earth-a busy, not inadequate swarm, over which the tempest of soldier-emperors passingly blows. . . . Men live from hand to mouth with petty thrifts and petty fortunes and endure. . . . Masses are trampled on, but the survivors fill up the gaps with a primitive fertility and suffer on.35
The 'high history' of the period was that of warrior princes from the east whose enervating straggles further fit Spengler's characterization of 'a drama noble in its aimlessness . . . like the course of the stars … the alternance of land and sea.'36
Like the Kievan princes before them, the Mongol conquerors adopted a religion (Islam), established a capital on the lower reaches of a great river (Sarai on the Volga), were initially weakened more by a new conqueror from the east (Tamerlane) than by virtually simultaneous assaults from the west (the Muscovite victory at Kulikovo in 1380), and were plagued by inner fragmentation» The khanate of Kypchak, or 'Golden Horde,' was but one of several dependent states within the far-flung empire of Genghis Khan; it was a racially conglomerate and ideologically permissive realm which gradually disintegrated in the course of the fifteenth century, becoming less important politically than its own 'appanages': the separate Tatar khanates in the Crimea, on the upper Volga aTKazan, and at Astrakhan, the Caspian mouth of the Volga. Cunning diplomacy and daring raids enabled the Crimean Tatars and other lesser Tatar groups to maintain militarily menacing positions in the southern parts of European Russia until late in the
.- » ¦ , ¦'''¦'¦ t..«-»^a^» «»«a«iu' »«¦ ' '**
eighteenth century.
The real importance of the Tatars' protracted presence in the Eastern European steppelands lies not so much in their direct influence on Russian culture as in their indirect role in providing the Orthodox Eastern Slavs with a common enemy against whom they could unite and rediscover a sense of common purpose. Slowly but irresistibly, the Eastern Slavs emerged from the humiliation and fragmentation of the Mongol period to expand their power eastward-beyond the former realm of the Golden Horde, beyond that of the so-called'Bliie*H6'f3e^Ton meliTeppes of Central Asia, on to the Pacific? To understand how Russia emerged from its 'dark ages' to such triumphant accomplishment, one must not look primarily either to Byzantium or to the Mongols: the Golden Horn or the Golden Horde. One must
Itn.k Hither to the 'primitive fertility' which began to, bring, an agricultural. •tu plus and a measure of prosperity; and, even more important, to 'the ,. 1 unuilaiion of spiritual energies during long silence'37 in the monasteries kimI ItVth'c accumulation of political power by the new city which rosejo.
dominate this region: Moscow.
2. The Forest
Ihe most important immediate consequence for Russia of the Mongol sweep across the Eurasian steppe in the thirteenth century was that the once-outlying forest regions of the north now became the main center of an j independent Orthodox culture. What the change of geographical focus from the central Dnieper to the upper Volga really meant can never be precisely ascertained. Pitifully few documentary or archeological materials have survived the fights, frosts, and fires of the north. Cultural historians are inclined to stress continuities with the Kievan age, pointing out that the principal cities of the northeast--Vladimir, Suzdal, Riazan, Rostov, and Yaroslavl- were almost as old as Kiev; that Vladimir had been the ruling seat of the leading Kievan princes for many years prior to the sack of Kiev; and that Novgorod, the second city of Kievan times, remained free of Mongol invasions and provided continuity with its steadily increasing prosperity. The characters, events, and artistic forms of Kievan times dominated the chronicles and epics 'which assumed their final shape in the creative memory of the Russian north.'1 The ritualized forms of art and worshipjmd the peculiar sensitivity to beauty and history-all remained constant features of Russian culture' ~
Yet profound, if subtle, changes accompanied the transfer of power to the upper Volga: the coldest and most remote frontieFregion oTEyzantine-Slavic civilization. This region was increasingly cut off not just from declining Byzantium but also from a resurgent West, which was just rediscovering Greekr'phito5oph7~fflid~KinaffigTtF^M~lMv^ffie^'TTie mention of Russia that had been sd~E«cjuent''iri early medieval French literature vanished altogether in the course of the fourteenth century.2 Russian no less than Western European writers realized that the Orthodox Eastern Slavs now comprised a congeries of principalities rather than a single political force. The chroniclers in the Russian north sensed that they
•?- somewhat cut off, using the term 'Rus'' primarily for the old jHilllico-cultural center on the Dnieper around Kiev.3
? sense of separation within the domain of the Eastern Slavs had llfeady been suggested by the tenth-century Byzantine distinction between ? u' and 'distant' Rus'; and in the thirteenth century the distinction I •• i ween 'great' Russia in the north and 'little' Russia in the south was gi initially transplanted from Byzantium to Russia. What apparently began in 11 pure description of size eventually became a favored pseudo-imperial di ilgnation in the north. Individual towns like Novgorod and Rostov called llirmselves~**tfe'G?eat.' Details of the life of Alexander the Great-a favorite subject in the epic literature of the East-were blended by the chroniclers of the Russian north into the idealized life of Alexander Nrvsky4-whose victory over the Swedes in 1240 and the Teutonic Knights two years later was followed by a reign as Great Prince of Vladimir. His victorious exploits helped compensate for the simultaneous humiliation at the hands of the Mongols and made him seem no less 'great' than the ruiier Alexander. By the late fifteenth century, Ivan III had brought great-BMI out of legend and into reality, subordinating most of the major cities of ihe Russian north to Moscow. The first grand duke of Muscovy to call himself tsar (Caesar), he also became the first of several imperial con-• |iicTors of modern Russia to be known as 'the Great.'
There was, however, nothing great, or even impressive, about Great Russia in the thirteenth and the early fourteenth century. It must have Mimed highly unlikely that the Eastern Slavs in the bleak Volga-Oka region would in any way recapture-let alone surpass-the glories of the Kievan past. Kiev and the original region of Rus' along the Dnieper had been despoiled by the still-menacing Mongols. The Volga was frozen for much ni ihe year and blocked to the south by Mongol fortresses. Flat terrain and wooden'fortifications offered little natural protection from eastern invaders. Shivic co-religioniststo'the west were preoccupied with other problems. To
IIic northwest, Novgorod had carved out an economic empire of its own and
moved increasingly into the orbit of the expanding Hanseatic League.
Further north, the rugged Finns were being converted to Christianity, not
by Ihe once-active Orthodox missionaries of Novgorod and Ladoga, but by
1 Ik- Westernized Swedes. Directly to the west, the Teutonic and Livonian
knights provided a continuing military threat; while Galicia and Volhynia
IIIthe southwest were drifting into alignment with the Roman Church. Most
of what is now White (or West) Russia was loosely ruled by the Lithuanians,
