In the third quarter of the century the Czar was Alexis Mikhailovich, considered a demigod, almost inaccessible to his people but called the "father of Russia", while the earth was "mother". Even when only 16 years of age he had been called the "young monk" and he spent most of every day praying and working. On fast days he frequented midnight prayers, prostrating himself on the ground as many as 1,000 to 1,500 times. He often ate only 3 meals a week. Near the end of his reign there were about 8,000,000 Russians, only a fraction of which lived in the larger towns. Most were scattered in villages in forest clearings or along the rivers. May Day, still celebrated by the communists, was an ancient holiday of rebirth and fertility after the long, frozen winter.
Czar Alexis' first wife, Marie Miloslavsky, died bearing her 14th child, but those that survived were sickly and only 2 lived to rule. Alexis then married Natalya Naryshkina, raised by his chief minister and friend, Artemon Mateev, but whose real father was a Tartar. The bride, through her upbringing in the educated Mateev's home, introduced many western ways into Czar Alexis' previously monastic life. Their "Camp David" was an immense wooden building at Preobrazhenskoe of jumbled architecture. A separate three story building with two peaked towers served for their young son Peter and his half-brother, Ivan. The palace had baths for family and servants while its elaborate contemporary at Versailles in France had none. Alexis died at 47 years, apparently of a respiratory ailment and his invalid son Fedor (by his first wife) became Czar. His legs were so swollen that he had to be carried to his coronation at age 15. His mother's family, the Miloslavskys, had Alexis’ minister and Natalya's surrogate father (Mateev) arrested, stripped of property and sent as a state prisoner to Pustozersk, a remote town north of the Arctic circle - such has always been and remains the custom for change of political power in Russia’ Peter and his mother remained secluded in the Kremlin.
Fedor, with a scurvy-like disease, mild-mannered and relatively intelligent, of ten had to rule giant Russia lying on his back and he lived only 6 more years. But he did one great thing by abolishing a medieval system of precedence which had burdened the administrative system with boyars (nobles) of inadequacy and allowed-henceforth offices and power to be distributed on a basis of merit, not birth. At Fedor's death, his brother Ivan would normally have been the next czar, but he was lame, nearly blind and spoke with difficulty so the throne was given to Peter, 10 years old, with the idea that Mateev, recently removed from exile, would be his advisor, although his mother Natalya would be regent.
In the middle of the century, even though Russia had tried valiantly to remain isolated from Lutheran Sweden, Catholic Poland and the Islamic Turks and Tatars, foreigners and their more modern ideas had begun to f ilter into Russia so that even the church began to doubt itself, resulting in a Great Schism, as in the Catholic World long before. Alexis' patriarch, the iron-willed Nikon was a reformist, trying to get the wandering Russian liturgy and church ritual back to the classical Greek Orthodoxy. Arch priest Avvakum, a fanatical fundamentalist, became the leader of the "old Believers" - many common people who had migrated to the Urals and forests and established remote villages. Avvakum, originally Nikon's friend, was banned to Tobolsk in Siberia in 1653, but by writing and lectures he remained a leader of the Schismatics. Nikon continued as a stern enforcer of discipline on laity and clergy alike, banning Cursing, card playing, sexual promiscuity and drinking. Eventually he assumed powers which seemed to exceed the czar 's and was brought to heel by the four Orthodox patriarchs of Jerusalem, Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria. Nikon then condemned himself to exile but the turmoil did not end and soon there was a full scale rebellion. After Fedor became czar, Avvakum wrote to him saying that his father Alexis was in hell, suffering terrible torments because he had originally backed Nikon. Fedor had the old patriarch burned at the stake, but as a martyr he inspired 20,000 old Believers to burn themselves to death in the next 6 years (1684-1690). The Schism almost destroyed the Russian Church.