To appreciate better the success of the princes of Moscow, it is necessary to give special attention to one aspect of their policy: relations with the Mongols. In their dealings with the Golden Horde, the Muscovite rulers managed to eat the proverbial cake and to have it too. The key to their
remarkable performance lay in good timing. For a long time, while the Mongols retained their strength, the princes of Moscow demonstrated complete obedience to the khans, and indeed eager co-operation with them. In this manner they became established as grand princes after helping the Mongols to devastate the more impatient and heroic Tver and some other Russian lands to their own advantage. In addition, they collected tribute for the Mongols, thus acquiring some financial and, indirectly, judicial authority over other Russian princes. "The gathering of the Russian land" was also greatly facilitated by this connection with the Golden Horde: Liubavsky and other historians have stressed the fact that the khans handed over to the Muscovite princes entire appanages which were unable to pay their tribute, while, for that reason, rulers of other principalities preferred to sell their lands directly to Moscow in order to save something for themselves. But, as the Golden Horde declined and the Muscovite power rose, it was a grand prince of Moscow, Dmitrii Donskoi, who led the Russian forces against the Mongol oppressors on the field of Kulikovo. The victory of Kulikovo and the final lifting of the Mongol yoke by Ivan III represented milestones in the rise of the princedom of Moscow from a northeastern appanage principality to a national Russian state.
Yet another major factor in that rise was the role of the Church. To estimate its significance one should bear in mind the strongly religious character of the age, which was similar to the Middle Ages in the West. Moscow became the seat of the metropolitan and thus the religious capital of Russia in 1326 or 1328, long before it could claim any effective political domination over most of the country. It became, further, the city of St. Alexis and especially St. Sergius, whose monastery, the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery north of Moscow, was a fountainhead of a broad monastic movement and quickly became a most important religious center, rivaled in all Russian history only by the Monastery of the Caves near Kiev. Religious leadership, very valuable in itself, also affected politics. St. Alexis, as we saw, acted as one of the most important statesmen of the princedom of Moscow; and the metropolitans in general, linked to Moscow and at least dimly conscious of broader Russian interests, favored the Muscovite "gathering of Russia." Their greatest service to this cause consisted probably in their frequent intervention in princely quarrels and struggles, through advice, admonition, and occasionally even excommunication; this intervention was usually in favor of Moscow.
Judgments of the nature and import of the rise of Moscow are even more controversial than descriptions and explanations of that process. Most pre-revolutionary Russian historians praised it as a great and necessary achievement of the princes of Moscow and of the Russian people, who had to unite to survive outside aggression and to play their part in history. Soviet his-
torians came to share the same view. On the other hand, some Russian doubters, for example, Presniakov, together with many scholars in other traditions, such as the Polish, the Lithuanian, or the nationalist Ukrainian, have argued on the other side: they have emphasized in particular that the vaunted "gathering of Russia" consisted, above all, in a skillful aggression by the Muscovite princes against both Russians, such as the inhabitants of Novgorod and Pskov, and eventually various non-Russian nationalities, which deprived them of their liberties, subjugating everyone to Muscovite despotism. As is frequently the case in major historical controversies, both schools are substantially correct, stressing as they do different aspects of the same complicated phenomenon. Without necessarily taking sides on this or other related issues, we shall appreciate a little better the complexity and the problems of the period after devoting some attention to the economic, social, and cultural life of appanage Russia.
XII
APPANAGE RUSSIA: ECONOMICS, SOCIETY, INSTITUTIONS
Thus our medieval boyardom in its fundamental characteristics of territorial rule; the dependence of the peasants, with the right of departure; manorial jurisdiction, limited by communal administration; and economic organization, characterized by the insignificance of the lord's own economy: in all these characteristics our boyardom represents an institution of the same nature with the feudal seigniory, just as our medieval rural commune represents, as has been demonstrated above, an institution of the same essence with the commune of the German Mark.
… the "service people" was the name of the class of population obligated to provide service (court, military, civil) and making use, in return, on the basis of a conditional right, of private landholdings. The basis for a separate existence of this class is provided not by its rights, but by its obligations to the state. These obligations are varied, and the members of this class have no corporate unity.
Here, of course, you have in fact the process of a certain feudalization of simpler state arrangements in their interaction and mutual limitation.*
Whereas the controversy continues concerning the relative weight of commerce and agriculture in Kievan Russia, scholars agree that tilling the soil represented the main occupation of the appanage period. Rye, wheat, barley, millet, oats, and a few other crops continued to be the staples of Russian agriculture. The centuries from the fall of Kiev to the unification of the country under Moscow saw a prevalence of local, agrarian economy, an economic parochialism corresponding to political division. Furthermore, with the decline of the south and the Mongol invasion, the Russians lost much of their best land and had to establish or develop agriculture in forested areas and under severe climatic conditions. Mongol exactions further strained the meager Russian economy. In Liubavsky's words: "A huge parasite attached itself to the popular organism of northeastern Russia; the parasite sucked the juices of the organism, chronically drained its life forces, and from time to time produced great perturbations in it."
* Italics in the original. Struve's statement refers to a particular development during the period, but I think that it can also stand fairly as the author's general judgment on the issue of feudalism in Russia.
The role of trade in appanage Russia is more difficult to determine. While it retained great importance in such lands as Galicia, not to mention the city and the principality of Novgorod, its position in the northeast, and notably in the princedom of Moscow, needs further study. True, the Moscow river served as a trade route from the very beginning of Moscow's history, and the town also profited commercially from its excellent location on the waterways of Russia in a more general sense. Soviet historians stress the ancient Volga trade artery, made more usable by firm Mongol control of an enormous territory to the east and the southeast; and, as already indicated, they also link closely the expansion of the Muscovite principality to the growth of a common market. In addition to the Volga, the Don became a major commercial route, with Genoese and Venetian colonies appearing on the Black Sea. Around 1475, however, the Turks established a firm hold on that sea, eliminating the Italians. The Russians continued to export such items as furs and wax and to import a wide variety of products, including textiles, wines, silverware, objects of gold, and other luxuries. Yet, although the inhabitants of northeastern Russia in the appanage period did retain some important commercial connections with the' outside world and establish others, and although internal trade did grow in the area with the rise of Moscow, agricultural economy for local consumption remained dominant. Commercial interests and the middle class in general had remarkably little weight in the history of the Muscovite state.