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Russian Colonial Expansion before Ivan the Dread: A Survey of Basic TrendsAuthor(s): Michael RywkinSource: Russian Review, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Jul., 1973), pp. 286-293Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Editors and Board of Trustees of theRussian ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/128250Accessed: 03/12/2008 16:18

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Russian Colonial Expansion (Before Ivan the Dread: A Survey of Basic Trends

By Michael Rywkin

Russian eastward expansion started long before Grozny's takeover of Kazan (1552). It began around the year 1200 with the successive drives by Novgorod, by the princes of Vladimir-Suzdal, and finally, by Moscow, conducted against the Finnish tribes inhabiting the im- mense northeast of today's European Russia.

This expansion was temporarily arrested during the initial stages of the Tartar invasion of Russia, but resumed early in the fourteenth

century, long before the end of the Tartar yoke. The key drive was not the one conducted in the northeastern direction, which led to the

acquisition of large territories, but the one eastward down the Volga River across the Mordva and Mari lands. The Russian acquisition of the Mordva from the Tartars was crucial to the further balance of power. The city of Nizhni Novgorod was a pivotal town in the battle for the possession of the Volga basin, and played a primary role1 in the struggle between the two rivals.

; In the minds of contemporaries, however, the growth of Moscow's absolutism as she reunified the Russian principalities under her aegis, the struggle against the Horde, and the slow process of re- covery of western lands from the Polish-Lithuanian state seem to overshadow the importance of this expansion. Yet the strength of modern Russia has been based on that eastward expansion which created a solid foundation for everything else the Russian state chose to attempt.

The earliest Russian eastward movement dates back to the times of Kievan Russia. The sparcity and the primitive way of life of the

1 A. E. Presniakov, Obrazovanie velikorusskago gosudarstva, Petrograd, 1918, pp. 262-63.

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indigenous population facilitated the task. The Finnish tribes of Merya, Muroma, Ves, and Yam were "integrated" rather than con- quered. The Slavs settled alongside the Finns, each having more than enough space for their main occupation: the Slavs for agricul- ture; the Finns for hunting and fishing.

It was the culturally more advanced mercantile Novgorod which started the first forceful penetration of the "less civilized" northeast by conquering the Komi-Zyriane in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Permyaks and the Votyaks both succumbed, while the Yugra was forced to pay tribute in furs and metals. The Ostyaks moved away and crossed the Urals in order to avoid Russian rule. Y The powerful princes of Vladimir-Suzdal, themselves installed on formerly Finnish lands, followed suit by pushing towards the stra- tegic junction between the Volga and Oka rivers, a pivotal point in the early Russian expansionist drive. An initial outpost was built there in 1172, the town of Nizhni Novgorod founded in 1221 on the site of a Volga Bulgar village; and finally an expedition under Kon- stantin, son of Prince Yuri Dolgoruki, cleared the adjacent areas in 1227. Mordva tribes were not only brushed aside, but decimated in the area of the drive. The action was repeated again in 1228, then in 1232, with the help of Russian princes of Riazan and Murom. The Mordva fought back, sometimes successfully,2 more often not.

The Tartar invasion of Russia halted Russian expansion. In 1239 the Tartars appeared in Mordva territories, replacing the Russians as the leading force in the area. For the next 150 years Russia was to remain under Tartar domination. Spurred by fear of Tartar horse- men, the Russian population began to drift spontaneously from the open steppe northward, from the Dnieper to lands northeast of Mos- cow, better protected by dense forests. This population movement accelerated the settlement by the Russians of these sparsely popu- lated lands and the process of progressive absorption of small Fin- nish tribes living there at that time. Novgorod, which remained outside the Tartar control, was the first, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, to renew its colonial drive. Furs, wax, and leather, her principal exports to the West, originated mostly in vassal Finnish

