In general, although the Mongols interfered little in Russian life, they maintained an effective control over Russia for almost a century and a half, from 1240 to 1380. In 1380 the prince of Moscow Dmitrii succeeded in defeating the Mongols in a major battle on the field of Kulikovo. Although the Mongols managed to stage a comeback, their invincibility had been destroyed and their rule greatly weakened. Still, another century passed before the Mongol yoke was finally overthrown. Only in 1480 Ivan III of Moscow renounced his, and Russian, allegiance to the khan, and the Mongols failed to challenge his action seriously. Later yet, Russia expanded to absorb the successor states to the Golden Horde: the khanate of Kazan in 1552, of Astrakhan in 1556, and, at long last, that of Crimea in 1783.
The Role of the Mongols in Russian History
Thus, the Mongol rule over the Russians lasted, with a greater or a lesser degree of effectiveness, for almost 250 years. There exists, however, no consensus among specialists concerning the role of the Mongols in Russian history. Traditionally Russian historians have paid little attention to the Mongols and their impact on Russia; nevertheless, some of them did stress the destructive and generally negative influence of the Mongol invasion and subjugation. Others virtually dismissed the entire matter as of minor significance in the historical development of their country. While a few earlier scholars held radically different views, a thorough reconsideration of the problem of the Mongols and Russia occurred only in the twentieth century among Russian emigre intellectuals. A new, so-called Eurasian, school proclaimed the fundamental affiliation of Russia with parts of Asia and brought the Mongol period of Russian history to the center of interest. What is more, the Eurasian school interpreted the Mongol impact largely in positive and creative terms. Their views, particularly as expressed in Vernadsky's historical works, have attracted considerable attention.
The destructive and generally negative influence of the Mongols on the course of Russian history has been amply documented. To begin with, the Mongol invasion itself brought wholesale devastation and massacre to Russia. The sources, both Russian and non-Russian, tell, for instance, of a complete extermination of population in such towns as Riazan, Torzhok, and Kozelsk, while in others those who survived the carnage became slaves. A Mongol chronicle states that Batu and his lieutenants destroyed the towns of the Russians and killed or captured all their inhabitants. A papal legate and famous traveler, Archbishop Plano Carpini, who crossed southern Russia in 1245-46 on his way to Mongolia, wrote as follows concerning the Mongol invasion of Russia:
… they went against Russia and enacted a great massacre in the Russian land, they destroyed towns and fortresses and killed people, they besieged Kiev which had been the capital of Russia, and after a long siege they took it and killed the inhabitants of the city; for this reason, when we passed through that land, we found lying in the field countless heads and bones of dead people; for this city had been extremely large and very populous, whereas now it has been reduced to nothing: barely two hundred houses stand there, and those people are held in the harshest slavery.
These and other similar contemporary accounts seem to give a convincing picture of the devastation of the Mongol invasion even if we allow for possible exaggeration.
The Mongol occupation of the southern Russian steppe deprived the
Russians for centuries of much of the best land and contributed to the shift of population, economic activity, and political power to the northeast. It also did much to cut Russia off from Byzantium and in part from the West, and to accentuate the relative isolation of the country typical of the time. It has been suggested that, but for the Mongols, Russia might well have participated in such epochal European developments as the Renaissance and the Reformation. The financial exactions of the Mongols laid a heavy burden on the Russians precisely when their impoverished and dislocated economy was least prepared to bear it. Rebellions against the Mongol taxes led to new repressions and penalties. The entire period, and especially the decades immediately following the Mongol invasion, acquired the character of a grim struggle for survival, with the advanced and elaborate Kievan style of life and ethical and cultural standards in rapid decline. We learn of new cruel punishments established by law, of illiterate princes, of an inability to erect the dome of a stone cathedral, and of other clear signs of cultural regression. Indeed, certain historians have estimated that the Mongol invasion and domination of Russia retarded the development of the country by some 150 or 200 years.
Constructive, positive contributions of the Mongols to Russian history appear, by contrast, very limited. A number of Mongolian words in the fields of administration and finance have entered the Russian language, indicating a degree of influence. For example, the term iarlyk, which means in modern Russian a trademark or a customs stamp, comes from a Mongol word signifying a written order of the khan, especially the khan's grant of privileges; similarly the Russian words denga, meaning coin, and dengi, money, derive from Mongolian. The Mongols did take a census of the Russian population. They have also been credited with affecting the evolution of Russian military forces and tactics, notably as applied to the cavalry. Yet even these restricted Mongol influences have to be qualified. The financial measures of the Mongols together with the census and the Mongol roads added something to the process of centralization in Russia. Yet these taxes had as their aim an exaction of the greatest possible tribute and as such proved to be neither beneficial to the people nor lasting. The invaders replaced the old "smoke" and "plough" taxes with the cruder and simpler head tax, which did not at all take into account one's ability to pay. This innovation disappeared when Russian princes, as intermediaries, took over from the Mongol tax collectors. Thinking simply in terms of pecuniary profit, the Mongols often acted with little wisdom: they sold the position of grand prince to the highest bidder and in the end failed to check in time the rise of Moscow. Rampant corruption further vitiated the financial policy of the Mongols. As to military matters, where the invaders did excel, the fact remains that Russian armies and tactics of the appanage period, based on
foot soldiers, evolved directly from those of Kiev, not from the Mongol cavalry. That cavalry, however, was to influence later Muscovite gentry horse formations.
Similarly, the Mongols deserve only limited credit for bringing to Russia the postal service or the practice of keeping women in seclusion in a separate part of the house. A real postal system came to Russia as late as the seventeenth century, and from the West; the Mongols merely resorted to the Kievan practice of obligating the local population to supply horses, carriages, boats, and other aids to communication for the use of officials, although they did implement this practice widely and bequeath several words in the field of transportation to the Russians. The seclusion of women was practiced only in the upper class in Russia; it probably reflected the general insecurity of the time to which the Mongols contributed their part rather than the simple borrowing of a custom from the Mongols. The Mongols themselves, it might be added, acquired this practice late in their history when they adopted the Moslem faith and some customs of conquered peoples.