Formation of Muscovy 1300 - 1613, The

Robert O. Crummey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317871996
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Europäische Geschichte

This is a comprehensive account of the rise of the late medieval Russian monarchy with Moscow as its capital, which was to become the territorial core of the Soviet Union. The legacy of the Grand Princes and Tsars of Muscovy -- a tradition of strong governmental authority, the absence of legal corporations, and the requirement that all Russians contribute to the defence of the nation -- has shaped Russia's historical development down to our own time.

CHAPTER ONE

Land and people

This book tells the story of the rise of the late medieval Russian monarchy with Moscow as its capital. It describes the ways in which the princes of Moscow mobilized the natural and human resources of their domains in order to establish their control over north-east Russia and ultimately to claim sovereignty over all Eastern Orthodox Christians of East Slavic language and culture.

Readers of East European ancestry already realize that I am using words which are confusing and charged with emotion. By ‘Russian’, I mean the ancestors of our contemporaries of Great Russian nationality and the territories in which they lived.

In telling our tale, our first task is to describe the resources available to any would-be leader of the Russian lands. In 1304, the prospects for the future political consolidation and economic and social development of north-east Russia looked poor. For one thing, the entire core of the future monarchy suffered from serious natural disabilities.

The Muscovite state arose in far harsher geographical surroundings than the national monarchies of western Europe. The city of Moscow is located at a latitude of 55° 45’, far to the north of London and the cities of the United States and Canada, excluding Alaska. In the English-speaking world, Edinburgh and Glasgow are the only very large cities that lie so far north. Moreover, we must remember, Moscow is situated near the southern border of the late medieval monarchy that bore its name.

In keeping with its location, the Moscow region has a continental climate. The mean temperature in January is – 10.3°C (13.5°F) and, in July 17.8°C (64°F). In the United States, similar conditions can be found in northern Minnesota and the Dakotas: nowhere in Britain are winters so harsh. On the average, in Moscow fewer than 150 days a year are free of frost.¹

All of northern and central Russia is an extension of the north European plain. The landscape is essentially flat; a traveller scarcely notices the upland watersheds north and west of Moscow. At the same time, the countryside around the city is far from monotonous. The terrain is slightly rolling and many rivers, streams and ravines cut through the land.

A mixture of deciduous and evergreen forest makes up the natural vegetation of the Russian heartland. In this zone, the grey forest soil can be farmed although it is not especially fertile. Within the territory of the future Muscovite state, however, one area stands out as a fortunate exception – the Vladimir Opole, a pocket of rich loess-like soil covering more than 4,000 square kilometres. In this region to the east of Moscow emerged the first great political and cultural centre of north-east Russia.²

While the natural blessings of Moscow pale before those of Paris, they are far more promising than the conditions in most other areas of northern Russia. North of the mixed forest zone lies the evergreen forest, the taiga. In this vast area, which, in 1300, served as the hinterland of the city-empire of Novgorod, the climate is even harsher than in Moscow, the growing season is very short and subject to untimely frosts and the soil is acidic and infertile. Throughout history, agriculture has taken second place: the inhabitants of the taiga have lived primarily by exploiting the resources of the forest and its lakes and rivers.

In the historical circumstances of the year 1304, then, the mixed forest zone, the core area of the future Muscovite state, provided the best available conditions for Russian peasant farmers. Admittedly the grasslands to the south were more fertile, but they were controlled by nomad warriors and herdsmen. The mixed forest gave its population shelter from nomadic raids and could be farmed.

As earlier historians delighted in pointing out, the mixed forest zone of north-east Russia has other advantages as well. Rivers criss-cross the Russian plain and, throughout history, have given the inhabitants of the area an easy way to travel and transport goods. Moreover, in pre-modern times, the harshness of the climate served a useful purpose: travel across the plain was easiest in winter when water and land were frozen. By contrast, in the spring melting snow and heavy rain produced the rasputitsa (roadlessness) when movement across the country was virtually impossible.³

For centuries, this harsh land sustained a sparse population. According to the most recent estimate, in 1550 Tsar Ivan IV of Moscow ruled between 6 and 6.5 million subjects. The population of his domain was not evenly distributed. In the relatively fertile lands around Moscow and the rich Vladimir region to the east, the population density was probably about 10 people per square kilometre.⁴. At the other end of the scale, the vast Novgorod lands – all of the far northern and north-western territories of Ivan’s realm – had, in the late fifteenth century, slightly more than half a million inhabitants or less than 2 per square kilometre.⁵ The average population density for all of Ivan IV’s domains was about 4 people per square kilometre – a figure only one-fifth or one-tenth of the average for the more highly developed regions of Western Europe in the same period.⁶

How the population of the Russian lands changed over time is a complex and controversial subject.⁷ Any estimates of the population of the Russian lands before the fifteenth century are, at best, educated guesses. Thus it is very difficult even to assess the impact of crises like the Mongol invasion of 1237–40. In all probability, the invaders caused heavy loss of life in those cities which they besieged and captured. Moreover, Mongol military operations later in the century devastated the exposed eastern most regions of the Russian lands, particularly around the capital, Vladimir.⁸ The overall impact of their conquest, however, may not have been as devastating as earlier generations believed.⁹ In addition, historians agree, the Russian lands soon recovered from the blow: signs of renewed economic and institutional vigour in the early 1300s suggest that the population was again on the rise.

