A blending of Slavic and Greek traditions eventually produced Russian culture.
Russia’s Birth
Overview
In addition to sending its missionaries to the land of the Slavs during the ninth century, Byzantium actively traded with its neighbors to the north. Because of this increased interaction, the Slavs began absorbing many Greek Byzantine ways. It was this blending of Slavic and Greek traditions that eventually produced Russian culture.
Russia’s first unified territory originated west of the Ural Mountains in the region that runs from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea. Hilly grasslands are found in the extreme south of that area. The north, however, is densely forested, flat, and swampy. Slow-moving, interconnecting rivers allow boat travel across these
plains in almost any direction. Three great rivers, the Dnieper, the Don, and the Volga, run from the heart of the forests to the Black Sea or the Caspian Sea.
In the early days of the Byzantine Empire, these forests were inhabited by tribes of Slavic farmers and traders. They spoke similar languages but had no political unity. Sometime in the 800s, small bands of adventurers came down among them from the north. These Varangians, or Rus as they were also called,
were most likely Vikings. (The name “Russia” is taken from this group.) Eventually, these Vikings built forts along the rivers and settled among the Slavs.
Slavs and Vikings
Russian legends say the Slavs invited the Viking chief Rurik to be their king. So in 862, he founded Novgorod, Russia’s first important city. That account is given in The Primary Chronicle, a history of Russia written by monks in the early 1100s. Around 880, a nobleman from Novgorod named Oleg moved south to Kiev, a city on the Dnieper River. From Kiev, the Vikings could sail by river and sea to Constantinople. There they could trade for products from distant lands.
Kiev grew into a principality, a small state ruled by a prince. As it did, the Viking nobles intermarried with their Slavic subjects and adopted many aspects of Slavic culture. Gradually, the line between Slavs and Vikings vanished.
Kiev becomes Orthodox
In 957, a member of the Kievan nobility, Princess Olga, paid a visit to Constantinople and publicly converted to Christianity. From 945 to 964, she governed Kiev until her son was old enough to rule. Her son resisted Christianity. However, soon after Olga’s grandson Vladimir came to the throne about 980,
he considered conversion to Christianity. The Primary Chronicle reports that Vladimir sent out teams to observe the major religions of the times. Three of the teams returned with lukewarm accounts of Islam, Judaism, and Western Christianity. But the team from Byzantium told quite a different story.
This report convinced Vladimir to convert to Byzantine Christianity and to make all his subjects convert, too. In 989, a baptism of all the citizens of Kiev was held in the Dnieper River. Kiev, already linked to Byzantium by trade, now looked to the empire for religious guidance. Vladimir imported teachers to
instruct the people in the new faith. All the beliefs and traditions of Orthodox Christianity flourished in Kiev. Vladimir appreciated the Byzantine idea of the emperor as supreme ruler of the Church. So the close link between Church and state took root in Russia as well.
Kiev’s Power and Decline
Overview
Thanks to its Byzantine ties, Kiev grew from a cluster of crude wooden forts to the glittering capital of a prosperous and educated people. The rise of Kiev marked the appearance of Russia’s first important unified territory.
Kievan Russia
Vladimir led the way in establishing Kiev’s power. He expanded his state west into Poland and north almost to the Baltic Sea. He also fought off troublesome nomads from the steppes to the south.
In 1019, Vladimir’s son Yaroslav the Wise came to the throne and led Kiev to even greater glory. Like the rulers of Byzantium, Yaroslav skillfully married off his daughters and sisters to the kings and princes of Western Europe. Those marriages helped him to forge important trading alliances. At the same time, he created a legal code tailored to Kiev’s commercial culture. Many of its rules dealt with crimes against property. Yaroslav also built the first library in Kiev. Under his rule, Christianity prospered. By the 12th century, Kiev was home to some 400 churches.
Kiev’s Decline
The decline of the Kievan state started with the death of Yaroslav in 1054. During his reign, Yaroslav had made what turned out to be a crucial error. He had divided his realm among his sons, instead of following the custom of passing on the throne to the eldest son. Upon their father’s death, the sons tore the state apart fighting for the choicest territories. And because this system of dividing the kingdom among sons continued, each generation saw new struggles. The Crusades—the numerous clashes between Christians and Muslims for control of the Holy Lands of the Middle East that began in 1095—added to Kiev’s troubles by disrupting trade. Then, just when it seemed that things could not get worse, a new threat emerged.
The Mongol Invasions
Overview
In the middle 1200s, a ferocious group of horsemen from central Asia slashed their way into Russia. These nomads were the Mongols. They had exploded onto the world scene at the beginning of the 1200s under Genghis Khan, one of the most feared warriors of all time.
The Mongols may have been forced to move out by economic or military pressures. They may have been lured by the wealth of cities to the west. Whatever their reasons for leaving, they rode their swift horses across the steppes of Asia and on into Europe. Their savage killing and burning won them a reputation for ruthless brutality. When Genghis Khan died in 1227, his successors continued the conquering that he had begun. At its fullest extent, the Mongol Empire stretched from the Yellow Sea to the Baltic Sea and from the Himalayas to northern Russia.
