Belatedly, laroslav himself recognized the danger and tried to avert it. According to a chronicler, before he died in 1054 he summoned his sons and begged them, much as Shakespeare has the dying Edward IV beg his courtiers, to love each other and his heir. If they did so, said laroslav, God would vanquish their enemies and peace would prevail. But, he warned, ‘If you live in hatred and dissention, quarrelling with one another, then you will ruin the country your ancestors won with so much effort, and you yourselves will perish.’
Though laroslav had had the authority to create a more centralized administration, he had failed to challenge the apanage principle. Perhaps he was too much of a traditionalist; perhaps it was politically impossible for him to do so. At any rate, his will was set in the traditional mould. He bequeathed the throne of Kiev to Iziaslav, his first-born, and four other cities to his other sons, Sviatoslav, Vsevolod, Igor and Viacheslav. If any of them violated the boundaries of another’s territory or tried to oust him, the others were to join together to help the brother who had been wronged. 31 Beyond that, Iaroslav had only exhortations for them. It was not enough. The falling-out was not long delayed.
The masters of the steppe, which ran eastward of the Kievan frontier, were now the Polovtsians, otherwise known as Cumans or the Kipchak horde. Anxious to break into the profitable slave trade and to filch such plunder as they could from Russian territory, their raiding parties were becoming a nuisance, and to the more exposed cities even a danger. In 1068 these Polovtsians succeeded in routing a Russian army trying to keep them out, and this precipitated a revolt against Grand Prince Iziaslav of Kiev. The rebels evidently thought Iziaslav was failing them over the issue of defence. The invaders were turned back by Sviatoslav’s forces and order was restored to Kiev. However, the divisive issue of the succession remained. Iziaslav’s three brothers joined forces to remove him, and Sviatoslav gained control of Kiev. But he died in 1077, at which Iziaslav returned from refuge in Poland and took over again.
When he was killed in the following year, a chaotic period of family infighting followed — only briefly interrupted by war against the Polovtsians. The premier city passed into the hands of Iaroslav’s last surviving son, Vsevolod, but he died in 1094, and from then on the crisis deepened. Attempts were made to find an accommodation between rival members of the family, and it was agreed to abide by Iaroslav’s will by giving Kiev to Iziaslav’s son Sviatopolk as a patrimony, Chernigov to the sons of Sviatoslav, and so on. But, as generation succeeded generation and the lines of precedence among Iaroslav’s numerous descendants became more and more blurred, the spirit of family solidarity withered, and the tendency to civil strife grew.
Apanages became patrimonies, and the Rus state came to resemble a ramshackle collection of little independent duchies. Pressure from the Polovtsians increased, and some of them joined in the Russians’ family fights. Fear of the steppe people and a sense of the common interest sometimes made for co-operation, but family conflict always flared up again and the fear of civil war was pervasive even in quiet times. ‘Why’, wailed a chronicler, ‘do we ruin the land of Russia by continual strife against each other?’ 32
The answer was ambition, aggressive individualism, resentments enshrined in family memories, the prevailing sense of honour — familiar enough in western Europe at that time, where they also led to rebellion and civil war. Then in 1113 Vladimir Monomakh became grand prince of Kiev, and the old sense of family solidarity briefly reasserted itself.
Vladimir was born in 1053, a year before the death of Iaroslav, his grandfather. The offspring of Vsevolod of Chernigov and a Byzantine princess, he liked to boast of his toughness and prowess. In his autobiographical testament he wrote that
I [have] captured ten or twenty wild horses with my own hand … Two bison tossed me and my horse on their horns, a stag gored me, an elk trampled me underfoot, another gored me with his horns, a wild boar tore my sword from my thigh, a bear bit my saddle-cloth next to my knee, and another wild beast jumped on to my flank and threw [down] my horse with me … [Yet] God preserved me unharmed. I often fell from my horse, fractured my skull twice, and in my youth injured my arms and legs, not sparing my head or my life. 33
Vladimir was literate as well as courageous. An heir to both the Slavonic tradition of Russia and the Greek tradition of Byzantium, it was in his reign that Slavonic replaced Greek on his official seal. Yet he treasured his Roman-Byzantine heritage too, having frescos painted in Santa Sophia depicting an emperor presiding over games in the hippodrome. Vladimir sponsored public works, building a bridge over the Dnieper and erecting Kiev’s ‘Golden Gate’, celebrated in one of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition; and he was also a loyal and generous son of the Church.
