Moscow's policy of demanding an immediate submission to the tsar was typical for both the southern and eastern frontiers. In 1589, for example, following his orders from Moscow, the commander of the recently rebuilt Fort Tersk in the North Caucasus instructed the Kumyk shamkhal to dispatch the envoys and to petition to become the tsar's subject or otherwise face military retribu- tion.[127] In the same year, in response to the Muscovite demands for pledging loyalty and submitting hostages, the Kabardinian chief, Alkas, replied: 'I have reached an old age, and hitherto people believed my word in everything, and I have never given hostages or taken an oath to anyone.'[128] A few years later, on the Siberian frontier, the Muscovites received a more dramatic reply from the Kalmyk chief Kho-Urluk. Upon the first encounter with Kho-Urlukin 1606, the envoys from the Siberian town of Tara presented him with an ultimatum to swear allegiance to the Muscovite suzerain and surrender hostages, or else to vacate the land. Insulted by such demands, Kho-Urluk ordered the Muscovite envoys put to death.[129]
In the end, however, the Kabardinian, Kalmyk and numerous other chiefs chose to comply with the Muscovite demands, which were accompanied by the irresistible offers of presents, annuities and military aid. In return for their oath of allegiance and hostages, the local chiefs were rewarded with cash, woollens, furs and various luxury items, 'so that other peoples would follow the example and come into submission. . .' Thus, Alkas consulted with his nobles (uzden) and agreed to Muscovite conditions, provided that Moscow paid him an annuity, let his people hunt and fish along the rivers freely, ferried them across the rivers and helped them against adversaries.[130]
Yet Moscow's objective of turning the natives into loyal, tribute-paying subjects remained unrealised for a long time. The natives continued to construe their relationship with Moscow in their own terms, which were pointedly different from Moscow's. The shert', which Moscow conceived of as an oath of allegiance, was seen by the local chiefs as a peace treaty with mutual obligations. Providing hostages was one of the concessions offered by the local chiefs to Moscow's adamant demands for such human surety. Moscow's assurances to treat the hostages as honourable guests and reward them upon return helped the chiefs to convince their kin that this was the only way to secure a peace treaty and receive benefits from Moscow. In the North Caucasus, for example, such 'hostages' appeared to be more military liaisons than hostages. For several years they resided in Fort Tersk with their retinues and joined Muscovite military campaigns in return for generous rewards and payments.[131]
Even iasak, which is usually considered to be a tribute or tax paid by the natives to Moscow and an unquestionable sign of their submission, was in reality a fur trade, an unequal exchange between the equal parties. One contemporary observer commented that the native chiefs were collecting furs from their own people and bringing them to the Muscovite officials voluntarily. And many a Muscovite official bemoaned the fact that without the expected payments in kind, or presents in Muscovite vocabulary, the natives refused to offer their furs.[132]
Finally, annual payments and intermittent presents which in Moscow's eyes were annuities and favours granted by the tsar to the local chiefs in exchange for their allegiance, had been regarded by the natives as a rightful form of tribute or payments due to them as a condition of a peace treaty. When such payments did not arrive on time or were brought in insufficient amounts, the
Nogai, Kabardinian, Kalmyk and other chiefs felt free to launch raids against Muscovy to demand the restoration of the status quo.
In the seventeenth century, Moscow and its restless neighbours along the frontiers would continue to struggle in defining and redefining the terms of their relationship. Time, however, was on Moscow's side. We shall revisit these issues at greater length in Chapter 22. Suffice it to recapitulate here that from the time of the initial encounter Moscow and the natives perceived each other in different terms and construed different realities which continued to coexist along the Muscovite frontiers.
Methods of conquest
Contested vocabularies and terms of engagement notwithstanding, one undeniable reality remained: Moscow's expansion in the sixteenth century was made possible by its overwhelming military, economic and political superiority vis-a-vis the disparate peoples along Muscovy's northern, eastern and southern frontiers. Everywhere the conquests were facilitated by an almost perpetual state of warfare between and among the tribal societies and the rival chiefs. Some chiefs sought Moscow's assistance against the contenders for power and before long found themselves completely dependent on Moscow. Other chiefs were won over by various forms of early modern economic aid: payments, presents, trade privileges, exemptions from customs, and bribes. Often the local chiefs requested that the Muscovites build a nearby fort for their protection. Thus, the construction of Fort Sviiazhsk near Kazan' could not have taken place without the co-operation of some of the Chuvash and Mari chiefs, Fort Tersk in the North Caucasus without the Kabardinian chief, Temriuk Idarov and his descendants, Forts Tomsk and Eniseisk in central Siberia without the Mansi chief, Alachev, and Fort Mangazeia in northern Siberia without the chief of the Nenets tribe of the Mongkansi.[133]
While some native chiefs and princes chose to serve Moscow's interests so they could aggrandise their power among their own people, numerous others preferred to leave their kin and settle in the Muscovite lands. Indeed, it was Moscow's long-standing policy to employ and actively recruit the services of the native elites. At first, content to join the Moscow grand princes on occasional military campaigns in return for rewards, various indigenous princes were soon ready to settle in Muscovy and perform military service in exchange for a stable income: grants of land, supplies of grain, cash and generous gifts. The increasing number of such renegade native princes in Moscow's service was directly proportional to the increasing turmoil in their own societies.
One of the best-known, if somewhat exceptional, cases was the arrival in Moscow of Kasim, the son of the khan of the Golden Horde, Ulu-Muhammed. In 1452, Grand Prince Vasilii II granted Kasim a frontier town in the Meshchera lands (Meshcherskii gorodok). Later known as Kasimov, it became the residence for numerous members of the Chingisid dynasty for over two centuries. At first an autonomous Muslim enclave on the Muscovite frontier ruled by the legitimate khans, it soon became a puppet khanate within Muscovy and a convenient springboard to install the loyal Chingisids in Kazan' and Astrakhan'.[134]
After the initial conquest of Kazan', Moscow chose to resort to the same policy of forced resettlement and exchange ofpopulations which it traditionally applied in the Muscovite lands proper. Thus, the Tatars were expelled and some resettled as far as Novgorod and Russian Orthodox townsmen and peasants were brought in to settle in the Kazan' area. However, the incendiary nature of such policies became apparent shortly thereafter. The government realised that expanding into lands with non-Russian and non-Christian populations required a more gradual approach.[135]
Likewise, the initial zeal in asserting the victory of the Christian arms over the Muslim khanate by burning the mosques of Kazan' and converting the Muslims by force had quickly abated. Facing local revolts and the threat of the Ottoman-Crimean intervention, Moscow had to postpone any immediate plan for transforming the Muslim lands into Christian ones. The religious conversion of the non-Christians did not cease, but any large-scale evangelisation had to wait for better times. Moscow was compelled to resort to a more gradual and pragmatic approach which prevailed until the early eighteenth century. (For a more detailed discussion of the issue of the religious conversion in the seventeenth century, see Chapter 22 below.)
127
132
133
134
V V Vel'iaminov-Zernov,
135
M. K. Liubavskii,