Kliuchevsky and other Russian historians seem to overstate the case when they select the evolution of the northeast as the authentic Russian development and the true continuation of Kievan history. It would seem better to consider Novgorod, the southwest, and the northeast, all as fully Kievan and as accentuating in their later independent growth certain aspects of the mixed and complicated Kievan society and system: the democratic veche, the aristocratic boyar rule, or the autocratic prince; the city or the country-
side; trade or agriculture; contacts with the West or proximity to Asia. Nor should other Russian areas - not included in our brief discussion - such as those of Smolensk, Chernigov, or Riazan, be denied their full share of Kievan inheritance. The more catholic point of view would not minimize the significance of the northeast in Russian history. It was in the northeast, together with the Novgorodian north and certain other adjacent lands, that the Great Russian ethnic type developed, as distinct from the Ukrainian and the White Russian. The conditions of its emergence, all characteristic of the northeast, included the breakdown of Kievan unity and the existence of a more primitive style of life in a forest wilderness inhabited also by Finnic-speaking tribes. And it was a northeastern principality, Moscow, which rose to gather the Russian lands and initiate a new epoch in Russian history.
XI
… we can imagine the attitude towards the princedom of Moscow and its prince which developed amidst the northern Russian population… 1) The senior Grand Prince of Moscow came to be regarded as a model ruler-manager, the establisher of peace in the land and of civil order, and the princedom of Moscow as the starting point of a new system of social relations, the first fruit of which was precisely the establishment of a greater degree of internal peace and external security. 2) The senior Grand Prince of Moscow came to be regarded as the leader of the Russian people in its struggle against foreign enemies, and Moscow as the instrument of the first popular successes over infidel Lithuania and the heathen "devourers of raw flesh," the Mongols. 3) Finally, in the Moscow prince northern Russia became accustomed to see the eldest son of the Russian church, the closest friend and collaborator of the chief Russian hierarch; and it came to consider Moscow as a city on which rests a special blessing of the greatest saint of the Russian land, and to which are linked the religious-moral interests of the entire Orthodox Russian people. Such significance was achieved, by the middle of the fifteenth century, by the appanage princeling from the banks of the Moscow River, who, a century and a half earlier, had acted as a minor plunderer, lying around a corner in ambush for his neighbors.
The unification of Great Russia took place through a destruction of all local, independent political forces, in favor of the single authority of the Grand Prince. But these forces, doomed by historical circumstances, were the bearers of "antiquity and tradition," of the customary-legal foundations of Great Russian life. Their fall weakened its firm traditions. To create a new system of life on the ruins of the old became a task of the authority of the Grand Prince which sought not only unity, but also complete freedom in ordering the forces and the resources of the land. The single rule of Moscow led to Muscovite autocracy.
The name Moscow first appears in a chronicle under the year 1147, when Iurii Dolgorukii, a prince of Suzdal mentioned in the preceding chapter, sent an invitation to his ally Prince Sviatoslav of the eastern Ukrainian principality of Novgorod-Seversk: "Come to me, brother, to Moscow." And in Moscow, Iurii feasted Sviatoslav. Under the year 1156, the chronicler notes that Grand Prince Iurii Dolgorukii "laid the foundations of the town of Moscow," meaning - as on other such occasions - that he built the city wall. Moscow as a town is mentioned next under 1177 when Gleb,
Prince of Riazan, "came upon Moscow and burned the entire town and the villages." It would seem, then, that Moscow originated as a princely village or settlement prior to 1147, and that about the middle of the twelfth century it became a walled center, that is, a town. Moscow was located in Suzdal territory, close to the borders of the principalities of Novgorod-Seversk and Riazan.
The Rise of Moscow to the Reign of Ivan III
We know little of the early Muscovite princes, who changed frequently and apparently considered their small and insignificant appanage merely as a stepping stone to a better position, although one might mention at least one Vladimir who was one of the younger sons of Vsevolod III and probably the first prince of Moscow in the early thirteenth century, and another Vladimir who perished when Moscow was destroyed by the Mongols in 1237. It was with Daniel, the youngest son of Alexander Nevskii, who became the ruler of Moscow in the second half of the thirteenth century that Moscow acquired a separate family of princes who stayed in their appanage and devoted themselves to its development. Daniel concentrated his efforts both on building up his small principality and on extending it along the flow of the Moscow river, of which he controlled originally only the middle course. Daniel succeeded in seizing the mouth of the river and its lower course from one of the Riazan princes; he also had the good fortune of inheriting an appanage from a childless ruler.
Daniel's son Iurii, or George, who succeeded him in 1303, attacked another neighbor, the prince of Mozhaisk, and by annexing his territory finally established Muscovite control over the entire flow of the Moscow river. After that he turned to a much more ambitious undertaking: a struggle with Grand Prince Michael of Tver for leadership in Russia. The rivalry between Moscow and Tver was to continue for almost two centuries, determined in large part which principality would unite the Russian people, and also added much drama and violence to the appanage period. In 1317 or 1318 Iurii married a sister of the khan of the Golden Horde, the bride having become Orthodox, and received from the khan the appointment as grand prince. During the resulting campaign against Tver, the Muscovite army suffered a crushing defeat, and, although Iurii escaped, his wife fell prisoner. When she died in captivity, Iurii accused Michael of poisoning her. The Tver prince had to appear at the court of the Golden Horde, where he was judged, condemned, and executed. In consequence, Iurii was reaffirmed in 1319 as grand prince. Yet by 1322 the khan had made Michael's eldest son, Dmitrii, grand prince. Iurii accepted this decision,
but apparently continued his intrigues, traveling in 1324 to the Golden Horde. There, in 1325, he was met and dispatched on the spot by Dmitrii, who was in turn killed by the Mongols. Dmitrii's younger brother, Alexander of Tver, became grand prince. However, he too soon ran into trouble with the Mongols. In 1327 a punitive Mongol expedition, aided by Muscovite troops, devastated Tver, although Alexander escaped to Pskov and eventually to Lithuania. In 1337 Alexander was allowed to return as prince of Tver, but in 1338 he was ordered to appear at the court of the Golden Horde and was there executed.