The Church in return was his staunch supporter. Though its head, the Metropolitan, was appointed by the Patriarch of Constantinople and was, as yet, usually a Greek rather than a Russian, the Grand Prince’s wishes on ecclesiastical appointments were heeded. The Church also provided a major source of political advice and administrative skill for him to draw on. The reinterment of Boris and Gleb — in effect their canonization - took place in 1115, the centenary of their murder, and must have been the fruit of deep discussion between Vladimir and his ecclesiastics. Vladimir and his son Oleg attended the ceremony, which was clearly intended to bolster their legitimacy. They were, after all, blood relatives of the infant martyrs (albeit also of their murderer).
When Oleg died, however, it proved impossible to keep the state together. The solidarity of the Riurikid clan on which the first Russian state, Kievan Rus, had been built was crumbling, and the descent into ruin became steadily faster. In large part this was because the narrow interests of each patrimonial principality began to outweigh consideration of the general good, and because of the bickering of the various princes. But secular changes were also important.
Between the years 1000 and 1200 Russia’s population is reckoned to have doubled. 34 At the same time its centre of gravity, both demographic and economic, had begun to move north from Kiev. Novgorod was expanding into the vast, rich hunting grounds of Perm, and by the end of the century it was extracting tribute from native peoples in the Urals. Yet the chief beneficiary of the demographic change was not Novgorod but the new city of Vladimir, which ruled over the east-central region known as Suzdalia. By 1200 even the proud princes of the south looked up to the Prince of Vladimir as first among equals. 35 Long important for the access it gave to the Caspian and the Orient, the mid-Volga valley had become a major source not only of food but also of furs, honey and other commercial products. And its population had been multiplying, both by natural increase and through immigration. It was coming to be seen as a land of opportunity, and it was also safer from predatory raiders than some districts further south.
These demographic changes led to some towns losing importance and the appearance of new ones: Iurev-Polskii, Dmitrov, Moscow. The prince most associated with developing and exploiting this trend was Monomakh’s son, Prince Iurii Dolgorukii (‘Long-Arm’) of Rostov and Suzdal. He invested in Vladimir, fortified the little commercial settlement of Moscow, and in 1155 ascended to the throne of Kiev. He died two years later, but his successor as prince of Vladimir was the doughty Andrei Bogoliubskii. Andrei was both a great builder (his Church of the Intercession on the river Nerl bids fair to being the most perfect in all Christendom) and a competitor for the throne of the Grand Prince in Kiev. He actually captured and plundered Kiev in 1169, though he could not hold it. For the moment the rival clans of the south, of Volhynia and Pereiaslav, held Kiev, but they enjoyed only a nominal pre-eminence. Kiev had lost the control of Russia it had exerted a century earlier.
As Andrei’s career suggested, Russia’s economic strength was coming to be based more on the middle Volga region and less on the lower Dnieper and the Black Sea. The relative decline of the south coincided with, and may have been related to, Byzantium’s increasing commercial difficulties. By contrast, the rising prosperity of Vladi
mir, and of Pskov, was based in part on trade with Germany. And Andrei’s domains also profited from trade with the Caucasus, the Caspian and beyond. Indeed, this connection was so important that in 1197 a marriage was arranged between Andrei’s son and Queen Tamara of Georgia. 36 These economic trends tended to accentuate the northward drift of population.
