|
|
2
Kievan Russia and
the Mongol Experience
l
You have your millions. We are numberless, numberless,
numberless. Try doing battle with us! Yes, we are Scythians! Yes, Asiatics,
with greedy eyes slanting!
Aleksandr Blok, "The Scythians," in John Stallworthy
and Peter France, eds., The Twelve and Other
Poems ( New York: Random
House, 1970). Reprinted by permission of Random House.
THE RISE AND DECLINE OF KIEV
For many Russians, Ukraine,
which gained its independence in 1991 along with the other fourteen republics
of the former USSR,
is more than simply another Slavic country. The first state of the eastern
Slavic peoples was centered around Kiev,
Ukraine's
capital. It was the Kievan state that adopted Orthodox Christianity as Russia's official religion, and it was in
Kievan Russia
that the Russian language acquired written form and its distinct Cyrillic
alphabet. Although Moscow would emerge as the
political center of Russia
two centuries after the Mongol invasion, Kiev's
early history is an inseparable part of Russia's historic identity.
Click on the map for better resolution
The rise of Kiev begins, according to the Primary Chronicle, a twelfth
century account of early Russian history mixing fact and legend, with the
city's occupation by the shadowy Oleg, a Varangian, from 882 to his death in
913. Oleg came to Kiev from Novgorod,
the ancient northern city where, according to the Primary Chronicle, warring
tribes agreed (in 860-862) to invite princes from Scandinavia
to rule over them. Of the three princes who accepted their offer, only Riurik
survived to establish the first Russian dynasty. Oleg, according to this
account, campaigned southward along the Dniepr
River, captured strategic Kiev (the city is situated on a hill overlooking a bend
of the river), and united it with Novgorod,
establishing the Kievan state.
  
Click on each mini-map for proper
resolution
Oleg was succeeded by Prince Igor, who
expanded Kievan authority and conducted a series of campaigns against Byzantium in 941-944.
Igor was murdered by one of the tribes tributary to Kiev, the Derevlians, and his wife Olga
took his place. A rather devious figure, Olga visited cruel revenge on those
who had murdered her husband. When a Derevlian delegation proposed that the
new widow marry their prince, she graciously assented, invited the delegation
to be carried by her servants in their boat to a splendid banquet, and then
had them dropped in a huge trench and buried alive. A second delegation sent
to Kiev was
burned to death in a bath house. Next Olga invited herself to the city where
her husband was buried, held a huge funeral feast for her hosts (who were
either very trusting or not terribly astute), and then had her followers
slaughter some 5,000 of the drunken revelers. She then laid siege to the
Derevlians' city, burning it and imposing heavy tribute on the survivors.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Varangians of Kievan Rus
(reconstruction: Angus McBride / 1979)
The
warrior on the left was born and raised in Kiev as can be seen by his dress influenced
by Slav and Asian neighbours. That includes his white linen tunic, baggy
trousers and leather boots. Anothr Asiatic trait adopted by some Kievan
Varangians was the tattooing of the hands and arms. His helmet is also of
Turcic origin.
The warrior to the right is dressed and armed like recent immigrant from Scandinavia
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Olga was the first Christian Kievan ruler.
Although she converted to Christianity around 954-955, her son and successor
Sviatoslav was pagan, and it was not until 988, under Vladimir ( 980-1015), that the Kievan state
formally adopted Byzantine Christianity. Sviatoslav greatly expanded Kievan
territory with his subjugation of the Viatichi, an eastern Slavic tribe, and
his campaigns against the Khazars, Alans, and Bulgars. Following an
unsuccessful campaign against Byzantium,
Sviatoslav was killed by the Pechenegs, a fierce tribe of Central Asians.
Legend has it that the chief of the Pechenegs had Sviatoslav's skull lined
with gold and used it as a drinking cup.
   
Click on each mini-map for proper
resolution
Prince Vladimir's forcible conversion of
Kievan Russia to Orthodox
Christianity and his marriage to the Byzantine emperor's sister strengthened Kiev's links to Constantinople.
