Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus'

Mongol conquest of Eastern Europe
The route of the first Mongol expedition in Russia - 1223
Date 1223, 1236-1240 Location Modern Russia, Ukraine and Belarus Result Decisive Mongol victory resulting in principalities of Kievan State becameing vassals of the Mongol Golden Horde.
Belligerents
Mongol Empire	Vladimir-Suzdal Galicia-Volhynia Novgorod Republic Principality of Ryazan
Commanders and leaders
Batu Khan Mongke Khan Subutai Jebe Burundai Berke Orda Guyuk Khan	Mstislav Mstislavich Yuri II of Vladimir Mstislav III of Kiev Dmitro Daniel of Galicia
Strength
20,000 in 1223 In 1236, More than 35,000 Mongols+More than 40,000 Turkic auxiliaries	80,000 in 1223
Casualties and losses
More than 7,000	About half of the population of Rus with minimum of at least 500,000

The Mongol invasion of Rus' was heralded by the Battle of the Kalka River in 1223 between the Mongolian generals Subutai and Jebe's reconnaissance unit and the combined force of several Rus' princes. After fifteen years of peace, it was followed by Batu Khan's full-scale invasion during 1237 to 1240, facilitated by the breakup of Kievan Rus' in the 12th century. The invasion may have resulted in the death of up to half of the population of Rus though others believe that only around 500,000 were killed. It had incalculable ramifications for the history of Eastern Europe, including the division of the East Slavic people into three separate nations and the rise of the Grand Duchy of Moscow.

Background

As it was undergoing fragmentation, Kievan Rus' was hit by an incredibly violent tit invasion by an irresistible foreign foe coming from the mysterious regions of the Far East. "For our sins", writes the Rus' chronicler of the time, "unknown nations arrived. No one knew their origin or whence they came, or what religion they practiced. That is known only to God, and perhaps to wise men learned in books".

The princes of Rus' first heard of the coming Mongol warriors from the nomadic Cumans. Previously known for pillaging settlers on the frontier, the Cumans now preferred peaceful relations, warning their neighbors: "These terrible strangers have taken our country, and tomorrow they will take yours if you do not come and help us". In response to this call, Mstislav the Bold and Mstislav Romanovich the Old joined forces and set out eastward to meet the invaders - only to be routed in 1223 at the Battle of the Kalka River, a defeat remembered to this day in Russia and Ukraine.

Although this defeat left the Kievan principality at the mercy of invaders, the Mongol forces retreated and did not reappear for thirteen years, during which time the princes of Rus' went on quarreling and fighting as before, until they were startled by a new and much more violent invading force.

Invasion of Batu Khan

Sacking of Suzdal by Batu Khan in February, 1238: a miniature from the sixteenth century chronicle

The vast Mongol hordes of around 35,000 mounted archers, commanded by Batu Khan and Subutai, crossed the Volga River and invaded Volga Bulgaria in the autumn of 1236. It took them a year to extinguish the resistance of the Volga Bulgarians, the Kypchaks and the Alani.

In November 1237, Batu Khan sent his envoys to the court of Yuri II of Vladimir and demanded his submission. A month later, the hordes besieged Ryazan. After six days of bloody battle, the city was totally annihilated. Alarmed by the news, Yuri II sent his sons to detain the invaders, but they were soundly defeated. Having burnt down Kolomna and Moscow, the horde laid siege to Vladimir on February 4, 1238. Three days later, the capital of Vladimir-Suzdal was taken and burnt to the ground. The royal family perished in the fire, while the grand prince hastily retreated northward. Crossing the Volga, he mustered a new army, which was totally exterminated by the Mongols in the Battle of the Sit River on March 4.

Thereupon Batu Khan divided his army into smaller units that spread out, to more effectively cover the vast expanse of the Russian steppe. These invading units proceeded to spread out and lay waste to the country - ransacking fourteen cities of modern-day Russia: Rostov, Uglich, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Kashin, Ksnyatin, Gorodets, Galich, Pereslavl-Zalessky, Yuriev-Polsky, Dmitrov, Volokolamsk, Tver, and Torzhok. The most difficult to take was the small town of Kozelsk, whose boy-prince Vasily, son of Titus, and inhabitants resisted the Mongols for seven weeks, killing 4,000. As the story goes, at the news of the Mongol approach, the whole town of Kitezh with all its inhabitants was submerged into a lake, where, as legend has it, it may be seen to this day. The only major cities to escape destruction were Novgorod and Pskov. Refugees from southern Rus' gravitated mostly to the northeast, in the forest region with poor soils between the northern Volga and Oka Rivers.

