Polish influence on Russia in XVII century

The article concentrates on the Polish role in the initial stage of Russian westernization. Polish influence is re­garded in its ambivalence: as a threat to the sovereignty of Moscow statehood and as a catalyst for the transformation of traditional Russian society in the mainstream of European modernization. The author dwells on the Polish influ­ence in many spheres of life in the Moscow State in the XVII century: public administration, the army, law, educa­tion, fashion, architecture and worship. During the XVII century there was a constant distribution of new knowledge, skills, elements of culture as a result of military campaigns, migrations of foreigners, transfer of territories, estab­lishment and functioning of new social, cultural and military institutions, publications of Polish translations and ac­quisitions of foreign books. Such penetration of new elements from Poland or via its territory prepared Russian socie­ty to a radical step towards mass import of Western innovations that began at the turn of the XVII-XVIII centuries. Poland and the Polish were not categorically rejected as the embodiment and symbol of Russian national fall in the Time of Troubles. The value of Polish influence however should not be overestimated: Polish furniture in a number of houses of Moscow nobility, a hundred of books, brought to Russia from Poland, some Polish words or Polish hats introduced by Agafya - a Russian tsarina of Polish origin, were a very thin and superficial cultural layer covering the thickness of traditional Russian life.