Reportedly, Vladimir
considered the pros and cons of the region's major religious
influences--Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. As Nicholas Riasanovsky has
pointed out, the story of how the Russians chose Orthodoxy over Islam or
Judaism may be apocryphal (supposedly Islam was unacceptable because it
rejected alcohol, Judiasm because it was a stateless religion of a defeated
people, and Roman Catholicism because it lacked splendor), but it does
indicate the range of choices available in this cosmopolitan environment.
Historians David MacKenzie and Michael Curran note that Vladimir's emissaries were more impressed
with the pageantry and glory of the Greek Orthodox ritual than with the
philosophical depth of Orthodox beliefs. This preoccupation with ceremony
over substance would be a constant in Russian and Soviet history.
The adoption of Orthodoxy would have a
formative impact on Russian development. Geography combined with religion to
isolate Russia from many
of Europe's later cultural, philosophical,
and political currents, most notably the Reformation and the Renaissance. Russia in the Kievan period, however, was no
less advanced than Western Europe, and had
close contacts with many European principalities. Kiev's
location on the Dniepr River made it a critical stop on the trade route
"from the Varangians to the Greeks"; that is, from Scandinavia to Byzantium. Much of Kiev's prominent
position was due to its location astride the trade routes of this period.
By the middle of the eleventh century, Kiev controlled most of the territory from the Baltic to
the Black Sea, and from the Carpathian Mountains to the Oka River
in the east. Prince Iaroslav the Wise ( 1019-1054) ruled over the Kievan
state at its zenith, developing and expanding the Orthodox Church and
implementing the first written Russian laws, The Russian Justice.
The Kievan political system was
authoritarian, but much less so than its successor state Muscovy.
Many scholars have remarked on the "democratic" character of
certain political institutions, especially the veche (town assembly) and the duma
(council of boyars, or nobility). The veche was an assembly, dating from
prehistoric times, of free heads of households who were called together from
time to time to resolve questions of war, succession, or other major issues.
The veche was a disorderly form of direct
democracy, with freewheeling debate where decisions were made unanimously
rather than by majority rule.
The boyars' duma also preceded the institution
of the prince, and served as his advisory and consultative body. The
institution of the duma persisted through the Muscovite and imperial periods,
resurfaced as Tsar Nicholas II's concession to limited constitutional
government in 1907, and was recreated in 1993 as democratic Russia's main legislative
assembly.
 
Kiev's major political
institution was the office of prince. Typical Kievan princely functions
included providing military leadership, dispensing justice, protecting the
Orthodox Church, and administering the government through his druzhina, or military
retainers. Janet Martin has argued that a well-defined political system had
evolved in Kievan Russia
by the eleventh century, in which Kiev
was the center of princely authority, legitimate rulers were those who
descended from the Riurikid dynasty, and succession occurred laterally by
order of seniority.
Interestingly, Kievan law and punishments
were relatively mild by the standards of that era. The Russian laws
formulated early in the eleventh century by Grand Prince Iaroslav--The
Russian Justice--dealt largely with property crimes and assessed fines
for most offenses. Iaroslav also developed a Church Statute in an effort to
define the respective jurisdictions of princely, boyar, and Church authority.
In supporting the Church's juridical authority, the Kievan government was
able to impose Christian legal and social norms through the Russian lands.
Kievan society was complex and stratified.
At the top was the princely class, served by the druzhina. Next in the
hierarchy were the boyar nobility, who energetically defended their interests
against princely encroachment, and the Orthodox clergy. Below the boyars and
clergy were the liudi or free middle-class, largely urban
craftsmen; owners of blacksmith shops, tanneries, or carpentry shops; and
moderately prosperous merchants and rural landowners. Propertyless urban
workers and free peasants constituted the next level of society. The lowest
classes were debtors (the "half-free") and slaves.
There is some dispute about the Kievan form
of government. Soviet historians, who analyzed Kievan politics from a Marxian
class perspective, described it as a European-style feudal system, with
powerful landowners exploiting peasant labor and a complex hierarchy of
mutual obligations. Kiev does appear to have
been highly decentralized, like a feudal system, but Kiev was as much a trading state as it was
agricultural. As Janet Martin points out, the Kievan peasantry were not tied
to the land, as are serfs, but were free landowners. They farmed and shared
responsibilities for taxes and other obligations jointly, through the village
commune. The boyar nobility owned rural estates, but as Martin observes, they
largely raised horses and livestock, and did not necessarily interfere or
compete with peasant farming.
