Vasilii II was only ten when, in 1425, he acceded to his father’s throne. Provision had been made for his minority: a council of regents was to govern till he came of age. His mother and her father, Grand Duke Vitovt of Lithuania, were among its members. So were his uncles Andrei and Petr, his future father-in-law Prince Iaroslav of Sepukhov, and his brother Semen, both of them great-grandsons of Ivan ‘Money-Bag’. The regency was knitted together by close kinship and political interest. But someone of account had been excluded: the boy-prince’s eldest uncle, lurii, whose power base included the profitable salt-producing region around Galich and Chukhloma and also Zvenigorod only a few miles to the west of Moscow. lurii immediately claimed the throne on the ground of traditional, lateral succession in the House of Riurik. Moral pressure from the Patriarch Photius persuaded him to drop his claim — but not for long. When Photius and Grand Duke Vitovt died, he reasserted it and was soon in command at Moscow. Vasilii was forced to swear homage to his uncle and content himself with the Principality of Kolomna as his inheritance. The year was 1433; Vasilii was eighteen.
Many Muscovite notables would not accept lurii as grand prince, however, and the upshot was civil war. An army of Vasilii’s supporters sacked Iurii’s base at Galich, but the following year lurii counter-attacked and Vasilii himself was defeated and taken to Moscow, this time as his uncle’s prisoner. Fortunately for him, lurii died suddenly; but then his sons took up their father’s claim. In 1436 Vasilii captured the elder of them, his cousin Vasilii Kosoi, and blinded him. But he was not secure as grand prince, and for the next several years he was absorbed in trying to exert an effective grip on his domains, keeping the Tatars out, and reacting to a crisis in the Church. 25
The throne of the metropolitan had remained empty since Photii’s death. It was eventually filled by Isidore, a Greek from Constantinople. But Isidore soon accepted an invitation to attend a Church council in Italy sponsored by the Pope. The papacy had long wanted to unite the Eastern and Western Churches on his own terms. With the Ottoman Turks pressing in on Constantinople from every side, the Emperor was desperate for aid and all for compromise. So was Russia’s Greek patriarch. But most Russians found the idea appalling. For them the only true Christian faith was their faith. The ‘Latins’, such as the crusaders from north-west Europe, who had exhibited such greed, depravity and lack of sexual restraint when they had sacked Constantinople in 1204, no longer observed the practices, still less the morality, of the Orthodox Christian faith. And so, when Isidore returned to Russia from Ferrara in 1441, having agreed to acknowledge the Pope, Vasilii ordered his arrest. A more reliable Russian bishop eventually took his place, but not for seven years. For that period the cruel, unfortunate, Vasilii lacked the support his predecessors had come to rely on in difficult times. And before the situation was resolved his former enemies returned to haunt him.
A substantial fraction of what remained of the Golden Horde, led by Ulug-Mehmet, had taken to regularly pillaging Muscovite territory. Vasilii had tried to counter its raids without much success, and when, in 1445, he was confronted by it before all his forces could be mustered he suffered a disastrous defeat and was taken prisoner. Ulug-Mehmet thought of replacing Vasilii with Dmitrii Shemiaka, Vasilii’s cousin, but eventually he sent 500 warriors to escort the Grand Prince back to Moscow. Vasilii returned in shame to a capital which had suffered a disastrous fire in his absence. Worse, Dmitrii now managed to raised support from among the Muscovite elite, and when the Grand Prince left town on a pilgrimage to the Holy Trinity Church and the shrine of St Sergius at Zagorsk, Dmitrii and his friends took possession of Moscow.
Soon afterwards, Vasilii was taken prisoner, whereupon Dmitrii, in revenge for his brother Vasilii Kosoi, had his eyes put out. Thenceforth the victim was known as Vasilii the Blind. Surprisingly, perhaps, the act did not emasculate him politically, but this was chiefly because of Dmitrii’s mistakes. Rather like Richard III as pictured by Shakespeare, Dmitrii imprisoned Vasilii’s young sons. This alienated many Russians, and when Vasilii journeyed to Tver people of many camps, including two of Ulug-Mehmet’s own sons, came to join him on the way. By the time he turned back towards Moscow his following had grown into an army. Seeing no hope, Dmitrii abandoned the city. There ensued a slow but inexorable pursuit, and Dmitrii eventually submitted, and swore loyalty to Vasilii, in 1448. But as soon as Novgorod decided to lend him its power he reneged. By now he represented the interests of some of the more important principalities which were resisting the imposition of Moscow’s supremacy, but within two years his forces had been overcome, his city of Galich had been captured, and he himself had been forced into exile in Novgorod, where, many months later, Vasilii’s agents succeeded in poisoning him.
