Professional historians both create and reflect “popular” historical memory. In doing so, they participate in the elaboration and maintenance of visions and interpretations of the past that are closely connected to national identity and nationalism. These visions, through their omissions and “forgotten” episodes, reflect the politics of national identity and construct the boundaries of the national community. In this sense, historians’ omissions are as important as their discoveries: as this article purports to demonstrate, in Russia specialists in Russian history during the period of the “Tatar Yoke” continue at worst to disregard or at best to utilize only very selectively the research of specialists in Russia on the Golden Horde, which would qualify their sometimes one-sided depictions of the Tatars informed by nationalist fervor or pan-European arrogance with respect to “savage” or “backward” peoples. The research of scholars of oriental studies on the Golden Horde’s economy (international trade, coinage, urbanization), government (administration, bureaucracy, foreign policy, diplomatics), and culture (material, Islamic), needs to be fully integrated into the analysis of Russianists in order to present a balanced and comprehensive view of Rus’-Tatar relations, which has been for the most part prevented by distortions of a nationalist historiography.
Since the eighteenth century Russian historiography has devoted considerable attention to the Golden Horde^[1] and Rus’-Tatar relations.^[2] However, the nature of that attention has certain peculiarities which require analysis. The first Russian historians adopted the conceptual framework of the Rus’ chroniclers, which shaped their attitudes toward the “Tatars,” as these sources called the Mongols. The subsequent development of studies of the Golden Horde by orientalists (vostokovedy) influenced this stance only partially. It is only fairly recently that specialists in Russian history under the Golden Horde have begun to broaden their approach, but they have yet to integrate what orientalists know about the Golden Horde into their narrative of Rus’-Tatar relations. Finally, the definition of Rus’-Tatar interaction remains constrained by tradition and needs to be considerably expanded.
The formative narratives of “Russian” history – Tatishchev,^[3] Karamzin,^[4] Solov’ev^[5] – dealt extensively with the Tatar conquest and the relationship between the Rus’ and their new Tatar overlords. While differing considerably in historical philosophy, sensibility, style, and format, these three historians all relied directly and heavily upon the Rus’ chronicles for their narratives. These chronicles treated the Tatars from an explicitly religious perspective as “infidels,” alien outsiders motivated by Devil who sought only to harm Orthodox Christians. There was no need to seek any other motivation on the part of the Tatars. Nor was there any interest in anything about the Tatars other than their aggressive, violent actions against Rus’. The chroniclers had applied to the Tatars the standard vocabulary of steppe relations of the Kievan period. Rus’-Tatar relations were reduced in large measure to a bloody narrative of Tatar “raids,” and the issue of Tatar conquest, sovereignty, was avoided as much as possible. Evidence of more complex interaction between the East Slavs and the Tatars was de-emphasized.
By paraphrasing or quoting the chronicles, Tatishchev, Karamzin and Solov’ev not only projected this hostile attitude into their historical narratives, but also infused the confessional animosity of the chroniclers toward “pagan” or later Muslim Tatars – which they shared – with more modern national and cultural prejudices against pastoral nomads and “Asiatics.” In fact these Imperial Russian historians were embarrassed, ashamed, that their ancestors, civilized European Christians, had been conquered by such an “inferior” people as the Mongols. For this reason, these historians denied Golden Horde rule any legitimacy. Trips by Riurikid princes to the Horde or to Karakorum to secure approval for their thrones were considered degrading. By and large these historians confined Rus’-Tatar relations to political narrative; the economic consequences of the Tatar invasion and Tatar exploitation were limited to destruction; there was no possibility of cultural influence; social history ignored the Tatars; even borrowing of political institutions was not discussed, since implicitly the Golden Horde had no government or administrative apparatus worth mentioning. The Tatars were little more than an admittedly dangerous band of bandits and robbers. The only arguments made for Tatar influence concerned the supposedly baneful moral consequences for the Russian “people” (narod) of subjugation to the immoral Tatars, namely the acquisition of stereotyped “Asiatic” vices such as servility and duplicity. Such evaluations of Russian national morals were intrinsically connected to the on-going highly politicized and ideological debates on the nature of Russian national character and Russian national identity.
Beginning in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, “Oriental Studies” (vostokovedenie) in the Russian Empire very rapidly made significant contributions to historical understanding of the Golden Horde. Frдn (Fren), Sablukov and Savel’ev studied Golden Horde coins,^[6] Sablukov and Berezin the Horde’s internal structure,^[7] Grigor’ev the iarlyki granted to the Russian Orthodox Church by the khans,^[8] Tereshchenko the archeology of the Volga region.^[9] Tiesenhausen’s translation of excerpts from Arabic and Persian sources about the Golden Horde was of capital importance to Russian historians who did not read oriental languages.^[10] Studies of the successor states of the Golden Horde, Vel’iaminov-Zernov on the Kasimov khanate,^[11] Smirnov on the Crimean khanate, also translated and incorporated Turkic sources.^[12]
Therefore, Russian historians of Rus’-Tatar relations of the late Imperial period had the opportunity to enrich their analysis with the fruits of Oriental studies which showed that the Golden Horde minted coins when the Rus’ principalities and city-states did not, that the Horde had an administrative apparatus and tax structure, that there were cities in the steppe. An Orientalist, N. I. Veselovskii, even suggested that the Tatars had influenced Muscovite diplomatic ceremonial and Russian social customs,^[13] although his arguments for the former were much stronger than for the latter.