The economic life of Kiev revolved mostly around trade and
agriculture. Writings of the Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus
described how the Kievan princes would tour their territories collecting
tribute, including boats, which they would then use to transport their
exports down the broad Dniepr River to Constantinople.
Kiev exported wax, honey, furs, flax, and
slaves, and in turn imported wines, silks, spices, ironware, and glassware
from Byzantium, Asia,
and eastern Europe.
The larger towns like Suzdal, Novgorod, Riazan, and Smolensk were centers of medieval Kievan
political, ecclesiastical, and commercial life. Major cities probably had
10,000 to 20,000 inhabitants; Kiev might have
been as large as 50,000, roughly comparable to London of that period. Kievan Russia's
houses, shops, and churches were built of wood, so fire was a common danger.
Wood was plentiful, but its extensive use for construction means that we know
little about Kievan structures, since only archaeological ruins remain from
that time. Various trades were practiced in Kievan towns, and the major urban
centers boasted a marketplace where all manner of products were bought and
sold. To protect their wealth, Russian medieval princes usually built a
fortress, or kremlin, basically a stockade of logs fortified by towers. Later
kremlins, like that in Moscow,
would be constructed of more enduring stone and brick.
The great majority of people in medieval
Kievan Russia
lived in the countryside and farmed for a living. The peasants used slash and
burn techniques to clear patches of forest, moving on when the soil in a
particular area became depleted. Kievan agriculture consisted of cattle
raising and wheat cultivation in the south; rye, flax, hemp, barley, and oats
were produced in the north. They also raised horses, pigs, sheep, goats, and
chickens, fished in nearby lakes and rivers, and gathered mushrooms and wild
berries to supplement their diet. Honey, beeswax, and furs were quite
important to Kievan agriculture and trade, as were metalwork and textiles. A
portion of what the peasants produced was allocated to the Kievan princes as
tribute or taxes, and they in turn extended their protection to the rural
population.
In religious matters, Kievan culture
combined the early indigenous pagan Slavic beliefs with the strong influence
of Byzantine Orthodox Christianity. The Church and the Kievan state
cooperated in symbiotic fashion; indeed, Orthodox Christianity provided much of
the cultural glue that held the decentralized Kievan principalities together.
Nicolai Petro has suggested that the early relationship between church and
state could be considered one of "harmony," with the Church acting
as moral conscience and supporter of the state. This symbiotic relationship
ended with Peter the Great's subordination of the Church to the state early
in the eighteenth century. From then on the Russian state dominated and
regulated Church affairs; in turn, the Orthodox Church promoted the idea that
the tsar was God's direct representative on earth.
Kievan culture at this time was heavily
influenced by Byzantium
through the Greek Orthodox Church connection. Kievan Russia
accepted Byzantine Christianity uncritically. Russia's Orthodox clergy stressed
the ritualistic and physical aspects of worship: the beauty of religious
icons, the splendor of golden cupolas, and the joyousness of ringing bells.
As James Billington notes in The
Icon and the Axe, Russian Orthodox services feature the interdependence
of sight, sound, and smell, in the form of icons, religious hymns, and
incense, much as in the pre-Vatican II Catholic ritual.
The visual nature of Russian Orthodoxy was
reflected in the primary artwork of the period, Russian forms of the Byzantine
icon. These twodimensional paintings of tempera on wood depicted saints such
as Boris and Gleb, Kievan princes who were cruelly murdered by their brother
Sviatopolk (called "the Damned," who ruled 1015-1019), and various
historical and religious themes. Icons were daily reminders of the presence
of God in all aspects of life; their pictorial representation of spirituality
was especially important for average Russians, who could neither read nor
write. Icons decorated the interior of every Orthodox church and, from the
earliest Christian times, Russian families kept icons on their walls or in a
special corner of the house. Many early icons have survived; some of the best
examples can be found at the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the cathedrals
of the Kremlin in Moscow, and the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery in
Sergiev Posad (formerly Zagorsk), outside of Moscow.
