declined, the political center of the state shifted to the northeast, to the so-called princedom of Vladimir-Suzdal which covered large territories in the central and eastern parts of European Russia. It was a ruler of this principality, Andrew Bogoliubskii, who sacked Kiev in 1169 and, having won the office of the grand prince, transferred its seat to his favorite town of Vladimir in the northeast. His father, the first independent prince of Suzdal and a son of Vladimir Monomakh, the celebrated Iurii Dolgorukii, that is, George of the Long Arm, had already won the grand princedom, but had kept it in Kiev; with Andrew, it shifted definitively to the northeast. Although Andrew Bogoliubskii fell victim to a conspiracy in 1174, his achievements of building up his principality and of emphasizing the authority of the princes of Suzdal in their own territory and in Russia, remained. His work was resumed in 1176 by Andrew's brother Vsevolod, known as Vsevolod III, because he was the third Russian grand prince with that name, or Vsevolod of the Large Nest because of his big family. Vsevolod ruled until his death in 1212 and continued to build towns, fortresses, and churches, to suppress opposition, and to administer the land effectively. At the same time, as grand prince, he made his authority felt all over Russia.
It will be remembered that the Mongol invasion dealt a staggering blow to the Russian northeast. The grand prince at the time, Iurii, a son of Vsevolod III, fell in battle, the Russian armies were smashed, and virtually the entire land was laid waste. Yet, after the Golden Horde established its rule in Russia, the northeastern principalities had some advantages. In contrast to the steppe of the south, they remained outside the zone directly
occupied by the Mongols and on the whole could slowly rebuild and develop. A certain distance from the invaders, it might be added, gave them an advantage not only over the old Kievan south, but also over the southeastern principality of Riazan, which evolved along lines parallel to the evolution of the northeast, but experienced greater Mongol pressure. Moreover, the seat of the grand prince stayed in the northeast with the descendants of Vladimir Monomakh. To be more exact, after the death in 1263 of Alexander Nevskii, who, as mentioned earlier, had managed to stabilize relations with the Mongols, the office of the grand prince went successively to his brothers Iaroslav of Tver and Basil of Kostroma and to his sons Dmitrii and Andrew. Following the death of Andrew in 1304, Michael of Tver, Iaroslav's son and Alexander Nevskii's nephew, ruled as grand prince until he was killed by the Mongols at the court of the Golden Horde in 1319. Michael was succeeded by his rival, a grandson of Alexander Nevskii, Iurii, or George, who became the first prince of Moscow to assume the office of grand prince.
But, while the position of the grand prince, with its location in the northeast and the complicated Kievan practice of princely succession, continued as a symbol of Russian unity, in other respects division prevailed. Appanages multiplied as princes divided their holdings among their sons. On the death of Vsevolod III, the Vladimir-Suzdal princedom had already
split into five principalities which proceeded to divide further. Ultimately some princes inherited tiny territories, while still others could not be provided for and had to find service with more fortunate members of the family. In the continuous shifting of political boundaries, four leading principalities emerged in the northeast in the first half of the fourteenth century: the princedoms of Vladimir, Rostov, Tver, and Moscow. A proliferation of appanages, characteristic of the northeast, occurred also in the western lands and in the southeastern principality of Riazan, in fact, everywhere in Russia, except in Novgorod which knew how to control its princes.
Whereas the evolution of Novgorod emphasized the role of the veche, and the evolution of Galicia and Volynia that of the boyars, the prince prevailed in the northeast. Although, as already mentioned, Rostov, Suzdal, and some other towns and areas of the northeast formed integral and important parts of Kievan Russia, they generally lay, in contrast to the southwest, in a wilderness of forests with no definite boundaries and hence with great possibilities of expansion to the north and the east. That expansion took place in the late Kievan and especially the appanage periods. This celebrated 'colonization' of new lands was considered by S. Soloviev, Kliuchevsky, and some other specialists to have been decisive for subsequent Russian history. The princes played a major role in the expansion by providing economic support, protection, and social organization for the colonists. In the new pioneer society there existed little in the nature of vested interests or established institutions to challenge princely authority. It may be noted that Andrew Bogoliubskii had already transferred his capital from ancient Suzdal to the new town of Vladimir and that his chief political opponents were the boyars from the older sections of his realm. The Mongol invasion and other wars and disasters of the time also contributed to the growth of princely authority, for they shattered the established economic and social order and left it to the prince to rebuild and reorganize devastated territory. The increasing particularism and dependence on local economy, together with the proliferation of appanages, meant that the prince often acted simply as the proprietor of his principality, entering into every detail of its life and worrying little about the distinction between public and private law. With the passage of years, the role of the prince in the northeast came to bear little resemblance to that of the princes in Novgorod or in Galicia.
Kliuchevsky and other Russian historians seem to overstate the case when they select the evolution of the northeast as the authentic Russian development and the true continuation of Kievan history. It would seem better to consider Novgorod, the southwest, and the northeast, all as fully Kievan and as accentuating in their later independent growth certain aspects of the mixed and complicated Kievan society and system: the democratic veche, the aristocratic boyar rule, or the autocratic prince; the city or the country-
side; trade or agriculture; contacts with the West or proximity to Asia. Nor should other Russian areas - not included in our brief discussion - such as those of Smolensk, Chernigov, or Riazan, be denied their full share of Kievan inheritance. The more catholic point of view would not minimize the significance of the northeast in Russian history. It was in the northeast, together with the Novgorodian north and certain other adjacent lands, that the Great Russian ethnic type developed, as distinct from the Ukrainian and the White Russian. The conditions of its emergence, all characteristic of the northeast, included the breakdown of Kievan unity and the existence of a more primitive style of life in a forest wilderness inhabited also by Finnic-speaking tribes. And it was a northeastern principality, Moscow, which rose to gather the Russian lands and initiate a new epoch in Russian history.
XI
… we can imagine the attitude towards the princedom of Moscow and its prince which developed amidst the northern Russian population… 1) The senior Grand Prince of Moscow came to be regarded as a model ruler- manager, the establisher of peace in the land and of civil order, and the princedom of Moscow as the starting point of a new system of social relations, the first fruit of which was precisely the establishment of a greater degree of internal peace and external security. 2) The senior Grand Prince of Moscow came to be regarded as the leader of the Russian people in its struggle against foreign enemies, and Moscow as the instrument of the first popular successes over infidel Lithuania and the heathen 'devourers of raw flesh,' the Mongols. 3) Finally, in the Moscow prince northern Russia became accustomed to see the eldest son of the Russian church, the closest friend and collaborator of the chief Russian hierarch; and it came to consider Moscow as a city on which rests a special blessing of the greatest saint of the Russian land, and to which are linked the religious-moral interests of the entire Orthodox Russian people. Such significance was achieved, by the middle of the fifteenth century, by the appanage princeling from the banks of the Moscow River, who, a century and a half earlier, had acted as a minor plunderer, lying around a corner in ambush for his neighbors.
The unification of Great Russia took place through a destruction of all local, independent political forces, in favor of the single authority of the Grand Prince. But these forces, doomed by historical circumstances, were the bearers of 'antiquity and tradition,' of the customary-legal foundations of Great Russian life. Their fall weakened its firm traditions. To create a new system of life on the ruins of the old became a task of the authority of the Grand
