Russian principalities

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Wikipedia

The Russian principalities (Russian: русские княжества), also known as the Rus' principalities, were polities that became independent following the disintegration of Kievan Rus' in the 12th century as a result of feudal fragmentation.[1] By the late 15th and early 16th century, the remaining principalities had been united with the Grand Principality of Moscow, leading to the creation of a centralized state.[2][3] The period between the 12th and 15th centuries is also known as Appanage Russia.[a][5][6][4][7]

History

Background

Following the death of Yaroslav the Wise in 1054, Kievan Rus' experienced a period of civil strife between his sons Iziaslav, Sviatoslav and Vsevolod.[4] The following century, this was followed by a period of political fragmentation and decentralization.[4] The proliferation of many smaller principalities weakened political unity, and by the mid-12th century, the capital Kiev was in decline.[4] The lack of political unity in part facilitated the Mongol conquest.[8] The traditional view has been that Kiev was in economic decline from the mid-12th century; however, some recent historians have instead adopted the view that there was economic expansion in the late Kievan period as the creation of new appanages represented the division of labor and delegation of authority among the Rurikids.[5]

13th–15th centuries

Following the Christianization of Kievan Rus' in 988, spiritual leadership belonged to the Byzantine Empire.[9] However, from the mid-13th century, the Russian principalities were dominated by the Golden Horde following their conquest by Batu Khan.[10] Previously, princes and grand princes governed themselves and only had to acknowledge the spiritual ascendancy of the Byzantine emperor, but during Mongol rule, they had to be confirmed by the Mongol khan in order to have any power, and the Russians later began referring to the khan as tsar – a title that had previously been reserved for the universal Christian ruler.[11] The only Russian district that was not governed by a prince was Novgorod, although it still depended on an extraneous prince and his army to defend its borders.[12]

Güyük Khan appointed his own governors to oversee the Russian principalities.[13] The tribute was known as the dan by the Russians; its main purpose was not only to tax subjects but also to conscript young men into the Mongol armies.[13] Although the Russian princes did not unanimously support Mongol supervision at first, Mengu-Timur was able to strengthen his ties with the Russian principalities by making the Russian Church cooperate with the Mongol administrators.[14] In 1267, he made Russian clergy exempt from taxation and military service, which was in line with the Mongol policy of religious tolerance.[14][15] From the 1260s, local nobles collected taxes on the khan's behalf, and in an attempt to gain the support of the nobility, the Mongols allowed them to keep their land.[16] Until 1380, the khans of the Golden Horde exercised political control over the Russian principalities, and from 1380 to 1480, they continued to demand tribute from the Russian princes, although they did not always receive this.[17] The period until 1480 is known as the "Tatar yoke".[15] Extrapolating from 1549 data, George Vernadsky estimated the annual tribute to be approximately 145,000 rubles, plus an additional 25,000 rubles from Novgorod under a special tax, equivalent to 15.6 tons of silver.[18]

The leading Russian figure was the grand prince of Vladimir, which led to a struggle among the princes for the title.[19] The grand prince had the right to collect the taxes from all the princes on behalf of the khan of the Golden Horde.[19][15] By the early 14th century, two dynastic houses, those of Tver and Moscow, competed for the title.[19] Due to conflict among the princes, political life in the Russian principalities was highly unstable, with at least 10 Russian princes being executed during the reign of Özbeg Khan.[20] He later gave his support to Ivan I of Moscow, which allowed the house of Moscow to eventually dominate the other principalities, and later challenge the Golden Horde itself.[21][22] The seat of the Russian metropolitan was also moved to Moscow in 1325, establishing it as the spiritual center of Russian Orthodoxy.[23][24] Jani Beg (r. 1342–1357) continued to support the house of Moscow and relations between the Russian principalities became stable.[25] He was also able to maintain the balance of power between Moscow, Tver and Nizhny Novgorod.[26]

By 1371, Dmitry Donskoy was recognized as the grand prince of Moscow and Vladimir by both the Tatars and his cousins, and thus, the grand principality became his patrimony (otchina).[27] In his 1389 will, he was able to bequeath his "patrimony, the grand principality" to his eldest son.[28] Despite this, in the late 14th century, the grand prince of Moscow had little effective control over the other major political centers: Novgorod, Tver, Nizhny Novgorod-Suzdal and Ryazan.[29] Although the other Russian principalities rarely challenged Moscow's hegemony directly, they grew increasingly independent in their relations with the Golden Horde and Lithuania, with some princes styling themselves as grand princes.[29] However, this has been a point of contention among historians, with Anton Gorsky [ru] arguing that Nizhny Novgorod and Tver were only able to claim the status of grand principality in the 1360s.[30]

Vasily I of Moscow was able to take advantage of the political strife within the Golden Horde.[31] In 1392, he visited the court of Tokhtamysh, whose forces had recently been defeated by Timur, and was given permission to take the throne of Nizhny Novgorod-Suzdal.[31] However, the principality was not fully incorporated until the mid-15th century.[18] After Tokhtamysh's forces were destroyed in 1395, Vasily stopped paying tribute.[32] However, after Edigu launched a devastating invasion in 1408 and Tatar raids continued in the following years, Vasily was forced to resume paying tribute and visit the khan to renew his patent to the throne.[32] Moscow's absorption of Ryazan, the last remaining independent Russian principality, was little more than a formality.[33]

