One of these events was the dissolution of the Golden Horde. The system of succession prevailing among the 'White Bone' (descendants of Genghis Khan), with its complicated lines of seniority better suited to a nomadic nation organized into tribes than to an imperial power, caused uninterrupted internal conflicts. In the 1360s, the Horde was thrown into turmoil as packs of pretenders battled with each other for the throne; during the next twenty years, Sarai had no fewer than fourteen khans. Moscow exploited these dissensions by playing one party against the other. In 1380, Dmitry of Moscow dared even to resist the Mongols by force of arms. True, the khan he challenged was a Crimean and a usurper; true also, the victory which he won over this khan at Kulikovo Professor Keep rests his case on evidence of restlessness of the service class, but he concludes that its attempt to gain some freedom from the state did not succeed. Professor Torke's evidence indicates mainly that the sixteenth-century Russian government realized it could use the various social estates to help it administer the country. The idea of society as I understand it, and as it has been customarily defined in the west, entails recognition by the state of the right of social groups to legal status and a legitimate sphere of free action. This recognition came to Russia only with the reign of Catherine II.
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had little military significance since two years later the Mongols avenged themselves by sacking Moscow. Still, Kulikovo showed that Russians could stand up to their masters.
Already severely weakened by internal conflicts, the Golden Horde received its coup de grace from Timur (Tamerlane). From his base in central Asia, this Turkic conqueror mounted between 1389 and 1395 three campaigns against the Horde, on the last of which his troops destroyed Sarai. The Horde never recovered from these blows. In the middle of the fifteenth century it broke up into several parts, the most important of which became the khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan and the Crimea. These successor states, notably the khanate of the Crimea, could still launch at will raids into Russia, but they no longer had control over it. Indeed, by the end of the fifteenth century it was Moscow that decided which candidate would occupy the throne in Kazan. During the reign of Ivan in (tradition dates the event as having occurred in 1480), Moscow ceased to pay the tribute to the Golden Horde or its successor states.
The other event which helped to politicize the seigneurs of Muscovy was the collapse of the Byzantine Empire. Russian relations to Byzantium had never been clearly defined. From the time of its conversion to Orthodoxy, the assumption undoubtedly existed that Russia stood in some kind of dependence on Constantinople. The point was pressed by the Greek hierarchy, which liked to put forward Justinian's theory of 'harmony' or symphonia according to which the church and imperial authority could not exist without one another. But the implied claim that the Russian Orthodox were subjects of the emperors of Byzantium could never be enforced, and during the Mongol rule became quite meaningless in any event, since Russia's emperor then was the very unchristian khan. Whatever control Byzantium exercised over Russia was channelled through the clergy, that is through appointments to high ecclesiastical offices made or endorsed in Constantinople. But even this link snapped after 1439 when the Russian church rejected Byzantium's union with the Catholics concluded at the Council of Florence. Henceforth, proceeding on the assumption that Constantinople had committed at Florence an act of apostasy, the Great Princes of Moscow began to appoint their own metropolitans, no longer bothering to secure the approval of the Greek hierarchy. Whatever authority over Russia the Byzantine emperors and the Byzantine church may have laid claim to disappeared in 1453 when Constantinople fell to the Turks and the imperial line ceased.
After the fall of the Byzantine Empire, the Orthodox church had vital reasons for building up in Russia powerful imperial authority. The subject will be treated in greater detail in the chapter devoted to the relations between church and state (Chapter 9). Here only the main point needs emphasis. Overwhelmed by Muslims, challenged by Catholics, and undermined by heretical reform movements within its own establishment, the Orthodox church was fighting for its very life. With the fall of Constantinople, the ruler of Moscow emerged as the only Orthodox prince in the world able to protect the Orthodox church from its many external and internal enemies. It became therefore a matter of sheer survival to support the Muscovite rulers, and to imbue these land-grabbers and profiteers with a political consciousness that would help raise their eyes beyond the horizon of their landed properties. After 1453, the Greek and Russian ecclesiastical establishments did all in their power to transform the prince of Moscow into aftdei defensor, responsible for the welfare of all Orthodox Christians. The process had one of its culminating points at the church Synod of 1561, which appended to its resolutions an epistle from the Patriarch of Constantinople acclaiming Ivan iv 'emperor and seigneur [Tsar' i Gosudar', i.e. imperator et dominus] of Orthodox Christians in the entire universe'.17
The collapse of the Golden Horde and the Byzantine Empire freed Moscow from subservience to the two imperial powers which had claimed over it some form of suzerainty. It is therefore at this time, too - the second half of the fifteenth century - that the Great Princes of Moscow began in a tentative manner to claim the imperial title. Ivan in was the first Russian ruler occasionally to call himself tsar, a title originally applied to the Byzantine emperor and, since 1265 reserved for the khan of the Golden Horde. After marrying the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, he also adopted the imperial double-headed eagle. His son, Basil in, called himself tsar more often, and his grandson, Ivan iv formalized the practice in 1547 by making 'Tsar of all Russia' (Tsar vseia Rossii) the title of Russia's rulers. Heady ideas now began to circulate in the towns and villages of north-eastern P-ussia. Princes, whose ancestors had to crawl on all fours for the amusement of the khan and his court, now traced their family descent to Emperor Augustus and their crown to an alleged Byzantine investiture. Talk was heard of Moscow being the 'Third Rome', destined for all time to replace the corrupted and fallen Romes of Peter and Constantine. Fantastic legends began to circulate among the illiterate people, linking the largely wooden city on the Moskva river with dimly understood events from biblical and classical history.
Such were the circumstances under which the patrimonial outlook became politicized. Next arises the question what model the princes of Moscow took to emulate in their quest for autocratic and imperial status. The two with which they were familiar were Byzantine and Mongoclass="underline" the basileus and the khan. Western kings could not have served for the purpose, in part because of their Catholicism, in part because,