2 S. A. Tokarev, Etnografiia narodov SSSR. Istoricheskie osnovy byta i kultury, Mos- cow, 1958, p. 158.

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territories.3 Thus in 1315 large lands at the Vaga River were bought by a rich Novgorod family from local Finns (Chud).4 Other Russian principalities, coming out of the initial shock of Tartar invasion, fol- lowed suit: in 1341, Konstantin Vasilievich, prince of Suzdal, trans- ferred his capital to Nizhni Novgorod and began to spread his do- main at the expense of Mordva tribesmen.5 He instructed his sub- jects to "settle along the Oka, Volga, and Kudma rivers and in Mordva villages, wherever they like." 6 This drive against the Mordva was joined, each on his own, by the princes of Moscow and Novgorod. Starting with the middle of the fourteenth century, the Russian colonization drive slowly but surely moved down the Volga River.7 Between 1359 and 1379 Mari and Mordva lands fell into Muscovite hands. Some lands were taken by force, others simply bought from a baptized Tartar prince, Alexander Ukovich. Russian missionaries followed the military into the Perm area. Stefan Permsky, a leading pioneer of Christanity, was made bishop of Perm in 1383. Nizhni Novgorod princes (independent from Moscow between 1340 and 1390) followed an aggressive policy on their own. Thus between the mid-1360s and mid-1370s, they raided not only Mordva and Bulgar lands, but successfully fought the latter's Tartar overlords, especially when they were out of favor with Sarai for one reason or another. ' Further revival of Russian expansionist ambition was due to two factors: the weakening of the Tartars, increasingly prone to internal quarrels, and the emergence of Moscow as the unifying center of the Russian lands. The Tartars, still powerful through the 1340s, suffered their first defeat at the hands of the Russians in 1378, and then came the debacle of Kulikovo pole in 1380. It was not, however, the end of the Tartar yoke, for in 1378, the Tartars, aided by the Mordva, burned Nizhni Novgorod and stopped Russian penetra-

3 Peter I. Liashchenko. History of the National Economy of Russia to the 1917 Revo- lution, New York, 1949, p. 167, and Bertrand Gile, Histoire economique et sociale de la Russie du moyen age au XX siecle, Paris, 1949, p. 39.

4 M. N. Pokrovsky and V. M. Nikolsky, Russkaia istoriia s drevneishikh vremen, vol. I (3rd ed.), Moscow, 1920, p. 168.

5 G. Peretiatkovich, Povolzhie v XV i XVI viekakh, Moscow, 1877, p. 92. 6 P. Miliukov. Ocherki po istorii russkoi kultury, vol I, pt. 2, The Hague, 1964, p.

146, and Presniakov, op. cit., p. 264. 7 Presniakov, op. cit., p. 272.

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tion of the Mordva and Volga Bulgar territories. In 1382 the Tartars under a new khan, Tokhtamysh, ravaged Moscow, killing 25,000 peo- ple and imposing heavy contributions. They lacked an opportunity, however, to reassert their domination of Russia: in 1392 Tamerlane, the Turkic master of Central Asia, defeated Tartar armies. In the same year the weakened Horde sold Moscow a yarlyk (permission to rule) for the Meshchera area of Mordva (together with yarlyks for Nizhni Novgorod and Murom).8 Meshchera Tartar rulers, descen- dants of Prince Behmet, son of Hussein, who had "sat" there since 1298, lost their rights shortly thereafter (1398).' Moscow's prestige was enhanced through Tamerlane's failure to take Moscow in 1395, when he chose not to engage the Russians. Meanwhile, the Golden Horde failed to recover from its blows and started to disintegrate: Crimea, upper Volga (Kazan), and lower Volga (Astrakhan) began to tear away from the weakened central authority.

:!Seizing their opportunity, the Russian principalities eagerly re- newed their expansionist drives. The Novgorod merchant Tarasov and his men crossed the Kudma River. The town of Kurmysh was founded near the river Sura by Prince Boris of Gorodets. These set- tlements were shortly thereafter destroyed by the Tartars, but re- built again at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Russian out- posts appeared on the right bank of the Volga as early as the 1370s. Russian settlers moved eastward from Novgorod and northward from Rostov: thus Novgorodian and Muscovite colonial drives met and began to merge.10 In 1397-98, Moscow, strengthened by her successes, attempted to wrest the fur producing regions of Zavolo- chie"1 and Dvina from Novgorod, but failed for the time being.

Moscow and the rest of Russia were still vassals of the Horde. Thus Vasily I of Moscow (1389-1425) was duly confirmed in his office by the Khan. A fratricidal struggle for power in Moscow, which took place in the second quarter of the fifteenth century, was still

8 M. G. Safargaliev, "Prisoedinenie Mordvy k russkomu tsentralizovannomu gosud- astvu," Trudy Nauchno-Issledovatelskogo Instituta iazyka, literatury, istorii i ekonomiki pri Sovete Ministrov Mordovskoi ASSR, Saransk, 1964, issue XXVII, pp. 3-4.

9 Encyclopediia Brokhaus i Efron, vol. XIX, St. Petersburg, 1896, p. 230. 10 V. Kliuchevsky, Boiarskaia duma drevnei Rusi, Moscow, 1902, pp. 535 ff. 11 Zavolochie-name given to Finnish areas outside direct Novgorod control and, con-

sequently, defining different geographical regions at various times.

