17e: Conclusions

1. The secret of Moscow's success
In the first place, like Rome, Moscow was blessed with a good defensible location (that is, far away from the Mongols) and close to both river and land transport, making trade possible. Next, the Muscovite princes tended not to beget multiple male offspring, which kept their land unseparated. Finally, there was the utter unscrupulousness of Moscow's Grand Princes. They sucked up to the Golden Horde to keep the coveted yarlyk, and hung on to as much of the tribute money as they could. They picked off minor principalities one by one, and worked their way up to the big cheese - Novgorod the Great. Once the land was gathered - whether conquered or purchased or inherited - the new territory became like everything else, the property of the Grand Prince (or the Tsar). The upper classes had it easier than the peasants, but everyone was the property of the Grand Prince or the Tsar.

2. All the King's Men
The upper classes had their discontents. Nobles, especially the wealthiest ones, or boyars, were expected to provide the Grand Prince (or the Tsar) with troops. In return, they were allowed to hold enough of the Grand Prince's (or the Tsar's) land to provide a good livelihood. This did not always satisfy the boyars. The Grand Princes traced their ancestry back to Rurik, but were a very junior branch of the Rurikid family tree. Some of the boyars came from far more important branches, and resented it.  More to the point, the boyars did not appreciate the Grand Princes' autocratic rule and centralized government. Seen in this light, Ivan III's marriage to a Byzantine princess and adoption of Byzantine court rituals seemed like an exercise in self-preservation. The boyars wanted more of a voice in the state, and sometimes got it, as they did in Ivan the Terrible's youth. But they did not keep it for long. The oprichnina was primarily an attempt to terrify the boyars into submission, and for the most part it worked.

3. Rule of law and the class system
The law seems to have been something used to keep the various classes in their places. Most notably, it became harder and harder for serfs to relocate from one master to another. Due to the climate, Russian farmland was neither abundant nor fertile, and did not produce enough to let the peasants live comfortably. Ivan the Terrible was the first to send explorers into Siberia, but the mass settlement of Siberia (such as it was) was years off. Aggrieved peasants could always escape south to join the Cossacks. On the fertile steppe land of what is now called Ukraine, the Cossacks lived in freedom under an elected "hetman." They combined a love of farming with a love of fighting; sort of an agricultural version of the wild, wild American West. Yet the lower classes got at least a little respect. When Ivan the Terrible formed Russia's first standing army units, the streltsy, in the 1550s, they were recruited from the lower (and supposedly less disloyal) classes. And for all that, the peasants preferred to be ruled by an autocratic monarch.

4. Holy Russia
This was the high point of the Orthodox Church's influence upon Russia. First, it was the religious faith of almost all Russians (the natives of the conquered Kazan and Astrakhan khanates being the exception). As the masses of peasantry embraced Orthodoxy, Orthodoxy became Russian to meet their spiritual needs, with consequences we will explain in the next lecture. Second, Orthodoxy was a unifying force in Russian political life. When Russia seemed doomed to crumble under the Swedish and Polish invasions, the call for resistance came out from the St. Sergius-Trinity Monastery. Miraculously, the union of peasants, nobles, and the Orthodox Church drove the invaders out, proving the existence of a unique Russian national identity. Was Russia truly the Third Rome, destined to bring peace and Christianity to the world?