[2] He was the first tsar to sign laws on his own authority and his council passed the Sobornoye Ulozheniye of 1649, which strengthened the bonds between autocracy and the lower nobility.

[3] In religious matters, he sided closely with Patriarch Nikon during the schism in the Russian Orthodox Church which saw unpopular liturgical reforms.

[2][3] While finding success in foreign affairs, his reign saw several wars with Iran, Poland (from whom left-bank Ukraine and Smolensk were annexed) and Sweden, as well as internal instabilities such as the Salt Riot in Moscow and the Cossack revolt of Stenka Razin in southern Russia.

19 March] 1629,[2] the son of Tsar Michael and Eudoxia Streshneva,[4] the sixteen-year-old Alexis acceded to the throne after his father's death on 12 July 1645.

[6] Morozov pursued a peaceful foreign policy, securing a truce with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and carefully avoiding complications with the Ottoman Empire.

On 17 January 1648, Morozov procured the marriage of the tsar with Maria Miloslavskaya, himself marrying her sister Anna, ten days later,[6] both the daughters of Ilya Danilovich Miloslavsky.

Alexis empowered Morozov to conduct reforms in reducing social tensions, however his measure of tripling the tax burden (arrears for the two years preceding 1648 was demanded) saw heightened popular discontent.

In May 1648 Muscovites rose against his faction in the Salt Riot, and the young Tsar was compelled to dismiss them and exile Morozov to the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery.

Alexis put down the Novgorod rebellion quickly, but was unable to subdue Pskov, and was forced to promise the city amnesty in return for surrender.

On 1 October 1653 a national assembly met at Moscow to sanction the war and find the means of carrying it out, and in April 1654 the army was blessed by Nikon, who had been elected patriarch in 1652.

[6] The campaign of 1654 was an uninterrupted triumph, and scores of towns, including the important fortress of Smolensk, fell into the hands of the Russians.

In the meantime, Poland had so far recovered herself as to become a much more dangerous foe than Sweden, and, as it was impossible to wage war with both simultaneously, the tsar resolved to rid himself of the Swedes first.

According to the truce, Polotsk and Polish Livonia were restored to Poland, but the more important cities of Smolensk and Kiev remained in the hands of Russia together with the whole eastern bank of the Dnieper river.

This truce was the achievement of Afanasy Ordin-Nashchokin, the first Russian chancellor and diplomat in the modern sense, who after the disgrace of Nikon became the tsar's first minister until 1670, when he was superseded by the equally able Artamon Matveyev, whose beneficent influence prevailed to the end of Alexis's reign.

He also banned all English merchants from his country (notably members of the Muscovy Company) and provided financial assistance to "the disconsolate widow of that glorious martyr, King Charles I.

"[12] In 1653, Patriarch Nikon established a series of reforms that aimed to bring the practices of the Russian Orthodox Church into line with its Greek counterpart.

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition: It is the crowning merit of the Tsar Alexei that he discovered so many great men (like Fyodor Rtishchev, Ordin, Matveyev, the best of Peter's precursors) and suitably employed them.

The essence of Alexis's personality is a certain spiritual Epicureanism, manifested in an optimistic Christian faith, in a profound, but unfanatical, attachment to the traditions and ritual of the Church, in a desire to see everyone round him happy and at peace, and in a highly developed capacity to extract a quiet and mellow enjoyment from all things.