A Palm Sunday Procession Before the Kremlin NYPL, Slavic and Baltic Division

Another dramatic rebellion occurred in the Orthodox Church, which was undergoing a spiritual revival in the mid-17th century. Many clergy believed that local liturgy was not true to original Orthodox practice and hence was contaminated. As part of a general effort to "purify" church ceremony and translations of church service books, a Church council in 1654 tried to reform traditional Russian rituals to make them conform to Byzantine Greek practice, for instance, making the sign of the cross with three fingers raised instead of two. A group that came to be known as the Old Believers, many of whom were zealous reformers, considered the reformed practices heretical, and Patriarch Nikon (1605–1681), their chief advocate, a heretic. These people believed, instead, in the purity of the Muscovite religious tradition and way of worship that had evolved over the centuries. Exhibiting a mixture of piety, zealotry, nationalism, and xenophobia, this group soon numbered nearly one-third of the population. In a vivid autobiography, Avvakum (ca. 1620–1682), one of the leaders, recounted how the government employed “fire, whip, and gallows” to persecute the sect, which became a permanent dissident group in society.

	Sofiia Miloslavskaia, Regent of the Muscovite Tsardom NYPL, Slavic and Baltic Division

In contrast to the Old Believers, many other Russians welcomed new ideas and a more western way of life. After parts of Ukraine were annexed in 1654—Kiev (in Ukrainian, Kyïv) and the area east of the Dniepr River—secular and religious higher learning filtered into the state from academies located in Kiev and Kharkov (Kharkiv). In addition, by the 1670s, nearly 18,000 craftsmen and military experts had settled in the Foreign Quarter of Moscow. Under Aleksei—a profoundly pious tsar but also a leader in secular innovation—a taste for snuff, roses, asparagus, portrait painting, and ballet challenged the strictures of the Domostroi. However, not all aspects of society moved away from Muscovite mores; elite Russian women remained in Eastern seclusion in the terem.

	The Co-Tsars Ivan V and Peter I NYPL, Slavic and Baltic Division

In part to escape the fate of females, the educated and westernized sister of Fedor III (r. 1676–82), Sofiia (1657–1704), took advantage of the bloody struggle for the throne that followed her brother's death. Supported by the elite guards called the strel’tsy, Sofiia Miloslavskaia squelched the arguments between the families of her father Aleksei’s first and second wives, the Miloslavskiis and the Naryshkins by effecting an odd arrangement whereby one son from each family took the title of co-tsar, and she ruled as regent for seven years in the name of her sickly sixteen-year-old brother, Ivan V (r. 1682–96), and her robust ten-year-old half brother, Peter I (r. 1682–1725).