Despite the long-standing influence of Byzantium on Russia, Andrei Bogoliubskii was the first Russian ruler to assume the authority of a Byzantine autocrat. Here at last, it seems, was a potential grand prince who could make Kievan Rus work as a state. He would not pander to the people; nor did he respect the conventions of family inheritance — indeed, he recognized its inefficiency. He lavished gifts on the Church, but insisted on the last word even on some clerical issues (and dismissed a bishop who disagreed with him). Yet the Church inspired his autocratic impulses and justified them. It sang his praises, compared him to King Solomon, said that he interceded with heaven in the interests of the Russian land. A cabal of disgruntled retainers led by a princely relative assassinated him in 1175. His enemies rejoiced at the deed, but the Church pictured him as a martyr.
Andrei’s brother Vsevolod III - known as ‘Big Nest’ because he had so many children - succeeded him and eventually challenged Roman of Volhynia for the throne of the grand prince. He gained possession of it in 1205, but his rivals would not concede and he proved unable to establish his authority over all Russia. For the remaining seven years of his life Vsevolod concentrated his attentions on his vast northern patrimony, which stretched from the Neva to the Volga. But he shared his brother’s political philosophy and practised it insofar as he was able. When investing his son Constantine with a cross and a sword symbolizing his right to rule in Novgorod, Vsevolod told him, ‘God has given thee the seniority over all thy brothers, and Novgorod the Great [now] possesses the seniority [and right] to rule over all the Russian lands.’ 37
After Vsevolod died in 1212, however, even his own sons fell out with one another. Prince Vsevolod Rostislavich took over in Novgorod. In 1221 the people there rejected him and asked Prince Iurii of Vladimir to send them a Suzdalian prince instead. Fifteen years later, just such a prince was sent there. He bore the famous name of Alexander, and tried to emulate his namesake. 38
Fourteen years later civil war erupted yet again in the south, and over the next five years Kiev changed hands seven times. Well might the Novgorod chronicler bewail ‘the accursed, ever-destructive devil who wishes no good to the human race [who] raised up sedition among the princes of Rus’ so that men might not live in peace … The evil one rejoices in the shedding of Christian blood.’ 39
Kievan Russia was at the point of collapse. The descendants of Riurik had become so numerous that serious genealogical skills would have been needed to establish where sovereignty and precedence should lie, but by the early thirteenth century it hardly seemed to matter. The state was collapsing amid the almost constant war for the possession of Kiev, when a series of hammer blows shattered it beyond hope of recovery This coup de grâce was delivered by a new enemy: the Mongols.
In 1222 Mongols had routed a poorly co-ordinated force of Russians and Pechenegs on the river Kalka. But they were only a reconnaissance party, which soon turned back. Ten years later, however, they returned, this time in full force, commanded by Baty, grandson of the dreaded Chingiz Khan. Ironically, they came at a time when Prince Alexander of Novgorod was demonstrating that there was still fight left in the Russians. He defeated a Swedish army on the river Neva in 1240 (which is why he is known as Alexander Nevskii), and then destroyed a force of Teutonic Knights in a battle on the ice of Lake Peipus near the Baltic. These victories were to be trumpeted by Russian propagandists in many a dark day over the following centuries, but even Alexander had no answer to the Mongols. And when they returned this time they came intent on subduing all Russia.
They were terrifyingly efficient, 40 and killing aroused few qualms in them. Indeed, they used terror deliberately to weaken their enemies’ will to resist. Their original purpose in moving west had been to claim large tracts of grassland on which to feed their herds. A spell of global warming had struck their grazing grounds, which had suffered from a succession of droughts. This had spurred them to go out in search of fresh pastures for their horses, which represented food and drink as well as mobility to them. But they killed and terrorized for booty too, and for regular income in the form of tribute. The Russians were no match for them.
From this point on, however, we should refer to the Mongols as Tatars, for, although the Tatars were not Mongols but Turkic-speaking tribes who followed Chingiz Khan and his successors, they came to represent Mongol power to the Russians. The Tatars sacked Riazan in 1237, Vladimir and Suzdal in 1238, and Pereiaslav and Chernigov in 1239. In 1240 they took Kiev itself. Then they put Russia’s princes to the rack, demanding their submission.
