Moscow Begins to Grow
Moscow was an obscure village until, in the late thirteenth century, Daniil Aleksandrovich extended the lands around it and made it a small principality. History shows that the main cause of the city's growth was its position on the navigable Moscow River, which joined the Volga on the east by short portages and the Oka, Don and Dnieper on the south and west. Yuri Danilovich, Daniil's son and prince of Moscow, had his eye on the neighboring principality of Suzdal and its wealthy capital, Vladimir. Mikhail, prince of Tver, had the same plan. War broke out between Moscow and Tver over the prize. Moscow won, and Mikhail was killed and counted among the saints.
Moscow grew. Ivan I, Yuri's brother and successor, added the two titles "Grand Prince of Moscow" and "Grand Duke of Vladimir" to his name. Ivan I, who was charged by the Tatar khan with collecting tribute, turned in less to the khan's treasury than he collected, and grew rich this way. For this greed and love of money he was given the name Kalita ("money bag"); but for thirteen years he kept the principalities safe from Tatar raids. At his death he lay, like a monk, with the middle of his head shaved round and incense filling the room (1341). His son Simeon, called "Simeon the Proud," who had inherited his father's taste for tribute, claimed rule over all the provinces and called himself "Grand Prince of All Russia." But this could not prevent his death in the plague (1353). Ivan II was a gentle, peaceable ruler, and in his time fratricidal war overran Russia.
Kulikovo and the Sack of Moscow
His son Dmitry had every martial quality. He defeated his enemies one by one and even challenged the Tatar khan. In 1380 Mamai, a khan's commander, raised an army of Tatars, Genoese mercenaries and a number of vagabonds and marched on Moscow. Dmitry and his Russian allies met this army at Kulikovo, near the Don, and routed it (1380); Dmitry and his companions won the title Donskoi. Two years later the Tatars repeated their attack with a hundred thousand men. The Russians, puffed up by the earlier victory and complacent, could not assemble enough force to meet them. The Tatar army took Moscow, killed 24,000 of its people and burned the whole city. Later Dmitry's son Vasily I made peace with the Tatars, annexed the province of Nizhny Novgorod, and forced the principalities of Novgorod and Vyatka to bow to his rule.
Autocracy, Colonists and Trade
The grand princes of Moscow adopted the Tatars' despotic style. Perhaps among an unlettered people any other kind of government would have led to chaos. Under the yoke of a tyrannical, cunning government a body of officials, in the manner of the Eastern Roman Empire, did the administrative and clerical work, and a council of boyars was formed to advise and serve the prince. The boyars were both army chiefs and lords of their estates, and at the same time held the protection and power over the lives and property of the half-free, toiling peasants.
In that time bands of adventurous settlers moved to more remote, unsettled regions; they drained marshy land and, by burning woods and brush, made fertile fields; but they farmed those fields so recklessly that after a short time they had to leave the exhausted, worn-out land and move on in search of new fields. In this way the settlers advanced to the White Sea and the Ural mountains, and some bands reached Siberia. On the endless plains of Russia, towns were many but all small. Houses were built of wood and clay and were reckoned to last at most twenty years. The roads were unpaved dirt, and in winter, when sleds and the boots of patient travelers pressed the snow down on them, travel was much easier.
Merchants preferred rivers to roads and, by waterways or over the ice, carried on slow, laborious trade between north and south and with the Eastern Roman Empire, the Muslim countries and the German merchants' union, the Hanseatic League. Perhaps this very growth of trade removed some of the selfishness and isolation of the Russian princes and forced the groundwork of Russian unity. Vasily II, nicknamed "Vasily the Blind" because in 1446 his enemies had put out his eyes, brought all rebels to heel with whipping, torture and cutting off of limbs (I give this briefly), and left to his son a Russia strong enough that he could escape the shame of Tatar domination.
Ivan the Great
Ivan III was given the title "the Great" because he was able to carry out this heavy task and make Russia a single, independent country. His nature suited the need of the day: reckless, cunning, calculating, stubborn and ruthless. It was Ivan III who could lead his armies from his seat in the Kremlin to great victories in the farthest parts of the country. Ivan punished any disobedience or incompetence severely, and did not spare even the boyars from his wrath. He had a physician executed who failed to cure his son. He ruled his household and close circle so sternly and gloomily that women fainted at his sharp glance. Russia called him "the Terrible" until the turn came for his grandson, the true "Ivan the Terrible."
