one
The Beginnings
For
over a century and a half, intellectuals and scholarsinterested in Russia have
differed sharply over the essential characteristics of the country’s economic,
social, and politicalinstitutions, and its culture. Much of the time, the
debate centered on the question of whether Russia was part of Western European
civilization or of Asian civilization, or whether it had somehow amalgamated
basic features of both. That this was not a debate taken lightly became clear
as early as 1836, when the philosopher P.Ia. Chaadaev published the first of
his ‘Philosophical Letters’, in which he bemoaned Russia’s cultural isolation
and its failure to make a signal contribution to world culture. Neither ‘of the
East nor of the West’, Russia, according to Chaadaev, had no great traditions
of its own; ‘alone in the world, we have given nothing to the world, we have
taught it nothing … we have not contributed to the progress of the human spirit
and what we have borrowed of this progress we have distorted … we have produced
nothing for the common benefit of mankind’. Chaadaev’s sweeping and harsh
pronouncements had the effect, in the words of the political thinker and
activist Alexander Herzen, ‘of a pistol shot in the dead of night’. Tsar
Nicholas I declared Chaadaev insane and put him under house arrest. Among
Russia’s educated elite, Chaadaev’s pronouncements generated excitement of a
different sort. Intellectuals took Chaadaev’s views seriously and initiated a
passionate debate that quickly divided them into two groups, the Slavophiles
and the Westerners, and in one form or another their historical and
philosophical discussions continue to this very day. An observer of
contemporary conditions in Russia reported from Moscow in the Times Literary Supplement of 19 November
1999 that ‘In Russian intellectual life, a conversation that was cut off and
redirected after the Bolshevik Revolution has resumed its course. Its basic
theme: East, West, whence, and whither Russia?’
The Slavophiles and
Westerners of the early nineteenth century were not at odds with each other
over all public issues. For example, both groups believed that such deeply
rooted features of Russian society as serfdom and government censorship should
be abolished. But beyond that they parted company. The Slavophiles were
profoundly religious and revered Russian Orthodoxy, a faith they considered to
be much more spiritual than Western Christendom, which they disdained as
allegedly under the thrall of cold rationalism. They also disdained Western
conceptions of law as destructive of the social bonds that hold society
together. In Russia, the Slavophiles claimed, people settled conflicts not by
litigation but by discussing their differences in a kindly manner and by
unanimous agreement. Nor did the Slavophiles believe in the efficacy of
constitutional government, then widely advocated in the West, though they did
condemn the arbitrary bureaucracy that meddled in the lives of the Russian
people. And the Slavophiles did not favor the institution of private property
for peasants, preferring instead the tradition of communal ownership of land
that had evolved in many regions of the Russian countryside. They insisted that
the attempts of reformers ever since Tsar Peter the Great in the early
eighteenth century to introduce Western insti-tutions and values into Russia
should be rejected, for they undermined the meritorious features of Russian
civilization.
By contrast, the
Westerners, a group with diverse views on how to improve conditions in Russia,
tended to be secularists and were highly critical of the historical path their
country had followed. Although they were no less patriotic than the Slavophiles,
they insisted that Russia was a backward country in need of fundamental change.
Some Westerners were socialists, some were liberals, but they all respected the
achievements of Europe in science and, more generally, in education, and they
favored the replacement of Tsarist autocracy with constitutional government.
There is good reason
for this sharp divergence of opinion on Russia’s past. The history of the
country is highly complex and on many critical developments the evidence is so
scanty that a consensus is hard to come by. Of course, the histories of nearly
all countries are replete with uncertainties. But in the case of Russia an
additional factor has stimulated controversy. Ever since the ninth century ad the country has been subjected to a
wide range of different influences whose impact it is hard to gauge. Until the
mid thirteenth century, the economic, social, and political institutions of
Rus, as the country was then known, bore certain similarities to those in
Central and Western Europe. But the Mongol invasions of 1237, which marked the
beginning of two centuries of foreign domination, deepened the isolation of Rus
from Western Europe that had begun in the late twelfth century, and influenced
cultural trends in various ways. Cut off from the West, Russia remained largely
unaffected by the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, the scientific
revolution of the seventeenth, and the Enlightenment of the eighteenth, all
movements that promoted individualism and rationalism.
Russia also differed
from most European countries in several other respects. The industrial
revolution, which beginning in the mid eighteenth century produced vast
economic and social changes in the West, did not take hold in Russia until late
in the nineteenth century. Moreover, serfdom, an institution that had largely
disappeared in Central and Western Europe by the sixteenth century, became
firmly entrenched in Russia in 1649 when a new Code of Law reaffirmed the
subservient condition of peasants. Serfdom was not abolished until 1861.
