Empires Apart

by Brian Landers

  Thirty-five years later the Third Crusade set off from western Europe to liberate the Holy Land from the infidel, but decided that the Byzantine Christians presented a much more tempting target. Constantinople was taken and its trade routes fell into the hands of the Italian city-states, destroying Kiev’s economic supremacy for ever. The Rus were pushed back relentlessly from the south-east, from the south-west by the descendants of Attila’s Huns and from the west by the Teutonic knights.

  Then came the single most important event in Russian history: the Mongols arrived. (The Mongols in Russian histories are often referred to as Tartars, especially in more recent times when Stalin wreaked particular revenge on them. The elision from one term to the other is confusing for foreigners, but no more so than the elision from English to British in American histories. The term Tartar itself is derived from the Chinese name of one of the Mongol tribes; it has nothing to do with tartare sauce or the tartar on teeth, which comes from an Arabic word meaning resin.) The Mongols first emerged not in what is now Mongolia but further north, where the Huns had created the first state in central Asia, Hsiung-nu, in around 200BC, before being pushed and pulled westwards in the murderous stream of conquest ending at Châlons. Culturally the Mongols drew from both the forest traditions of Siberia and the cultures of the Turkic peoples who had replaced the Huns to control the great sweep of the steppes. Their transformation from a collection of loosely linked, nomadic clans into a unified military and political force was entirely thanks to Genghis Khan.

  Genghis Khan was born in a tent on the banks of the river Onon, east of Lake Baikal, in 1162. After the murder of his father he was taken under the wing of a Mongol leader whom he soon overpowered. He set about creating a united Mongol nation by first subduing his closest kinsmen and then extending out to other Mongol and Turkic tribes. Among people where clan connections had been all-important, Genghis Khan introduced and enforced a strictly meritocratic regime. When he had compelled the tribes of central Asia to submit he turned on China. Invasions of China had been tried and failed before; that Genghis Khan succeeded is a testament to the skill with which he waged war, and the ferocity of his troops. In 1214, 75,000 Mongols lay siege to the 600,000 defenders of Peking. The next year the city fell. The Mongols were on their way.

  The Mongols changed the world in a way unparalleled since the Romans. No individual Roman leader had anything like the impact on world history that Genghis Khan exerted. China, India, Russia and a host of other nations are as they are today because of the influence of that one man. After conquering northern China in 1215 Genghis Khan led his hordes through Persia into southern Russia. (The word ‘horde’ derives from the Mongol word for camp.) His son sacked Kiev and raided into Poland and Moravia. The Mongols withdrew only when the time came to elect a new khan, an election attended by emissaries from the Pope and the Caliph of Baghdad. If the latter was trying to curry favour he failed. The Mongols soon fell on to the Muslim world. The only favour they bestowed on the caliph was that in respect to superstitions about not shedding a caliph’s blood they wrapped him in a carpet and had their horses trample him to death. Islam might have been destroyed but for the Mongols’ defeat by Egyptian forces outside Nazareth. Even more than Châlons this battle changed the course of world history. As it was, Islam survived and the western Mongols themselves soon converted.

  The Mongols combined technology, organisation and tactics to produce a force that was almost unstoppable. The core of their technological superiority was the humble bow and arrow. Their enemies’ cumbersome bows were designed for hunting, where the need was to maximise the range at which an unsuspecting animal could be brought down by the first arrow fired. A hunter would not get a second chance. The Mongols were more interested in rapid fire: their bows were small, short-range weapons. Mongol archers could dispatch arrow after arrow, using a stone attached to their thumbs to draw back the bowstring. As with modern technologies, the Mongol arrow designers were forever inventing new, more specialist applications. There were arrows for starting fires or piercing armour, whistling arrows for signalling, arrows carrying miniature grenades, arrows tipped with quicklime or naphtha. Above all, Mongol bows could be fired by fighters on horseback while at full gallop. Indeed, they could be fired accurately backwards at a pursuing enemy. The Mongols had combined artillery and light cavalry in one deadly force.