Russian Orthodoxy differs from other
branches of Christianity in that it did not develop a rational or inquisitive
theology. There was, for example, no Russian counterpart to the Western
Jesuit tradition of critical scholarship, and attempts at innovation were
strenuously resisted by the faithful. Orthodox teachings stressed uncritical
obedience to political and religious authority and did not hold science or
secular learning in high esteem. The Church's influence reinforced strongly
conservative tendencies in Russian society and inhibited scientific and
technical development.
Russian literature of the time, like that in
medieval Europe, was strongly religious. The
introduction of a written alphabet by the Byzantine monks Cyril and
Methodius, by way of what is now Bulgaria, was intended as a means of spreading
Christianity to the Slavs. Written works were therefore to serve a purpose,
to reinforce belief in God. The earliest Russian writings consisted of
collections of readings from the Gospels, lives of the saints, and sermons.
Secular literature as we know it did not exist. However, some works such the
Kievan chronicles, including the Primary
Chronicle, blended history and politics with religion and myth. These
early chronicles are valuable partly as historical records, and partly for
their insights into the culture and political struggles of the time. Church
Slavonic served as both the written and spoken language of worship for
medieval Russia,
and was intelligible to all worshippers, unlike the use of Latin in Catholic
masses of the same period.
One notable example of historical narrative
from the late twelfth century is the Lay
of the Host of Igor. Not overtly religious, the Lay is an account in verse of an
unsuccessful Russian campaign against the Polovtsy, a Turkic people who first
invaded Kievan territory in the mideleventh century. In addition to written
works, medieval Russia
also possessed a strong oral tradition. Secular epic poems (byliny)
that recounted the partly mythical, partly real adventures of ancient Russian bogatyri (heroic warriors) were very popular
among the people. These byliny and other songs would be sung at
festivals and weddings by bards, who would also recount magical Russian folk
tales for their audience.
The most prominent examples of medieval
Russian architecture were likewise religious. While most Orthodox churches
built of wood did not survive, there are a number of impressive stone
churches that have been preserved. Among the most notable examples are the
Cathedral of St. Sophia in Kiev, the St.
Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod, and the
Cathedral of the Assumption in Vladimir.
Russian churches are quite different from the massive Gothic cathedrals of
medieval France, England, and Germany. Some are virtually
square; others may resemble a pile of building blocks of various shapes. Most
are distinguished by oriental cupolas (onion domes) surmounting one or more
drums, with a cross at the very peak. Mosaics, frescoes, and icons decorated
the interiors. While Gothic cathedrals inspire awe, Russian churches strike
the observer as whimsical and colorful on the outside, exotic and warm on the
inside.
APPANAGE RUSSIA
The
half-century following the death of Iaroslav the Wise in 1054 saw a period of
constant civil wars among his less able sons Iziastav, Sviatoslav, and
Vsevolod. Next came a period of political fragmentation, de- centralization,
and dynastic struggle among the northern princes, from about 1100 to 1237,
called the appanage period in Russian history. The term comes from the custom
of Russian princes dividing their territories among their sons, granting each
an appanage (udel). The appanage period witnessed the proliferation of
princely families and of the boyars who served as their retainers. The
immunities and privileges granted to the boyars, such as the power to collect
taxes and administer justice, eroded the peasants' social and economic
position. The peasantry, who had been largely free landholders during the
Kievan era, were gradually transformed into renters during the appanage
period, and finally became serfs tied to the land by the end of the sixteenth
century.
This proliferation of small principalities
greatly weakened the political unity of Russia and made the land
vulnerable to foreign conquest. The Polovtsy, a Turkish people, were one of
the major forces threatening the Kievan state from the latter part of the
eleventh century to the middle of the thirteenth. Grand Prince Vladimir
Monomakh, an able ruler ( 11131125), and his son Mstislav ( 1125-1132) fought
the Polovtsy and enacted some progressive domestic measures (for example,
Monomakh's social legislation to help the poor), but Kiev was clearly in
decline relative to other major Russian cities by the middle of the twelfth
century.
