In the century between 1450 and 1550 the Grand Principality of Moscow had proven itself a formidable power, consolidating control over major resources and trade entrepots in the crucial Baltic, Volga, and Black Sea spheres. Already Muscovy contained a diverse population—East Slavic, Orthodox peasants and landlords in the center; East Slavic and Finno-Ugric forest peoples north to the Arctic and east to the Urals, who included Orthodox Christians and many still practicing local animist religions. De facto empire had begun, on the eve of conquests of Kazan and Siberia.
On the Rus' state: Omeljan Pritsak, The Origin of Rus' (Cambridge, Mass.: Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1981), chap. 1; Thomas S. Noonan, "The Flourishing of Kiev's International and Domestic Trade, ca.1100-ca.1240," in I. S. Koropeckyj, ed., Ukrainian Economic History: Interpretive Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1991), 102-46; Peter Golden, "Aspects of the Nomadic Factor in the Economic Development of Kiev Rus'," in Koropeckyj, ed., Ukrainian Economic History, 58-101; Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard, The Emergence of Rus', 750-1200 (London and New York: Longman, 1996). This literature reflects a modern "Eurasianist" approach; on its origins, see Nicholas Riasanovsky, "The Emergence of Eurasianism," California Slavic Studies 4 (1967): 39-72. Rise of Moscow through the sixteenth century: N. S. Kollmann, "The Principalities of Rus' in the Fourteenth Century," in The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 6: c.1300- c.1415 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000): 764-94, 1051-8 and "Russia," in The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 7: c.1415-c.1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998): 748-70, 976-84; Donald Ostrowski, "The Growth of Muscovy (1462-1533)," in Maureen Perrie, ed., The Cambridge History of Russia, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 213-39; Janet Martin, Medieval Russia, 980-1584 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Robert O. Crummey, The Formation of Muscovy, 1304-1613 (London: Longman, 1987). On Novgorod: Henrik Birnbaum, Lord Novgorod the Great: Essays in the History and Culture of a Medieval City-State (Columbus, Oh.: Slavica Publishers, 1981). Surveys of Kyiv Rus' and early modern Ukraine include Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, 4th edn. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009) and Paul R. Magocsi, A History of Ukraine (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996). On the fur trade: Janet Martin, Treasure of the Land of Darkness: The Fur Trade and its Significance for Medieval Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). For the Mongol background, see Allen J. Frank, "The Western Steppe: Volga-Ural region, Siberia and the Crimea," in Nicola Di Cosmo, Allen J. Frank, and Peter B. Golden, eds., The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The Chinggisid Age (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2009), 237-59. On Mongol influence: Donald G. Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier, 1304—1589 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Charles J. Halperin, Russia and the Golden Horde: The Mongol Impact on Medieval Russian History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985) and his The Tatar Yoke: The Image of the Mongols in Medieval Russia, corrected edn. (Bloomington, Ind.: Slavica, 2009).
On the slave trade, see Christoph Witzenrath, ed., Eurasian Slavery, Ransom and Abolition in World History, 1200-1860 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015).
3
Assembling Empire
The First Centuries
Russia's first centuries of empire, roughly from mid-sixteenth century through the seventeenth, overwhelm the observer with their sheer energy and almost complete lack of self-reflective ideology describing the imperial project. Muscovy's rulers did not define what they were doing; they simply expanded continuously. Sources such as chronicles, decrees, and bureaucratic correspondence form the meager basis on which historians intuit conceptual attitudes. A crusading ideology was not characteristic of the Orthodox Church, although anti-Muslim rhetoric was a trope in chronicle writing. Even if the Orthodox Church had wanted a more energetic missionary role, the state did not support it. Decrees in the seventeenth century, for example, forbade Siberian governors from forcibly converting or oppressing natives, in order to keep tax collection stable. Neither did an ideology of cultural superiority drive conquest. Non-Russian subjects were recognized as different in language, religion, and culture, but were not systematically described or discriminated against as inferior. Valerie Kivelson argues that the Muscovite state reveled in the abundance of its subject peoples, regarding them as God's bountiful creation and evidence of divine favor on Russia.
Russia's experience of "empire" is classically dated to the conquests of the khanate of Kazan (1552) and the city of Astrakhan (1556), both major trading centers with multi-ethnic and multi-religious populations, closely followed by conquest of the khanate of western Siberia (1582) and movement across Siberia. Expansion continued through the seventeenth century south into the steppe, east, and, with greater difficulty, westward. Motives throughout were pragmatic: to conquer important trade routes and depots for customs income and to capture material resources (furs, taxes). So also was colonial policy: in these early centuries of empire, Russia practiced a "politics of difference," maintaining regional cultures and institutions in exchange for loyalty and human and fiscal resources.
CONQUEST OF KAZAN
Although by 1550 Muscovy ruled East Slavic and Finno-Ugric populations, the 1552 conquest of the sovereign state of Kazan, with its Muslim and animist populations and multiple ethnic groups, marked a decisive advance in diversity. Taking advantage of dynastic instability and determined to stave off Crimean influence in Kazan, Moscow mounted a military campaign in 1551—2. The conquest was brutaclass="underline" using tactics of mass expulsion that had been employed on the western borderland since the defeat of Novgorod (1478), most of the Tatar population was moved out of Kazan city. Leaders and elites were executed or deported; Russian gentry were moved onto their lands and Russian merchants into the city. Mosques were destroyed and an Orthodox bishopric and monasteries were founded on confiscated lands. Resistance was persistent—Tatars and Cheremis (Mari) revolted in 1570-2 and 1581-4—and brutally put down.