Class 7. Rise of Muscovite Power (3)
every now and again, making attacks,
or as allies in wars or whatever.
But these are fairly durable entities.
And we have to understand Moscow
and not just as a post Rus' entity,
but also as one of these post Mongol entities,
along with the Nogai Horde, along with the Kazan Khanate,
along with the Crimean Khanate.
And by the way, for us, the Crimean Khanate
is the most important because the Crimean Khanate
is the one that controls Crimea,
and then much of the north coast of the Black Sea,
what's now the south of Ukraine.
So we have to imagine the Mongols establishing a state,
which over time fragments into a number
of different entities, of which one is Moscow.
Of which one is Moscow.
Now, how is Moscow different?
Moscow is different in religion.
It's not Pagan as the Mongols are,
to use the term of abuse that the Christians use.
And Moscow doesn't convert to Islam.
This is important too.
The rest of these entities convert to Islam.
So, but Moscow doesn't, Moscow is Orthodox.
Moscow's Orthodox, but it's Orthodox
in an interesting way, right?
It's Orthodox in a place, mark this for the future.
It's Orthodox in a place
where there's no other way of being Christian.
This is really important, I mean,
I think right down to the present moment.
There's no other way of being Christian.
If you're Christian, you're Orthodox, that's it.
Whereas west of this, in Kyiv and in the rest of Europe,
there are going to be lots of other ways of being Christian.
And even if you are Orthodox,
in what's now Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania,
you're going to be in a series of encounters
with other sorts of Christians over the next few centuries.
In Moscow, this is not true.
Orthodoxy is Christianity, Christianity is Orthodoxy.
And this is all, and related to this, also to mark,
there isn't any theology.
There isn't any disputation about religion in Moscow.
In points further west there is going to be,
the Orthodox are going to take part
in all of the interesting conversations
around Reformation, Counter-Reformation, all of that.
That's not going to be happening in Moscow until much later,
when Moscow and Kyiv come into contact for the first time,
which is not for centuries.
It's not for centuries, it's not in this lecture,
it's in the 17th century, okay.
So we're in Mongol Rus'.
Mongol Rus' is the northeast.
It's the district which I mentioned last time, Suzdal.
And then Suzdal, surrounding territories,
the northeast of what had been Rus'.
And the way that the political system is set up by this,
is set up in this Northeastern Rus', this Mongol Rus',
is really a kind of fresh start,
in the sense that the Mongols have come and destroyed.
Okay, good, that's true for everyone.
Then there's the Black Death, it's a bit of a mess.
There's really no one around to write.
And in addition to that, a new principle
of political succession is set up.
The principle of political succession in the old Rus',
the one based in Kyiv was admittedly very messy
and to the point of incomprehensibility,
but it had something to do with the ruler and his sons.
That's about as much as we can say.
And that's by the way, not so unusual in Europe.
This whole idea that it was the eldest son,
and it was all very simple.
That usually covers over a whole bunch
of illegitimacy and bloodshed, but you know, okay.
So illegitimacy and bloodshed gets a lot of nods.
I just wanna record that for the camera.
All right, so focus.
So in Northeastern Rus', in and around Suzdal,
there's a new succession principle which is,
how well can you collect taxes for the Mongol overlord?
That's the new principle of power.
So the Mongols accept that there's something called Rus'.
They have no trouble with that,
but who is the Grand Prince of Rus'?
The Grand Prince of Rus' is
the person who can collect the tribute.
So that is a new principle of rule.
That is new compared to Kyiv obviously,
where if you were in Kyiv,
you were the one taking the tribute, right?
And by the way, this is a really fundamental thing
about political power.
If you want to figure out who is actually in charge,
who is paying tribute to whom?
Because everyone says, "I'm the king and the tsar,
and all the galaxies," and so on, right?
That's very easy.
Having stationary, okay, they didn't have stationary yet,
but having a list of titles is very easy, right?
But what really matters is, are you paying the tribute,
or is someone paying the tribute to you?
So the rulers of Muscovy had titles, right?
They were the Grand Princes of Moscow,
which sounds great and certainly had its pluses.
But they were paying tribute to the Mongols,
and they were the Grand Princes of Moscow
because they could pay tribute to the Mongols.
The Mongols chose the man who could collect the tribute.
And so that's a different principle of succession.
The people who ran Mongol Rus' were princes of,
they were princes who were descended from the old Rus'.
Not in any particular distinction,
but they were of the blood,
but they were only the Grand Princes of Rus'
because they were the ones who could collect the taxes.
And then the other way that this is a fresh start
is that the whole system is based in a new city,
which is Moscow.
So Moscow existed as some kind of fort or something
in the 12th century, but Moscow had no princely line.
Moscow is not a district in old Rus'.