Factors often cited as contributing to this
decline include the weak and decentralized nature of the Kievan political
system, debilitating political and social conflicts, external aggression, the
decline of trade, and perhaps most important, the uncertainties of princely
succession. Scholars are divided on whether Kiev
declined in absolute terms, or only relative to other emerging Russian
city-territories like Vladimir, Novgorod, Rostov, Suzdal,
Chernigov, Periaslavl, and Smolensk. Whatever the truth, the various
Kievan states were unable to present a unified defense against outside
forces.
Following the death of Grand Prince Iaropolk
II in 1139 the Kievan state's luster faded, and two regional
centers--Volyhnia and Galicia
in the southwest (present-day western Ukraine
and Belarus),
and VladimirSuzdal in the northeast--emerged as prominent states in the
century preceding the Mongol invasion. Prince Iaroslav Osmomysl ( 1153-1187)
developed Galicia into a
strong state, to the point where he defended Kiev against the Asian nomads of the
steppes. Prince Roman of Volyhnia ( 1197-1205) united his territory with Galicia,
defending his lands against the threat of nomads, Lithuanians, Poles, and
Hungarians.
The emergence of the northeast was linked in
large part to the migration of peoples from the Kiev area in the twelfth century. Although
agriculturally less fertile, this area to the east of Moscow,
between the Volga and Oka
Rivers, was
sufficiently removed from the feuding princes and nomadic marauders to
provide a measure of security. One of the most powerful Rostov princes was Iurii Dolgorukii ( "Long Arm," 1149- 1157), son of Vladimir
Monomakh. Prince Iurii waged a ten-year struggle for control of Kiev, a position from
which he could establish a claim to political supremacy over the south.
The city-state of Novgorod had the reputation of being
prosperous, fiercely independent, and proud--its full title was "Lord
Novgorod the Great." According to the Primary
Chronicle the Varangian
prince Riurik, founder of the Kievan dynasty, first came to Novgorod in 862. Not only was the city one
of the main trading partners of Kiev, it also
served as a prominent commercial link between the Scandinavian and Germanic
peoples along the Baltic Sea and the Asiatic Bulgars of the Volga
region. Located northwest of Moscow, at its
height Novgorod controlled a huge area from Russia's far north east to the Ural Mountains.
Novgorod citizen, as
depicted on a 12th century icon
Novgorod also stands out as
a city-state in which strong constraints were put on princely authority. The
city's veche evolved into a strong institution in the late eleventh/early
twelfth century, circumscribing the authority of the mayor (posadnik)
and the archbishop, and asserting its right to appoint the city's prince. The
veche frequently appointed princes who were outsiders, and then required them
to reside outside the city proper. The veche decided issues of war and peace,
mobilized the army, proclaimed laws, and levied taxes. In addition, a Council
of Notables, presided over by the archbishop and consisting largely of boyars
and local officials, constituted Novgorod's
aristocratic assembly.
During the twelfth century there were
frequent clashes between the Rostov-Suzdal princes and their boyars, who
resisted the princes' costly foreign policy adventures. Iurii Dolgorukii's
son Andrei Bogoliubskii ( 1157-1174) sought to control the key city of Novgorod. He also
attacked and sacked Kiev in 1169, ending
decisively that city's central position in early Russia. Andrei chose to rule from
the northern city of Vladimir rather than Kiev. The high point of northeast
rule was achieved under Andrei's younger brother Vsevolod ( 1177-1212), who
subordinated the southern lands to Vladimir-Suzdal rule.
The recurring conflict between boyar
nobility and princes in late Kievan Russia was not unlike the
disputes between King John I and the English nobility at about the same time.
However, while political struggle in early thirteenth-century England resulted in signing the Magna Carta
and introduced the principle of limited royal authority, in Russia he
conflict weakened the state and facilitated the Mongol conquest. Kievan Russia was not an easily defended island, like
England,
but a vulnerable, open territory located at the intersection of powerful
military forces.
Had Russia's geographic position been
more favorable, perhaps those elements of democratic government and limited
authority might have been reinforced. As it was, the Mongol invasion and two
centuries of foreign oppression highlighted the need for unchallenged
centralized authority and domestic repression to protect the Russian state.
It was a lesson that Russia's
rulers would use to justify over seven hundred years of authoritarian
governance.