In the summer of 1238, Batu Khan devastated the Crimea and subdued Mordovia. In the winter of 1239, he sacked Chernigov and Pereyaslav. After many days of siege, the horde stormed Kiev in December 1240. Despite the fierce resistance of Danylo of Halych, Batu Khan managed to take two of his principal cities, Halych and Volodymyr-Volynskyi. The Mongols then resolved to "reach the ultimate sea", where they could proceed no further, and invaded Hungary and Poland.

The age of the Tatar yoke

See also: List of Tatar and Mongol raids against Rus'.

Prince Michael of Chernigov was passed between fires in accordance with ancient Turco-Mongol tradition. Batu Khan ordered him to prostrate himself before the tablets of Chingis Khan. The Mongols stabbed him to death for his refusal to do obeisance to Chingis Khaan's shrine.

This time the invaders came to stay, and they built for themselves a capital, called Sarai, on the lower Volga. Here the commander of the Golden Horde, as the western section of the Mongol empire was called, fixed his golden headquarters and represented the majesty of his sovereign the grand khan who lived with the Great Horde in the Orkhon Valley of the Amur. Here they had their headquarters and held parts of Rus in subjection for nearly three centuries. All of Russian states submitted to the Mongol rule, including Novgorod, Smolensk, Galich and Pskov.

The term by which this subjection is commonly designated - the Mongol or Tatar yoke - suggests ideas of terrible oppression, but in reality, after the initial extermination of much of the indigenous population, these nomadic invaders from Mongolia - once secure in their position of power - were not such cruel, oppressive taskmasters as is generally supposed. In the first place, they only settled relatively sparsely in the country that they had conquered (Kalmykia is in fact the only place in western Russia where their descendents remain to this day), and they had little direct dealing with the inhabitants - preferring to employ intermediates to rule their empire. In accordance with the admonitions of Genghis to his children and grandchildren, they resisted integration by retaining their pastoral mode of life. This meant however, that as long as sufficient tribute was paid, the subject races (being mostly agriculturists and dwellers in towns) were not disturbed in their ordinary avocations, were generally not attacked and could still farm their land. This was unlike the case in Central Asia where the armies of Genghis Khan purposefully destroyed the region's irrigation systems to prevent future farming.

There are various points that can be made in defense of the Tatar rule, once it was established. In religious matters they were relatively tolerant. When they first attacked Europe, they were Shamanists and, violent as the invasion was, it nonetheless involved no religious fanaticism. Even after they converted to Islam they kept a lot of their original tolerance of other religions' existence, and the khan of the Golden Horde, who first became a Muslim, allowed the Rus to found a Christian bishopric in his capital. Nogai Khan, half a century later married a daughter of the Byzantine emperor, and gave his own daughter in marriage to a Rus prince, Theodor the Black. Some modern Russian historians (most notably, the Soviet era historian and "Neo-Eurasianist" ideologist Lev Gumilev) even postulate there was no invasion at all. According to them, the Rus princes concluded a defensive alliance with the Horde in order to repel attacks of the Teutonic Knights from the west, which may have seemed to the Orthodox Church at the time to pose a much greater threat to Rus Orthodoxy and culture.

So there were some positive features of Tatar rule in Russia. However, even after they had settled down as a tribute-receiving aristocracy, Tatar rule had its violent side too. As long as a great horde of nomads was encamped on the frontier, the country was liable to be repeatedly invaded and pillaged. Fortunately, these invasions were not frequent, when they occurred however, they caused an incalculable amount of death, rapine, devastation and overall suffering. In the intervals, the people had to pay a fixed tribute. At first it was collected in a rough-and-ready fashion by Tatar tax-gatherers, by about 1259 it was regulated by a census of the population, and finally its collection was entrusted to the native princes, so that the people were no longer brought into direct contact with the Tatar officials who controlled them.

The invasion's impact on historical development

There is disagreement among historians as to the scale of slaughter that was involved. The body count of Russian civilians was undoubtedly massive - Mongol practise was often to exterminate the entire population of cities that resisted conquest. Colin McEvedy (Atlas of World Population History, 1978) estimates the population of Russia-in-Europe dropped from 7.5 million prior to the invasion to 7 million afterwards indicating that about half a million people were killed. Other estimates are much higher, ranging up to around half of Russia's population being killed in the invasion.