Moreover, the principle of autocracy, long challenged in the West and seriously
undermined by the French Revolution of 1789, remained the guiding principle of
government in Russia until 1917. Initially, the word ‘autocrat’ in the Russian
lands referred to a ruler who was independent of any foreign power. But in the
late fifteenth century and even more so in the sixteenth, the term referred to
a leader with unlimited power. Not all proponents of autocracy agreed fully on
its precise meaning, but all tended to favor a definition akin to the one that
appeared in 1832 as the first article of the Fundamental Laws of the
Russian Empire (the first volume of the Digest that listed all laws still
in effect): ‘The Emperor of all the Russians is a sovereign with autocratic and
unlimited powers. To obey the commands not merely from fear but according to
the dictates of one’s conscience is ordained by God himself.’ In short, the
emperor’s powers were boundless and in theory the tsar could do as he wished
because he alone was answerable to God. The tsar set policy, he established the
laws of the land, and he was responsible for their enactment. By the early
twentieth century, this view of governmental authority was the single most
divisive issue in the political conflicts that preceded the collapse of
tsarism.
In the meantime, the
make-up of the Russian state, originally populated predominantly by Slavs, had
changed dramatically. The steady expansion of Russia to the east, south, and
west, which began in the sixteenth century and lasted until late in the nineteenth
century, transformed the country into a multinational empire in which some
fifty-five percent of the population was not ethnically Slavic. Among other
things, this development hindered the emergence of a nation state, a political
association with a relatively homogeneous population that shares a sense of
nationality. The minorities, of which there were more than 150, spoke their own
languages, retained their own cultural traditions, and often were heirs of a
long and proud history. Although Christianity of the Orthodox persuasion was
the state religion, with more adherents than any other faith, by the nineteenth
century several other Christian denominations had sizable followings, as did
Islam and Judaism.
Geography
By the early twentieth century Russia appeared
to many within the elite to be a clumsy giant.1 A vast empire comprising
one-sixth of the earth’s surface, stretching from the White Sea and Arctic
Ocean to the Black and Caspian Seas, to Persia, Afghanistan, India, and China,
and from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean, it was almost three times the
size of the United States. The absence of natural boundaries within this huge
territory had facilitated both internal migration and territorial expansion,
but at the same time it deprived the country of natural defenses against
invaders, a frequent threat over the centuries. Populated in the early
twentieth century by some 130 million people, the country was blessed with
abundant natural resources, though these were unevenly distributed throughout
the land. In a rough triangle from Lake Lagoda to Kazan to south of the Pripet
marshes (near Kiev), mixed forests predominated. This is the region central to
what came to be Muscovy; the climate is severe and most of the land is poor,
inhospitable to agriculture. Rye was the staple crop of this zone, though barley,
oats, and wheat were also grown. Near Novgorod some flax and hemp were
cultivated. Because of climatic conditions the region regularly endured
droughts and devastating famines.
Another zone, known as
the taiga, consists largely of conifer forests and stretches north to the
tundra and east for hundreds of miles all the way to the Pacific Ocean. The
subsoil of the tundra, which extends along the Arctic coast and inland between
the valleys and comprises about fifteen percent of Russia’s land mass, is permanently
frozen. Plants in this region grow for only about three months of the year. Its
economy depended heavily on the fur trade and to a lesser extent on fishing and
the extraction of tar, pitch, and potash and more recently on coal and
minerals. The shore along the White Sea is also rich in salt. Siberia, a huge
sector of this region, was known mainly for its furs and some gold.
A third zone, the
steppes, south of the above-mentioned zones, comprises about twelve per cent of
the Russian land mass. A treeless expanse from the western border to the Altay
mountains in Central Asia, it included the so-called bread basket of the empire.
It has a variety of rich black-earth soils, enjoys dry warm summers, and was in
many ways ideal for grain cultivation. But even here the rainfall is low and
tends to be erratic, another cause of the periodic famines in Russia.
The extensive and
elaborate system of natural waterways, such as the Volga, Dnieper and Don
rivers, the Caspian, Black, and Baltic Seas, Lake Ladoga, and Lake Baikal,
greatly facilitated commerce and internal migration. But one serious drawback
has hampered commerce. Only Murmansk, founded in 1915 in the extreme north-west
of the country (next to Finland), borders on an open ice-free ocean and is
therefore navigable throughout the year. On the other hand, Russia’s natural
resources are enormous. No other country can boast of so large a variety of
minerals, and only the United States is richer in resources. The empire had
about twenty percent of the world’s coal supplies, located primarily in the
Donets (Ukraine) and Kuznets (in mid Siberia) basins. Its huge oil and gas
reserves may have exceeded half the world’s total supply. And there were vast
supplies of iron, manganese, copper (ofrelatively low quality), lead, zinc,
aluminum, nickel, gold, platinum, asbestos, and potash. Well endowed by nature,
Russia seemed destined for a long period of leadership on the world scene.