THE MONGOL CONQUEST AND RULE
In 1223 a fierce group of Asiatic warriors
swept into Russia through
the passes of the Caucasian Mountains, defeated a combined force of Russians
and Polovtsy at the Kalka
River, and then
disappeared. The Mongols, or Tatars as the Russians called them, had under
the great Genghis Khan ( 1167-1227) conquered northern China and Central Asia, and on their return to
Mongolia
briefly engaged the Russians in battle. Fourteen years later the Mongols
would return to Russia,
this time determined to subjugate the territory as part of their campaign to
conquer Europe. From 1236 to 1238 the
Mongols attacked and defeated the Volga Bulgars, destroyed Russian Riazan,
and conquered Vladimir and Suzdal. Novgorod,
surrounded by dense forests and treacherous bogs, escaped annihilation, but
the city was forced to pay tribute to the Mongols.
Click on the map for better resolution
A Mongol warrior as depicted on a
Chinese miniature
   
Click on each mini-map for proper
resolution
The Mongols renewed their Russian campaign
in 1240-1242, conquering Kiev and subduing Hungary, Galicia,
and southern Poland.
Their sophisticated military tactics, highly mobile form of warfare, and
extensive military experience made them a formidable foe. The Mongols trained
their young men to fight from an early age through hunting. In their military
campaigns they employed an advanced system of communications, using scouts
and a system of signal flags and messengers. They adroitly employed
enveloping movements and feints, and readily adapted foreign technologies,
such as Persian siege machines, to the Mongolian style of attack. Kievan
military practices, by contrast, resembled those in Europe,
and consisted largely of heavily armored cavalry (the prince and his druzhina), usually augmented
by poorly armed peasant conscripts. Although the Russians fought fiercely,
they were no match for the Mongols.
As
many historians have noted, the constant feuding and division among Russia's
principalities, and their consequent inability to unite and resist the
invaders, made them easy prey. The 1236 attack on the Volga Bulgars, located
directly east of Vladimir-Suzdal, should have alerted the Russian princes to
the Mongol danger. Perhaps they believed that the Mongols posed no greater
threat than the Pechenegs or Polovtsy, who engaged the Russians in sporadic
battles along the frontier, while trading and even intermarrying with the
Russians. In any case, they were woefully unprepared for the swift and
thorough destruction visited on them by the Mongol warriors.
Russia was not the
Mongols' sole objective, but rather one stage in their drive to conquer Europe. However, just as the Mongols were poised to
launch an assault against the rest of Europe and fulfill Genghis Khan's dream
of a drive "to the last sea," the Great Khan Ogedei died in Karakorum and the
campaign was called off. The feared assault on western Europe would not be
resumed. The Russian lands became the westernmost part of the Mongol empire,
with Batu Khan establishing the headquarters of his Golden Horde (large
tribal group) at Sarai on the lower Volga River.
Sarai served as the Mongol capital of the Golden Horde, to which Russian
princes were obliged to make periodic journeys to pay tribute and pledge
their loyalty.
Although the Mongols were skillful
conquerors, they did not have enough administrators to rule Russian territories
directly. Instead, the khan at Sarai granted a patent (iarlyk), or
official appointment, to the various Russian princes, giving them the right
to rule certain domains. In exchange the princes would provide tribute to the
Mongols. Initially, this was one-tenth of everything in the
principality--livestock, food, and population. In this way the Mongols
obtained troops and horses for their army, along with slaves, furs, silver,
and other goods. Later, as Mongol control weakened, the khans delegated primary
responsibility for tax collection to the prince of Moscow,
thus elevating him to the status of grand prince and contributing to Moscow's emergence as
the premier Russian city.
In Novgorod,
Prince Aleksandr Nevskii cooperated with the Mongols, apparently reasoning
that since resistance was futile, it would be better to strike a favorable
arrangement with Batu Khan in the south. This would free Novgorod to consolidate its authority in
the north. Aleksandr had acquired the nickname "Nevskii" when he
surprised and routed a Swedish invasion fleet along the Neva River
in 1240. This bold warrior conducted a series of campaigns against the
Lithuanians, Swedes, and Germans, his Christian neighbors to the west. In
1242 his forces defeated the German Teutonic Knights on the ice of Lake Chud,
in present-day Estonia,
a battle immortalized in Sergei Eisenstein's 1938 film Aleksandr Nevskii. This work
by the Soviet Union's greatest director was sanctioned by the dictator Joseph
Stalin, who valued the film's skillful use of early Russian history to
mobilize Soviet patriotism against the looming threat from Hitler's Germany.