At last Blind Vasilii ruled unchallenged. But Muscovy was in a debilitated condition, and he was heavily dependent on the Church to exert moral pressure on political dissidents, even to threaten them with excommunication (as it had threatened Dmitrii in 1447). Smooth transfers of power could not be expected, and it became his urgent priority to establish a succession to his throne that would be regarded as legitimate. The recent civil wars had shown that claims based on genealogy could still be backed by force, and cities like Pskov, Tver and Novgorod could still assert themselves against Moscow. Besides, in theory at least, the Khan still decided who the Grand Prince was to be, granting him legitimacy with the issue of his yarlyk, his licence to rule. However, Vasilii’s chancery had a strategy which it implemented with vigour.
It made great strides in claiming back apanages. It bought some, and took others by force, but that still left princes and cities which hankered after a remembered independence and bygone privileges. Determined to reinforce his power, which had been so much eroded, Vasilii did not spare those who stood in his way. Cities that had supported his enemies were punished. Novgorod was disciplined; compelled for the first time to use the Grand Prince’s insignia in its official correspondence, and to swear never to enter into relations with foreign powers on its own initiative, it was also forced to pay a sizeable indemnity. A new prince of Pskov, which had hitherto been neutral, was forced to swear an oath of loyalty to the Grand Prince as well as undertaking to uphold the customs of Pskov. By 1460 Pskov was referring to itself as Blind Vasilii’s ‘hereditary property’ (otchina), addressing him as ‘Sovereign’ (Gosudar’), and pledging loyalty not only to him but to his descendants. 26 Following the precedent set by Grand Prince Iurii Danilovich, who had annexed Mozhaisk in 1303, a Muscovite governor was imposed on it. In the same way the Principality of Tver became an hereditary property of the Grand Prince. The Principality of Riazan was also annexed. In effect all princely rights were becoming subject to the Grand Prince’s will.
The brisk way in which these measures were taken suggests that policies were already in place, awaiting the opportunity to implement them, and that the Grand Prince had enough trained functionaries ready to carry them out. Policy was formulated by the blind ruler’s executive council, or durna, consisting of five or six boyars — experienced executives drawn from the ranks of the princes, like I. Iu. Patrikeev, or untitled servitors, like F. M. Cheliadnia. 27 But implementation depended on a cadre of literate and numerate functionaries from the subjected principalities themselves and on servitors of former enemies as well as on the Grand Prince’s own staff. This can be safely inferred from our knowledge of the reign of Blind Vasilii’s son and successor, Ivan III, who was to continue the work. So the Grand Prince began to interpose himself between the subject princes and their people. A quasi-feudal, hierarchical ruling structure was beginning to give way to a more direct and absolutist regime. 28
To the extent that the new governmental trend cut across traditional vested interests, it was unpopular; but society was tired of civil war, and Vasilii’s strict regime promised to end it. The new metropolitan, Jonah, backed these policies to the hilt. The Church felt besieged and in particular need of the Grand Prince’s support. Jonah had been installed by the Russian bishops, wi
thout reference to the Patriarch of Constantinople. This was an alarming breach of precedent, but the circumstances were extraordinary. It was generally recognized that Constantinople must soon fall to the Turks. Besides, most Russians were convinced that the senior patriarch, who had supported the Council of Ferrara/Florence had fallen from the faith. The installation of Metropolitan Jonah, therefore, signalled the independence of the Russian Church, but also isolated it. Furthermore, largely Orthodox Lithuania and Catholic Poland, united by a dynastic marriage in 1386, had begun to merge politically after the Treaty of Horodlo of 1413, and on terms which discriminated against non-Catholic nobles and gentry.
