Following the death of Daniel in 1264 and of his worthy son and successor Leo in 1301, who had had more trouble with the Mongols, Volynia and Galicia began to decline. Their decline lasted for almost a century and was interrupted by several rallies, but they were finally absorbed by neighboring states. Volynia gradually became part of the Lithuanian state which will be discussed in a later chapter. Galicia experienced intermittently Polish and Hungarian rule until the final Polish success in 1387. Galicia's political allegiance to Poland contributed greatly to a spread of Catholicism and Polish culture and social influences in the southwestern Russian principality, at least among its upper classes. Over a period of time, Galicia lost in many respects its character as one of the Kievan Russian lands.
The internal development of Volynia and Galicia reflected the exceptional growth and power of the boyars. Ancient and well-established on fertile soil and in prosperous towns, the landed proprietors of the southwest often arrogated to themselves the right to invite and depose princes, and they played the leading role in countless political struggles and intrigues. In a most extraordinary development, one of the boyars, a certain Vladislav, even occupied briefly the princely seat of Galicia in 1210, the only occasion in ancient Russia when a princely seat was held by anyone other than a member of a princely family. Vladimirsky-Budanov and other specialists have noted such remarkable activities of Galician boyars as their direct
administration of parts of the principality, in disregard of the prince, and their withdrawal in corpore from the princedom in 1226 in their dispute with Prince Mstislav. By contrast with the authority of the boyars, princely authority in Galicia and Volynia represented a later, more superficial, and highly circumscribed phenomenon. Only exceptionally strong rulers, such as Iaroslav Osmomysl, could control the boyars. The veche in Galicia and Volynia, while it did play a role in politics and at least occasionally supported the prince against the boyars, could not consistently curb their power. It should be noted that the rise of the boyars in southwest Russia resembled in many respects the development of the landlord class in adjacent Poland and Hungary.
The Northeast
The northeast, like the southwest, formed an integral part of the Kievan state. Its leading towns, Rostov and Suzdal and some others, belonged with the oldest in Russia. Its princes, deriving from Vladimir Monomakh, participated effectively in twelfth-century Kievan politics. In fact, as we have seen, when Kiev and the Kievan area declined, the political center of the state shifted to the northeast, to the so-called princedom of Vladimir-Suzdal which covered large territories in the central and eastern parts of European Russia. It was a ruler of this principality, Andrew Bogoliubskii, who sacked Kiev in 1169 and, having won the office of the grand prince, transferred its seat to his favorite town of Vladimir in the northeast. His father, the first independent prince of Suzdal and a son of Vladimir Monomakh, the celebrated Iurii Dolgorukii, that is, George of the Long Arm, had already won the grand princedom, but had kept it in Kiev; with Andrew, it shifted definitively to the northeast. Although Andrew Bogoliubskii fell victim to a conspiracy in 1174, his achievements of building up his principality and of emphasizing the authority of the princes of Suzdal in their own territory and in Russia, remained. His work was resumed in 1176 by Andrew's brother Vsevolod, known as Vsevolod III, because he was the third Russian grand prince with that name, or Vsevolod of the Large Nest because of his big family. Vsevolod ruled until his death in 1212 and continued to build towns, fortresses, and churches, to suppress opposition, and to administer the land effectively. At the same time, as grand prince, he made his authority felt all over Russia.
It will be remembered that the Mongol invasion dealt a staggering blow to the Russian northeast. The grand prince at the time, Iurii, a son of Vsevolod III, fell in battle, the Russian armies were smashed, and virtually the entire land was laid waste. Yet, after the Golden Horde established its rule in Russia, the northeastern principalities had some advantages. In contrast to the steppe of the south, they remained outside the zone directly
occupied by the Mongols and on the whole could slowly rebuild and develop. A certain distance from the invaders, it might be added, gave them an advantage not only over the old Kievan south, but also over the southeastern principality of Riazan, which evolved along lines parallel to the evolution of the northeast, but experienced greater Mongol pressure. Moreover, the seat of the grand prince stayed in the northeast with the descendants of Vladimir Monomakh. To be more exact, after the death in 1263 of Alexander Nevskii, who, as mentioned earlier, had managed to stabilize relations with the Mongols, the office of the grand prince went successively to his brothers Iaroslav of Tver and Basil of Kostroma and to his sons Dmitrii and Andrew. Following the death of Andrew in 1304, Michael of Tver, Iaroslav's son and Alexander Nevskii's nephew, ruled as grand prince until he was killed by the Mongols at the court of the Golden Horde in 1319. Michael was succeeded by his rival, a grandson of Alexander Nevskii, Iurii, or George, who became the first prince of Moscow to assume the office of grand prince.
But, while the position of the grand prince, with its location in the northeast and the complicated Kievan practice of princely succession, continued as a symbol of Russian unity, in other respects division prevailed. Appanages multiplied as princes divided their holdings among their sons. On the death of Vsevolod III, the Vladimir-Suzdal princedom had already
split into five principalities which proceeded to divide further. Ultimately some princes inherited tiny territories, while still others could not be provided for and had to find service with more fortunate members of the family. In the continuous shifting of political boundaries, four leading principalities emerged in the northeast in the first half of the fourteenth century: the princedoms of Vladimir, Rostov, Tver, and Moscow. A proliferation of appanages, characteristic of the northeast, occurred also in the western lands and in the southeastern principality of Riazan, in fact, everywhere in Russia, except in Novgorod which knew how to control its princes.
Whereas the evolution of Novgorod emphasized the role of the veche, and the evolution of Galicia and Volynia that of the boyars, the prince prevailed in the northeast. Although, as already mentioned, Rostov, Suzdal, and some other towns and areas of the northeast formed integral and important parts of Kievan Russia, they generally lay, in contrast to the southwest, in a wilderness of forests with no definite boundaries and hence with great possibilities of expansion to the north and the east. That expansion took place in the late Kievan and especially the appanage periods. This celebrated "colonization" of new lands was considered by S. Soloviev, Kliuchevsky, and some other specialists to have been decisive for subsequent Russian history. The princes played a major role in the expansion by providing economic support, protection, and social organization for the colonists. In the new pioneer society there existed little in the nature of vested interests or established institutions to challenge princely authority. It may be noted that Andrew Bogoliubskii had already transferred his capital from ancient Suzdal to the new town of Vladimir and that his chief political opponents were the boyars from the older sections of his realm. The Mongol invasion and other wars and disasters of the time also contributed to the growth of princely authority, for they shattered the established economic and social order and left it to the prince to rebuild and reorganize devastated territory. The increasing particularism and dependence on local economy, together with the proliferation of appanages, meant that the prince often acted simply as the proprietor of his principality, entering into every detail of its life and worrying little about the distinction between public and private law. With the passage of years, the role of the prince in the northeast came to bear little resemblance to that of the princes in Novgorod or in Galicia.