The greatest achievement of the monastic revival, and perhaps the only one to arouse enthusiasm in modern times, was the impulse it gave to architecture and icon painting. The monastery churches were at first rather modest, with a square plan and a roof supported by four interior columns. The design was ubiquitous, and it combined necessary simplicity with economy of resources. It also easily provided for the high icon screen, which came into practice at this time in Russia’s monastery churches. The high icon screen soon became universal, running up from the floor of the church nearly to the ceiling and cutting off the altar from the congregation. In the middle were doors, or “royal gates” (tsarskie vrata), through which the priest came after the consecration of the bread and wine for the Eucharist. The order of the icons was not random. On the lowest tier, at or just below eye level, were the “local” icons, to the right of the doors stood the image of the saint or feast to which the church was dedicated. Thus, a church of Saint Nicholas would have an image of that saint, and a church of the Resurrection would have a depiction of the resurrection of Christ. The next – above eye level, and thus most visible to a standing congregation – was the “deesis tier,” the centerpiece of the whole screen. In the middle over the doors, the usual image was Christ in Majesty, which depicts Christ seated on a throne surrounded by symbols of glory. By his sides were John the Baptist and Mary; the three together formed an image of the Incarnation, as well as of the ensuing intercession of Christ for sinful humanity. Mary and John slightly bow before Christ as a gesture of appeal to his mercy. On either side of this central composition were the four apostles. Above these large icons was the “festival tier,” which depicted the main festivals of the Christian year, starting with the Annunciation in March (not with Christmas, as might be expected). Above these, again, in larger format were the Old Testament prophets and patriarchs, sometimes forming two tiers. At the center was usually another icon of the Mother of God, flanked by David and Solomon, and the prophets. The basic idea of these images was the presence of Christ in the world and his incarnation to save mankind. The icon screen, like the church around it, was the meeting point of the world of the spirit and the visible world. This was not a new idea in Orthodoxy, but the monastic movement had found a way to express it with even more depth and clarity.
Thus icons became both more numerous and, if possible, more important. Theophanes the Greek came to Moscow from Novgorod in the 1390s and worked with local painters. The most important of these was the monk Andrei Rublev (circa 1370–1430), whose work hung on the icon screens of many monasteries around Moscow and eventually even in the Kremlin’s Annunciation Cathedral. Rublev’s icons display less of the hieratic stiffness of the older schools and portray a certain warmth in the face of Christ and in the faces of saints that seems to accord well with the inwardness of the newer monastic piety. Like other forms of that piety, Rublev’s icons provided an example for his pupils and imitators, and the new style spread far beyond the monasteries. The work of Rublev and his contemporaries was a new departure that laid the basis of the Russian icon of the succeeding centuries.
During the fourteenth century Moscow had established hegemony over the northeast – but only hegemony. At the death of Vasilii I (1389–1425), Tver remained a thorn in its side. Novgorod pursued its own policies and a number of the principalities of the northeast remained effectively independent. Lithuania continued to play an important role and often a hostile one, in spite of Vasilii’s marriage to a Lithuanian princess. Nevertheless, Vasilii held on to power and even expanded the territory directly subject to Moscow. The mechanism of expansion was simple: when Moscow annexed a territory the local elite, the local boyars and landholders were co-opted into Moscow’s army and administration, and their landholdings were confirmed. If resistance was unusually strong, land was confiscated or the local elite moved elsewhere and were given new land, but such extreme measures were unusual. Moscow could usually count on the loyalty of the new recruits, who exchanged local autonomy for a share in the rewards of serving a growing and successful power.
Moscow’s success and the loyalty of its boyar elite were tested to the limits in the stormy and bloody events of the reign of Vasilii II (1425–1462). Vasilii II was only ten years old at the time of his father’s death and his right to rule was immediately challenged by his uncle Iurii in northern Galich. Iurii’s challenge set off a civil war that quickly brought him victory and rule in Moscow. The victorious Iurii ordered the young Vasilii exiled to Kostroma on the Volga river. Then the Moscow boyars showed their hand. Many moved to Kostroma with their retinues, while others just abandoned Iurii. Isolated in the Kremlin, Iurii fled back north and died in 1434. His eldest son Vasilii Iur’evich “the Squint-eyed” took up the cause, proclaiming himself the rightful heir to the throne. After much marching and counter marching, Grand Prince Vasilii defeated his cousin Vasilii Iur’evich in 1436 and had him blinded as well. This act of cruelty was not the end, for Iurii’s second son, Dmitrii Shemiaka, replaced his brother as leader of the rebels. An unexpected defeat of Grand Prince Vasilii at the hands of a Tatar raiding party in 1445 gave Shemiaka a chance, and he took Moscow and blinded Vasiliii in revenge for his brother. Again the Moscow boyars, initially friendly, switched their allegiance back to Vasilii and Shemiaka fled north. He made a last stand in 1450, lost again, and then fled to Novgorod. There he died in 1453, according to the chronicle story, from a poisoned chicken fed to him by an agent of the Grand Prince.
These dark and confused struggles could take place in comparative isolation because great changes were taking place in the Horde. Fatally weakened by Tamerlane’s campaigns, the Horde began to disintegrate. In 1430 Crimea broke off and in 1436 Kazan’ formed an independent khanate on the middle Volga. Like the earlier Volga Bulgaria, it was an agricultural society with a nomadic fringe on the south and a Muslim culture with religious ties to Central Asia. Of the Golden Horde remained only the “Great Horde,” a small group of nomadic tribes that raided Russian and Lithuanian territory, but was no longer capable of ruling Moscow. Vasilii II even established his own dependent khanate at Kasimov on the Oka river southeast of Moscow, whose Tatar warriors served the Moscow dynasty for the next two hundred years.
The rule of the Mongols, or more properly the Golden Horde, over Russia had lasted a little over two centuries. Initially the conquest had been extremely destructive, but its later economic effects were largely confined to the payment of tribute. The inclusion of Russia in the Horde’s domain may have even strengthened Russia’s trade with the east, judging from archeological evidence, the coins and pottery of the Horde and its eastern and southern neighbors found in Russian towns. The Mongol episode also provided material for endless speculation in modern times on the imagined effect of the “Mongols” on Russia. For racial theorists in Germany and elsewhere it made Russia “Asiatic.” In fact, the Horde had little traceable effect on Russian society. Religion provided a cultural barrier on both sides, and the two societies were incompatible: Russia a rather simple sedentary society and the Horde a state with relatively complex institutions specific to nomadic society. In China, Central Asia, and Persia, the Mongols moved in among the sedentary peoples and were assimilated into them, but not in Russia. Russia’s geography prevented that outcome. Some modern historians have made much of the “oriental” character of the Russian state, again an alleged legacy of the Mongols. The problem with such theories is that they lack empirical foundation. The words and institutions that may have entered Russian from Mongolian via Turkic (such as tamga, for a sort of sales tax and yam, for the messenger system that relied on villages with special status to provide the riders and their horses) were marginal institutions. These were only extra bits in a state formed by the prince’s household ruling an agricultural society. Finally, the notion of Mongol influence at the basis relies on the notion of innate Asiatic slavishness and despotism, and it is neither an accurate description of the Mongol polity nor, as we shall see, of the Russian state that emerged after 1480.