![]() |
ISSN: 2158-7051 ==================== INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN STUDIES ==================== ISSUE NO. 5 ( 2016/2 ) |
THE LEGACY OF GENGHIS KHAN – THE MONGOL IMPACT ON RUSSIAN HISTORY, POLITICS, ECONOMY, AND CULTURE
ANIL ÇİÇEK*
Summary
The Mongol impact on Russian
history, politics, economy, and culture has been one of the most debated
subjects not only among Russian historians, scholars, and philosophers, but
also among the historians of Western countries as well. For Russian historians
with a traditional approach, the Mongols brought nothing to Russia but destruction
and bloodshed. The Westernizers approached the Mongol rule in Russia from the
perspective of relations with Europe and thus perceived the Mongol impact as a
very negative development, as Russia was isolated from Europe during the Mongol
rule, which continued for almost 250 years. The Eurasian school, however,
embraced the Mongol rule with the argument that it had a direct impact on strengthening
the founding pillars of the Tsarist Russian State: Orthodoxy, centralization of
political power, autocracy, and serfdom. In an attempt to make an impartial
analysis, this paper first briefly takes a look at the different
interpretations of Russian and Soviet historians of the impacts of the Mongol
invasion. It then focuses on the search for concrete evidence that obviously demonstrates
the impacts of the Mongol rule on Russia in various fields. In the last
section, the paper tries to lay out its own impartial assessment based on the
existing evidence as well as unbiased interpretations.
Key Words: Mongol invasion, Genghis Khan, Tatar yoke, Golden Horde, Kievan Rus’, Muscovy, Muscovite princes, centralization of power, political unification, oriental despotism, Eurasianism, Slavophiles, autocracy, absolutism, serfdom, Mongolianism, Russification of Mongol state system.
Introduction
The role of the Mongols in the rise of Muscovy has been a controversial
topic in Russian historiography. Some Russian and Western historians have used
the terminology “Tatar yoke” to better explain the destructive consequences of
the Mongol invasion of Russian lands. One group of Russian historians
considered the invasion a huge catastrophe in Russian history that isolated Russia
from Europe, whereas another camp of Russian historians saw it as a positive
development that kept Russia immune from the “bad influences” of the Catholic
Church of Rome and provided it the chance to establish its unique political, religious, cultural, and economic systems, at the core of
which lay Orthodox belief. Despite the great differences between the existing interpretations
of the impact of the Mongol invasion, it goes without saying that it had profound
consequences that helped to shape Muscovite and modern Russia, and perhaps even
its role in recent world history.
From
the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, Kievan Rus’[1] (Russia
of Kiev) was well integrated into the medieval economic system. The Tartar
invasion, which resumed in 1237 and lasted more than 250 years, tore Russia
away from the West. Despite having devastating consequences for Kievan Rus’, the Tartar rule
played an important role in the rise of Moscow and subsequently the Russian
Empire. When the Principality of Moscow reorganized itself
and rolled back the Tartar invaders, a new Russia was born, which considered
itself as the heir of Orthodox Byzantium, different from the Catholic and
Protestant West. The victory of Moscow began the Russian drive towards the
Siberian vastness.
The Russian
historian Nikolai Karamzin was perhaps the first
person to open the debate about the consequences of the Mongol invasion. In his
masterpiece History
of the Russian State, which was published in 1818, Karamzin
described the Mongol invasion as a “blessing” as it played a key role in
unifying the Russian principalities. Karamzin’s book
was considered as the re-discovery of Russian history and Russian pride. The
common conviction among the educated elites that Russia’s history started with
the process of Westernization under the reign of Peter the Great rapidly faded
away. The distant past of Russia became a valuable source, wherein answers to
questions about the country’s nature and destiny were sought.
In fact, it would not be too odd to claim that the different
interpretations of the Russian historians and intelligentsia regarding the impact
of 250 years of Tatar rule have been highly influenced by the traditional
debate about the place of Russia between West and East. Westernizers saw the “East”, and in that sense the
Tatar influence, as linked with autocracy, despotism, and empire. Their
opponents admired precisely these features, which for them signified a strong
state, unity, and order.[2]
According to the Slavophiles,
Russia’s exclusion from the Roman heritage – thanks to the Mongol invasion – was
the essential feature distinguishing Russia from Europe. Russia had been spared
this fatal heritage and was therefore established on purely Christian
principles that were in complete harmony with the spirit of the Slavic peasant
commune. The West was poisoned by shallow rationalism and racked by class
antagonism, from which Russia was saved by Byzantine heritage and Slavic
spirit.
Nikolai Berdyaev, the eminent twentieth-century
Russian philosopher, believed that the source of Russian troubles lay in the
“inconsistency of the Russian spirit” due to the “conflict of the Eastern and
Western elements in her”. Russia, he argued, always contained within its wide
territory an invisible and shifting border between two continents, and thus
Russian society was forever torn between two cultures. Berdyaev insisted that
Russia could not discover its true calling or place in the world until it
resolved its internal conflict between East and West.[3] As precisely pointed out by Berdyaev, the difference of the attitudes of Russian historians and philosophers towards
the Mongol impact have in fact demonstrated this dual Russian character.
When the works
of non-Russian historians are examined, one often encounters some attempts to
establish a link between the Mongol invasion and the “autocratic tradition” of
the Russian state. In most cases, non-Russian historians have considered the
Mongol invasion as the reason for the cultural and political backwardness of
Russia and its Oriental despotism. Especially during the years of the Cold War,
some historians and politicians of the Western world, as a part of an
intentional campaign against Communism, attempted to explore the similarities
between the Russian character and Mongol barbarism.
These different
camps of explanations of the consequences of the Mongol invasion, each playing
its own role in Russian history and political thought, in fact demonstrate the
different faces of Russia. In an attempt to make an impartial assessment about
the consequences of the Mongol invasion in Russian history, politics, economy,
and culture, this paper will examine these different interpretations in detail
in order to reach some concrete conclusions.
The Mongol
Invasion
Temuchin, known as Genghis Khan and born probably in 1162,
united the Mongols in 1206 after many years of struggle and wars. The armies of
Genghis Khan invaded China, smashed the Muslim states of Central Asia, and soon
reached the Caucasus. Genghis Khan died in 1227 but his successors continued
his sweeping conquests.
The Mongols – or
Tatars as they are called in Russian sources – appeared suddenly in 1223 in
southeastern Russia and smashed the Russians in a battle near the river Kalka,
only to vanish into the steppe. They returned to conquer Russia, in 1237-1240,
and impose their long rule over it. Batu, a grandson
of Genghis Khan, directed the Mongol invasion of Europe. The Mongols crossed
the Urals in 1236 to first attack the Volga Bulgars.
After that, in 1237, they struck at the Russian eastern principality of Ryazan,
coming unexpectedly from the north. The town of Ryazan was besieged and
captured after five days of bitter fighting and its entire population was massacred.
Next, in the winter of 1237-1238, the Mongols attacked the Suzdal
territory with its capital of Vladimir, the seat of the grand prince. In a
matter of several months, the Mongols had succeeded in conquering the strongest
section of the country.[4]
According to Riasanovsky, the winter campaign of the
Mongols was the only successful winter invasion of Russia in history.[5]
Kiev fell to Batu Khan in 1240. He established his headquarters in Sarai
on the lower Volga, north of the Caspian Sea. The Khanate of the Golden Horde
was the farthest part of the Mongol Empire. As the ties with the center
weakened gradually, it was the first to become independent. Sarai became the
capital of the Golden Horde and the Khans of the Golden Horde ruled southern
Russia from there. Their territory stretched from the Aral Sea across the
Caspian Sea to the Black Sea. Following successful campaigns to the north and
west from 1240 to 1242, all Russian cities came under the rule of the Golden
Horde.
The Mongols destroyed Kievan Rus’ and divided medieval
Russia into four regions. They dominated the southern steppes, whereas their
control over the region between the Volga and Oka rivers, including the
principalities of Vladimir and Moscow, was relatively moderate. They had the
least influence over the principality of Novgorod in northern Russia.