But because it failed
to discard its archaic social and political system, Russia could not take
advantage of the advances in modern science and technology that, beginning in
the seventeenth century, steadily enriched and transformed Western societies.
By the nineteenth century Russia lagged far behind much of Europein economic
development, national literacy, and the standardof living of its people. To
understand this backwardness it is necessary to study history, but one should
not assume that all students of history will agree on why Russia developed as
it did. The question touches on the highly sensitive issue of national identity
and is often discussed by even the most learned scholars in charged language
that tends to foster disagreement rather than consensus on the nature of
Russia’s past and destiny.
The Rise of Kiev
The very first problem that the student of
history encounters is the origin of the Russian state. According to the
Normanist school of historians,2 the beginnings of a Slavic
commonwealth can be traced to ad
862, when the tribes known as ‘Varangian Russes’ sent an urgent message to
Scandinavian princes for help: ‘Our whole land is great and rich, but there is
no order in it. Come to rule and reign over us!’ The oldest of three
Scandinavian princes, Riurik, settled in Novgorod, in the north, which
allegedly became ‘the land of Rus’. His younger brothers are said to have gone
to ‘Byeloozero’ and ‘Izborsk’ to serve as rulers. Riurik, the Normanists claim,
fundamentally shaped the culture and political institutions of Russia, which
during its first two centuries assumed a distinctly Scandinavian character.
Although archeological
evidence supports the presence of Scandinavians in Rus in the ninth century,
the Normanist interpretation has been widely challenged and is no longer
accepted in its original form. Historians3 have demonstrated that
long before Riurik appeared on the scene, Slavs in Kiev had assimilated the
cultural achievements of numerous peoples who had lived in southern Russia
since the sixth century, among them the Cimmerians, the Scythians, Sarmations,
the Goths, and the Khazars. In contacts with Hellenic, Byzantine and Oriental
civilizations, these peoples had developed their own material culture, art, and
customs no less advanced than those of the Scandinavians. Although the Russian
dynasty beginning in the ninth century was Norman, and Scandinavian influences
on Russia were significant, the basic culture of Russia was essentially
indigenous.
Whatever the
differences over the origins of Russia, all historians now agree that the
Kievan state or Kievan Rus, which emerged in the ninth century and existed for
some four centuries, was the first large and powerful Slavic state and that it
strongly influenced the course of Russian history. The Kievan era can be divided
into three fairly distinct periods. During the first, from 878 to 972, the
princes of Novgorod, successors of Riurik, expanded into the south and created
a vast empire stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea and from the
Carpathian mountains to the Caspian Sea. The idea behind the expansion was
essentially commercial, to gain control of a vast network of commercial
highways in the Pontic and Caspian regions. Prince Oleg, who initiated the
expansion in 878 or 879, constantly waged war and when he defeated the Magyars
(who migrated to present-day Hungary) the Kievan principality seized control
over the whole Dnieper from Kiev to the Black Sea. During his reign the
Russians engaged in extensive trade with the Greeks, the profits from which
became the basis of Kievan prosperity.
During the second
period, from 972 to 1139, Kievan princes sought to stabilize the new state, and
a principal means to that end was the adoption of Christianity. Apparently,
Prince Vladimir (977?–1015) concluded that if Kiev was to become a major power
it would have to abandon paganism and end Russia’s religious isolation. Not
much is known about the religious faith of the Russians up to this time, but
there is substantial evidence that the Kievans worshiped clan ancestors, who
were regarded as guardians and protectors. There is also evidence that Slavs
revered rivers, nymphs, and other spirits as well as trees, woods, and water
sprites. In addition, they worshiped gods of lightning, thunder, the great
goddess Mother Earth, and Veles, believed to be the protector of commerce. Only
the upper classes, it seems, prayed in temples in which priests officiated.
How and why Kiev came
to adopt Christianity remains unclear. Legend has it that Prince Vladimir sent
an emissary to the leaders of the main faiths to examine the beliefs of each.
