, without openly conceding any limitation on the khan’s sovereignty, he secured the goodwill of influential Muscovite officials together with a number of practical advantages, including customs exemptions, permission to engage in lucrative trade, and access to restricted goods.
The arrangement seems to have served the interests of all those involved. Perhaps for this reason, a few years later it was replayed once again along a familiar script. As noted above, in 1702–1703 Dostak Bahādur once again appeared at the court of Peter I, this time as envoy of the new Khivan ruler Ārang Muḥammad Khān. On this occasion, however, the episode carried even more concrete material advantages. Encouraged by the prospect of Khivan reaffirmation of submission, Peter I ordered an allowance of 1,000 gold chervonets to be granted to his new ‘servitor,’ the khan of Khiva.Footnote 93
Some revealing details concerning this payment emerged during the subsequent Khivan embassy of 1713-1714, led by a certain Ashūr Bek. Referring to the earlier precedent, the envoy stated that his predecessor, Dostak Bahādur, had in fact received 500 chervonets.Footnote 94 What became of the remaining half of the sum authorized by Peter I in 1703 remains unclear. Whether the missing funds were retained by Dostak Bahādur, remained in Russian hands, divided among intermediaries, or found their way elsewhere cannot now be established. In that political environment, profession of submission could be a lucrative business if one only knew how.
Loyalty through a piece of paper or in lieu of conclusion
The historical reconstruction presented here left one participant in this story in the background: Peter I himself. If the language of submission served the purposes of individuals such as Golitsyn, Zamanov, and Dostak Bahādur, was the tsar also aware of its ambiguities?
A certain clue may be found in the testimony provided several decades later by Qutlu Muḥammad Tevkelev, perhaps better known by his Russianized name Aleksei Tevkelev. Looking back on Peter’s efforts to bring the Kazakh Minor Horde under Russian subjecthood,Footnote 95 Tevkelev attributed to the tsar the following remark:
[…] Peter the Great expressed a strong desire […] to bring the vast Kazakh hordes – which though known since ancient times remains unfamiliar today – under Russian subjecthood […] And he particularly desired that should said horde be unwilling to accept [Russian] subjecthood, I was to spare no effort, regardless of expenses, even to the point of spending up to a million [rubbles] if needed, but only to bring them [=the Kazakhs] under the protection of the Russian Empire, even if only by means of a single piece of paper at least… Footnote 96
Tevkelev may well have been writing in hindsight, but his recollection suggests that a declaration of submission had a political value of its own. And a single piece of paper could be useful without resolving how far that authority actually extended or what obligations it implied.
For all its particularities, the Khivan case had broader parallels in this respect. Since the sixteenth century, Russian officials sought to structure their relations with frontier societies through a language of hierarchy, most commonly articulated in the form of subject–suzerain relations. The practical application of this language displayed what Brian Boeck has termed a degree of “tactical flexibility.”Footnote 97 Limited resources and the lack of effective mechanisms for direct rule often encouraged arrangements that asserted claims of authority without necessarily establishing immediate territorial control. As Charles Steinwedel has observed, groups such as the Don Cossacks and the Bashkirs became part of a “relatively privileged periphery,” retaining a legal status more favourable within the empire than most of the tsars’ Slavic subjects.Footnote 98 More often than not, such arrangements allowed Russian authorities to advance claims of supremacy without immediately confronting the practical limits of their power.
Much of the existing literature, however, has treated these agreements as one-sided arrangements shaped primarily by Russian elites, often implying that their counterparts remained largely unaware of the meanings and consequences attached to them. The story of the Khivan submission discussed in this essay points in a somewhat different direction. The Khivan envoy Dostak Bahādur, the Astrakhan intermediary Mikhail Zamanov, and Prince Boris Golitsyn all had reasons to pursue the arrangement that emerged in 1700. It should therefore not be considered as an act of deceit or simply a mistranslation imposed by Russian officials.
This outcome, however, owed much to the individuals involved. Mikhail Zamanov seems to have been one of those who made it possible. Positioned between Astrakhan’s Khivan community and Prince Golitsyn’s circle, he was well placed to bring together individuals who otherwise operated in very different social and political environments. Through this arrangement, Dostak Bahādur could pursue the interests of his mission without openly compromising the khan’s sovereignty. Prince Golitsyn, for his part, could present the outcome as evidence of an expansion of the tsar’s authority and acquire a diplomatic success at a moment when he had particular need of one. Peter I, meanwhile, had little reason to reject a declaration whose political value did not depend on immediate enforcement. The same document, as we can observe, could satisfy different purposes at the same time.
The differences in meaning attached to such agreements should not be taken as evidence of misunderstanding or deception. The Khivan case discussed in this essay may also gesture to the fact that a political accommodation could sometimes be reached without full agreement on what, precisely, had been agreed. Much of the significance of the Khivan submission of 1700, therefore, seems to have lain precisely in the fact that it left important questions open to interpretation.
Acknowledgements
This essay originated as a paper presented at the conference Towards a Global Diplomatic History (c. 1400–1900), held at the University of Warwick on 30–31 May 2024. I am grateful to my colleagues Artem Andreev, Guido van Meersbergen, Sean Pollock, Paolo Sartori, Nuryoghdi Toshov, and Thomas Welsford for their valuable comments and suggestions at different stages of this work. I also wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers for Itinerario for their constructive suggestions. All errors contained herein are mine and mine alone.
Funding Statement
The research was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF-Der Wissenschaftsfonds), project P 53433-G “Central Asia in Russian Diplomatic Archives”.
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