In 1243 Iaroslav of Vladimir submitted; in 1245 Prince Daniil Romanovich of Volhynia followed suit. Baty Khan confirmed both in office. When Grand Prince Mikhail Vsevolodovich of Kiev demurred, in 1246, they executed him. From then on the Khan was in control. The internecine fighting between the princes continued, but the Tatars learned to manage and manipulate it. They also enforced the taking of a census and the regular payment of considerable taxes. Beyond that they were content to govern at a distance, allowing the princes to administer their new subjects on their behalf. They only demanded that the princes visit their capital, Sarai on the Volga, to obtain confirmation of their appointments from the Khan, that they leave hostages as sureties for their good behaviour, and that they obey orders. Any infraction met with swift retribution, any protest with harsh reprisal. Otherwise the Russians were left alone.
Kievan Rus was destroyed; no Russian principality — not even Novgorod, which the Tatars had not reached — remained sovereign, and the Tatars were to make vicious punitive raids thereafter on various parts of the Russian land. The destruction and the loss of life was considerable; the sense of shame deep. Yet the impression nourished by Cold War historians that the Mongols ‘orientalized’ Russia is exaggerated. Apart from lending Russia a few institutions like the yam, or postal service (which is not peculiar to the Orient), and words for money, treasury and customs duties, their influence was chiefly psychological. Russia recovered demo-graphically, the economy eventually revived; the Church was virtually unaffected; and relations with Byzantium were not interrupted. 41 And the seeds of the next, more successful, imperial Russia had already been sown.
3
Reincarnation
T
HE POLITICAL SYSTEM of Kievan Rus had crumbled, never to be revived. The ultimate authority for the Russian lands was now the Tatar khan and his court at Sarai on the Volga. Yet over the course of the next two and a half centuries a new centre of authority was to emerge, more viable than the last — and in Moscow, a fortified settlement hardly heard of in the year 1200. It was the consequence of many causes, of both long-term trends and actions by individuals. To the extent that some recognizable elements of the old Russia were involved in creating the new entity it can be termed a reincarnation, but new factors also came into play, and the Tatars themselves unwittingly contributed towards it.
Some important trends noticeable in the late Kievan period continued. The drift of population northward, which had already given Vladimir preeminence among the principalities, resumed after an interval. 1 So did the extension of agriculture, especially towards the east. This increased food production and hence human fertility. A rising birth rate evidently compensated for the increase of mortality due to war, and, although outbreaks of bubonic plague were to cause setbacks, the population soon resumed its healthy tendency to expansion. The territorial extent of the hunting-and-gathering economy also spread steadily eastwards and towards the northeast, bringing in more wealth in furs to sell. By the later 1300s it was also bringing more people of different ethnicity into the Russian orbit, including Maris and Mordvs, strengthening a colonial tendency which had be
gun long before when Russians and Riurik’s Viking band had first encountered Finnic fisher-folk in the neighbourhood of Novgorod. But it was Moscow, rather than Vladimir or Novgorod, that proved best able to capitalize on these changes. This was chiefly because of its advantageous location commanding the portages, and hence the commerce, that passed between rivers in the basin of the mid and upper Volga, between the smaller rivers Kostroma and Sokhma, the Sukhna and the Vaga. 2
The Russian princes, particularly of the north-central regions, benefited from these accretions of wealth, but so did the Tatars, who used the princes to collect taxes for them. Immediately following the conquest the Khan had sent in officials, called baskaks, to control each prince and each domain. The baskak ensured the payment of taxes and supervised a census, begun in 1257, to establish a systematic basis for revenue collection. The baskak also supervised the maintenance of order and ensured that the prince toed the correct political line. Quite soon, however, the Khan began to delegate some of these functions to co-operative Russians. So it was that Alexander Nevskii, hero of wars against the Teutonic Knights and Sweden, and grand prince of Vladimir from 1252 to 1263, came to impose the Tatars’ census on Novgorod, where he had begun his career. After a time all the baskak’s functions were transferred to the Grand Prince, and, as the Khan’s chief tax agent, the Grand Prince came to exercise a substantial advantage over rival rulers of the Russian lands. In this way a servile practice was transformed into a means of accreting power.
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