Notes

  1. ↑ The name is used in reference to the custom of princes dividing their territories into appanages.[4]

References

  1. ↑ Feldbrugge 2017, p. 307.
  2. ↑ Feldbrugge 2017, pp. 329, 815, 825.
  3. ↑ Wilbur 2004, p. 69, "This tumultuous situation ended only as Moscow fashioned an autocracy capable of 'gathering the Russian lands'".
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Ziegler 2009, p. 15.
  5. 1 2 Wilbur 2004, p. 69.
  6. ↑ Riasanovsky 2005, pp. 34–35.
  7. ↑ Wilbur 2004, p. 69, "Most historians since the nineteenth century—Russian, Soviet, and Western—have used the phrase 'appanage era' to designate the period between the collapse of Kievan Russia and the emergence of a centralized Russian state [...] The interpretation also set a new initial date for the era—the mid 1100s—which has become increasingly accepted by scholars in the field".
  8. ↑ Ziegler 2009, pp. 16–17.
  9. ↑ Vásáry 2014, p. 263, "While Kievan Rus' and later the Russian principalities were governed de facto by the grand prince and the princes, spiritual leadership was in the hands of the Byzantine emperor".
  10. ↑ Favereau & Pochekaev 2023, p. 249.
  11. ↑ Vásáry 2014, pp. 263–264.
  12. ↑ Fennell 2014, p. 17.
  13. 1 2 Favereau & Pochekaev 2023, p. 250.
  14. 1 2 Favereau & Pochekaev 2023, p. 262.
  15. 1 2 3 Gonneau 2022, p. 373.
  16. ↑ Favereau 2021, p. 180.
  17. ↑ Fennell 2014, p. 84.
  18. 1 2 Gonneau 2022, p. 374.
  19. 1 2 3 Favereau & Pochekaev 2023, p. 282.
  20. ↑ Favereau & Pochekaev 2023, p. 283.
  21. ↑ Favereau & Pochekaev 2023, pp. 283–284.
  22. ↑ Fennell 2014, p. 167, "By the end of the 1320s Moscow had won the struggle for supremacy; from 1331 onwards no more princely rivalries were encouraged by the Tatars and Moscow was allowed to flourish and to provide a barrier to Lithuanian expansion. Eventually, at the end of the 1370s, this defensive and somewhat negative attitude towards the Tatars changed to one of offensive aggression. Moscow had become a power capable of dealing with the Horde on equal — or nearly equal — terms".
  23. ↑ Crummey 2014, p. 40.
  24. ↑ Ziegler 2009, p. 22.
  25. ↑ Favereau & Pochekaev 2023, p. 284.
  26. ↑ Favereau & Pochekaev 2023, p. 286.
  27. ↑ Fennell 2014, pp. 129, 164.
  28. ↑ Fennell 2014, p. 164.
  29. 1 2 Crummey 2014, p. 56.
  30. ↑ Favereau & Pochekaev 2023, p. 285.
  31. 1 2 Crummey 2014, p. 63.
  32. 1 2 Crummey 2014, p. 65.
  33. ↑ Crummey 2014, p. 93.

Sources

  • Crummey, Robert O. (6 June 2014) [1987]. The Formation of Muscovy 1300–1613. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-87200-9.
  • Favereau, Marie (20 April 2021). The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-24421-4.
  • Favereau, Marie; Pochekaev, Roman Yu. (2023). "The Golden Horde, c. 1260–1502". The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire. Cambridge University Press. pp. 243–318. ISBN 978-1-107-11648-1.
  • Feldbrugge, Ferdinand J. M. (2 October 2017). A History of Russian Law: From Ancient Times to the Council Code (Ulozhenie) of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich of 1649. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-35214-8.
  • Fennell, John (13 October 2014) [1983]. The Crisis of Medieval Russia 1200–1304. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-87314-3.
  • Gonneau, Pierre (30 November 2022). "Russia from the Mongol invasion to the death of Ivan the Terrible (1242–1584)". In Menjot, Denis; Caesar, Mathieu; Garnier, Florent; Pijuan, Pere Verdés (eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Public Taxation in Medieval Europe. Taylor & Francis. pp. 372–388. doi:10.4324/9781003023838-19. ISBN 978-1-000-73636-6.
  • Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. (29 September 2005). Russian Identities: A Historical Survey. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-534814-9.
  • Vásáry, István (31 December 2014). "The Tatar Factor in the Formation of Muscovy's Political Culture". Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change. University of Hawai'i Press. pp. 252–270. doi:10.21313/hawaii/9780824839789.003.0011. ISBN 978-0-8248-3978-9.
  • Wilbur, Elvira M. (2004). "Appanage era". In Millar, James R. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Russian History. Macmillan Reference USA. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-02-865907-7.
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