The Russian princes were
required to go to Sarai to tender personal homage and to pay tribute to the
khans. The Khans retained control over princely successions and exercised a
veto over all major policy decisions. The collection of taxes was closely
monitored by the Golden Horde through officials that were stationed in Russian
towns. Russian princes were obliged to send recruits for the Mongol armies when
ordered so by the Khans. In the beginning, the Mongols collected taxes from the
Russians by means of their own agents. Later, they did it through the
intermediary of Russian princes. The Khans appointed one Russian ruler as Grand
Prince and authorized him to maintain public order, law, and discipline.
Despite the fact that the
Mongols did not actively interfere in Russian life, they maintained their
effective rule until 1380. In 1380, Prince Dimitrii of
Moscow defeated the Mongols in the Battle of Kulikovo.
This defeat greatly weakened the Mongol power, but still another hundred years
had to pass for Mongol rule to be overthrown. Finally, in 1480, Ivan III,
Prince of Moscow, refused the authority of the khan and the Mongols failed to
challenge him. The successor states of the Golden Horde were absorbed one after
another into the Russian Empire: the Khanate of Kazan in 1552, of Astrakhan in
1556, and of Crimea in 1783.
Different Interpretations of
the Mongol Impact on Russia
The Mongol rule of Russia
continued for almost 250 years. However, there exists no consensus among
Russian historians, philosophers, and scholars regarding the impact of the
Mongols on Russian history. According to Riasanovsky,
traditionally Russian historians have paid little attention to the Mongols and
their impact on Russia; nevertheless, some of them did stress the destructive
and generally negative influence of the Mongol invasion and subjugation. Others
virtually dismissed the entire matter as being of minor significance in the
historical development of the country.[6]
Following the Bolshevik
Revolution, two contrasting views of the Mongol impact emerged. While Soviet
historians argued that Tatar rule delayed the development of a unified Russian
culture, economy, and national state, the Eurasian school of Russian emigres
depicted the Mongol unification of Eurasia as a historically progressive event,
claiming that Russia’s unification under Moscow was a direct consequence of
Mongol rule. According to Eurasianists, the Russian
state was the heir, successor, and continuer of Genghis Khan’s great empire.
In order to make an impartial
analysis regarding the impacts of Mongol rule in Russian history, politics, and
culture, it is both imperative and productive to take a brief look at the
different approaches of each school.
A) The Traditional Approach
Perhaps
the only thing upon which almost all Russian and non-Russian historians can agree
is the staggering devastation and massacre that the Mongol invaders brought to
Russian lands. Russian-language sources speak about the complete extermination
of the populations of towns such as Ryazan, Tortzhok,
and Kozelsk, while other sources indicate that those
who were lucky enough to survive the massacres became slaves of the
Mongols.
The
Tale of the Destruction of Ryazan[7] (Повесть
о разорении Рязани Батыем) is an early Russian work about the capture of the
city of Ryazan by the Mongols in 1237, which
describes the invasion of the city as follows:
…godless Emperor Batu invaded the Russian land with a great multitude of his Tatar warriors and
set up a camp of the river Voronezh in the vicinity of the principality of Ryazan. The Grand Prince Yury Ingvarevich
sends to Batu his son Fedor
Yurevich with gifts of supplication. The merciless Batu accepts the gifts and gives a false promise not to
invade Ryazan. His lust is fueled by stories about Prince Fedor’s
beautiful wife of Byzantine noble blood; Batu demands
for himself concubines from Ryazan’s ruling families. Angered by Fedor’s proud refusal, he puts the Prince and his retinue
to death. Great Prince Yury Ingarevich
prepares for the battle, which takes place on the border of the principality of
Ryazan. The outnumbered Russians fight fiercely and bravely but they lose the
battle. Many receive martyr-like deaths. The accursed Batu
successfully storms the city and kills all of its inhabitants.
The tale further describes the great destruction and
slaughter with the following words:
The churches of God they devastated, and in the holy
altars they shed much blood. And no one in the town remained alive: all died
equally and drank the single cup of death. There was no one here to moan, or
cry – neither father and mother over children, nor children over father and
mother, neither brother over brother, nor relatives over relatives – but all
lay together dead. And all this occurred to us for our sins.
Other similar accounts reflect the devastation that
the Mongol invasion created. These accounts justify the traditional negative
assessment of Mongol impact on Russia. Muscovite chronicles usually depicted the invasion
as a terrible misfortune for Rus’, emphasizing the
slaughter of Russian people by the Mongols.
According to national myth,
the Mongols brought nothing but terror and they left Russia without a trace.
Russia had no choice but to surrender to the superior Mongols; however, its Christian
civilization remained unaffected by the Tatar invaders and Christianity always preserved
its central place in Russian identity. Russians, according to the traditional
approach, were living in Asia, but their faces were looking towards the West. The
Asiatic Mongol culture, however, was primitive and backward when compared with
the Russian culture in which a European identity was strongly felt.
According to Orlando Figes, when Russia sought to redefine itself as a European
empire in the eighteenth century, it needed to construct a clearer cultural
boundary to set itself apart from the “Asiatic other” in the Orient. All the
non-Christian tribes, regardless of their origins or faith, were lumped together
as “Tartars” to reinforce this “good and evil” split. The word “Tartar” was
deliberately misspelled with an extra “r” to bring it in line with the Greek
word for hell (tartarus).[8]
In eighteenth-century imagination, the Urals were built up into a vast mountain
range, as if shaped by God in the middle of the steppe to mark the eastern
limit of the civilized world. The Russians on the western side of these
mountains were Christian in their ways, whereas the Asians on the eastern side
were described by Russian travelers as “savages” who needed to be disciplined.[9]
Dmitry Likhachev,
the leading twentieth-century cultural historian of Russia, argued that Russia received
extraordinarily little from Asia. Pushkin wrote that the Mongols brought “neither
algebra nor Aristotle” with them when they came to Russia. What they did was plunge
Russia into its “Dark Age”. In History
of the Russian State in 1818, Karamzin blamed
the Mongols for the backwardness of Russia, asking how a civilized people could
have learned anything from nomads.[10]
However, Karamzin also positively evaluated the invasion
in the sense that it helped the restoration of “autocracy” in Russia. By
strengthening Moscow, the Mongols, according to Karamzin,
contributed to the “greatness” of Russia. Meanwhile, the great historian Sergei
Soloviev in his 28-volume History of Russia argued that there was no reason to
assume any great influence of the Mongols on Russia; he only devoted three
pages of his work to the cultural influence of the Mongols.[11]
B) The Soviet View
Soviet historians, while
agreeing on the devastating results of the Mongol invasion on Russian history,
politics, economy, and culture, devoted more attention to the role of Russia as
the savior of Western Europe from Tatar raids. The heroic defense of the Russian
people, argued the Soviet historians, played a decisive role in preventing the plan
of the Tatar-Mongol aggressors to conquer all of Europe. By protecting the
peoples of Western Europe from the approaching avalanche of the Tatar-Mongol
hordes, Russia contributed to the economic and social development of Europe and
thus shaped the history of Europe and the world.
From the economic perspective, parallel to the
traditional approach, the Soviet historians argued that the Mongol invasion greatly
delayed Russia’s economic development. Tribute payments and the destruction of
commercial centers delayed the growth of a money economy. The town economies
based on handicrafts were completely destroyed, throwing Russia back by several
centuries. The economy of Europe, however, flourished in this period, preparing
the necessary ground for the industrial revolution. The Mongols also prevented
the agricultural development of Russia, which further worsened the commercial
position of Russia, especially in comparison to the West. Russia not only lost
the vital trade route of the Dvina River but also lost some of its territories in
the west to Lithuania, Sweden, and the Teutonic Knights. To summarize, the net
effect of the Tatar yoke on the Russian economy, according to Soviet historians,
was overwhelmingly negative. The Mongols gave nothing but destruction and
looting to the Russian people.
From the political
perspective, Soviet historians argued that the Mongol invasion interrupted the gradual
consolidation of the Russian lands and deepened feudal divisions. The Mongols
weakened the towns and prevented centralization. The policy of the Tatars was
to prevent, to the largest possible extent, the consolidation of power and
centralization in Russia by supporting the divisions between the Russian
principalities. Thus, the emergence of the “centralized Muscovite state” of the
15th century did not happen with the support or help of the Mongols but “contrary
to their interests and despite their will”.
