Turning to the more far-reaching claims made, especially by scholars of the Eurasian school, on behalf of the Mongols and their impact on Russia, one has to proceed with caution. Although numerous and varied, Eurasian arguments usually center on the political role of the Mongols. Typically they present the Muscovite tsar and the Muscovite state as successors to the Mongol khan and the Golden Horde, and emphasize the influence of the Mongols in transforming weak and divided appanage Russia into a powerful, disciplined, and monolithic autocracy. Institutions, legal norms, and the psychology of Muscovite Russia have all been described as a legacy of Jenghiz Khan.
Yet these claims can hardly stand analysis. As already mentioned, the Mongols kept apart from the Russians, limiting their interest in their unwilling subjects to a few items, notably the exaction of tribute. Religion posed a formidable barrier between the two peoples, both at first when the Mongols were still pagan and later when the Golden Horde became Moslem. The Mongols, to repeat a point, were perfectly willing to leave the Russians to their own ways; indeed, they patronized the Orthodox Church.
Perhaps a still greater significance attaches to the fact that the Mongol and the Russian societies bore little resemblance to each other. The Mongols remained nomads in the clan stage of development. Their institutions and laws could in no wise be adopted by a much more complex agricultural society. A comparison of Mongol law, the code of Jenghiz Khan, to the Pskov Sudebnik, an example of Russian law of the appanage age, makes the difference abundantly clear. Even the increasing harshness of Russian criminal law of the period should probably be attributed to the conditions
of the time rather than to borrowing from the Mongols. Mongol influence on Russia could not parallel the impact of the Arabs on the West, because, to quote Pushkin, the Mongols were "Arabs without Aristotle and algebra" - or other cultural assets.
The Eurasian argument also tends to misrepresent the nature of the Mongol states. Far from having been particularly well organized, efficient or lasting, they turned out to be relatively unstable and short-lived. Thus, in 1260 Kublai Khan built Peking and in 1280 he completed the conquest of southern China, but in 1368 the Mongol dynasty was driven out of China; the Mongol dynasty in Persia lasted only from 1256 to 1344; and the Mongol Central Asiatic state with its capital in Bukhara existed from 1242 until its destruction by Tamerlane in 1370. In the Russian case the dates are rather similar, but the Mongols never established their own dynasty in the country, acting instead merely as overlords of the Russian princes. While the Mongol states lasted, they continued on the whole to be rent by dissensions and wars and to suffer from arbitrariness, corruption, and misrule in general. Not only did the Mongols fail to contribute a superior statecraft, but they had to borrow virtually everything from alphabets to advisers from the conquered peoples to enable their states to exist. As one of these advisers remarked, an empire could be won on horseback, but not ruled from the saddle. True, cruelty, lawlessness, and at times anarchy, in that period characterized also the life of many peoples other than the Mongols, the Russians included. But at least most of these peoples managed eventually to surmount their difficulties and organize effective and lasting states. Not so the Mongols, who, after their sudden and stunning performance on the world scene, receded to the steppe, clan life, and the internecine warfare of Mongolia.
When the Muscovite state emerged, its leaders looked to Byzantium for their high model, and to Kievan Russia for their historical and still meaningful heritage. As to the Mongols, a single attitude toward them pervades all Russian literature: they were a scourge of God sent upon the Russians for their sins. Historians too, whether they studied the growth of serfdom, the rise of the gentry, or the nature of princely power in Muscovite Russia, established significant connections with the Russian past and Russian conditions, not with Mongolia. Even for purposes of analogy, European countries stood much closer to Russia than Mongol states. In fact, from the Atlantic to the Urals absolute monarchies were in the process of replacing feudal division. Therefore, Vernadsky's affirming the importance of the Mongol impact by contrasting Muscovite with Kievan Russia appears to miss the point. There existed many other reasons for changes in Russia; and, needless to say, other countries changed during those centuries without contact with the Mongols.
It is tempting, thus, to return to the older view and to consider the Mongols as of little significance in Russian history. On the other hand, their destructive impact deserves attention. And they, no doubt, contributed something to the general harshness of the age and to the burdensome and exacting nature of the centralizing Muscovite state which emerged out of this painful background. Mongol pressure on Russia and its resources continued after the end of the yoke itself, for one of the authentic legacies of Jenghiz Khan proved to be the successor states to the Golden Horde which kept southeastern Russia under a virtual state of siege and repeatedly taxed the efforts of the entire country.
I X
The Italian municipalities had, in earlier days, given signal proof of that force which transforms the city into the state.
The men of Novgorod showed Knyaz * Vsevolod the road. "We do not want thee, go whither thou wilt." He went to his father, into Russia.
"the chronicle of novgorod"
(r. michell's and n. forbes's translation)
Novgorod or, to use its formal name, Lord Novgorod the Great stands out as one of the most impressive and important states of appanage Russia. When Kievan might and authority declined and economic and political weight shifted, Novgorod rose as the capital of northern Russia as well as the greatest trading center and, indeed, the leading city of the entire country. Located in a lake area, in the northwestern corner of European Russia, and serving throughout the appanage period as a great Russian bulwark against the West, it came to rule enormous lands, stretching east to the Urals and north to the coast line. Yet, for the historian, the unusual political system of the principality of Novgorod and its general style of life and culture possess even greater interest than its size, wealth, and power.
The Historical Evolution of Novgorod
Novgorod was founded not later than the eighth century of our era - recent excavations and research emphasize its antiquity and its connection with the Baltic Slavs - and, according to the Primary Chronicle, it was to Novgorod that Riurik came in 862 at the dawn of Russian history. During the hegemony of Kiev, Novgorod retained a position of high importance. In particular, it served as the northern base of the celebrated trade route "from the Varangians to the Greeks," and also as a center of trade between the East and the West by means of the Volga river. The city seems to have remained outside the regular Kievan princely system of succession from brother to brother. Instead, it was often ruled by sons of the grand princes of Kiev who, not infrequently, themselves later ascended the Kievan throne; although some persons not closely related to the grand
* Knyaz means "prince."
prince also governed in Novgorod on occasion. St. Vladimir, Iaroslav the Wise, and Vladimir Monomakh's son Mstislav all were at some time princes of Novgorod. Iaroslav the Wise in particular came to be closely linked to Novgorod where he ruled for a number of years before his accession to the Kievan throne; even the Russian Justice has been considered by many scholars as belonging to the Novgorodian period of his activities. And Novgorod repeatedly offered valuable support to the larger ambitions and claims of its princes, for example, to the same Iaroslav the Wise in his bitter struggle with Sviatopolk for the Kievan seat.