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arbitrated by the Tartars. Meanwhile, the Golden Horde continued to break down. The Crimea separated in 1425 and proclaimed inde- pendence in 1446. A Tartar chieftan, Ulu-Mehmed, managed to install himself as ruler of Kazan, and in 1438 asked for Russian sup- port against the central authority of Sarai. Moscow, fearing Sarai, refused and turned against Ulu-Mehmed. As a result, between 1439 and 1445 she lost Nizhni Novgorod, the key base in the Muscovite eastward drive, and a good part of the Mordva lands, and suffered new raids.

The political interplay between Sarai, Kazan, Moscow, Wilno, and the Crimea was already one among equals. It was necessary to shift alliances according to the opportunities of the moment. The Golden Horde was no longer the paramount power. Thus Vasily II (Temnyi) of Moscow (1415-62), deeply enmeshed in the struggle for his throne against his own uncle (who was backed by Lithuania), found himself supported by Kazan. He was nevertheless captured by his Kazan allies (1445), but shortly thereafter released for a heavy ransom and the cession of eastern Meshchera (an area in- habited by ancient Ugro-Finnish tribes mixed with Turkic stock). Vasily returned from Moslem Kazan with honors, but was later blinded by his Russian Christian opponents; however, he finally triumphed in 1450.

For the meantime, Moscow's eastward expansion was tempo- rarily stalled and quiet reigned on the eastern borders of Russia. A balance of power appeared to exist between Moscow and Kazan, with the latter in possession of the disputed Mordva lands. Moscow used her peace with the Tartars to strengthen her position in the West against Catholic Lithuania and the latter's Russian Orthodox dependencies, and in the north against fiery Novgorod. Moscow, Metropolitan seat of Russian Orthodoxy since 1327 and Grand Duchy since 1328, eajoyed church support during both struggles."1 In 1456, three years after the fall of Constantinople, Vasily intervened in Novgorod, aided by Tartar and Nogai horsemen in Moscow's service.

After Vasily II returned from Kazan captivity, numerous Tartar notables and soldiers chose to serve Moscow as mercenaries.'3 Among

12 Alexander Eck, Le moyen age russe, Paris, 1933, p. 130. 13 Michael Florinsky, Russia. A History and an Interpretation, New York, 1953, p. 62.

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them was Prince Kassim, who received from Vasily some Russian and Mordva lands in 1446. It is unclear whether or not he was a Moscow agent from the very start. But in 1452 Moscow also gave him the "Meshchera township" (meshcherskii gorodok) on the Oka River, thus creating a buffer zone between herself and Kazan.

When Vasily II died and his son Ivan III inherited the throne, Moscow was about to emerge as the dominant power in the area. I The reigns of both Ivan III (1462-1505) and Vasily III (1505- 1533) were marked by the continuous process of reunification of the Russian lands around Moscow. Moscow recovered most of the west- ern regions of Great Russia proper which bordered on Ukrainian and Byelorussian lands owned by the Polish-Lithuanian state.14 The still- remaining separate Russian principalities of Pskov, Tver, Vyatka, and Riazan, some already dependent upon Moscow, were absorbed. Busy in the north, Moscow needed peace in the south and began in the 1490s to make contacts with the Ottoman Empire and pursue a

policy of political and military cooperation with Crimea, a Turkish protectorate since 1475. In order to placate Crimea, Ivan III even conceded the title of "sovereign" to her khan, Mengli Girei, as if reaffirming the traditional vassal position of Moscow in regard to the Horde, as now represented by its strongest splinter component.15 At the same time Moscow avoided antagonizing the dying Golden Horde. Sarai's envoys were still treated with the greatest respect and even with servility.16 Moscow needed peace with both Sarai and Crimea and she managed to achieve it, at least for the time being.

Elsewhere, Moscow was moving fast. When, between 1456 and 1478, Novgorod became her dependency, the Komi princes of Vym and Kod, harassed by numerous raids from 1465 onward, recognized Moscow's sovereignty in 1485. Moscow replaced Novgorod in ruling the Komi-Zyriane; Muscovite military followed in Novgorod's foot- steps in crossing the northern Urals. Finally, an aggressive policy replaced the former accommodating attitude towards the Kazan Tartars: in 1468, 1470, and 1496 various expeditions were under-

141494 Treaty of Moscow, 1503 armistice, 1522 provisional agreement. 15 V. P. Potemkin (ed.), Istoriia diplomatii, Moscow, 1941, vol. I, p. 199. 16Ibid., p. 129.