C) The Eurasian View
Among the scattered émigrés
who fled Soviet Russia was a group of intellectuals known as the Eurasianists. The philosopher Lev Karsavin
and the music critic Petr Suvchinsky were leading
members of the group. Many of the best known Russian exiles, including the
philologist Prince Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoi, the religious thinker Father George Florovsky, the historian George Vernadsky,
and the linguistic theorist Roman Jakobson, were
members of the group. Eurasianism was essentially a
phenomenon of emigration insofar as it was rooted in the sense of Russia’s
betrayal by the West in 1917-1921. Its largely aristocratic followers
reproached the Western powers for their failure to defeat the Bolsheviks in the
Revolution and the civil war, which had ended with the collapse of Russia as a
European power and their own expulsion from their native land. Disillusioned by
the West, but not yet hopeless about a possible future for themselves in
Russia, they recast their homeland as a unique Turanian
culture on the Asiatic steppe.[12]
The Eurasianists
foresaw the West’s destruction and the rise of a new civilization led by Russia
or Eurasia. At root, argued Trubetzkoi, Russia was a steppeland Asian culture. Byzantine and European
influences, which had shaped the Russian state and its high culture, barely
penetrated to the lower strata of Russia’s folk culture, which had developed
more through contact with the East. For centuries the Russians had freely
intermingled with the Finno-Ugric tribes, the Mongols, and other nomadic
peoples from the steppe. They had assimilated elements of their languages,
music, customs, and religion such that these Asiatic cultures had become
absorbed in Russia’s own historical evolution.[13]
According to the Eurasianist view, the Mongol invasion was a turning point
in Russian history. The Eurasianists argued that the Mongols
performed a historic task by achieving the political unification of Eurasia.
According to the Eurasianist view, the unification of
the Russian lands under the power of Moscow was the direct result of the Tatar
yoke. The Mongol rule facilitated the transition of Russia from the so-called
“appanage” period, which was based on tribal and town principalities, to the
road to statehood. In the beginning of the Mongol rule, Russia was only a
province of the Mongol Empire. However, by adopting the Mongol concept of the
state and later taking their place, the Russian state became the heir,
successor, and later continuer of Genghis Khan’s historic task. Thus, the
Mongol impact, argued the Eurasianists, proved highly
beneficial to the Russians.
Eurasianists
argued that the Tatars, by isolating Russia from the West, in fact protected it
from the illnesses of Latin Europe. The invasion had devastating results in the
beginning; however, the Russians learned to coexist with the Mongols in harmony
and peace. From the invaders, they adopted positive features such as strength,
courage, faith, and religiosity, all of which promoted the development of the
Muscovite state. The Mongols secured the commercial and cultural relations of
Russia with the Orient. They also strengthened the position of the Orthodox Church.
They largely contributed to the protection and preservation of the unique
Russian cultural identity. Thus, despite the destruction and disruption that it
caused, the Mongol invasion made positive contributions to all aspects of
Russian development.
D) Vernadsky’s Approach
Professor George Vernadsky,[14]
a Russian émigré who lived most of his life in the United States, formulated a
new approach that was mostly derived from the Eurasian view. Vernadsky assessed the Mongol influence by analyzing
differences between Kievan and Muscovite Russia and emphasized the importance of Eurasian nomadic cultures for the cultural and economic progress of Russia.
He refused the traditional view that modern Russia emerged from Kievan Rus. He emphasized the importance of the Mongol
period, during which the vast Eurasian plain was united under a single rule.
Vernadsky argued that
the Mongols drastically changed Kievan political life
based on the balance between monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic elements.
Monarchical power became highly developed, especially in the eastern provinces,
which were more exposed to Mongol influence. The Mongols, by crushing the town
assemblies, destroyed the democratic balance. The power of princes grew steadily
as their authority could not be questioned by democratic town assemblies. This, according to Vernadsky, paved the way
for the establishment of a strong centralized government during the period of
Tsarist Russia.[15]
Vernadsky criticized the efforts of Peter the Great to westernize
Russia, arguing that Peter distorted the Russian natural character and polarized
Russia into a Western-oriented elite that stood in
profound conflict with the Eurasian peasants. Vernadsky
considered this polarization as one of the main weaknesses of Russia and the
source of the dilemma about the real place of the country between the East and
the West.
Tracking the Footprints of
the Mongols in Russian History, Politics, Economy, and Culture
After taking a brief look
at the different interpretations of the Mongol impact on Russia, it is
imperative to search for concrete evidence that would demonstrate to what extent
the Mongols were able to influence Russian history, politics, economy, and
culture. Such a study would not only enable us to see which approaches have
been closer to explaining the actual situation but would also help us make our
own impartial assessment about such a debated topic.
A) The Mongol Impact on Russian History: The Contribution of Tatars in the
Rise of Moscow and Political Unification of Russia
Moscow remained an
insignificant town for more than a hundred years after its foundation in 1147. According
to Peter Stearns, no town benefited from the Mongol presence more than Moscow.[16]
With the start of the Mongol raids on Kiev and southern towns, thousands of
refugees began to arrive in Moscow looking for shelter. Within a short period
of time the population of Moscow increased drastically.
The most important turning
point in Moscow’s rise as a power center was the year 1327, when the populace
of Tver started a rebellion against their Mongol
Khans. Seeing this as an important opportunity, Prince Ivan I of Moscow crashed
the rebellion and restored the order with the help of a Mongol contingent. Ivan
I was rewarded with iarlyk (ярлык), a status as the tribute collector, for this
loyalty to his Khan. After 1328, Moscow started profiting largely from this
status. Its princes not only used their position to fill their own coffers; they
also annexed further towns as punishment for falling behind on the payment of
their tribute.[17]
Soon Moscow became second only
to Sarai in importance during the Mongol period.[18]
The Muscovite princes were transformed into permanent hereditary governors of
the Russian province of the Mongol Empire. From that moment, the Muscovite
princes became the representatives of a central state power and the restorer of
the unity inside the Tatar state system. Historical evidence demonstrates,
without any doubt, that the princes of Moscow, by cooperating with their Mongol
Khans in the collection of tribute, prospered greatly and thus became grand
princes.
As Mongol rule weakened, Moscow
grew in strength. The princes of Moscow initiated the process that has come to
be known as “the gathering of the Russian land”. They gradually expanded the territories
of the principality of Moscow by purchasing, colonizing, and conquering the
lands of other principalities.
Moscow also benefited
largely from Mongol religious tolerance. Before the Mongol invasion, Kiev was
the center of the Orthodox Church. Following the destruction of Kiev,
Metropolitan Maxim moved the center of the Orthodox Church to Vladimir in 1299.
The Metropolitan was made the representative of all the clergy in Russia, which
enhanced the power of the Orthodox Church. The new Metropolitan, Petr, decided
to move the center of the Orthodox Church to Moscow in 1322.[19]
The choice of Moscow as the seat of the
Orthodox leaders brought new sources of wealth to its princes and helped
bolster the importance of Moscow and its claims to be Russia’s leading city.
According to Nikolai Trubetzkoi, the assimilation of the techniques of the
Mongol state system and of the Tatar life style proceeded at an especially
rapid pace in Moscow. This is why Russians in that area assimilated more easily
and quickly to the spirit of the Mongol state. It was also the Moscow region
that exhibited particular interest in Byzantine state ideologies. This complex
psychological process culminated ultimately in the transformation of the Mongol
state system into the Russian state, the center of which was Moscow. The Grand
Princes of Moscow gradually became the living bearers of the new Russian state
spirit. The transformation of Muscovite princes into the “Tsars of all Rus” became possible owing to the psychological process that
led to the emergence of the Russian state ideology. Muscovite princes enjoyed
the full patronage and support of the Horde, which could only welcome the
administrative centralization of its Russian province. Whatever the case, the
political unification of Russia under the power of Moscow was a direct result
of the Tatar Yoke.[20]
Trubetzkoi
also argued that the important moment in Russian history was not the overthrow
of the Yoke but rather the extension of Moscow’s power over a large part of the
territory once under control of the Horde – in other words, the replacement of
the Tatar Khan by the Muscovite Tsar, together with the transfer of the center
of the political power to Moscow. This took place during the reign of Ivan the
Terrible, after the conquests of Kazan, Astrakhan, and Siberia.