In the end, he allegedly rejected Islam because it forbade alcohol, which ‘is
the joy of the Russian’, and Judaism, because it was the religion of a
dispersed people without a state. More likely, political consider-ations
prompted Vladimir to opt for Christianity. In 987–8 the Byzantine Emperor Basil
sought military support from Vladimir to help him fend off attacks from foreign
enemies. In return, Basil promised Vladimir the hand of his sister, Anna, an
offer that broke with a long-standing Byzantine court tradition against
marriage with foreigners. Deeply honored and pressured by dignitaries at his
court who had already converted to Christianity, Vladimir accepted the offer,
which was conditioned on his baptism. In February 988 Vladimir was baptized and
adopted the Christian name of Basil. The Byzantine emperor, behaving in a most
un-Christian manner, now refused to live up to his side of the bargain. In a
rage, Basil attacked Byzantium and after several victories he achieved his
goal, marriage to a Christian princess.
As is often true of
converts, Vladimir became an ardent advocate of the new faith. Determined to
root out paganism, Vladimir ordered the destruction of all statues of pagan
deities, directed the entire population of Kiev, Novogorod, and other cities to
be baptized in the local rivers, and took the initiative in having Christian
churches built throughout the realm. He also created a church hierarchy and
church schools to educate the children of the elite in the doctrines of
Christianity. Kiev, where an elegant cathedral was built, soon emerged as the
ecclesiastical center of Rus. The metropolitan, ordained by the patriarch of
Constantinople, resided in the city, which now also served as the political
center of Rus.
For the Russians and
for many people in the rest of the world, the country’s conversion to
Christianity signified that it was now part of the civilized world, not only
because the people had turned to monotheism but also because the conversion
added momentum to making permanent the written language (Cyrillic), the early
form of which had been invented in the mid ninth century by St Cyril and St
Methodius. For centuries to come, Christianity shaped much of the nation’s
culture. It was of critical importance that Russian Christianity came not from Rome
but from Byzantium, where the church was clearly subordinate to the secular
ruler. In the West, the church asserted its independence and at times even
claimed to be superior to the princely authorities, but in Russia the church
tended to buttress the temporal ruler’s claim to supreme power.
When Vladimir died in
1015 Kievan Rus’s prestige had risen appreciably, but, plagued by intermittent
outbursts of bloody clashes between political dignitaries, it was nevertheless
a politically unstable principality. The underlying problem was the absence of
a clearly defined rule for succession; on the death of a prince, his sons often
waged war against each other, and only after some had died could a semblance of
stability be restored. For example, Iaroslav (1015–54) succeeded Vladimir but
did not become sole ruler until 1036, when his brother Mstislav died. Despite
this instability, Kiev developed into a remarkably prosperous state with
political institutions that were in many respects as sophisticated and efficient
as those in Central and Western Europe.
Kiev’s Economy
For its economic well-being, Kiev depended on
both agriculture and trade, which explains the existence of some three hundred
cities with a combined population in the twelfth century of about one million
people out of a total between seven and eight million. Some four hundred
thousand of the urban dwellers lived in the three major cities, Kiev, Novgorod,
and Smolensk. The land in the southern regions of the principality was very
fertile; so rich, in fact, that after one ploughing it produced excellent
harvests for a number of years without any further tilling. The ax was the main
agricultural tool, but ploughs were also widely used for the production of
spelt, wheat, buckwheat, oats, and barley. Apple and cherry orchards were
widespread in what is today Ukraine. Kievans also engaged in horse and cattle
breeding. Slaves, indentured laborers, and freemen performed most of the
agricultural work on one of three types of larger estates belonging to princes,
boyars (senior nobles), or to the church.
Kievans engaged in
lively domestic as well as foreign commerce. The north depended on the south
for grain, in return for which the south obtained iron and salt. At the same
time, the cities imported agricultural goods and exported tools and other
manufactured goods. Foreign trade proceeded largely along the Dnieper river and
then across the Black Sea to Constantinople, which became the main southern
outlet for Russian goods such as furs, honey, wax, and slaves (after the tenth
century the Russians stopped the selling of Christian slaves). The Russian
traders, in turn, brought back wines, silk fabrics, art objects (in particular,
icons), jewelry, fruits, and glassware. Kiev also engaged in fairly extensive
trade with the Orient, exporting furs, honey, wax, walrus tusks, woolen cloth,
and linen, and importing spices, precious stones, silk and satin fabrics, and
weapons of Damask steel as well as horses. The sacking of Constantinople in
1204 by the knights of the Fourth Crusade put an end to the Black Sea trade,
but some of the slack was taken up by the overland trade between Kiev and
Central Europe that had developed in the twelfth century. The Russians supplied
Europe with furs, wax, honey, flax, hemp, tow burlap, hops, tallow, sheepskin,
and hides and imported manufactured goods such as woolen cloth, linen, silk,
needles, weapons, glassware, and metals such as iron, copper, tin, and lead.