Vasilii was also helped by the break-up of the Golden Horde, creation of the Tatar khan, into the separate Tatar khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, Siberia and the Crimea. The threat from Tatar raiders hardly diminished, but the possibilities of managing the problem by diplomatic as well as military means became greater. Now that the Tatars were in decline and the Golden Horde had split, they could no longer dictate who the grand prince was to be, and henceforth grand princes tried to assert their independence by seeking an additional, more impressive, title. They also began not only to nominate their chosen successors, but also to adopt the long-standing Byzantine practice, by which an emperor would co-opt his successor with him. In 1448 Vasilii the Blind co-opted his son, the future Ivan III, into government with him, formally investing him as co-ruler.
As well as striving to establish a legitimate succession, the grand princes had for some time been trying to bequeath incontestable title to their territories as personal property, and to eliminate the titles of lesser princes to their apanages. They went so far as to claim to have purchased lands they had in fact conquered, and willed their titles to their sons, hoping to secure the succession and inheritance of their property down the generations. Vasilii II succeeded in eliminating almost all apanages, though he also created new ones for his own offspring. The historian A. E. Presniakov argued that in the last resort Vasilii survived not because of any formal powers but thanks to the popular support he received. But Vasilii was aggressive, and the people expected him to be aggressive; the interests of the grand princes and their subjects happened to coincide. Such, implicitly, was the judgement of Liubavskii too. He attributed Moscow’s success to power rather than territory — the grand princes’ strengthening hold over the military class, their command of taxation resources and of landed assets. 29 But it was civil war which inspired the rise of Moscow and, according to some, the inception of the Russian autocracy.
Russia’s political fractiousness in the period was paralleled in many other parts of Europe. England was riven by the Wars of the Roses for longer than the Russians were by their civil wars, and the states of Italy seemed to be locked in almost perpetual struggles. Petrarch had regretted Italy’s lack of unity a century earlier, and the hard political advice that Machiavelli was to give in the century following was born of the bitter experience in the interim. Russians were exercising their minds about the problem too. Indeed, within a few decades, under Ivan III, they were to develop a more durable political entity in Moscow than the more brilliant Lorenzo de’ Medici was to build in Florence, and begin to flex their muscles in a wider world.
4
The Foundation of an Empire
R
ATHER THAN STRIVING for an imperial role, Muscovy stumbled into one. The impetus came from the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. This long-expected but none the less traumatic event was immediately interpreted by the Russian bishops as a punishment for apostasy -Constantinople’s dalliance with the Pope at the Council of Ferrara/ Florence. The work of legitimizing Russian imperial power began at that point, and again churchmen took the lead. The Legend of the White Cowl, suggesting that Moscow had become the seat of true Orthodoxy in religion, and the idea of Moscow as the ‘Third Rome’, the new capital of the Roman Empire, were both elaborated in monastic think-tanks. However, there was also a more tangible kind of transfer from Constantinople to Moscow: both before and after 1453, Greek refugees trickled in. They included churchmen, noblemen, artists and functionaries of every sort, and they brought with them the diplomatic, administrative and military expertise essential to the building of empires.
Moscow’s rulers began to hanker after imperial dignity, both to boost their authority in their own domains and to enhance their standing abroad. They did not aspire to rule the world, however. Nor is there evidence that they contemplated ruling a multiplicity of different peoples as the Romans had done. Muscovy could double its territorial extent and power merely by extending its rule over linguistic Russians who were Orthodox Christians, through ‘the ingathering of the Russian lands’ as it came to be called. But the first priority was to complete the task that Vasilii the Blind had begun: to establish direct control over the subject princes and exploit their lands and people in a systematic way
From this point of view the reign of Vasilii’s twenty-two-year-old son, Ivan III, did not begin auspiciously. Within a year of his accession in 1462, Novgorod had applied to King Casimir of Poland-Lithuania for support against him, and the Knights of the Sword had invaded the Principality of Pskov from Livonia. Yet eventually he was to succeed on almost every front. He was to become the great centralizer of the Russian principalities, and an historical figure of comparable weight to his contemporaries Henry VII of England and Louis XI of France.