Riasanovsky
argued that Muscovite princes considered the Mongols as a “scourge of God sent
upon the Russians for their sins”. When Moscow emerged as a center of power,
its leaders looked to Byzantium for their high model,
and to Kievan Rus’ for
their historical heritage. Despite being closer to the traditional view, which
considered the Mongols as of little significance in Russian history, Riasanovsky did not neglect the Mongol contribution to the
emergence of Moscow as the center of power in Russian history.[21]
B) Isolation of Russia from the West
One of the most profound
impacts of the Mongol invasion upon which almost all Russian and non-Russian
historians, scholars, and philosophers agree is the isolation of Russia from
the West for almost 250 years. Despite this consensus about the fact that the Mongol
invasion resulted in the isolation of Russia from the West, there have been serious
differences of opinion about the consequences that this isolation created. The
Westerners interpreted the isolation as a very negative development for Russia,
whereas the Eurasianists welcomed it as an event that
contributed to the development of the Russian identity.
Riasanovsky
considered the isolation as a negative development, arguing that Russia might
have participated in such epochal European developments as the Renaissance and
the Reformation.[22] According
to Pushkin, the Mongol occupation left a profound mark on the Russian way of
life as the Mongols separated Russia from the West.[23]
Russian Europhiles like Chaadaev found nothing to
impress them in the Mongol legacy. Seeking to explain why their country took a
separate path from Western Europe, many Russians blamed the despotism of the
Mongol Khans. Karamzin pointed to the Mongols for the
degeneration of Russia’s political morals. The historian Vasiliy
Osipovich Kliuchevsky
described the Russian state as “an Asiatic structure, albeit one that has been
decorated by a European façade”.[24]
C) The Religious Revival and the Rise of Orthodox Church
The destruction of the
independent feudal principalities of Rus’ by the
Mongol invasion and their incorporation into the Mongol state undoubtedly
caused profound upheaval in the hearts and minds of the Russian people. The
humiliation suffered by Russian national pride created an eruption of acute
spiritual turmoil. The hallmark of this period was the extraordinarily vigorous
development of religious life. For ancient Rus’ the
period of Tatar rule was above all else an epoch of religion. The foreign yoke
was perceived by religious minds as God’s punishment for past sins. The intense
religious orientation of the inner life of Russians suffused every product of
the spirit, and especially art, with its colors. This period is associated with
feverish creative activity in all areas of religious art; icon painting, church
music, and religious literature reached new heights.[25]
Dustin Hosseini argued
that the Orthodox Church became a powerful inspiration during the dark years of
Mongol rule. The Russian people eventually turned inward, seeking solace in
their faith and looking to the Orthodox Church for guidance and support. The
shock of being conquered by the steppe people planted the seeds of Russian
monasticism. The humiliation suffered by the princes and the town assemblies
caused fragmentation of their respective political authority. This loss of
political unity allowed the Orthodox Church to rise as an embodiment of both
religious and national identity while at the same time filling the gap of lost
political identity.[26]
An important feature of
Genghis Khan’s empire was the place given to religion. Genghis Khan, being a
very religious person himself, valued religious feelings and was very tolerant of
other religions within the territories of his empire. The Mongol Khans,
following the legacy of Genghis Khan, were therefore very tolerant to the
Orthodox Church and the clergy. The Orthodox Church was directly under the
protection of the Mongols and was exempted from taxation by Mongol or Russian
authorities. The clergy was also immune from common Mongol practices such as
forced labor or military service. The
Mongol protection created profound consequences for the Orthodox Church. It permitted
the church to build up its material wealth and influence, becoming less
dependent on the Russian princes, which was not observed in any other period in
Russian history. It acquired big quantities of land and became extremely
powerful not only in the daily life but in politics as well.
In the fourteenth century the Golden Horde converted to Islam.
This development created a barrier between the Mongols and their Orthodox
Russian subjects. It fueled the struggle for independence and the Russians
considered this war a crusade for Orthodox Christianity. This religious
difference also prevented the integration of the Mongols fully into Russian
life, which would have created deeper cultural impacts.
According to Trubetzkoi, Russia had come to know Orthodox Byzantium long
before the Tatar Yoke and during the time of the Yoke the grandeur of Byzantium
was in eclipse. Yet for some reason, it was during the period of Tatar rule
that Byzantine state ideologies, which formerly had no particular appeal in
Russia, came to occupy a central place in the Russian national consciousness.[27]
The Russian state system that arose as successor and heir to the state of
Genghis Khan rested upon a strong religious cultural foundation. Every Russian,
regardless of his occupation and individual circumstances, belonged to the same
culture, professed the same religious convictions, the same world view, and the
same moral code, and was guided in his behavior by the same traditional life
style.[28]
Mongols also made an
indirect contribution to the development and strengthening of orthodoxy in
Russia by protecting weak and divided Russia from its more powerful enemies such
as Poland, Lithuania, and Hungary, as well as the “crusades” of the Teutonic
Knights, who were determined to wipe out the Orthodox heresy.
D) Development of the Russian Identity and Consciousness
According to Trubetzkoi, following the humiliating defeat against the
Mongols, the Russians started to idealize their distant past. This idealization
is evident in Russian tales and heroic songs (byliny, были́ны). In folk
consciousness, this idealization of Rus’ and of
ancient Russian heroism transformed minor princes and their retainers into
all-Russian heroes. Such idealization strengthened the national pride that was
swelling in opposition to the foreign yoke. Together with the emergence of this
spirit of national military heroism there developed another conception of
heroism fostered by the religious revival, a heroism that was ascetic and
sacrificial, that found real embodiments in Russian monks and in the martyrs
executed by the Horde. This contemporary and local Russian heroism merged in
the Russian mind with traditions of ancient, non-Russian, Christian heroism.
Thus, in reaction to the despair occasioned by total defeat at the hands of the
Tatars, a wave of heroism – primarily religious, but also nationalistic – was
growing and gaining strength in Russian minds and hearts.[29]
This “Eastern spirit” was
manifested in the Russian people’s tendency to contemplation, in their
fatalistic attitudes, in their love of abstract symmetry and universal laws, in
their emphasis on religious ritual, and in their fierce bravery. According to Trubetzkoi these mental attributes were not shared by the
Slavs in Eastern Europe, suggesting, in his view, that they must have come to
Russia from Asia rather than from Byzantium. The “Turanian
psychology” had penetrated into the Russian mind at a subconscious level and
had left a profound mark on the national character.[30]
E) Oriental Despotism and Autocracy
A considerable number of
Russian historians and especially the Russian intelligentsia who belonged to the group of the Westernizers
attempted to establish a direct link between the Mongols and the despotic rule
of the Tsarist Russia. This argument was also used later to explain the
despotism of Soviet rule. Herzen said that Nicholas I
was “Genghis Khan with a telegraph”. As a continuation of this tradition,
Stalin was compared to Genghis Khan with a telephone. According to this group,
the most significant consequence of the centuries of Russian subservience to
the Golden Horde was surely the impetus it gave to authoritarian rule in
Tsarist Russia.
Figes
argued that the Russian autocratic tradition had many roots, but the Mongol
legacy did more to fix the basic nature of its politics. The Khans demanded
complete submission to their will from all their subjects, peasants and
noblemen alike. Moscow’s princes emulated the behavior of the Khans when they
ousted them from the Russian lands and succeeded them as Tsars in the sixteenth
century. Indeed, they justified their new imperial status not just for the
basis of their spiritual descent from Byzantium but also on the basis of their
territorial inheritance from Genghis Khan. The title “Tsar” had been used by
the last Khan of the Golden Horde and for a time the Russian terms for Tsar and
Khan were interchangeable. Even Genghis Khan was rendered Genghis Tsar.[31]
Hosseini argued that an
important democratic institution of Kievan Rus’, the veche (вече),[32]
suffered severe curtailment with the Mongol invasion and eventually vanished from
existence with the fall of Novgorod to Moscow. This, according to Hosseini, was
an important milestone in the totalitarianization of
first Muscovy and then the Russian state.[33]
According to some Russian
historians, the ruthless methods used by the princes of Moscow during the
unification of the other principalities under the rule of Moscow in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries also recalled the Mongol example. The princes
of Moscow, living through the experience of the bludgeoning authoritarianism of
the Khans, started using the same methods in governing their subjects and, in
practice, the tyranny and ruthlessness of the Tsars by all means surpassed the
model of Byzantine autocracy. Thus, the rulers of Moscow in time developed a
new version of “Russian autocracy”, which was, in principle, a continuation of
Byzantine and Mongol traditions, but in practice was different from both models.