By the standards of
the Middle Ages, the gross product of Kiev was impressive. A small minority,
most notably the princes of the major principalities, can be said to have been
successful capitalists who enjoyed considerable wealth. On the other hand,
laborers were not ‘workers’ in the modern sense of the word. Most of the people
worked on the land as free peasants and most of the manufacturers were artisans
who produced their wares in small establishments. Slaves, generally foreigners
captured in wartime, were used to perform household services, but the total
number was small.
It should be noted
that feudalism, the dominant social and political order in Central and Western
Europe by the eleventh century, did not take hold in Kievan Rus. A personal
relationship between nobles under which a lord (the suzerain) granted a fief to
a vassal in return for certain military and economic obligations, feudalism was
the political and military system of medieval Europe in the region roughly west
of Poland. Kievan Rus was organized differently. The upper classes, consisting
of the prince’s retinue and an aristocracy of wealthy people, merged into the
social group known as the boyars, whose power and prestige derived from their
possession of large landed estates. By the early thirteenth century the number
of princes, many with relatively small landed estates, had risen substantially,
and they came to be regarded as the upper crust of boyardom. Though highly
influential, the boyars did not constitute an exclusive social order. Through
outstanding service in a prince’s retinue a commoner could rise to the position
of boyar, though this did not occur very often. Nor did the boyars enjoy legal
privileges as a class. For example, they were not the only people who could be
landowners. By the same token, many boyars retained close ties to one or other
city.
The middle class in
Kievan Rus was quite large, in fact proportionately larger than in the cities
of Western Europe at the time, and consisted of merchants as well as a stratum
of independent farmers who were fairly well off. The lower classes were divided
into several groups. The most numerous were the smerdy, peasants or hired laborers who were personally free, paid
state taxes, and performed military service in wartime. But the smerdy did not enjoy full ownership of
their property. For example, at a smerd’s
death his sons inherited his belongings, but if he had no sons the property
went to the prince, who was authorized to assign a share to unmarried
daughters. But unlike the serfs in the West, the smerdy were not legally bound to the land and were not subject to
the arbitrary will of the landowner.
The political system
of Kievan Rus can best be described as an amalgam of three features, the
monarchic, the aristocratic, and, for want of a better word, the ‘democratic’.
Although these were closely intertwined, for pedagogical reasons it is best to
discuss each feature separately.
Designed originally to
prevent discord, the political system had evolved by the eleventh century into
an incredibly complicated structure that, ironically, tended to generate
interminable conflict. Its underlying principle, known as the rota system, was
that each member of the House of Riurik was entitled to a share in the common
patrimony, the ten lands of the Kievan kingdom. The senior prince was to occupy
the throne of Kiev and the other thrones would be distributed according to the
place of each prince in an elaborate genealogical tree of the family. (The only
exception was Novgorod, where the prince was elected from the princely family
at large.) Thus, upon the death of the senior prince all other thrones would be
redistributed. In theory, the scheme seemed ideal, but as the number of princes
multiplied the system became hopelessly confusing. For example, according to
the official rules, the elder son of the first brother in a princely generation
was considered genealogically equal to his third uncle (that is, the fourth
brother). Inevitably, disputes arose over claims to specific thrones and
increasingly these were settled by the sword.
Initially, each member
of the Riurik clan considered himself to be the social and political equal of
every other member. But the prince of Kiev, looked upon as the ‘father’ of the
younger princes, enjoyed certain prerogatives that gave him special status. He
assumed the title of ‘suzerain prince’ or ‘grand duke’, and in that capacity
assigned the junior princes to their provinces, adjudicated disputes between
them, and, most important, acted as the guardian of the entire realm of Rus.
When major decisions had to be reached, – for example, whenever Kiev faced attacks
by foreign enemies – the Prince of Kiev would convoke a family council of all
the princes. By the end of the twelfth century, the elaborate system no longer
worked as designed. Increasingly, the grand duke treated the smaller princes as
his vassals and the principle of genealogical seniority was often disregarded.
Although quite
powerful, the princes could not act entirely on their own. In the
administration of the realm, the implementation of legislative measures, the
codification of laws, and the conclusion of international treaties, the princes
needed the approval of the Boyar Council, which represented the aristocracy,
the second branch of the political structure. On occasion, the Boyar Council
acted as a supreme court. The precise functions of the Council were generally
determined by custom rather than law. Significantly, the boyars were not
obliged to serve any one prince and could leave at any time to work for the
ruler of another principality. Even if a boyar received land from a prince, that
did not oblige him to serve his benefactor in perpetuity. The land became the
private property of the boyar, who was not regarded as the vassal of any one
prince.