In 1240, the Mongols attacked and demolished Kiev. They rode under the leadership of Batu Khan, Genghis’s grandson. So many inhabitants were slaughtered, a Russian historian reported, that “no eye remained to weep.” A Roman Catholic bishop traveling through Kiev five years later wrote, “When we passed through that land, we found lying in the field countless heads and bones of dead people.” After the fall of Kiev, Mongols ruled all of southern Russia for 200 years. The empire’s official name was the
“Khanate of the Golden Horde”: Khanate, from the Mongol word for “kingdom”; Golden, because gold was the royal color of the Mongols; and Horde, from the Mongol word for “camp.”
Mongol Rule in Russia
Under Mongol rule, the Russians could follow all their usual customs, as long as they made no attempts to rebel. As fierce as they were, the Mongols tolerated all the religions in their realms. The Church, in fact, often acted as a mediator between the Russian people and their Mongol rulers.
The Mongols demanded just two things from Russians: absolute obedience and massive amounts of tribute, or payments. By and large, the Russian nobles agreed. Novgorod’s prince and military hero Alexander Nevsky, for example, advised his fellow princes to cooperate with the Mongols. The Russian nobles often crushed revolts against the Mongols and collected oppressive taxes for the foreign rulers.
Mongol rule isolated the Russians more than ever from their neighbors in Western Europe. This meant that among other things, the Russians had little access to many new ideas and inventions. During this period, however, forces were at work that eventually would lead to the rise of a new center of power in the country, and to Russia’s liberation.
Resistance and Rebellion against Mongol Rule
Although Russians by and large obeyed their Mongol rulers, pockets of resistance existed, shown by this 1259 diary entry of a resident of Novgorod:
The same winter the accursed raw-eating Tartars [Mongols], Berkai and Kasachik, came with their wives,
Resident of Novgorod, from Medieval Russia
and many others, and there was great tumult in Novgorod, and they did much evil in the province,
taking contribution for the accursed Tartars. And the accursed ones began to fear death; they said to [Prince] Alexander: ‘Give us guards, lest they kill us.’ And the Knayz ordered the son of Posadnik and all the sons of the Boyars to protect them by night. The Tartars said: ‘Give us your numbers for tribute or we will run away and return in greater strength.’ And the common people would not give their numbers for tribute but said: ‘Let us die honourably for St. Sophia and for the angelic houses.’
Resistance against Mongol rule occasionally broke out into open rebellion, as this account from an anti-Mongol uprising in Tver in 1327 indicates:
The lawless Shevkal, the destroyer of Christianity, . . . came to Tver, drove the Grand Prince from his court and entrenched himself there with great haughtiness and violence. . . . The entire city assembled and the uprising was in the making. The Tverians cried out and began to kill the Tartars wherever they found them until they killed Shevkal and the rest [of his men]. They missed killing the messengers who were with the horses that grazed in the meadow [outside the city]. They [the messengers] saddled their best horses and swiftly galloped to Moscow and from there to the [Golden] Horde, where they brought the news of the death of Shevkal.
Tver Eyewitness Account, from Medieval Russia
Russia Breaks Free
Overview
The city of Moscow was first founded in the 1100s. By 1156, it was a crude village protected by a log wall. Nonetheless, it was located near three major rivers: the Volga, Dnieper, and Don. From that strategic position, a prince of Moscow who could gain control of the three rivers could control nearly all of European Russia—and perhaps successfully challenge the Mongols.
Moscow’s Powerful Princes
A line of Russian princes eventually emerged on the scene who would do just that. During the late 1320s, Moscow’s Prince Ivan I had earned the gratitude of the Mongols by helping to crush a Russian revolt against Mongol rule. For his services, the Mongols appointed Ivan I as tax collector of all the Slavic lands they had conquered. They also gave him the title of “Grand Prince.” Ivan had now become without any doubt the most powerful of all Russian princes. He also became the wealthiest and was known as “Ivan Moneybag.”
Ivan convinced the Patriarch of Kiev, the leading bishop of Eastern Europe, to move to Moscow. The move
improved the city’s prestige and gave Moscow’s princes a powerful ally: the Church. Ivan I and his successors used numerous strategies to enlarge their territory: land purchases, wars, trickery, and shrewd marriages. From generation to generation, they schemed to gain greater control over the small states around Moscow.
An Empire Emerges
The Russian state would become a genuine empire during the long, 43-year reign of Ivan III. Upon becoming the prince of Moscow, Ivan openly challenged Mongol rule. He took the name czar (zahr), the
Russian version of Caesar, and publicly claimed his intent to make Russia the “Third Rome.” (The title “czar” became official only during the reign of Ivan IV.)
In 1480, Ivan made a final break with the Mongols. After he refused to pay his rulers further tribute, Russian and Mongol armies faced each other at the Ugra River, about 150 miles southwest of Moscow. However, neither side advanced to fight. So, after a time, both armies turned around and marched home. Russians have traditionally marked this bloodless standoff as their liberation from Mongol rule. After this liberation, the czars could openly
Such a defeat for the Mongols would have seemed impossible nearly two centuries earlier, as they pushed west from present-day China and crushed nearly everything in their path. One of the peoples whom they conquered back then was a new group that had risen to power in Central Asia—the Turks.
From Byzantines, Russians and Turks Interact (307-311), published by ClassZone, free and open access, republished for educational, non-commercial purposes.