The autocratic rule enabled the Russian princes to centralize their control and
minimize the limitations placed on their power by the landed nobility, the
clergy, and wealthy merchants. The seeds of this Russian style of autocracy were
first clearly observed during the reign of Ivan the Terrible and echoes were
later seen in the iron-fisted regimes of Peter the Great and Joseph Stalin.
According to the great historian Karamzin, the
Russian national character “presents some blots which are derived from the
Mongol barbarism”.
The Mongol invasion, above
all, planted the seeds of the feeling of insecurity in the Russian nation as
well as the Russian state. This feeling of insecurity led Muscovite Russia to the
development of a “military dictatorship”. The development of a privileged
aristocracy and a class of self-governing burghers was impeded. The absence of
private property led to the complete concentration of power in the hands of
Russia’s rulers. The lack of two key institutions, namely an independent
nobility and private property, which served to limit the authority of kings in
the West, helped Russian rulers to consolidate absolute power.[34]
F) State System,
Administration, and Military Organization
Trubetzkoi
considered Genghis Khan not only a great conqueror, but also a genius in state
administration. The Tatar conception of the state, according to Trubetzkoi, was absorbed and then applied to the conditions
of Russian life. In comparison with the primitive notions of the state typical
of pre-Mongol Rus’, the Mongol concept developed by
Genghis Khan was grand, and its grandeur was bound to impress the Russians
deeply. Thus, the Tatar Yoke gave rise to a rather complex situation. As Russia
acquired the techniques of the Mongol state system, it also appropriated its
spirit, its underlying design. Although this state system and its fundamental
ideas were perceived as foreign and hostile, their grandeur made such powerful
impressions that reactions of one sort or another were inevitable.
Consequently, the Russians had to separate this system from its “Mongolianism” and associate it with Orthodoxy in order to
“Russianize” it. In doing this, Russian national thought turned to
Byzantine-Greek political ideas and traditions that enabled the religious
appropriation and “Russification” of the Mongol state system. The ideas of
Genghis Khan, obscured and eroded during the process of their implementation
but still glimmering within the Mongol state system, once again came to life,
but in a completely new, unrecognizable form after they had received a Byzantine
Christian foundation. This is how the miraculous transformation of the
Mongolian conception of the state into the Orthodox Russian conception
occurred.[35]
According to Vernadsky, the Mongol influence on Muscovite administrative
and military affairs was also profound. It was on the basis of Mongol patterns
that the grand dual system of taxation and army organization was developed in
Muscovy in the late fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. For more than 50
years the Khans of the Golden Horde exercised full and direct power over
taxation and conscription in eastern Rus’. When the
Russian princes recovered authority over them, they continued the Mongol
systems. The Turkic origin of the Russian words for treasury (kazna, казна) and treasurer (kaznachei, казначей) suggest that
the Muscovite treasury followed a Mongol pattern. The division of the Muscovite
army into five large units resembled Mongol practice. The Russians adopted the
Tatars’ tactics of envelopment and their system of universal conscription.[36]
Riasanovsky
argues that a number of Mongolian words in the fields of administration and finance
entered the Russian language, indicating a degree of influence. For example,
the term iarlyk (ярлык),
which means in modern Russian a trademark or a customs stamp, comes from a
Mongol word signifying a written order of the Khan, especially the Khan’s grant
of privileges; similarly, the Russian words denga
(деньга), meaning coin,
and dengi (деньги),
money, derive from Mongolian. According to Riasanovsky,
Mongols affected the evolution of Russian military forces and tactics, notably
as applied to the cavalry. Similarly, the Mongols deserve at least limited
credit for bringing Russia the postal service.[37]
Halperin
argues that despite the objections of hypersensitive Russian historians, there
is a compelling case that Muscovy did indeed borrow a variety of Mongol
political and administrative institutions, including the tamga (тамга), the seal for the customs tax as well as the
tax itself; kazna
(казна), the
treasury; iam
(ям), the postal
system; tarkhan
(тархан), grants of fiscal or judicial immunity; and dengi (деньги),
money. Muscovite bureaucratic practices, and perhaps some features of Muscovite
bureaucratic jargon, may also derive from the Qipchaq
Khanate, as well as selective legal practices such as pravezh (правёж), beating on the shins.
Certainly Muscovite diplomatic norms for dealing with steppe states and peoples
were modeled on Tatar ways. Finally, the Muscovites had no choice but to study
Tatar military tactics and strategies, if only to survive by countering them in
battle, but Muscovites also copied Mongol weapons, armaments, horse equipage,
and formations.[38]
Ostrowski
saw a direct parallel between the organization of the central and provincial
political institutions of Muscovy and the Qipchaq
Khanate, embodied in matching organizational charts that demonstrate that the
two systems were “direct cognates”. According to Ostrowski,
the Muscovite Boyar Council, the division of military and civilian authority that
he calls a “dual administration”, the leading Muscovite military and diplomatic
officials (the tysiatskii, тысяцкий),
the heads of the domestic court administration (the dvorskii, дворский), the provincial
administrators (the volosteli, волостели)
– all were direct imitations of the political and administrative structure of
the Qipchaq Khanate.[39]
According to Trubetzkoi, a concrete example of the Mongol influence on
Russia was the establishment of the postal system. The Mongols, Trubetzkoi argued, brought the network of postal roads and
the Mongol system for organizing mail and other means of communication, based
on a statewide “postal obligation”, which continued to exist in Russia long
after the Tatar Yoke.[40]
Figes argued that the Mongols had a sophisticated
system of administration and taxation, from which the Russian state would develop
its own structures, and this is reflected in the Tatar origins of many words
like dengi (деньги), kazna (казна), and tamozhnia (таможня).[41]
G) Serfdom and Obedient
Character
According to Vernadsky, one of the social impacts of the Mongol invasion
was the creation of serfdom as an institution in Russia. The foundations of
the relatively free Kievan Rus’
were destroyed during the Mongol rule. Mongol Khans expected unconditional
submission from their subjects, including the Russian princes and the peasantry.
Both the princes and the peasantry were forced to pay tributes and heavy taxes
to their Mongol rulers. Fearing Mongol raids and in an attempt to avoid taxes, the Russian peasants started to escape to remote
areas or became, in effect, lifetime laborers of the Russian ruling class in
return for protection. When Ivan III announced the emancipation of the Russians
from the Mongol rule in 1480, the framework of a new service-bound society was
virtually complete. Thus, the Mongol Tatar rule prepared the necessary ground
for the enserfment of the peasantry.
The transition of the
peasantry into serfs of the Russian nobility resulted in a major change in the
rural social structure of Russia. Until the mid-nineteenth century, the
majority of the Russian population would be tied to the lands they worked and
bound to the minority of nobles who owned these vast estates.
The Mongols trained the Russian
people to take orders, to pay taxes, and to supply soldiers when ordered by
their masters. Carrying these obedient characteristics over into later
centuries, the Russian people became excellent subjects for future Russian
Tsars. The Mongols brought their state organization into Russia in order to provide
law and order in the conquered Russian territories. As a result of this policy
the Mongols gave the conquered country the basic elements of future Muscovite
statehood: autocracy, centralism, and serfdom.