The veche (popular assembly) represented the
third, ‘democratic’, element in the political system of Kievan Rus. All city
freemen could participate in its deliberations and its votes, and residents in
nearby towns could also attend meetings of the assembly, although generally
only the men in the capital showed up. Custom dictated that all decisions be
unanimous, but on occasion differences were so sharp that the veche could not reach any decision.
Princes, mayors, or groups of citizens could convoke meetings of the assembly,
which tended to follow the lead of the princes and boyars in matters of
legislation and administration. But after the mid twelfth century some assemblies
grew more independent and even played a role in the selection of princes and
sometimes went so far as to call for the abdication of a ruler.
The socio-economic and
political order of Kievan Rus was thus quite unique, not to be confused with
the feudal order dominant in the West. For about two centuries, that order
functioned relatively efficiently, but during the years from 1139 to 1237 it
began to falter. Rivalries between princes and between cities and
principalities sharpened, leading to an ever looser federation of Russian
states. The growth of regional commerce further weakened the bonds between the
principalities. Kiev focused on trade with Byzantium and, as already noted, after
1204 with Central Europe; Smolensk and Novgorod turned their attention
increasingly to commerce in the Baltic region; Riazan and Suzdal sought to
expand their trade with the Orient. The boyars in the various principalities
grew stronger and became less and less interested in maintaining close contact
with their neighbors. Although the various Russian states did not exactly view
their neighbors as ‘foreigners’, they did begin to look upon them as
‘outsiders’. That the bonds of unity had been frayed became evident in 1237
when the Russians proved incapable of mounting a united stand against the
advancing Mongols (also known as Tatars), who had reached Rus and soon
threatened the entire realm. The Mongols had given ample warning of their
intentions fourteen years earlier, in 1223, when they invaded the south-eastern
region then inhabited by the Polovtsy (or Cumans). The Polovtsy appealed to the
Russian princes for help but only a few agreed to join the fight. In a fierce
battle on the river Kalka the Mongols scored a great victory, but for some
reason they withdrew, only to return with a larger force in 1237.
the emergence of the mongol empire
In several respects, the Mongol empire, one of
the greatest in world history, remains an enigma to historians. It is hard to
explain how one million people succeeded in imposing their rule over one
hundred million in a huge area stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the
Adriatic coast, from China to Hungary. Although the Mongols dominated Russia
for close to two and a half centuries, from 1240 to roughly 1480, there is
still no consensus among scholars about the extent to which they influenced the
course of Russian history. That this long tutelage of the Mongols profoundly
affected Russia at the time can hardly be disputed. The critical question is
whether the conquerors left a lasting imprint on Russian political, cultural,
and social institutions.
In the twelfth century
the Mongols were only one of numerous tribes and clans that lived in the
easternmost part of what is today Mongolia, and their emergence as the dominant
force was essentially the work of one man, Chingis-Khan (Great Emperor), whose
original name was Temuchin. Born in the mid 1160s, Temuchin as a young man came
to believe that it was his destiny to achieve greatness. One source of his
conviction apparently was the legend that one of his forefathers had been born
some time after the death of the mother’s husband. The woman claimed to have
had a vision of a divine being visiting her at night. It has been suggested
that this was an adaptation of the story about the Virgin Mary, which is
plausible because Nestorian Christianity had a following among the Mongols. In
any case, Temuchin, an intelligent and wily young man, became an outstanding
warrior who ingratiated himself with Togrul, the ruler of the Keraits, one of
the more powerful Mongol tribes.
As Togrul’s adviser,
Temuchin succeeded in changing the rules of steppe politics, which had hampered
the development of a stable order. Under the prevailing rules, the loyalty of
vassals to their suzerains lasted only so long as it seemed useful to both
sides. Each vassal, in other words, was free to abandon his suzerain to join
the service of another one. Thus, no one tribal leader could form a large and
stable khanate. Temuchin concentrated on securing a large personal following
and soon challenged Togrul himself, who was killed probably as a result of
Temuchin’s cunning plans. Having seized power, Temuchin created a special unit
of 150 guards who were charged with protecting him night and day against a
surprise attack, a favored political stratagem among the Mongols. Then Temuchin
divided the entire army into units of one thousand, one hundred, and ten men
and enforced rigid discipline in each unit. At the same time, he insisted that
all political and military leaders be directly and clearly subordinate to him
and forbade them from changing their loyalties.
Once he had
established his authority over the tribes in his region (by 1206), Temuchin
adopted the title Chingis Khan and then step by step vastly expanded his
domain. He defeated the Tanguts, a people of Tibetan origins and in 1211 he
launched a four-year campaign against the Chin empire; within four years he
subjugated northern China and Manchuria. He strengthened his forces immensely
by incorporating into his army Chinese army engineers and by employing literate
Chinese as civil servants. Then, moving westward, he conquered Khorezm in
western Turkestan, an area of the utmost importance for international trade, since
it lay at the crossroad between China and the Mediterranean world and between
India and southern Russia. In the years 1221–3 the Mongols penetrated Russia,
from which Temuchin mysteriously retreated after his great victory at the river
Kalka.