The Black Death changed all that. Striking Russia from the west in 1352, plague devastated the main centres of population, claiming thousands of victims, ranging from the reigning prince of Moscow and the head of the Orthodox Church in Russia to the humblest of men and women. While the surviving Russian sources do not permit even rough statistical estimates of the casualties, the damage in the affected areas may well have equalled the devastation in western Europe where roughly a third of the population perished. Moreover, after its initial onslaught, the Black Death continued to plague the Russian lands for more than a century. Well into the 1400s, regular, severe recurrences of the disease carried off many victims.¹⁰ Which categories of people died remains a controversial subject. Without doubt, the small urban population suffered severe losses. Scholars disagree, however, on the extent to which the disease attacked the scattered rural population.¹¹

From the middle of the fifteenth century until the last decades of the sixteenth, the population of the Russian lands rose steadily.¹² Political conditions provide one of many explanations for the change. For, in precisely the same period, the rulers of Moscow took control of vast territories in the Russian lands and beyond and built a simple, but effective army and administration. With the emergence of a strong monarchy, the population of the core areas of north-east Russia was safer from the ravages of invasion and civil war than ever before.

In the late 1500s and early 1600s, however, a combination of crop failure and famine, disease, military casualties, soaring taxes and domestic unrest led to a severe drop in the population of the central regions of the Muscovite monarchy and, in particular, the Novgorod lands. Some of the losses unquestionably resulted from the flight of peasants who could no longer bear the conditions of life in their old homesteads.¹³ For this reason, the precise nature of the demographic crisis of the late sixteenth century remains unclear.¹⁴ Did it lead to an absolute reduction in the population of the Russian lands or was it instead a painful and disruptive process of shifting much of the population from the old areas of settlement to the newly conquered frontier territories to the east and south? The problem remains to be solved.

Until modern times, the forest dominated the landscape of north-east Russia. Before the sixteenth century, most Russian peasants lived in isolated settlements of between one and four households. In most cases, ‘axe did not meet with axe’: in other words, one hamlet’s fields and meadows had no common borders with its neighbours’. The surrounding forest provided food, fuel, building material and other resources which the peasants used to sustain their simple, self-contained life.¹⁵

Farming provided the peasants with their staple food. In their fields and clearings, they grew two main crops – rye and oats. They made their bread and some other dishes from rye flour while oats fed both men and animals. There were good reasons for their choices. Most of the east Russian lands lay too far north for the cultivation of wheat. Barley was an important crop only in the more remote and primitive northern regions since, in more favourable conditions, rye gave better yields.¹⁶ Unlike their western European counterparts, Russian peasants made little use of pulses, such as peas.¹⁷

Since peasants in Muscovite times had virtually unlimited quantities of land at their disposal, they used extensive methods of cultivation. As late as the sixteenth century, the simple slash-and-burn technique remained widespread.¹⁸ Choosing a promising patch of forest, the peasants cut down the trees, then created a clearing by burning the logs and underbrush. The resulting ash fertilized the soil and, for a time, the new field would give high yields. When the soil began to show signs of exhaustion, the peasants abandoned the clearing and began the process all over again at a new location.

As time passed, the peasants of the more fertile areas of the emerging Muscovite state tended to establish permanent fields which they sowed with grain or left fallow. This development, in turn, led, by the late fifteenth century at the latest, to the rotation of crops – a winter grain, usually rye, a summer grain, most often oats, and fallow. At first irregular, the rotation of crops gradually became somewhat more systematic. At the same time, contemporary documents present a wide variety of patterns of land use, including regular crop rotation followed by long periods of fallow. Moreover, particularly on the estates of the monasteries, the peasants began to cultivate large enclosed fields communally, subdividing them into strips on which individual households could cultivate their share of the common crops.¹⁹ Even after these innovations, it is unclear whether we can legitimately speak of the use of the ‘three-field system’ in sixteenth-century Russian agriculture.²⁰

For one thing, techniques of cultivation remained rudimentary and economical. Most peasants used simple implements – a sokha for ploughing, scythes for cutting hay, and axes. The sokha, a scratch plough – something of a cross between a harrow and a plough – usually had two tines with metal tips. The device was ideally suited to a forest environment where soils are thin. Since the sokha was comparatively light, it could easily be manoeuvred around rocks and stumps. It was also cheap, being easy to make and repair and requiring only one horse to pull it.²¹ On the negative side, the sokha could not cut through very dense soil or thick turf and could not turn the earth over like a modern plough.

In spite of owning cattle and other livestock, moreover, Russian peasants made very limited use of manure as fertilizer. Only on the best-organized large estates – those of the ruling dynasty and the monasteries – were they regularly obliged to do so.²² In other situations the difficulty of transporting manure to scattered and distant fields apparently inhibited the peasants from using it. Yet, without it, more intensive farming was impossible.

As long as the Russian peasants had as much land as they could work using traditional methods, however, they had little reason to make further innovations. Their grain crops yielded a comparatively low return – an average of three or four times the amount of seed sown for rye and a ratio of about three to one for oats.²³ Yet these figures are not significantly lower than the averages for western Europe in the same period....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of maps
• Note on transliteration, dates and sources
• Abbreviations
• Notes on plates
• Preface
• Chapter one Land and people
• Chapter two Moscow and its rivals, 1304–1380
• Chapter three Moscow’s victory, 1380–1462
• Chapter four Building the autocracy, 1462–1533
• Chapter five The Eastern Orthodox Church in Muscovy
• Chapter six The reign of Ivan the Terrible
• Chapter seven The arts and culture
• Chapter eight The Time of Troubles
• Afterword Looking ahead: the seventeenth century
• Select bibliography
• Maps
• Index