H) Unification of Eurasia:
The Historical Task Left to the Tsarist Russian State by the Mongols
According to Trubetzkoi, within the territory of Eurasia there were
originally tribes and states with a settled life style among the rivers, and
steppe tribes with a nomadic life style. Conflict between river and steppe was
inevitable. In the beginning the nomads were divided into many tribes, each of
which remained within a defined area. The constant threat of nomadic raids on
the river settlements and the never-ending danger that trade along the rivers
would be interrupted made normal development impossible for the river states.
The situation changed radically when Genghis Khan subjugated the nomadic tribes
of the Eurasian steppe system into a single, all-encompassing nomad state with
superb military organization. Nothing could resist such power. All the organized
states within the territory of Eurasia lost their independence and became
subject to the ruler of the steppes. Thus, Genghis Khan was successful in
accomplishing the historical task set by the nature of Eurasia, the task of
unifying this entire area into a single state, and he accomplished this task in
the only way possible – by first unifying the entire steppe under his power,
and through the steppe, the rest of Eurasia.[42]
Eurasia, argued Trubetzkoi, is a geographically, ethnographically, and
economically integrated system whose political unification was historically
inevitable. Genghis Khan was the first to accomplish this unification.
Instinctively, the Russian state, as the descendant of Genghis Khan, followed
the Mongol example to occupy and unite all of the territory of Eurasia, and became
the heir and successor of Genghis Khan’s historical endeavors.[43]
Figes
pointed out that the military conquest of the Central Asian steppe was
justified by an important number of Russians from the
educated circles on the grounds that Russia’s cultural homeland was on the
Eurasian steppe. By marching into Asia, the Russians were returning to their
ancient home. This rationale was first advanced in 1840 by the Orientalist Vasily Grigoriev. During the
campaign in Central Asia the thesis that Slavs were returning to their “prehistoric
home” was advanced. The idea that Russia had a cultural and historic claim in
Asia became a founding myth of the empire.[44]
I) Economy
The devastating results created by the Mongol invasion on the economy of Rus’ is one of the rare topics upon which there has
been a consensus among Russian historians. The Mongol raids devastated major
cities, Kiev, Chernigov, and Suzdal being the
foremost among them. These cities lost their importance for centuries. The Mongols
conscripted the majority of craftsmen and that almost brought the Russian
reservoir of skilled manpower to an end. The local industries were nearly
completely destroyed. The economic depression in Novgorod lasted for 50 years.
In the eastern parts of the Russian lands the situation was even more acute.
As the Mongols needed
agricultural production as taxes, agricultural production was able to escape
the destruction and thus became the leading branch of the Russian economy. In
the years to follow, the Mongol regional governors and Khans took some steps to
encourage the development of trade, especially with the East. With the
establishment of new and secure trade routes, trade started to flourish slowly.
Some Russian historians
argue that economic growth also heavily suffered from tributes and taxes. With
the devastation of the city assemblies, Russia lost the urban merchant
oligarchies and the rising middle classes that appeared in Western Europe during
the same period.
J) Culture
According to Figes, the Russian culture, in the beginning, was a product
of the combined influence of Scandinavia and Byzantium. The national epic that the
Russians liked to tell about themselves was the story of the struggle by the
agriculturalists of the northern forest lands against horsemen of the Asiatic
steppe. This national myth had become so fundamental to the European
self-identity of the Russians that to suggest an Asiatic influence on the
culture of Russia was to invite charges of treason. In the final decades of the
nineteenth century, however, cultural attitudes shifted. As the empire spread
across the Asian steppe, there was a growing movement to embrace its cultures
as a part of Russia’s own. The first important sign of this cultural shift came
in the 1860s, when Vladimir Stasov[45]
tried to show that much of Russia’s folk culture, its ornament, and folk epics
had antecedents in the East. Stasov was denounced by
the Slavophiles and other patriots. Yet by the end of
the 1880s, there was an explosion of research into the Asiatic origins of
Russia’s folk culture. Archeologists such as Dmitrii Anuchin and Nikolai Veselovsky
exposed the depth of Tatar influence on the Stone Age culture of Russia. They
equally revealed, or at least suggested, the Asiatic origins of many folk
beliefs of the Russian peasants of the steppe. Anthropologists found
shamanistic practices in Russian sacred peasant rituals. Others pointed out the
ritual use of totems by the Russian peasantry in Siberia. The anthropologist
Dmitry Zelenin maintained that the animistic beliefs
of the peasants had been handed down to them from the Mongol tribes.[46]
For Stasov,
the significance of the Eastern mark on Russian art went far beyond exotic
decoration. It was a testimony to the historical fact of Russia’s descent from
the ancient cultures of the Orient. Stasov believed
that the influence of Asia was manifest in all fields of Russian culture: in
language, clothing, customs, buildings, furniture, and items of daily use, in
ornaments, in melodies and harmonies, and in all fairy tales.[47]
In order to make a better
assessment of the Mongol cultural impact on Russia, perhaps it would be more
appropriate to take a deeper look at the specific aspects of the area of
culture.
a) Language
Vernadsky
believed that the Mongol cultural impact on Russia was considerable especially
in terms of language, as the Russian language borrowed many words from
Mongolian. Similarly, Hosseini argued that it is only natural that the Mongol
Empire, after 200 years of dominance, would leave a multitude of significant
linguistic and even socio-linguistic impacts on the people who inhabited the
lands of Rus’. Indeed, Russian borrowed thousands of
words, phrases, and other linguistic features from the Mongol and Turkic
languages. Listed below are just a few examples of some of the most significant
impacts that have survived.[48]
амбар barn
базар bazaar
денга coin
деньги money
лошад horse
сундук truck, chest
тамохня customs
улус district/region
By the fifteenth century
the use of Tatar terms had become so modish at the court of Muscovy that the Grand
Duke Vasily accused his courtiers of excessive love
of the Tatars and their speech. But Turkic phrases also left their mark on the
language of the street – perhaps the most notably in those “davai” (давай
– Come on, let’s go) verbal riffs that signal the intention of so many daily
acts:[49]
давай поидём Come on let’s go
давай посидим
Come on let’s sit down
давай попьём
Come on let’s get drunk
b) Art
While the arts in Russia
first suffered from the mass deportations of its artisans to other lands within
the Mongol Empire, the monastic revival and focus of attention that turned
towards the Orthodox Church led to an artistic revival. It was during the
second half of the Mongol rule in the mid-fourteenth century that Russian
iconography and fresco painting began to flourish.[50]
Studying the byliny (были́ны), the epic songs that contained the oldest folk
myths and legends of Russia, Stasov claimed that they
were from Asia.[51] The
composer Balakirev, who was the founder of the “Russian music school”, came
from ancient Tatar stock, and he was proud of it. The Oriental element was one
of the hallmarks of the Russian music school developed by the kuchkists – the
“Mighty Handful” (kuchka, кучка) of
nationalist composers that included Balakirev, Mussorgsky, Borodin, and
Rimsky-Korsakov. Many of the kuchkists’ quintessential Russian works – from Balakirev’s
fantasy for piano Islamei
to Borodin’s Prince Igor and
Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade – were
composed in this Oriental style. Balakirev had encouraged the use of Eastern
themes and harmonies to distinguish this self-conscious Russian music from
German symphonism.[52]
In Borodin’s Prince Igor, for example, the melismatic music of the Polovtsian Dances, which came to represent the
quintessential sound of the Orient, was actually drawn from Chuvash, Bashkir,
Hungarian, Algerian, Tunisian, and Arabian melodies.[53]
Distinguishing Russian
culture from that of the West became one of the major preoccupations of the
young Russian romantics of the nineteenth century. The Oriental theme was
frequently seen in the works of the great Russian poet
Mikhail Lermontov, who embraced the Caucasus as his “spiritual home”. Gogol
emphasized the “Asiatic” character of the Ukrainian Cossacks in his
unforgettable story Taras Bulba.
