When, urged by Pope Gregory IX to “Christianize” the Baltic region, the Teutonic Knights (Teutonic Order) shortly thereafter invaded Russia, Novgorod invited Alexander to return. After a number of battles, Alexander decisively defeated the Germans in the famous “massacre on the ice” in April 1242 on a narrow channel between Lakes Chud (Peipus) and Pskov. Alexander, who continued to fight both the Swedes and Germans and eventually stopped their eastward expansion, also won many victories over the pagan Lithuanians and the Finnic peoples.
In the east, however, Mongol armies were conquering most of the politically fragmented Russian lands. Alexander's father, the grand prince Yaroslav, agreed to serve the new rulers of Russia but died in September 1246 of poisoning after his return from a visit to the Great Khan in Mongolia. When, in the ensuing struggle for the grand princely throne, Alexander and his younger brother Andrew appealed to Khan Batu of the Mongol Golden Horde, he sent them to the Great Khan. Violating Russian customs of seniority, the Great Khan appointed Andrew grand prince of Vladimir and Alexander prince of Kiev—probably because Alexander was Batu's favourite and Batu was in disfavour with the Great Khan. When Andrew began to conspire against the Mongol overlords with other Russian princes and western nations, Alexander went to Saray on the Volga and denounced his brother to Sartak, Batu's son, who sent an army to depose Andrew and installed Alexander as grand prince. Henceforth, for over a century, no northeastern Russian prince challenged the Mongol conquest. Alexander proceeded to restore Russia by building fortifications and churches and promulgating laws. As grand prince, he continued to rule Novgorod through his son Vasily, thus changing the constitutional basis of rule in Novgorod from personal sovereignty by invitation to institutional sovereignty by the principal Russian ruler. When, in 1255, Novgorod, tiring of grand princely rule, expelled Vasily and invited an opponent of Mongol hegemony, Alexander assembled an army and reinstalled his son.
In 1257 the Mongols, in order to levy taxes, took a census in most of Russia. It encountered little opposition, but when news of the impending enumeration reached Novgorod an uprising broke out. In 1258 Alexander, fearing that the Mongols would punish all of Russia for the Novgorodian revolt, helped force Novgorod to submit to the census and to Mongol taxation. This completed the process of imposing the Mongol yoke on northern Russia.
In 1262 uprisings broke out in many towns against the Muslim tax farmers of the Golden Horde, and Alexander made a fourth journey to Saray to avert reprisals. He succeeded in his mission, as well as in obtaining exemption for Russians from a draft of men for a planned invasion of Iran. Returning home, Alexander died on Nov. 14, 1263, in Gorodets on the Volga. After his death Russia once more disintegrated into many feuding principalities. His personal power, based upon support of the princes, boyars, and clergy, as well as the fear of Mongols, could not be transmitted to any other man, including his weak sons.
Whether Alexander was a quisling in his dealings with the Mongol conquerors is a question seldom posed by Russian historians, because some Russian princes had for centuries concluded alliances with Turkic steppe nomads in order to gain advantage in domestic rivalries. Because Alexander was a willing collaborator, he may have reduced the common people's suffering by interceding for them with the Khan. He was supported by the church, which thrived under Mongol protection and tax exemption and feared the anti-Mongol princes who negotiated with the papacy. For these reasons, Alexander by 1381 was elevated to the status of a local saint and was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1547. Alexander's son Daniel founded the house of Moscow, which subsequently reunited the northern Russian lands and ruled until 1598. Alexander was one of the great military commanders of his time, who protected Russia's western frontier against invasion by Swedes or Germans. This image of him was popular in northwestern Russia and has in succeeding centuries been adduced for propaganda purposes. Thus, after the conclusion of the war with Sweden, the Order of Alexander Nevsky was created in 1725, and during World War II (in July 1942), when Germany had deeply penetrated into the Soviet Union, Stalin pronounced Alexander Nevsky a national hero and established a military order in his name.
Richard Hellie
Additional Reading
There is no book-length study of Nevsky in English. Information may be found in A.E. Presniakov, The Formation of the Great Russian State: A Study of Russian History in the Thirteenth to Fifteenth Centuries (1970; orig. pub. in Russian, 1918); and George Vernadsky, A History of Russia, vol. 3, The Mongols and Russia (1953).
Khazar
▪ people
member of a confederation of Turkic-speaking tribes that in the late 6th century AD established a major commercial empire covering the southeastern section of modern European Russia. Although the origin of the term Khazar and the early history of the Khazar people are obscure, it is fairly certain that the Khazars were originally located in the northern Caucasus region and were part of the western Turkic empire (in Turkistan). The Khazars were in contact with the Persians in the mid-6th century AD, and they aided the Byzantine emperor Heraclius (reigned 610–641) in his campaign against the Persians.
By the beginning of the 7th century, the Khazars had become independent of the Turkic empire to the east. But by the middle of that century, the expanding empire of the Arabs had penetrated as far northward as the northern Caucasus, and from then on until the mid-8th century the Khazars engaged in a series of wars with the Arab empire. The Arabs initially forced the Khazars to abandon Derbent (661), but around 685 the Khazars counterattacked, penetrating southward of the Caucasus into present-day Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The Khazars and Arabs fought each other directly in Armenia in the 720s, and, though victory passed repeatedly from one side to the other, Arab counterattacks eventually compelled the Khazars to permanently withdraw north of the Caucasus. The Khazars' initial victories were important, though, since they had the effect of permanently blocking Arab expansion northward into eastern Europe. Having been compelled to shift the centre of their empire northward, the Khazars after 737 established their capital at Itil (located near the mouth of the Volga River) and accepted the Caucasus Mountains as their southern boundary.
During the same period, however, they expanded westward. By the second half of the 8th century, their empire had reached the peak of its power—it extended along the northern shore of the Black Sea from the lower Volga and the Caspian Sea in the east to the Dnieper River in the west. The Khazars controlled and exacted tribute from the Alani and other northern Caucasian peoples (dwelling between the mountains and the Kuban River); from the Magyars (Hungarians) inhabiting the area around the Donets River; from the Goths; and from the Greek colonies in the Crimea. The Volga Bulgars and numerous Slavic tribes also recognized the Khazars as their overlords.
Although basically Turkic, the Khazar state bore little resemblance to the other Turkic empires of central Eurasia. It was headed by a secluded supreme ruler of semireligious character called a khagan—who wielded little real power—and by tribal chieftains, each known as a beg. The state's military organization also seems to have lacked the forcefulness of those of the greater Turkic-Mongol empires. The Khazars seem to have been more inclined to a sedentary way of life, building towns and fortresses, tilling the soil, and planting gardens and vineyards. Trade and the collection of tribute were major sources of income. But the most striking characteristic of the Khazars was the apparent adoption of Judaism by the khagan and the greater part of the ruling class in about 740. The circumstances of the conversion remain obscure, the depth of their adoption of Judaism difficult to assess; but the fact itself is undisputed and unparalleled in central Eurasian history. A few scholars have even asserted that the Judaized Khazars were the remote ancestors of many eastern European and Russian Jews. Whatever the case may be, religious tolerance was practiced in the Khazar empire, and paganism continued to flourish among the population.