The influence of the Mongol invasion on the territories of Kievan Rus' was uneven. Centers such as Kiev never recovered from the devastation of the initial attack. The Novgorod Republic (due to its northern location) escaped the invasion however, and new entities, the rival cities of Moscow and Tver, began to flourish in the vacuum left by the Mongol armies. Indeed, Moscow's eventual dominance of northern and eastern Rus was in large part attributable to the Mongols' devastation of the southern part of Russia. After the prince of Tver joined a rebellion against the Mongols 1327, his rival prince Ivan I of Moscow actually joined the Mongols in crushing Tver and devastating its lands. By doing so he eliminated his rival, allowed the Russian Orthodox Church to move its headquarters to Moscow, and was granted the title of Grand prince by the Mongols. As such, the Muscovite prince became the chief intermediary between the Mongol overlords and the Rus lands, which paid further dividends to Moscow's rulers. While the Mongols often raided and pillaged other areas of Rus, they tended to respect the lands controlled by their principal collaborators. This, in turn, attracted nobles and their servants who sought to settle in the relatively secure and peaceful Moscow lands.

Although Russian forces defeated the Golden Horde at the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380, Mongol domination of parts of Rus territories, with the requisite demands of tribute, continued until the Great standing on the Ugra river in 1480.

Certainly, it can be (and often is) argued that without the Mongol destruction of Kievan Rus' that Moscow, and subsequently the Russian Empire, would not have risen as it did. Trade routes with the East came through the Rus lands, making them a center for trade from both worlds. In short, the Mongol invasion, while involving slaughter on an almost unimaginable scale, had a significant long term effect on the rise of modern Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

Influence of the Mongol invasion on Rus' society

Historians have debated the long-term influence of Mongol rule on Rus society. The Mongols have been blamed for the destruction of Kievan Rus', the breakup of the ancient Rus nationality into three components, and the introduction of the concept of "oriental despotism" into Russia. But some historians claim that Kievan Rus' was not a homogeneous political, cultural, or ethnic entity and that the Mongol onslaught merely accelerated fragmentation that had begun before the invasion. Historians also credit the Mongol regime with an important role in the development of Muscovy as a state. Under Mongol occupation, for example, Muscovy developed its mestnichestvo hierarchy, postal road network, census, fiscal system, and military organization.

A significant number of historians consider the oppression of Rus' by the Mongols to be the major cause of what is sometimes called "the East-West gap" - approximately 200 years delay in introducing major social, political and economical reforms and scientific innovations in Russia comparing to Western Europe. Specifically, the isolation from the West may have caused Russia's later non-involvement in the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, and failure to develop a middle class.

The period of Mongol rule over Russia included significant cultural and interpersonal contacts between the Russian and Mongolian ruling classes. By 1450, the Tatar language had become fashionable in the court of the Grand Prince of Moscow, Vasily II, who was accused of excessive love of the Tatars and their speech, and many Russian noblemen adopted Tatar surnames (for example, a member of the Veliamanov family adopted the Turkic name "Aksak" and his descendents were the Aksakovs) Many Russian boyar (noble) families traced their descent from the Mongol or Tatar aristocracy, including Veliaminov-Zernov, Godunov, Arseniev, Bakhmetev, Bulgakov (descendents of Bulgak) and Chaadaev (descendents of Genghis Khan's son Jagatay). In a survey of Russian noble families of the 17th century, over 15% of the Russian noble families had Tatar or Oriental origins.

In the religious sphere, St. Paphnutius of Borovsk was the grandson of a Mongol baskak, or tax collector, while a nephew of khan Bergai of the Golden Horde converted to Christianity and became known as the monk St. Peter Tsarevich of the Horde

In the judicial sphere, under Mongol influence capital punishment, which during the times of Kievan Rus had only been applied to slaves, became widespread and the use of torture became a regular part of criminal procedure. Specific punishments introduced by the Mongols in Moscow included beheading for alleged traitors, branding of thieves (with execution for a third arrest). Penal law in western Europe in the Middle Ages was even harsher, however, than Mongol and Russian law.

The Russian language adopted numerous words from Mongol and Turkish. Such words include dengi (money), kazna (treasury), tamozhnia (customhouse), barysh (profit), and bashmak (shoe).

Successors of the Golden Horde

The Golden Horde was succeeded by the Kazan, Astrakhan, Crimean, and Siberian khanates, as well as the Nogai Horde, all of which were eventually conquered by the expanding Russian Empire.

See also

• Mongol invasion of Volga Bulgaria
• Tatar invasions
• Mongol occupation of Eastern Europe

References

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• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

Sources

Full Collection of Russian Annals, St. Petersburg, 1908 and Moscow, 2001, ISBN 5-94457-011-3.