  The superiority of their technology was married with the superiority of their logistics, a superiority entirely owing to the Mongol’s most prized possessions: his horses. Each Mongol cavalryman had three or four horses, ensuring there was always a fresh mount when battle commenced, and allowing them to travel phenomenal distances at high speed. Riders in the Mongol postal service could cover over 120 miles a day at a time when roads were virtually non-existent. The horse provided both transport and sustenance: milk, blood and meat. Like their riders the horses originated in the frozen tundra of eastern Siberia; they were used to enduring the bitter cold, and foraged for food below layers of snow. The result was a force as mobile in winter as summer.

  In 1237 the Mongols reached Russia. Hitler and Napoleon raced to defeat their Russian enemies before they themselves were defeated by the Russian winter. They failed. The Mongols were a different breed; they waited for winter to arrive and then struck with unsurpassed speed and ferocity. They had passed a relaxing summer exterminating the Bulgar kingdom on the Middle Volga, massacring the 50,000 inhabitants of its largest city in the process. After waiting until the Volga froze over, the Mongol army of 120,000 simply rode across the river and melted unseen into the snow-covered forests on the other side.

  Their first target was Ryazan in the east of the country. Here they immediately demonstrated not only the superiority of their military technology and strategy but the two ‘virtual’ weapons that would become a feature of Russian life for centuries to come: secret intelligence and terror.

  The Mongol hordes did not just charge out of Asia obliterating whatever they happened to come across. They gathered vast amounts of information on their enemies and planned their attacks in great detail. Long before the Rus realised what was happening the Mongols had identified all their weak points, both military and political. By taking the province of Ryazan the Mongols could split the Rus forces. More importantly, the province itself was ruled by four princes notoriously unable to agree on anything.

  Once the city and province of Ryazan were taken the Mongols unleashed their other, not so secret, weapon. The Russians were to learn a lesson that was never to be forgotten: the power of sheer terror. The entire nobility, men, women and children, was butchered. All the city’s women were systematically raped. Survivors were flayed alive in the streets.

  The Grand Duke Yuri of Suzdal had been the overlord of the Ryazan princes; he became the Mongols’ next target. He left his family for safety in the city of Vladimir so the Mongols headed there. When his wife refused to come out of the church where she was hiding her children the Mongols simply torched the building. Yuri himself was killed in battle a month later, along with most of his army. The Mongols then turned their focus to the far north-east and the rich trading city of Novgorod. Here they met their only serious setback.

  From Novgorod to Kulikovo

  The story of Novgorod could fill a chapter on its own. Until the time of Ivan the Terrible, centuries after the first Mongols appeared, the city developed along its own unique lines, as it had done in the centuries before the Mongols arrived. In some Russian histories it appears as an Athenian-like city state embracing democracy long before the feudal states of western Europe. Many nations have claimed to be the home of democracy. Greece can point to the glories of Athens, where government by the people, the demos, was first a reality – at least for those parts of the population who were not female, were not slaves and lived during those few periods of Athenian history when the demos held real power. France points to the liberty, equality and fraternity of the French Revolution, although the guillotine is an unlikely symbol of true d
emocracy. America points to the promises of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, promises that rang hollow for generations of black slaves. Britain prides itself on being the birthplace of parliamentary democracy, although the parliament of Iceland is far older. And the Russians have Novgorod.

  Novgorod, on the Gulf of Finland, was one of the major trading centres of Europe, and by the middle of the twelfth century it was a functioning democracy, governed by the people, the ‘veche’. The veche elected the local officials, even the local bishop. The powers of the local prince were severely limited by formal agreements with the veche, which laid down what he was allowed to do and prescribed in detail what taxes he was allowed to collect: all this well before the English barons compelled King John to subscribe to less onerous restrictions in the Magna Carta. The prince was even banned from living within the city walls; he was essentially a military leader hired by the veche to defend the city.