The easiest of Ivan's conquests was Novgorod. He was thirsty to master that busy, profitable market, and the merchants of Moscow also urged him to remove their northern rivals. The grand prince held the plains between Moscow and Novgorod and exchanged his goods for grain and provisions there. He had only to shut his granary and market against Novgorod for that city-state to go bankrupt or submit. After eight years of war and intermittent truce, Novgorod lost its independence (1478). Seven thousand of its leading citizens were moved to Suzdal (the book's figure), and the Hanseatic merchants living in Novgorod were exiled. The merchants of Moscow took over Novgorod's important market, and their prince inherited its taxes and revenues.
With the seizure of the ruined republic's colonies, Ivan extended his realm to Finland, the Arctic and the Ural mountains. The principality of Pskov submitted in time and was able to keep its republican status under the grand prince. Tver, to keep its independence, tried to make an alliance with Lithuania; Ivan marched on that city-state in person and took it without a fight. Then Rostov and Yaroslavl submitted too.
When Ivan's brothers died, the grand prince would not let their estates go to their heirs, but seized them all and added them to his realm. One brother, Andrei, plotted with Lithuania; Ivan had him arrested and jailed. Andrei died in prison, and Ivan wept at his death, but he confiscated his lands: "Policy does not bear feelings."
The Stand on the Ugra, 1480
Release from the Tatar yoke seemed impossible, yet it came easily. The remnant of the Mongol and Turkish invaders had settled in three groups opposed and ill-disposed to one another, at Sarai, Kazan and the Crimea. By his policy Ivan stirred the Tatars against one another until he was sure that those three groups would never again make friends and work together against him. In 1480 Ivan refused to pay tribute to the Tatar khan. The Mongol khan Akhmad crossed the Volga with a big army and halted south of Moscow on the banks of the Oka and Ugra rivers. Ivan brought his 150,000 men to the opposite banks of those two rivers and camped.
For several months the two enemies stood face to face and neither began the fight. Ivan hesitated to risk his rule and his life in a gamble, and the Tatars feared his advanced artillery. When the rivers froze and the barrier between the armies vanished, Ivan ordered a retreat. Instead of pursuing him, the Tatars went back to their base at Sarai (1480). The result was a great and almost comic victory for the Russians. From then on Moscow paid the Tatars no tribute; and the grand prince called himself "sovereign," meaning he paid tribute to nobody. Ivan's policy had set the hostile khans against one another. Their mutual enmity led them to war. Akhmad Khan was defeated and killed, and the Golden Horde at Sarai scattered.
Lithuania, the Tsar and Byzantium's Heritage
Lithuania remained; and so long as Ukraine, Kiev and western Russia were in the hands of a state that constantly threatened Moscow and at the same time urged Orthodox Christians to accept Roman Christianity, neither the grand prince nor the metropolitans could live in peace and safety. At this time a plot by a group of Poles to kill Ivan gave him a pretext for war. Ivan went to war (1492) on the plea of saving provinces that had been deceived by the propaganda of Roman Catholic Christians. Several Lithuanian princes, uneasy and discontented with the union with Poland and the Roman Catholic Church, opened their gates to Ivan's troops.
Alexander, grand prince of Lithuania, stood against him at Vedrosha and was beaten (1500). Pope Alexander VI mediated, and a six-year truce was signed (the book's account). Moscow kept the territory it had won, which west of the Sozh River included the city of Chernigov and reached nearly to Smolensk. Ivan III, who had reached sixty-three, left the conquest and rescue of the remaining provinces to his successors.
Ivan's forty-three-year rule counts as one of the most important periods of Russian history before the twentieth century. Whether he was driven by greed for wealth and rank or by belief that peace and happiness for the Russian people could not be secured without the country's unity and independence, Ivan III did for his country what Louis XIV did for France (the book's name; Louis XI is surely meant), Henry VII for England, Ferdinand and Isabella for Spain, and Alexander VI for the Papal States. The coincidence of these events shows that in that period nationalism and monarchy were gaining strength and spreading and, in contrast, the supernational power of the popes was declining. The boyars lost their independence and the principalities became tributaries of Moscow. Ivan took the title "Sovereign of the Land of Russia." Perhaps at the prompting of his Greek wife, he also added the Greco-Roman title Tsar (Caesar) to his name, made the picture of the double-headed imperial eagle the national banner, and presented himself as the heir to the full political and religious power of the destroyed Eastern Roman Empire.
In this way, along with Byzantine Christianity, Byzantine theories and customs of government, the method of using the Church in the service of the state, the Byzantine Greek alphabet and Byzantine art forms passed to Russia and became common there. As a result, to the extent that the Eastern Roman Empire had been made Oriental by its closeness to eastern Asia, Russia too, having lived for a time under the influence and domination of the Tatars of the East, took on in many respects the form of an Eastern monarchy, one that to western Europeans seemed strange and mysterious.