by Riazanovsky
Pskov's relations with Moscow differed from those of Novgorod. Never a rival of the Muscovite state, Pskov, on the contrary, constantly needed its help against attacks from the west. Thus it fell naturally and rather peacefully under the influence of Moscow. Yet when the Muscovite state finally incorporated Pskov around 1511, the town, after suffering deportations, lost its special institutions, all of its independence, and in the face of Muscovite taxes and regulations, its commercial and middle-class way of life.
In spite of brilliance and many successes, the historical development of Novgorod and Pskov proved to be, in the long run, abortive.
X
THE SOUTHWEST AND THE NORTHEAST
At the end of the twelfth century the Russian land has no effective political unity; on the contrary, it possesses several important centers, the evolutions of which, up to a certain point, follow different directions and assume diverse appearances.
MIAKOTIN
While the history of Novgorod represented one important variation on the Kievan theme, two others were provided by the evolutions of the southwestern and the northeastern Russian lands. As in the case of Novgorod, these areas formed parts of Kievan Russia and participated fully in its life and culture. In fact, the southwest played an especially important role in maintaining close links between the Russians of the Kievan period and the inhabitants of eastern and central Europe; whereas the northeast gradually replaced Kiev itself as the political and economic center of the Russian state and also made major contributions to culture, for instance, through its brilliant school of architecture which we discussed earlier. With the collapse of the Kievan state and the breakdown of unity among the Russians, the two areas went their separate ways. Like the development of Novgorod, their independent evolutions stressed certain elements in the Kievan heritage and minimized others to produce strikingly different, yet intrinsically related, societies.
The Southwest
The territory inhabited by the Russians directly west and southwest of the Kiev area was divided into Volynia and Galicia. The larger land, Volynia, sweeps in a broad belt, west of Kiev, from the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains into White Russia. The smaller, Galicia, which is located along the northern slopes of the Carpathians, irrigated by such rivers as the Prut and the Dniester, and bordered by Hungary and Poland, represented the furthest southwestern extension of the Kievan state. During the Kievan period the Russian southwest attracted attention by its international trade, its cities, such as Vladimir-in-Volynia and Galich, as well as many others, and in general by its active participation in the life and culture of the times. Vladimir-in-Volynia, it may be remembered, ranked high as a princely seat, while the entire area was considered among the more desirable sections of the state. The culture of Volynia and Galicia formed
an integral part of Kievan culture, but it experienced particularly strong foreign, especially Western, influences. The two lands played their part in the warfare of the period; Galicia became repeatedly a battleground for the Russians and the Poles.
As Kiev declined, the southwest and several other areas rose in importance. In the second half of the twelfth century Galicia had one of its ablest and most famous rulers, prince Iaroslav Osmomysl, whose obscure appellation has been taken by some scholars to mean "of eight minds" and to denote his wisdom, and whose power was treated with great respect in the Lay of the Host of Igor. After Iaroslav Osmomysl's death in 1187, Andrew, king of Hungary, made an abortive effort to reign in the principality, which was followed by the rule of Iaroslav's son Vladimir who died in 1197. After Vladimir, Galicia obtained a strong and celebrated prince, Roman of Volynia, who united the two southwestern Russian lands and also extended his sway to Kiev itself. Roman campaigned successfully against the Hungarians, the Poles, the Lithuanians, and the Polovtsy. Byzantium sought his alliance, while Pope Innocent III offered him a royal crown, which Roman declined. The chronicle of Galicia and Volynia, a work of high literary merit noted for its vivid language, pictured Roman as follows: "he threw himself against the pagans like a lion, he raged like
a lynx, he brought destruction like a crocodile, and he swept over their land like an eagle, brave he was like an aurochs." Roman died in a Polish ambush in 1205, leaving behind two small sons, the elder, Daniel, aged four.
