RUS Lecture 2

In the beginning, there were a bunch of happy [Slavs] - farmers and hunters who lived right around the Pripet Marshes. They were the peaceful forerunners of most Eastern European peoples. Unlike the ancient Romans, who were hemmed in from their earliest days by other Latin towns and by other Italic peoples, the happy Slavs had plenty of room to move as they liked. As soon as they had worn out out one forest clearing, they could walk or take a boat on one of the numerous Russian rivers to another forest to clear out and farm out. There was no need to fight it out with other Slavs for land or resources, because there was land and resources enough for all - hence no need for organized military force. The early Slavic civilization was undoubtedly primitive but likely very contented.

The numerous Russian rivers had also made the land of the Slavs a natural trade route from Scandinavia to Byzantium; trade creates profits and draws raiders. Consequently, the Slavs began looking for a strong, military-oriented leader who could protect them. In 862, the city of Novgorod invited a Varangian (Viking) prince named Rurik to be their prince. This set into motion a sequence of events leading to the foundation of Russian civilization  in Kievan Rus - so called from its capital city of Kiev in modern-day Ukraine.  Presciently, Saint Vladimir converted the entire nation to Orthodox Christianity in 988; its spiritual merits aside, Orthodoxy was both a bridge to the Byzantine culture (itself directly derived from Ancient Roman culture) and a prop of the Russian state for centuries to come.  Although the Byzantines  hoped to use the Orthodox faith as a means of control over the growing Kievan state, this never happened.

Kievan Rus was blessed with some strong and visionary leaders, such as Yaroslav The Wise (1019-1054). Yaroslav first codified the laws of Rus as the Russkaya Pravda, created a Patriarchate of Kiev, and his daughters married the kings of France, Hungary, and Norway. Less successfully, he devised a scheme of succession to the thrones of Russia which made Diocletian's Tetrarchy look like child's play. It proved just as effective, too. For every Vladimir Monomakh (1113-1125) who ruled wisely, there were a handful of princelings willing to do anything to gain power... including sacking Kiev itself, as happened in 1169.



In 1223, a group of Mongols called the Golden Horde appeared on the boundaries of Rus, and in 1240 they sacked Kiev, establishing mastery over all Russia (with the exception of Novgorod). Russia was merely a part of the Mongol empire, which was so huge that the Mongols could not occupy it. Instead, the Mongols were happy enough to exact tribute from their Russian vassals. These vassal princes were in a tough position, balancing the rapacious demands of the Mongols with the difficulties of government. They were also compelled to make regular journeys to Karakorum to pay homage to the Mongol Khan. The prince who brought in the greatest tribute was called the Grand Prince.

Except for the Russian Orthodox Church, which was mainly let be by the Mongols, the two hundred years of Mongol control made a deep mark on Russian society. The Mongols are blamed for sundering the Rus into Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarussians; for introducing an authoritarian streak into the happy Slav/Viking mix; and for destroying the city of Kiev, which was on pace to become one of Europe's greatest. On the positive side, the Mongols also influenced the Russian economic, transportation, and military systems. All can agree, however, that they were not terribly missed.



Another consequence of the Mongol occupation was the rise of an obscure outpost imaginatively named Moscow, after the river it overlooked. Like that of Rome, Moscow's origins are cloaked in mystery. First appearing in the Russian chronicles in 1147, Moscow was already equipped with a Kremlin during the reign of Vladimir Monomakh, but its advantageous location at the intersection of several trade routes boded well for its economic growth also. Its first prince, Daniil, was a younger son of the famed Grand Prince Alexander Nevsky, victor over the Swedes (1240) and [Teutonic Knights] (1242). In 1325 the Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church established his seat in Moscow, marking a shift in ecclesiastical influence.

But the most important figure in Moscow's rise to power was a venal opportunist named [Ivan I Kalita], or "Moneybags," who ruled from 1328 to 1340. As the leading Mongol tax collector for all Northern Russia, he acquired the title of Grand Prince, and ensured that it would be passed on to his successors. He also took every opportunity, to weaken neighboring cities economically and bring them into Moscow's sway. His immediate successors followed his policy of economic warfare and submission to the Golden Horde until Dmitri Donskoi (1359-1389) stepped out of line and beat a Mongol army at Kulikovo (1380). The Mongols responded by sacking Moscow the next year, and Dmitri returned to the fold.

In 1462, [Ivan III The Great] became Grand Prince. He was called by the Russians "Gatherer of Territories." In 1469 he married [Zoe Palaeologa], daughter of a pretender to the now-defunct Byzantine throne, who took the name of Sophia and became a valued counselor on cultural matters. Under Sophia's influence, Ivan III welcomed displaced Byzantine scholars and clerics, and began to use (occasionally) the title Tsar and other Byzantine royal trappings. Sophia also encouraged Ivan to pay less attention to the [boyars], or nobles, and fostered the growing belief that Moscow was the [Third Rome]. In 1480, Ivan III ceased paying tribute to the Mongols, marking the end of their sway over Russia. Oddly enough, Ivan III enjoyed much better relationships with his Muslim neighbors to the south and east than he did with his Roman Catholic neighbors to the west.



Ivan IV Grozny had himself crowned Tsar in 1547. His was not a happy childhood; he lost his father at age 3 and his mother at age 7, and he was brought up by influential boyars who did everything possible to get in his way. In his "good years" from 1550 to 1560, he called a national assembly, held a synod called the Stoglav, in which Orthodox clerics answered 100 questions about moral issues, and captured the khanates of Kazan (1552) and Astrakhan (1555) - Russia's first Muslim peoples. The next ten years were marked by a reign of terror called the Oprichnina, in which Ivan demonstrated that he had effectively lost his mind. He also fought a number of bloody but inconclusive wars in order to make Russia a presence on the Baltic Sea. Ivan had better luck expanding his boundaries to the east, as the Cossack [Yermak] conquered the Khanate of Sibir in 1582 and presented it to Ivan. Because Ivan had killed his highly capable son and heir Ivan in 1581, the throne fell on Ivan's death in 1584 to his halfwit son Fyodor.

Fyodor was succeeded after his death in 1598 by the actual power behind the throne, Boris "Tiffani" Godunov. Since this marked the end of the Rurikid dynasty, Godunov had himself proclaimed tsar by a national assembly, but the boyars managed to depose him in 1605, setting off the "Time of Troubles." In 1613, two [False Dmitris] and a Polish invasion later, the Russian people selected a young relative of Ivan IV's first wife, one Mikhail Romanov, as their new Tsar.