  But to see Novgorod as a gleaming example of democracy in a region tumbling into absolutism is a considerable exaggeration. It is tempting to look back on medieval Novgorod through the prism of modern ideologies as a golden period of European proto-democracy, but the facts are somewhat different. Teleologic is no logic. The veche consisted of all male citizens. Women were not empowered and, although slavery had largely disappeared in the city itself, it still survived in the rural areas over which Novgorod exerted its authority. Minority groups, particularly the rich German merchants, had to live in designated areas and had no formal political power. Meetings of the veche, which could be called by anyone ringing the town bell, could be heated. These meetings were open affairs, and were known on occasions to break up into competing gatherings on either side of the Volkhov river. Disputes were then settled by brawls on the bridge; the concept of the secret ballot was unknown. In practice Novgorod was governed by an assembly of some fifty wealthy merchants, boyars (landowners) and officials. Novgorod was a principality run by an oligarchy, dressed like a republic and remembered as a democracy. In addition Novgorod was an imperial power, grabbing territory as far east and north as the Urals, the upper Volga and the White Sea. No form of government that relies on military might to contain its people within an imperial framework can claim to be a true democracy.

  Novgorod withstood the Mongol siege, and as a consequence was able to maintain a degree of the early Rus enlightenment through the dark centuries of Mongol rule. In the long run that may not have helped the city. When Mongol rule finally ended Ivan the Terrible inflicted his own terror on the still independently minded citizens.

  Having failed to take Novgorod, the Mongols casually mopped up the remaining Rus opposition over the next two years. At the city of Kozelsk they were taken by surprise when the besieged garrison counter-attacked. Their response was to sack the city with a brutality that even they had not known before.

  In 1240 Kiev fell. The Mongols realised that the city was a treasure worth preserving and sent envoys to demand submission. The governor had the envoys killed, and the Mongols wreaked a terrible revenge. The cathedral of St Sophia was the only building they left standing in the whole city. They showed their bizarre sense of honour among the carnage by sparing the life of the governor, who had demonstrated his bravery by executing their envoys.

  The Mongols ruled Russia for 250 years, but it is difficult to find anything positive to say about any stretch of their reign. They ended the squabbling of warring princes and imposed central control, but other than that they contributed virtually nothing, destroying what went before without creating what came after. They left a tradition of absolutism, a resigned acceptance of arbitrary authority, an abiding fear of invasion and a distrust of all things foreign. The areas of greatest Mongol influence can be seen in the Russian language – with Mongol or Tartar roots found on the one hand in words relating to whips, chains and slavery and on the other in words like treasury, customs duty and money. What they did not leave was any contribution to culture: no magnificent buildings, no art, no music. They had no significant impact on religion. They produced no heroic kings or mythical sagas. During the Mongol period economic development virtually stagnated. Histories of Russia can leap from 1223, when the Mongols arrived, to 1480, when Ivan III formally ended Muscovy’s subjection to the Golden Horde. In between lay the Russian Dark Ages, during which the power of the Mongols slowly disintegrated. They were always more interested in extracting tribute than in administering their empire, and over time the Russian nobility assumed more and more of the effective authority. In particular the dukes of Muscovy came to exercise the power that the Mongols in their distant capital of Sarai lacked the desire or ability to exercise themselves. The cultural developments of the period, like the construction of the Kremlin, started 130 years after the Mongol invasion, and a century later the construction of the Dormition Cathedral in Moscow, owed everything to the re-empowering of the Russian nobility and virtually nothing to their Mongol overlords.

  On 8 September 1380 there occurred what has often been described as the most important event in the history of medieval Russia. Indeed, in a survey of schoolchildren in one of the former Soviet Asian republics held in the year 2000 it was cited as the most important event in the previous millennium. The battle of Kulikovo saw Russia throw off the Mongol yoke and unite around the banner of Muscovy. About 200,000 died and the Russian dead, it is said, took seven days to bury. The Muscovite grand duke Dmitri Donskoy whose military prowess determined the course of the battle is one of Russia’s most celebrated heroes; the communists named a Typhoon-class nuclear submarine after him. Kulikovo is Yorktown and Gettysburg combined: it both liberated and defined a nation.