After Roman's death, Galicia experienced extremely troubled times marked by a rapid succession of rulers, by civil wars, and by Hungarian and Polish intervention. In contrast, Volynia had a more fortunate history, and from 1221 to 1264 it was ruled by Roman's able son Daniel. Following his complete victory in Volynia, which required a number of years, Daniel turned to Galicia and, by about 1238, brought it under his own and his brother's jurisdiction. Daniel also achieved fame as a creator of cities, such as Lvov, which to an extent replaced Kiev as an emporium of East-West trade, a patron of learning and the arts, and in general as a builder and organizer of the Russian southwest. His rule witnessed, in a sense, the culmination of the rapprochement between Russia and the West. In 1253 Daniel accepted a king's crown from the pope - the only such instance in Russian history - while his son Roman married into the Austrian reigning house. Daniel's work, however, received a shattering blow from the Mongol invasion. The Mongols laid waste Galicia and Volynia, and the Russians of the southwest, together with their compatriots elsewhere, had to submit to the overlordship of the khan.
Following the death of Daniel in 1264 and of his worthy son and successor Leo in 1301, who had had more trouble with the Mongols, Volynia and Galicia began to decline. Their decline lasted for almost a century and was interrupted by several rallies, but they were finally absorbed by neighboring states. Volynia gradually became part of the Lithuanian state which will be discussed in a later chapter. Galicia experienced intermittently Polish and Hungarian rule until the final Polish success in 1387. Galicia's political allegiance to Poland contributed greatly to a spread of Catholicism and Polish culture and social influences in the southwestern Russian principality, at least among its upper classes. Over a period of time, Galicia lost in many respects its character as one of the Kievan Russian lands.
The internal development of Volynia and Galicia reflected the exceptional growth and power of the boyars. Ancient and well-established on fertile soil and in prosperous towns, the landed proprietors of the southwest often arrogated to themselves the right to invite and depose princes, and they played the leading role in countless political struggles and intrigues. In a most extraordinary development, one of the boyars, a certain Vladislav, even occupied briefly the princely seat of Galicia in 1210, the only occasion in ancient Russia when a princely seat was held by anyone other than a member of a princely family. Vladimirsky-Budanov and other specialists have noted such remarkable activities of Galician boyars as their direct
administration of parts of the principality, in disregard of the prince, and their withdrawal in corpore from the princedom in 1226 in their dispute with Prince Mstislav. By contrast with the authority of the boyars, princely authority in Galicia and Volynia represented a later, more superficial, and highly circumscribed phenomenon. Only exceptionally strong rulers, such as Iaroslav Osmomysl, could control the boyars. The veche in Galicia and Volynia, while it did play a role in politics and at least occasionally supported the prince against the boyars, could not consistently curb their power. It should be noted that the rise of the boyars in southwest Russia resembled in many respects the development of the landlord class in adjacent Poland and Hungary.
The Northeast
The northeast, like the southwest, formed an integral part of the Kievan state. Its leading towns, Rostov and Suzdal and some others, belonged with the oldest in Russia. Its princes, deriving from Vladimir Monomakh, participated effectively in twelfth-century Kievan politics. In fact, as we have seen, when Kiev and the Kievan area declined, the political center of the state shifted to the northeast, to the so-called princedom of Vladimir-Suzdal which covered large territories in the central and eastern parts of European Russia. It was a
ruler of this principality, Andrew Bogoliubskii, who sacked Kiev in 1169 and, having won the office of the grand prince, transferred its seat to his favorite town of Vladimir in the northeast. His father, the first independent prince of Suzdal and a son of Vladimir Monomakh, the celebrated Iurii Dolgorukii, that is, George of the Long Arm, had already won the grand princedom, but had kept it in Kiev; with Andrew, it shifted definitively to the northeast. Although Andrew Bogoliubskii fell victim to a conspiracy in 1174, his achievements of building up his principality and of emphasizing the authority of the princes of Suzdal in their own territory and in Russia, remained. His work was resumed in 1176 by Andrew's brother Vsevolod, known as Vsevolod III, because he was the third Russian grand prince with that name, or Vsevolod of the Large Nest because of his big family. Vsevolod ruled until his death in 1212 and continued to build towns, fortresses, and churches, to suppress opposition, and to administer the land effectively. At the same time, as grand prince, he made his authority felt all over Russia.