Eisenstein's film was pulled from public circulation after Germany and the USSR signed a non-aggression pact
in August 1939, but was shown again after the German invasion in June 1941.
Mongol rule lasted for about one century in
the western part of Russia,
and nearly two centuries in the eastern region. The impact of the Mongol
invasion on Russia
has been subject to dispute among scholars. Certainly they visited enormous
destruction on the Russians, laying waste to many cities and slaughtering
people by the thousands. But some major cities escaped destruction ( Novgorod, Tver, Iaroslavl, and Rostov), and other areas recovered fairly
quickly.
Some prominent Russian observers--the
nineteenth-century poet Aleksandr Blok, and the twentieth-century historian
George Vernadsky, for example--asserted that Mongol rule had a major
formative impact on Russian culture. These "Eurasianists," as they
were called, claimed that the Mongol experience had made Russia an
Asian nation, or at least a nation of mixed Asian and European
characteristics. This explained, they claimed, the Russian preference for a
simple rural society over dehumanizing industrialization, for emotion over
reason, for spiritual values over materialism. Europe was the land of reason
and enlightenment, Asia and Russia
lands of mysticism and sentimentality.
For Blok, a nobleman committed to the 1917
Bolshevik Revolution, Russia
had been corrupt Europe's shield against
Mongol depredations. His poem "The
Scythians," penned
early in 1918, derides a Europe immersed in
war and celebrates the new world of socialist revolution. For emigré
Eurasianists writing from Paris in the 1920s, the central Western value alien
to Russia
was Marxism, the philosophy of a German Jew imposed on their homeland by
Lenin and the Bolsheviks. After the collapse of communism, these arguments on
the national essence of Russia--was it a mainstream European country, was it
a unique blend of Asia and Europe, or was it something else entirely?--would
resurface as Russians searched for a post-communist identity.
Another impact of Mongol rule, as the
British historian Robert Crummey has observed, was to strengthen the office
of the grand prince and enhance the influence of Russian Orthodoxy as a
source of cohesion and identity within Russia. Mongol support for Moscow's grand princes conferred an important advantage
in the city's rivalry with Novgorod
and Tver. And the Orthodox religion provided the cultural and ideological
glue to bind together Russia's
dispersed communities, however tenuously, until political reintegration was
accomplished.
Map depicting major Russian lands as
part of the Golden Horde also known as the Kipchak khanate
The indirect nature of Mongol administration
and the tolerance and even special privileges granted to the Orthodox Church
suggest that the Mongols probably did not have a lasting impact on Russian
political institutions. They were few in number, and concentrated largely in
the south around Sarai. David Morgan, in his very readable history The Mongols, points out that
the Golden Horde was more generally called the Khanate of Qipchaq, in
recognition of the heavy concentration of Qipchaq (or Polovtsy) Turks in the
area. If the Mongols were quickly assimilated by these Turkic peoples in the
region where they were most densely concentrated, as Morgan claims, it seems
doubtful they would have greatly influenced the Russians in the northern and
western regions, where few Mongols had settled.
Mongol rule decisively ended Kiev's position as the
leading Russian principality. As the Golden Horde's grip over Russia weakened in the latter part of the
fourteenth century and early fifteenth century, the northern principalities
of Novgorod, Tver, and Moscow
emerged as Russia's
cities of consequence. Of these three, rulers of the previously obscure
principality of Moscow would assume the tasks
of "gathering" the dispersed Russian lands, defending an expanding Russia from its external adversaries, and
firmly establishing Moscow
as the center of Russian political and religious authority.
CHARLES
E. ZIEGLER is Professor and Chair of the Political Science Department at the University of Louisville. He is the author of Foreign Policy and East Asia ( 1993), Environmental Policy in the USSR ( 1987), and dozens of scholarly
articles and book chapters.
|
|