Chingis Khan died in
1227 leaving a two-fold legacy that inspired his successors to continue his
policy of military expansion. On the one hand, he had claimed to be driven by a
religiousobligation to establish universal peace and a universal state. If he
conquered the world he would bring stability and order to humankind, which, in
return, would have to pay the price of permanent service to the new state.
Under the new dispensation, the poor would be protected from injustice and from
exploitation by the rich. On the other hand, Chingis Khan glorified the
military life as a high calling that was deeply satisfying. ‘Man’s highest
joy,’ he declared, ‘is in victory: to conquer one’s enemies, to pursue them, to
deprive them of their possessions, to make their beloved weep, to ride their
horses, and to embrace their daughters and wives.’
Chingis Khan had
turned his army into the best in the world. Consisting for the most part of
superbly trained cavalry accompanied by a gifted engineering corps, it adopted
highly sophisticated strategies and tactics to weaken the resolve of the enemy
to resist. Long before attacking a stronghold, the Mongols sent secret agents
to the region to wage psychological warfare. The agents would spread the word
that the Mongols intended to grant religious toleration to dissenters, to help
the poor resist exploitation by the rich, and to aid wealthy merchants by
making the roads safe for commerce. But at the same time the agents warned that
these commitments would be kept only if there was a peaceful surrender. In the
event of resistance, the punishment would be devastating.
Once the Mongols had
decided on a battle they would proceed to surround and annihilate the enemy.
Applying a strategy known as the ring, the Mongols would occupy a huge area
around the enemy and then would gradually approach their quarry. Uncanny in
their ability to coordinate their advances, the commanders applied steady
military pressure on the enemy. If the enemy lines failed to crack, the Mongols
would feign retreat. The enemy, assuming that the invading forces were in
disorderly retreat, would rush forward only to be surprised by the Mongols’
orderly resistance. The Mongol columns then surrounded the defenders, who found
no way of escaping the ring. The Mongols persisted in fighting until the enemy
had been utterly destroyed.
mongol domination
In 1235, Ugedey, Chingis Khan’s son, decided to
attack Europe. After defeating the Bulgars and other peoples in the eastern
parts of Russia, 120,000 troops under the command of his nephew, Batu, reached
north-eastern Russia and inflicted one defeat after another on the local
armies. Batu caught the Russians by surprise by attacking in wintertime, a
season considered inhospitable to the movement of large armies. The Mongols,
used to severe winters, were warmly attired with furs and rode horses trained
to gallop on snow, and their armies moved swiftly across the many frozen rivers
and lakes. In addition the Mongols benefited from miscalculations by the
Russians and Western Europeans. The Russians believed that the Volga Bulgars
would put up strong resistance, but their forces crumbled quickly, enabling the
Mongols to capture Riazan in 1237. Shortly thereafter the Mongols seized
control of Moscow and in 1238 they entered the city of Vladimir, which they
destroyed. The invaders then defeated the army of the Grand Duke Iuri II,
turned south, and after capturing Kiev in 1240, began to move towards Hungary
and Poland. The Western Europeans, disdainful of the Russians as heretics and
schismatics, made no effort to help them fend off the Mongols, who in 1241
entered Silesia and almost took Vienna. Only the death of Great Khan Ugedey
that year saved the rest of Europe from invasion. Eager to influence the
selection by clan leaders of a new leader, Batu withdrew from the West and
returned to southern Russia.
But the Mongol army
did not retreat from Russia, over which they established a rather elaborate
system of rule that reduced the Russians to a subordinate position without
eliminating all autonomous political life of the local population. It is this
duality of the Mongol domination that has led to much controversy about the
impact of the long period of foreign rule on the history of Russia.
On the other hand, the
Great Khan’s authority was considered absolute. Once elected by clan leaders,
no one could challenge the ruler, who relied upon the army as the backbone of
the administrative structure of the Mongolian empire. The Great Khan issued his
orders to army commanders, who acted as civil governors of the districts in
which their armies camped. At the same time, most Russian princes retained
their posts, but they were clearly in a subordinate position. They were
required to travel to Saray, which was the capital of the Golden Horde, the
autonomous state the Mongols had set up west of the Ural mountains, to kowtow
before the Khan, pledge their allegiance to him, and be confirmed in their
offices. Any prince who resisted this humiliating ritual was quickly executed.