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taken against them. Ivan's second marriage in 1472 to Sofia Paleolo- gue, niece of the last emperor of Byzantium, greatly enhanced his prestige. Sure of his strength, he began to call himself "Sovereign of all Russia."

In 1480 the Golden Horde made a last effort to check the growth of Moscow, but after facing Ivan III's armies at the Ugra River for the entire summer, Khan Ahmed retreated southward, losing face in this confrontation. The date of this bloodless encounter marks the end of the Tartar yoke. The Golden Horde was officially abol- ished the same year. After Ivan III's intervention in a dynastic struggle in Kazan in 1487, Moscow's predominance became clear. Contemporary correspondence between Moscow, Crimea, and the Nogai Tartars refers to Ivan III as "father and brother," while grant- ing only the lesser titles of "son and brother" to Kazan's Mahmed- Amin.17

The Russian "foreign office" (posolskii prikaz) developed. The names of its acting diaks (department heads) have been known since 1485.18 By 1485 the German agent Nicolas Poppel "discovered" Mus- covite Russia, at that time vaguely known to the West as a remote dependency of Poland. In 1489, upon his return to Moscow, he of- fered his services to Ivan III in order to obtain for him the title of King from the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Ivan refused this honor by pointing out that he was already a sovereign (gosudar) in his own right.1" The Russian governmental structure based on the prikazy system emerged between the 1490s and 1515,0" and reflected the newly acquired status of Muscovite Russia as the genuine politi- cal and diplomatic center of the area, replacing the Golden Horde. Foreign contacts multiplied. In 1492, an embassy from the King of Kakhetia (in remote Georgia) sought Russian friendship. To Mos- cow's pleasure, the remnants of the Golden Horde were destroyed by Crimean forces in 1502, and in the same year taxes were known

17Iaroslav Pelensky, "Muscovite Imperial Claims in the Kazan Khanate," Slavic Review, vol. XXVI, no. 4, December 1967, pp. 561-62.

18 N. Likhachev, Biblioteka i arkhiv Moskovskikh gosudarei v XVI stoletii, St. Peters- burg, 1894, pp. 87 ff. The prikaz itself takes final form in 1549.

19 Istoriia diploinatii, vol. I, p. 197. 20 I. I. Verner, 0 vremeni i prichinakh obrazovaniia moskovskikh prikazov, Moscow,

1907, p. 14.

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to have been collected in Moscow from Tartar merchants by diak Bashenin."2 In 1512, the Kassimov khanate officially became a Mus- covite protectorate. During the years 1516 to 1519, Kazan itself slipped to that status. Starting with the 1520s the word votchina (patrimony) was applied to Kazan in Moscow's correspondence with foreign powers. In 1523, Vasily III marched on Kazan. He failed to take the city, but achieved the more limited goals of building a strategic outpost at Vasilsursk, directly menacing Kazan and re- establishing Russian domination in the Meshchera. The econom- ically important Kazan fair shifted to Vasilsursk (1524), then to the Saint Makarius monastery (and much later to Nizhni Novgorod). A Moscow namestnik was appointed to manage the Meshchera ter- ritory. The earliest prototype of the first Russian "colonial office," the Meshcherskii dvor (or prikaz), was established at a later time. In 1553, after the conquest of Kazan, it was absorbed by the prikaz of the Kazan court (Kazanskii prikaz). Unfortunately, almost nothing is known about the Meshcherski prikaz, its structure or authority.

During the 1520s, the Crimean alliance with Russia began to sour over Moscow's growing influence in Kazan, which upset the balance of power in the area. Crimean complaints went to her protector, Sultan Selim of Turkey. But by that time Crimea, the main Tartar stronghold, was no longer able to compete in the north with the growing power of Moscow. Nor was there any semblance of a re- turn to unity among the Tartars: on the contrary, various splinter groups which remained after the collapse of the Golden Horde in- creasingly sought Moscow's support in their fratricidal quarrels, the way the Russians princes had sought Sarai's backing just a century before.

Muscovite Russia had finally arrived at the very verge of a genu- ine colonial expansion .The Golden Horde was no longer. Crimea's reach was already too short to menace Moscow. Rival Russian prin- cipalities had been absorbed. The weakened and isolated Kazan stood as the only obstacle between Moscow and her forthcoming colonial drive into Asia.

21 A. A. Zimin, "0 sostave dvortsovykh uchrezhdenii Russkogo gosudarstva kontsa XV i XVI w., "Istoricheskie zapiski, vol. 63, 1958, p. 50.

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