Nobody goes to Moscow to rule anything, right?
It's not one of these districts Suzdal or like Chernihiv,
where you go and you rule.
It's not a district at all.
It's no place, it's nowhere.
Moscow becomes a town, becomes a meaningful place
with a princely line after the Mongol destruction of Kyiv,
and because it's a Prince of Moscow
who's able to collect the tribute.
It was also, well, there's also some marriage involved.
In 1317, Yuri, who was a Prince of Moscow,
married the sister of the Khan of the Golden Horde, right?
As one does, you know, in situations like this, right?
So he also marries into power, and at that point,
power passed durably from a more important
bigger city called Tver to Moscow.
And from that point, Moscow is gonna be
the center of this entity.
And it's gonna be the Princes of Moscow
who eventually remember, it takes them a while,
but who eventually remember to say,
"We are the rulers of all of Rus'."
The first one, by the way to, as far as we know,
who says that he's the ruler of all Rus'
was Vasily I, who ruled from 1389 to 1399.
And the evidence we have is there's a coin
where he appears, and he says, "I am the ruler of all Rus'."
On the other side of that coin, it says,
"Long live Sultan Tokhtamysh",
which reminds you of what the actual political order is.
He's the ruler of all of Rus', terrific.
But what he means by all of Rus' is the bit of Rus'
that is under the control of the Golden Horde, right?
That's under the control of the Mongols.
Now all of this, the Mongol connection is very important
because when the Mongol connection is broken,
the basic state form remains.
There's no clear moment in the history of Muscovy
where you can say, "Okay, the Mongols were here,
they were doing everything,
and then they got on their little horses and left."
That's not how it worked at all.
The way that it worked was that
somewhere in the middle of the 15th century,
Moscow stops paying tribute.
But they don't change at that point,
they just stop paying tribute.
It's the same entity, okay?
So have a state which is in some way post Rus'.
Religion, princely family, language, all of that.
But it's also in many ways a new start,
a new start under the Mongols.
So it's post post Rus', I would say, and it's post Mongol.
Let me say a word now about the system,
because the system is incredibly interesting.
First of all, and to give credit where credit is due,
the Muscovites knew how to fight.
And the reason they knew how to fight
was that they fought with,
and then eventually against the Mongols.
So the Mongol cavalry techniques,
which the Mongols brought with them to Europe
and which no one could withstand,
were then learned by the Muscovites, because of course,
the Muscovites were part of the same state.
They were fighting on the same side.
So they were very good at war.
And the way that they set up their armies in five parts
has everything to do with the way
that the Mongols set set up their armies.
So that's very important to know.
The Muscovites knew how to fight,
that is part of their heritage.
The heritage that they don't have is all
the legal bureaucratic heritage of Kyiv,
which we've talked about earlier.
They're free and clear of that.
For better or worse, they're free and clear of that.
It's rather the Lithuanians who pick up that heritage,
which means that the legal tradition
in Mongol Rus' is very simple.
It starts from the idea that the tsar owns everything,
which is convenient.
I mean, it's very convenient if you're the tsar.
And okay, and when I say all this,
don't overdo it, but do record this and think about it
when you're thinking about the history of Russia,
the centuries, as centuries pass.
So all the property belongs to the tsar, the ruler.
You can't really own land.
You can own land conditionally.
If I'm the tsar, I'm gonna be the tsar,
'cause I'm the one who's talking.
You can own land conditionally
until I say that you don't anymore, right?
So land ownership can be broken at any time.
You own land practically, in exchange
for service to me, the tsar.
So everyone who owns land by definition
is a servant of the tsar,
and almost always that's military service.
So this is the way the army is set up.
You get to control land, but in return,
you serve in the army.
That is the fundamental deal.
You control land in exchange for military service,
and I can break that at any point.
So you're the fighting class,
but you're not exactly a nobility
in the sense of West European nobilities.
There is no legal list, there's no register,
there's no patent of nobility.
There's no beautiful piece of paper
which you can produce and say,
"I have a better Latin script than you," or whatever.
You're not really nobles in the sense
of being a legal estate.
You're really nobles it more or less at my at my pleasure.
So there aren't property rights,
and there aren't really feudal rights either.
There's this deal, which is a very effective deal.
It works very well, a fighting class
in exchange for control of land.
And of course it works very well,
so long as we're getting more land all the time.
And that's part of the magic of the system.
We are going to be getting more land all the time
for at least a couple of centuries.
The state is going to grow spectacularly,
first west into Europe,
then south into formerly Muslim territories,
and then west all the way to the Pacific Ocean
in just a couple of centuries, okay.
This is basically an agrarian country though.
So part of this system is serfdom.
So you are off fighting wars, but you have a land manager
and you have serfs on your territory.
The Russian peasants live in communes.