Yet the Mongols showed
little interest in exercising direct control over the Russian lands. Their
concern was to collect taxes and to secure recruits for their army, but beyond
that they allowed Russian princes to administer their lands. There were only two
exceptions to this mode of rule: in south-west Russia (Ukraine) the Mongols
removed the existing administrative structures entirely and replaced them with
their own, whereas in Novgorod Mongol agents left the Russian authorities
firmly in control at all times. In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth
centuries some Russian princes and grand dukes assumed the burden of collecting
the tribute for the conquerors, which enhanced their local power and their
standing among the Mongols. Eventually, some of these princes grew strong
enough to challenge the authority of the conquerors.
Such challenges would
probably have failed had the Mongol empire not suffered from endless internal
discord. In principle, the Great Khan in Mongolia was the absolute ruler, but
the distances between the different regions of the realm were so vast and communications
between them so slow that local khans often ignored their leader with impunity
and at times even sought to take over the entire empire. In the 1360s and 1370s
the conflicts reached such intensity that the Golden Horde was virtually
paralyzed, enabling Russian princes to play off one khan against another and in
the process strengthen their own authority.
In the meantime, the
impact of Mongol rule on Russia had been substantial. For one thing, the
Mongols caused enormous physical damage. A number of cities were entirely
destroyed and as a consequence Russian industry (enamels, jewelry, ceramics,
glasswork, stone-cutting, building crafts) suffered a devastating blow from
which it did not recover until the mid-fourteenth century. It has been
estimated that during the first three years of the invasion, from 1237 until
1240, some ten per cent of the population was killed. Moreover, because of the
decline of industry internal trade declined markedly, though it should be noted
that the Mongols’ interest in international trade did stimulate foreign
commerce.
A major consequence of
Mongol rule was the continuing decline and eventual disappearance of the veche, the ‘democratic’ institution of
Kievan Russia in which the lower classes had been able to express their
discontents. Their major grievances were taxation and conscription, which
placed a special burden on them. Princes and boyars, who frequently managed to
come to terms with the foreign rulers, were inclined to support the khans’
elim-ination of the veche, a
potentially troublesome institution for local Russian authorities. By the
mid-fourteenth century, the veche had ceased to be a significant political
institution in much of the country.
Another major
political change during the era of Mongol rule was the replacement of the rota
system, under which Russia had remained a unified state, by the appanage
system, under which each province became a separate, divisible, permanent
property of a particular prince. Princes no longer moved from one province to
another on the death of a prince higher on the ladder of the House of Riurik.
And each prince could dispose of his property at will to his wife, sons,
daughters, or other relatives, however distant. Historians4 differ
over the reasons for the disintegration of the Russian state into ever smaller
appanages, but there is agreement on certain general factors that made it
possible. Although the Mongols did not initiate the establishment of the
appanage system, they found it advantageous because it made much more difficult
a unified stand of the Russians against them. But the geography of the country
probably played a more important role. A striking feature of northern Russia
was the complex network of rivers and streams, all flowing in different
directions, and as people began to colonize new regions they naturally moved
along the waterways. This diffusion of people led to the formation of small
river provinces separated from each other by natural boundaries of virtually
impassable wilderness. Princes, who often supervised the colonization almost on
a day-to-day basis, tended to look upon the new settlements as their own
creation and even as their own property. And there were no dignitaries such as
boyars to offer resistance to their claims of supremacy. Many of the appanage
princes were hardly rich even by the standards of the fifteenth century and
often they were no more affluent than independent owners of private estates. In
view of the political disintegration of Russia, it is remarkable that the
Mongol yoke was ever discarded and that a new, unified state under the
leadership of Muscovy emerged. How that happened will be the subject of the
next chapter.
Before exploring that
theme, however, a few more words should be said about the long-term legacy of
the Mongol domination. Although the Mongols left much of the administration to
Russian dignitaries, they did contribute significantly to the undermining of
the relatively free society of Kievan Rus by introducing certain elements of what
has been called a ‘service-bound society’, though the process of establishing
such a society was not completed until the seventeenth century. The following
are some of the Mongol practices that left their mark on Russia: the obligation
placed on the nobility to serve the state; the right of the ruler to confiscate
the estate of a nobleman pronounced guilty of treason; the imposition on
townspeople as well as peasants of a tiaglo
(literally ‘burden’ or taxes); the introduction of such harsh judicial
practices as capital and corporal punishment. Torture became a regular feature
of Russian criminal procedures only after the Mongol conquest. It would be
misleading to attribute the changes in the institutions and traditions of
Kievan Russia solely to the influence of the Mongols, but it would be equally
misleading to discount that influence.