  If world history is determined in battle, Kulikovo must rank alongside Châlons and the Mongols’ earlier defeat at Ayn Jalut outside Nazareth. At Châlons Attila was stopped in his tracks, saving western European civilisation from being consumed by a barbaric east. At Ayn Julut the Mongol general Kitbogha was killed, and the Mongols never again threatened Islamic civilisation. At Kulikovo the forces of Khan Mamai were destroyed, allowing Russian (and by implication European) civilisation to throw off the chains of Asiatic slavery.

  There are, however, some important differences between the three battles. The details of the fighting are unimportant, although it is worth noting that Donskoy’s victory was largely because the Mongols’ Lithuanian allies failed to turn up. It was also helped by internecine conflict within the Mongol Golden Horde; Sarai had fourteen different khans in the space of twenty years.

  Châlons changed history because after the battle Attila went back home and was never heard of again. The outcome at Ayn Jalut was if anything even more decisive. After Kulikovo, however, although Mamai, the Mongol leader, went home, he returned with a vengeance the next year, driving all before him and attacking Moscow. As late as 1451, seventy years after Kulikovo, Mongol armies still raided up to the walls of Moscow. In fact it was to be a century after Donskoy’s supposedly epic victory before Russia threw off the Mongol yoke, and then not because of a glorious battle but because the Turkic leader Tamurlane turned all eyes elsewhere and Muscovy was able to creep out of the Mongol tent.

  The significance of Kulikovo lies not in the historical reality but in today’s perceptions. Kulikovo is the crucible in which modern Russia was born, a furnace of fire and steel that reflects the character of the nation. Donskoy is to Russians in many ways the equivalent of Thanksgiving to Americans. The Pilgrim Fathers are held up as the first religious refugees fleeing to a promised land, which was destined to be built in their image; Kulikovo is held up as the symbol of Holy Russia, surrounded by enemies and surviving only through its own strength and inspired leadership. Historically both stories are largely fiction. The Pilgrim Fathers were not the first Protestant refugees in the New World (French Huguenots had beaten them to it) and America was taken not with the piety of the Pilgrims but by sheer brute force. The bullet, not the bible, was the true symbol of the new nation across the Atlantic, just as intrigue r
ather than the blood of Kulikovo was the symbol of the nation forming between the Urals and the Baltic. When Russia at last broke free of its Asian overlords it was less thanks to the valour of Dmitri Donskoy than it was to the diplomatic manoeuvring of leaders such as Ivan I, revealingly known to history as Ivan Moneybags.

  It was not until the reign of Ivan III, Ivan the Great, that Muscovite Russia was finally established as a truly independent power. Not only did he end formal subservience to the Mongols, but he also defeated the other two forces that could have smothered the infant state: the Lithuanians and the Khazars. Ivan III also started the tradition of deporting troublesome groups, which was to become such a feature of both Russian and American history. After capturing Novgorod and incorporating it into Muscovy he dispossessed most of the landowners and deported them to the east.

  At exactly the same time another corner of Europe was also throwing off the shackles of its Islamic conquerors. But if in Russia the shackles were iron and rusted away, in Spain the shackles were gold and were torn asunder. In Iberia the infidels who had brought culture, tolerance and harmony were replaced by a regime bringing aggression, the Inquisition and Christopher Columbus. In Russia the infidels were replaced by something just as bad, indeed worse: the pure evil of Ivan IV, Ivan the Terrible.

  Ivan the Terrible

  The one tsar most westerners have heard of lived nearly half a millennium ago. Ivan the Terrible ruled for half a century from 1533 to 1584. While the Spanish were destroying the great empires of the Incas and Aztecs, Ivan IV turned a middle-ranking eastern European duchy into the Russia still recognisable today. If any one man can truly be called the father of Russia it is Ivan IV. His greatness is undeniable. Unfortunately for those who lived under him, he was also quite clearly mad.