He resolved the ambiguous status of the more important apanage principalities. Their lords ruled on their own account, and although he was grand Prince - their acknowledged superior - in practice they could defy him. He might call on them to join him with all their force to repel an invader or to attack an enemy’s stronghold, and they might very well comply, like those princes who had joined Dmitrii of the Don in his famous battle against the Tatars years before. But again they might not. Their assessments of necessity and advantage were not necessarily the same as his, and, even though they had a formal and moral obligation to the Grand Prince, they had the power to act as they pleased. And as long as they retained that power, Muscovy would be vulnerable to foreign enemies. Furthermore, the perpetuation of a subordinate prince’s command over his own forces allowed the possibility of civil war. As the reign of Vasilii II had proved, a grand prince was ill-advised to trust even his nearest kith and kin. And so Ivan III determined to be ‘sovereign over all the sovereigns of the Russian land’. His aim was to subordinate the princes to his will, absorb their private armies into his own army, and transfer such of their boyars as might be useful — and unconditionally loyal — into his own service. In short, he wanted to monopolize, and rationalize, power over the Russian lands. He also set out to solve the perennial succession question, to make possession of the throne hereditary, the permanent property (votchina) of himself and his descendants, requiring oaths not only to himself but to his chosen heir. 1
In terms of Muscovy’s territorial expansion the results were dramatic. In the 1470s Muscovy secured all Novgorod’s northern territories as far as the east and west banks of the White Sea, and the lands of Great Perm eastward to the river Ob, which bordered on the frontier with the Khanate of Siberia. This brought more native peoples under Ivan’s rule: Voguls and Ostiaks, Votiaks and Cheremis. The city state of Tver, which had hitherto blocked Moscow’s way to the north, had been incorporated; Novgorod was crushed, and its constitution, which incorporated liberties for the propertied element, was overridden. Ivan had already annexed Iaroslavl (1463) and Viatka to the south. He stood firm against the Golden Horde’s last attempt to bully Muscovy in 1480, and in 1493 he adopted the title ‘Sovereign of All Russia’.
But territorial advance did not end there. Towards the west, Toropets was secured, and the important area between the rivers Ugra and Desna as far as the Berezina; and towards the south-east, also at Lithuania’s expense, the towns of Briansk and Chernigov were taken. Muscovy’s power now extended to not far short of Kiev itself. More than this, by the time of his death in 1505, Iv
an had increased his country’s military power, placed the state’s finances on a sounder footing, and laid the foundations of a system by which property and status depended on service to the Grand Prince. Inheritance was still to count, but it came to apply as much to obligations — particularly obligations to serve the Grand Prince — as to property and privilege.
These achievements may be enough to justify Ivan’s sobriquet ‘the Great’, but there was also another: it was he who made Muscovy a European power to be reckoned with. He established diplomatic relations with Ottoman Turkey as well as with Poland-Lithuania and the Tatars, and exchanged embassies with Denmark, Venice, Georgia, Hungary and the Holy Roman Emperor. Nor did Ivan behave like a respectful newcomer among Europe’s heads of states. When the Emperor, anxious to please him, offered him the title of king, Ivan summarily rejected it. He would not be patronized. He had a better estimation of his dignity than that.
Ivan, more than any other individual, was the architect of the Muscovite state, and he gave it the capability of becoming an empire. But there were costs. His rule was exacting and oppressive. He crushed Novgorod and its autonomous institutions; he carried out dispossessions on a large scale; and his reign has been described, with some justice, as one of ‘cultural depression and spiritual barrenness’. In all these respects Ivan III resembles Ivan the Terrible, Nicholas I, Stalin and all the other Russian tyrants. But is this fair? Were the Tudor rulers of England less tyrannical than he? Were their exactions less demanding? Did Catholics and humanists not suffer under them? Should not historical figures be judged in context, and according to the standards of their own times rather than of ours? 2
There is no doubt that Ivan’s reign saw a marked upward surge in Russia’s fortunes, and that he was in large measure responsible for it; but, like so many great historical figures, he enjoyed a good share of luck. The death of his first wife, Maria of Tver, in April 1467, is a case in point, for the sad event opened up an unexpected opportunity. In 1469 a Byzantine Greek called Iurii Trakhaniot arrived in Moscow bearing a letter from Bessarion, an eminent scholar from Constantinople who had taken refuge from the Turks in Rome. The letter proposed marriage between Ivan and Zoe Palaeologue, the daughter of the Despot of Morea and niece of Constantinople’s last emperor. 3 Whatever the lady’s personal attributes, politically the offer was tempting. A union between the house of Moscow and the imperial dynasty would bring prestige and open up tempting prospects of aggrandizement.
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