It will be remembered that the Mongol invasion dealt a staggering blow to the Russian northeast. The grand prince at the time, Iurii, a son of Vsevolod III, fell in battle, the Russian armies were smashed, and virtually the entire land was laid waste. Yet, after the Golden Horde established its rule in Russia, the northeastern principalities had some advantages. In contrast to the steppe of the south, they remained outside the zone directly
occupied by the Mongols and on the whole could slowly rebuild and develop. A certain distance from the invaders, it might be added, gave them an advantage not only over the old Kievan south, but also over the southeastern principality of Riazan, which evolved along lines parallel to the evolution of the northeast, but experienced greater Mongol pressure. Moreover, the seat of the grand prince stayed in the northeast with the descendants of Vladimir Monomakh. To be more exact, after the death in 1263 of Alexander Nevskii, who, as mentioned earlier, had managed to stabilize relations with the Mongols, the office of the grand prince went successively to his brothers Iaroslav of Tver and Basil of Kostroma and to his sons Dmitrii and Andrew. Following the death of Andrew in 1304, Michael of Tver, Iaroslav's son and Alexander Nevskii's nephew, ruled as grand prince until he was killed by the Mongols at the court of the Golden Horde in 1319. Michael was succeeded by his rival, a grandson of Alexander Nevskii, Iurii, or George, who became the first prince of Moscow to assume the office of grand prince.
But, while the position of the grand prince, with its location in the northeast and the complicated Kievan practice of princely succession, continued as a symbol of Russian unity, in other respects division prevailed. Appanages multiplied as princes divided their holdings among their sons. On the death of Vsevolod III, the Vladimir-Suzdal princedom had already
split into five principalities which proceeded to divide further. Ultimately some princes inherited tiny territories, while still others could not be provided for and had to find service with more fortunate members of the family. In the continuous shifting of political boundaries, four leading principalities emerged in the northeast in the first half of the fourteenth century: the princedoms of Vladimir, Rostov, Tver, and Moscow. A proliferation of appanages, characteristic of the northeast, occurred also in the western lands and in the southeastern principality of Riazan, in fact, everywhere in Russia, except in Novgorod which knew how to control its princes.
Whereas the evolution of Novgorod emphasized the role of the veche, and the evolution of Galicia and Volynia that of the boyars, the prince prevailed in the northeast. Although, as already mentioned, Rostov, Suzdal, and some other towns and areas of the northeast formed integral and important parts of Kievan Russia, they generally lay, in contrast to the southwest, in a wilderness of forests with no definite boundaries and hence with great possibilities of expansion to the north and the east. That expansion took place in the late Kievan and especially the appanage periods. This celebrated "colonization" of new lands was considered by S. Soloviev, Kliuchevsky, and some other specialists to have been decisive for subsequent Russian history. The princes played a major role in the expansion by providing economic support, protection, and social organization for the colonists. In the new pioneer society there existed little in the nature of vested interests or established institutions to challenge princely authority. It may be noted that Andrew Bogoliubskii had already transferred his capital from ancient Suzdal to the new town of Vladimir and that his chief political opponents were the boyars from the older sections of his realm. The Mongol invasion and other wars and disasters of the time also contributed to the growth of princely authority, for they shattered the established economic and social order and left it to the prince to rebuild and reorganize devastated territory. The increasing particularism and dependence on local economy, together with the proliferation of appanages, meant that the prince often acted simply as the proprietor of his principality, entering into every detail of its life and worrying little about the distinction between public and private law. With the passage of years, the role of the prince in the northeast came to bear little resemblance to that of the princes in Novgorod or in Galicia.