c) Customs, Traditions, and Faith
Russian customs and
traditions were also influenced by the Tatars. The Russian customs of
hospitality have their roots especially clearly in the culture of the Mongol Khans,
for whom hospitality was one of the most respected virtues. Distinguishing the
Russian culture from that of the West became one of the major preoccupations of
the young Russian romantics of the nineteenth century. Russian archeologist Nikolai
Veselovsky found a Mongol origin for the Russian
peasant custom of honoring a person by throwing them into the air.[54]
There is also reason to
suppose that the shamanistic cults of the Mongol tribes were incorporated in
the Russian faith. The Holy Fool (yurodivyi, юродивый) was probably descended from the Asian
shamans, too, despite his image as the quintessential “Russian type” in many
works of art.[55]
d) Clothing and Eating Habits
Many common elements of
Russian clothing were Asiatic in their origin – a fact reflected in the Turkic
derivation of the Russian words for clothes like kaftan (Кафтан),
zipun (Зипун
- a light coat), armiak
(Армяк
- heavy coat), sarafan (Сарафан), and khalat (Халат). Even the Tsar’s crown or Cap
of Monomakh – by legend handed down from Byzantium – was probably of Tatar
origin
The food of Russia was
deeply influenced by the cultures of the East, with many basic Russian dishes,
such as plov
(Плов - pilaf), lapsha (Лапща
- noodles), and tvorog
(Творог - curd cheese) imported from the Caucasus and
Central Asia, and other eating habits, like the Russian taste for horsemeat and
koumis (Хоумис - fermented mare’s milk), no doubt handed down from
the Mongol tribes. In contrast to the Christian West and most Buddhist cultures
of the East, there was no religious sanction against eating horsemeat in
Russia.
K) Ideology
According
to Trubetzkoi, despite the large differences between
the ideological foundations of the Muscovite and Mongol state systems, there was
an inner kinship between them. Good reasons exist for considering the Muscovite
state system a successor to the Mongol system, not only with regard to
territory and certain peculiarities of state organization, but also in its
ideological content. Both were based on a life style that was bound up with a
specific psychological orientation – the nomadic life style in the empire of
Genghis Khan, and the Orthodox way of living in the Muscovite state. In both,
the supreme head of state was the most brilliant representative of the ideal
form of that particular life style. In both, discipline within the state
depended upon the universal subordination of all citizens and of the monarch
himself to a transcendent divine source. The subordination of all persons to
the monarch was understood as a consequence of universal subordination to the
divine source, whose earthly instrument was the
monarch. In both, the absence of attachment to earthly goods, freedom from
material prosperity, and unshakable devotion to a religiously conceived notion
of duty were recognized as virtues.[56]
Conclusion
As seen in the previous
sections of this paper there has been disagreement among Russian historians about
the nature and degree of influence exerted by the Mongol rule on the history,
politics, economy, and culture of Russia. While famous Russian historians such
as Soloviev almost totally neglected any sort of
Mongol influence on Russia, Eurasianists such as Vernadsky and Trubetzkoi argued
that the Mongol impact on Russia was profound and visible in almost all fields
of Russian life.
Looking at the existing
written historical documents, almost all historians agree that the Mongols
brought great devastation and destruction to the Russian lands. However,
directly or indirectly, the Mongol rule influenced Russian life in many ways,
the effects of which are still visible today, especially in Russian language
and culture. The Mongols, by isolating Russia from the West, had a profound
impact on the Russian development. Perhaps the most fundamental consequence of
the Mongol rule was the divergence of Russian civilization from the West.
During the period of Kievan Rus’,
Russia was on a parallel track with Europe and its Latin Christian
civilization. Following the Mongol invasion and the destruction of Kiev, the
distance between Russia and Europe widened, and Russian society evolved along
more distinctly different lines than it had a few centuries earlier. While the
ideas of freedom and justice were gaining strength in Europe, Russia was
institutionalizing serfdom, which was another direct result of the Mongol rule.
While Europe was witnessing extraordinary development with new ideas and the
introduction of scientific methods, particularly during the Renaissance,
Russian society was experiencing a traditional, stagnant life based on small-scale
agricultural production.
Russia, if not conquered
by the Mongols, could have followed a similar path to that of the West.
Therefore, it is an undeniable fact that Russian civilization followed a
different course from the West as a direct consequence of the Mongol
occupation. If Russia has been able to develop its own unique civilization based
on the belief of Orthodoxy, which, without any doubt, differs vastly from the
civilization of Europe, it is thanks to the element of “Asia or Orient”, which
was introduced by the Mongols and which has deeply penetrated into the Russian
character and identity.
As was laid out in the
previous sections of this paper, both the Western and Eurasian schools
established a direct link between the Mongol rule and the foundation of an
autocratic and to some extent despotic Tsarist Russian State. The Westernizers,
who were charmed with the values of enlightenment, democracy, and freedom,
blamed the Mongols for Russia’s backwardness, whereas the Eurasianists
embraced the Mongol legacy, claiming that it strengthened the founding pillars
of the Tsarist Russian State such as Orthodoxy and autocracy and thus made a profound
contribution to the security and stability of Russia. This paper does not
attempt to begin an argument about the correctness of the views of the Western
or Eurasianist schools. It rather tries to focus on
one common observation that unites both sides: the direct Mongol impact on the
tradition of autocracy in Russia. In that sense, the common observation of the
two schools definitely seems more realistic than the traditional myth that claims
that the Mongol rule had no direct or indirect impacts on Russian history,
politics, economy, or culture.
Another undeniable seed that
the Mongol invasion planted in Russian society is a deep sense of insecurity.
The fear of being overrun and subjugated, either by a Western or Eastern power,
made unity and cohesiveness a high-priority value in Russian society and the
Russian state. The Russians were highly divided among themselves when the Mongol
invasion started and this facilitated their easy defeat. This painful
experience demonstrated to the Russians the necessity of building a strong centralist
state, first to overthrow the Mongols and then to be ready for other similar
attempts aimed at the occupation of Russian territories. In fact, history
acknowledged the necessity of Russian unity as the Russians had to fight
against foreign intruders during Napoleon’s Russian campaign and in the First
and Second World Wars. If the Mongol invasion had not taken place, it is highly
possible that the Russians would have remained divided and would have been
absorbed by their powerful neighbors: Poles, Lithuanians, and others.
In making an impartial assessment
regarding the Mongol legacy in Russian history, politics, economy, and culture,
it would be more appropriate to neither deny the Mongol impact nor to overemphasize it. Approaching the issue from a broader
perspective and with the historical evidence, it is an undeniable fact that the
Mongols indeed had significant impacts on Russian life and this Mongol legacy
is still visible in today’s modern Russia.
[1]Kievan Rus’ (Russian: Ки́евская Русь) is the name used by Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin for the medieval state of Rus. The state existed from approximately 880 to sometime in the middle of the 13th century when it disintegrated. It was founded by East Slavic tribes and Scandinavian traders (Varangians) called Rus’ and centered in Novgorod. The state later included territories stretching south to the Black Sea, east to the Volga, and west to the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
[2]Peter J. S. Duncan, Contemporary Russian Identity Between East and
West, The Historical Journal, Volume 48, Number 1, Cambridge University Press,
United Kingdom, 2005, p. 277.
[3]Ana Siljak, Between East and
West: Hegel and the Origins of the Russian Dilemma, Journal of
the History of Ideas, Volume 62,
Number 2, April 2001, pp. 335-358.
[4]Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, A
History of Russia, Fourth Edition, New York, 1984, pp. 67-68.
[5]Riasanovsky, A
History of Russia, p. 68.
[6]Riasanovsky, A History of Russia, p. 72.
[7]Ryazan was one of the first to be conquered by Batu Khan. In Russian texts, they were called “Tatars” (татаре). According to various chronicles and
this military tale, Ryazan was attacked in 1237. The
Tale of the Destruction of
Ryazan survived in several sixteenth
and seventeenth century redactions and is thought to be a part of a miscellany
that was composed and revised by the clergy of the Church of St Nicholas of Zarazsk. Given the form of a military tale, the later
version of the tale of Batu’s capture of Ryazan is a
fictionalized account with some historical inaccuracies suggesting that the tale
was composed sometimes after the described events and was subsequently further
edited. Tracing its provenance, textual analysis and dating of various
redactions have been conclusively resolved by Soviet scholars. Originally, the
tale of Batu’s capture of Ryazan was a part of a
cycle dedicated to the icon of St Nicholas of Zarazsk.