Kliuchevsky and other Russian historians seem to overstate the case when they select the evolution of the northeast as the authentic Russian development and the true continuation of Kievan history. It would seem better to consider Novgorod, the southwest, and the northeast, all as fully Kievan and as accentuating in their later independent growth certain aspects of the mixed and complicated Kievan society and system: the democratic veche, the aristocratic boyar rule, or the autocratic prince; the city or the country-
side; trade or agriculture; contacts with the West or proximity to Asia. Nor should other Russian areas - not included in our brief discussion - such as those of Smolensk, Chernigov, or Riazan, be denied their full share of Kievan inheritance. The more catholic point of view would not minimize the significance of the northeast in Russian history. It was in the northeast, together with the Novgorodian north and certain other adjacent lands, that the Great Russian ethnic type developed, as distinct from the Ukrainian and the White Russian. The conditions of its emergence, all characteristic of the northeast, included the breakdown of Kievan unity and the existence of a more primitive style of life in a forest wilderness inhabited also by Finnic-speaking tribes. And it was a northeastern principality, Moscow, which rose to gather the Russian lands and initiate a new epoch in Russian history.
XI
THE RISE OF MOSCOW
… we can imagine the attitude towards the princedom of Moscow and its prince which developed amidst the northern Russian population… 1) The senior Grand Prince of Moscow came to be regarded as a model ruler-manager, the establisher of peace in the land and of civil order, and the princedom of Moscow as the starting point of a new system of social relations, the first fruit of which was precisely the establishment of a greater degree of internal peace and external security. 2) The senior Grand Prince of Moscow came to be regarded as the leader of the Russian people in its struggle against foreign enemies, and Moscow as the instrument of the first popular successes over infidel Lithuania and the heathen "devourers of raw flesh," the Mongols. 3) Finally, in the Moscow prince northern Russia became accustomed to see the eldest son of the Russian church, the closest friend and collaborator of the chief Russian hierarch; and it came to consider Moscow as a city on which rests a special blessing of the greatest saint of the Russian land, and to which are linked the religious-moral interests of the entire Orthodox Russian people. Such significance was achieved, by the middle of the fifteenth century, by the appanage princeling from the banks of the Moscow River, who, a century and a half earlier, had acted as a minor plunderer, lying around a corner in ambush for his neighbors.
KLIUCHEVSKY
The unification of Great Russia took place through a destruction of all local, independent political forces, in favor of the single authority of the Grand Prince. But these forces, doomed by historical circumstances, were the bearers of "antiquity and tradition,"
of the customary-legal foundations of Great Russian life. Their fall weakened its firm traditions. To create a new system of life on the ruins of the old became a task of the authority of the Grand Prince which sought not only unity, but also complete freedom in ordering the forces and the resources of the land. The single rule of Moscow led to Muscovite autocracy.
PRESNIAKOV
The name Moscow first appears in a chronicle under the year 1147, when Iurii Dolgorukii, a prince of Suzdal mentioned in the preceding chapter, sent an invitation to his ally Prince Sviatoslav of the eastern Ukrainian principality of Novgorod-Seversk: "Come to me, brother, to Moscow." And in Moscow, Iurii feasted Sviatoslav. Under the year 1156, the chronicler notes that Grand Prince Iurii Dolgorukii "laid the foundations of the town of Moscow," meaning - as on other such occasions - that he built the city wall. Moscow as a town is mentioned next under 1177 when Gleb,
Prince of Riazan, "came upon Moscow and burned the entire town and the villages." It would seem, then, that Moscow originated as a princely village or settlement prior to 1147, and that about the middle of the twelfth century it became a walled center, that is, a town. Moscow was located in Suzdal territory, close to the borders of the principalities of Novgorod-Seversk and Riazan.
The Rise of Moscow to the Reign of Ivan III
We know little of the early Muscovite princes, who changed frequently and apparently considered their small and insignificant appanage merely as a stepping stone to a better position, although one might mention at least one Vladimir who was one of the younger sons of Vsevolod III and probably the first prince of Moscow in the early thirteenth century, and another Vladimir who perished when Moscow was destroyed by the Mongols in 1237. It was with Daniel, the youngest son of Alexander Nevskii, who became the ruler of Moscow in the second half of the thirteenth century that Moscow acquired a separate family of princes who stayed in their appanage and devoted themselves to its development. Daniel concentrated his efforts both on building up his small principality and on extending it along the flow of the Moscow river, of which he controlled originally only the middle course. Daniel succeeded in seizing the mouth of the river and its lower course from one of the Riazan princes; he also had the good fortune of inheriting an appanage from a childless ruler.