This cycle included several parts or tales, each with a differing thematic
emphasis. The tale of St Nicholas of Zarazsk (in 1225) and the tale of Batu’s capture of Ryazan (in 1237) in their earlier
manuscripts versions are dated to the second third of the sixteenth century.
For the first time, the tale of Batu’s capture of
Ryazan was published by I. P. Sakharov in 1841. It was based on the late
sixteenth century redaction. The whole cycle was published by D. C. Likhachev in 1947. In his canonical study, Likhachev (basing it on the research by V. L. Komarovich) dated, analyzed, and classified 34 variants
dating from the sixteenth-eighteenth centuries.
[8]Orlando Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural
History of Russia, New York, 2002, p. 378.
[9]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of
Russia, p. 378.
[10]See Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural
History of Russia, p. 367.
[11]See Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural
History of Russia, p. 367.
[12]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of
Russia, p. 423.
[13]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of
Russia, pp. 423-424.
[14]Vernadsky left his native country in 1920 for Constantinople, moving to Athens later that year. At the suggestion of Nikodim Kondakov, he settled in Prague, teaching there from 1921 until 1925 at the Russian School of Law. There, in association with Nikolai Trubetzkoi and P. N. Savitsky, he participated in formulating the Eurasian theory of Russian history. After Kondakov’s death, Vernadsky was in charge of the Seminarium Kondakovianum, which disseminated his view of Russian culture as the synthesis of Slavonic, Byzantine, and nomadic influences. In 1927, Vernadsky was offered a position at Yale University in the United States. At Yale, he first served as a research associate in history (1927-1946), and then became a full professor of Russian history in 1946. He served in that position until his retirement in 1956. He died in New Haven on 20 June 1973.
[15]See Charles J. Halperin, “George Vernadsky, Eurasianism, the
Mongols, and Russia”, Slavic Review,
1982, pp. 477-493.
[16]See Peter Stearns, Russia in Bondage et al. World Civilizations. The
Global Experience, New York, 1992, p. 460.
[17]Stearns, Russia in Bondage, p. 460.
[18]Jiu-Hwa L. Upshur, World History, Minneapolis, 1994, pp. 371-372.
[19]See Dustin Hosseini, The Effects of the Mongol Empire on Russia, The
University of Texas at Arlington, 2005, p. 6.
[20]Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetzkoi, The Legacy of Genghis Khan and the Essays on
Russia’s Identity, Michigan Slavic Publications, 1991, pp. 181-182.
[21]Riasanovsky, A
History of Russia, pp. 75-76.
[22]Riasanovsky, A
History of Russia, p. 73.
[23]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of
Russia, p. 368.
[24]Figes, Natasha’s
Dance: A Cultural History of Russia, p. 369.
[25]Trubetzkoi, The Legacy of Genghis Khan and the Essays on Russia’s Identity,
pp. 175-176.
[26]Hosseini, The Effects of the Mongol Empire on
Russia, p. 4.
[27]Trubetzkoi, The Legacy of Genghis Khan and the Essays on Russia’s Identity,
p. 181.
[28]Trubetzkoi, The Legacy of Genghis Khan and the Essays on Russia’s Identity,
p. 190.
[29]Trubetzkoi, The Legacy of Genghis Khan and the Essays on Russia’s Identity,
p. 176.
[30]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of
Russia, p. 425.
[31]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of
Russia, p. 369.
[32]The word is inherited from Proto-Slavic větje, meaning “council” or “talk” (which is also
represented in the word “soviet”, both ultimately deriving from the Proto-Slavic
verbal stem of větiti, “to talk, speak”). The East
Slavic veche is thought to have originated in
tribal assemblies of Eastern Europe, thus predating the Rus’ state. The earliest mentions of veche
in East European chronicles refer to examples in Belgorod Kievsky in 997, Novgorod the Great in 1016, and Kiev in 1068. The assemblies discussed matters of war and peace, adopted laws,
and called for and expelled rulers. In Kiev, the veche
was summoned in front of the Cathedral
of St Sophia. The veche was the
highest legislature and judicial authority in the Republic of Novgorod until 1478,
after the Massacre of
Novgorod by Grand Prince Ivan IV.
[33]See Hosseini, The Effects of the Mongol Empire on Russia, p. 10.
[34]See Ronald G.
Charbonneau. The Origins of Muscovite Autocracy, Master Thesis, Department of
History of McGill University, Montreal, 1967.
[35]Trubetzkoi, The Legacy of Genghis Khan and the Essays on Russia’s Identity,
pp. 178-180.
[36]See Charles J. Halperin, “George Vernadsky, Eurasianism, the
Mongols, and Russia”. Slavic Review,
1982, pp. 477-493.
[37]Riasanovsky, A History of Russia, p. 73.
[38]Charles J. Halperin, Russia and the Golden
Horde: The Mongol Impact on Medieval Russian History, Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1985, pp. 90-95.
[39]Charles J. Halperin, Muscovite Political
Institutions in the 14th Century, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian
History, Volume 1, Number 2, Spring 2000, p. 239.
[40]Trubetzkoi, The Legacy of Genghis Khan and the Essays on Russia’s Identity,
p. 178.
[41]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of
Russia, p. 367.
[42]Trubetzkoi, The Legacy of Genghis Khan and the Essays on Russia’s Identity,
p. 166.
[43]Trubetzkoi, The Legacy of Genghis Khan and the Essays on Russia’s Identity,
p. 167.
[44]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of
Russia, p. 414.
[45]Vladimir Vasilievich Stasov (Влади́мир Васи́льевич Ста́сов, 1824-1906) was probably the most respected Russian critic during his lifetime. Stasov became a huge figure in mid-19th-century Russian culture. He wanted Russian art to liberate itself from what he saw as Europe’s hold. By copying the West, he felt, the Russians could be at best only second-rate. However, by applying their own native traditions, they might create a truly national art that could match Europe’s with its high artistic standards and originality.
[46]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of
Russia, p. 365.
[47]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of
Russia, p. 392.
[48]Hosseini, The Effects of the Mongol Empire on
Russia, pp. 9-10.
[49]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of
Russia, p. 371.
[50]Hosseini, The Effects of the Mongol Empire on
Russia, p. 7.
[51]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of
Russia, p. 393.
[52]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of
Russia, pp. 390-391.
[53]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of
Russia, p. 384.
[54]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of
Russia, p. 371.
[55]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of
Russia, p. 373.
[56]Trubetzkoi, The Legacy of Genghis Khan and the Essays on Russia’s Identity,
p. 196.
Bibliography
Charbonneau, Ronald G. The Origins of
Muscovite Autocracy, Master Thesis, Department of History of McGill
University, Montreal, 1967.
Duncan, Peter J.
S. Contemporary Russian Identity Between East and West, The Historical
Journal, Volume 48, Number 1, Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom, 2005.
Figes, Orlando. Natasha’s Dance A Cultural
History of Russia, New York, 2002.
Halperin, Charles J. “George Vernadsky,
Eurasianism, the Mongols, and Russia." Slavic Review,
1982.
Halperin, Charles J. Muscovite Political Institutions in
the 14th Century, Kritika:
Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Volume 1, Number 2, Spring 2000,
p.239
Halperin, Charles J. Russia and the Golden Horde: The
Mongol Impact on Medieval Russian History, Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1985.
Hosseini,
Dustin. The Effects of the Mongol Empire on Russia, The
University of Texas at Arlington, 2005.
Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. A History of Russia,
Fourth Edition, New York, 1984.
Siljak, Ana, Between East and West: Hegel and the Origins of the Russian Dilemma, Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 62,
Number 2, April 2001.
Stearns, Peter. Russia in Bondage et.al. World
Civilizations. The Global Experience, New York, 1992.
Trubetzkoi, Nikolai Sergeevich. The Legacy of Genghis Khan and the Essays on Russia’s Identity,
Michigan Slavic Publications, 1991.
Upshur, Jiu-Hwa L. World History, Minneapolis, 1994.
*Anıl Çiçek - Dr., Head of Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey, completed his post-doctoral research studies at the University of Latvia as a part of the Jean Monnet Scholarship Program, achieved Russian language certificate TRKI-III (advanced level) of the University of St Petersburg
© 2010, IJORS - INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN STUDIES