This did not happen. Kliuchevskii, the most significant Russian historian of the time, chose to ignore this scholarship entirely. In his thematic “Course of Russian History” he denied any and all Tatar influence on Russian history, and did everything he could to minimize or avoid his own evidence to the contrary.^[14] Presniakov’s detailed narrative of the period partially refuted Kliuchevskii’s position. Even though Presniakov’s focus was on the development of Russian political structures, namely the appanage system, he showed the influence of the Tatars on that process. Presniakov was the first to offer a scholarly evaluation of Horde political strategies and tactics devoid of the pejorative vocabulary of earlier Russian historiography. Nevertheless, to Presniakov, the Golden Horde was still an “alien and strange authority” (chuzhaia i chuzhdaia vlast’), an external factor in Rus’ history despite Tatar sovereignty.^[15] The role assigned to the Tatars in Russian history was not changed even when specialists in Russian history began working with “Tatar” sources, as shown by Priselkov’s classic study of the iarlyki given to the Church by the khans.^[16]
If Kliuchevskii represented the apex of Imperial Russian historiography, it is no wonder that the Tatars were blamed for anything and everything any Russian historian thought wrong with Russian history or contemporary life, from “isolation” from Western Europe, “missing” the Renaissance and Reformation, economic and cultural backwardness, to the seclusion of women.
Guided by the hand of the great Orientalist Bartol’d (Barthold), Russian Oriental studies survived the transition to the Soviet period. Bartol’d’s influence on the study of the Golden Horde consisted less in his publications than in his scholarly attitude toward the worlds of Islam and the steppe, even if he was prone to idealize the Mongol Empire. Vladimirtsov studied Mongol politics and society, formulating the controversial concept of “nomadic feudalism” which was later applied to the Golden Horde.^[17] Especially after World War II and without interruption since 1991, orientalists have significantly enriched historical knowledge of the Golden Horde. The starting point was the synthesis co-authored by Iakubovskii and B. D. Grekov, in which the former wrote the sections on the rise and fall of the Horde, the latter on the Horde and Rus’.^[18] Subsequent studies include the decline of the Golden Horde by Safargaliev,^[19] Horde ethnic and social composition, and cities by Fedorov-Davydov,^[20] Russians who resided in or visited the Horde by Poluboiarinova,^[21] diplomatic relations between the Golden Horde and Egypt by Zakirov,^[22] Mongol administrative practices as embodied in imperial charters by A. P. Grigor’ev and Usmanov,^[23] and the Horde’s historical geography by Egorov, who also produced a popular brochure on the Horde.^[24] Mukhamadiev continued the numismatic researches of Fedorov-Davydov, S. A. Ianina, and others by examining coins from the Volga region.^[25] Eleven of thirteen articles in an anthology on the history of the Golden Horde were authored by scholars from Russia or Tatarstan. Their focus was the Golden Horde as a period in the history of the Tatar “people” (narod), with interesting articles on the term “Tatar,” the multi-ethnic origins of the “Tatar people” and their evolving national consciousness, along with archeological and artistic studies.^[26] Khalikov turned to a regional analysis of Volga Bulgaria.^[27] In a more recent anthology on sources for the study of the Golden Horde and its successor states, ten of the twenty contributors were from Russia, Tatarstan or Mari-el; their articles explored written, archeological, folkloric and ethnographic evidence.^[28] Orientalists continued to study the successor states of the Golden Horde, from the early study of Kazan’ by Khudiakov,^[29] to the latest monumental depiction of the Nogai Horde by the post-Soviet Trepavlov.^[30] Kul’pin has added an ecological perspective on the Horde’s history, although his work is marred by an uncritical reading of Muscovite narrative sources to justify a fanciful interpretation of Mamai’s motives in 1380.^[31] Khafizov’s study of the break-up of the Mongol Empire and the formation of the Golden Horde is largely derivative and rather poorly annotated, but it is still curious for its point-of-view.^[32] From this impressive scholarship specialists in Russian history during the Mongol period would have learned that the Golden Horde was a major state, which conducted sophisticated international relations with Egypt and Iran, which possessed cities, a distinctive, syncretistic material culture, a Muslim religious establishment and high culture. Nevertheless, Egorov complained, Russian historians of Russia have always emphasized only the negative side of Rus’-Tatar relations.
Following in the tradition of N. I. Veselovskii, specialists in the Horde sometimes offered suggestions as to Tatar influence on Russia. Khudiakov had advanced some observations about possible institutional borrowing by Muscovy from Kazan’. The Turcologist Baskakov investigated how many Russian families derived from Turkic progenitors^[33]; although his uncritical reliance on legendary genealogies and late coats-of-arms weakens his arguments, it remains striking how many Russian elite families at least claimed steppe origin, and how expertly they fashioned convincing Turkic names for their “ancestor.” Trepavlov, not surprisingly after 1991, has gone farthest of all, not only drawing conclusions about the contribution of the Nogais to Russia’s upper class,^[34] but also claiming that the Muscovites copied the “dual kingship” of the Mongols,^[35] Mongol notions of “statehood” (gosudarstvennost’)^[36] and the title of “White Khan” (Belyi tsar’).^[37] Kul’pin traces the Muscovite notion that the ruler was owner of all landed property in the state to the Tatars as part of the “heritage” of the Golden Horde. Unfortunately, some of these assertions rest on one-sided interpretations of the nature of Mongol and Golden Horde authority. In a world of their own, Gumilev’s fantastic theories receive far more respectful treatment as scholarship than they deserve.^[38]
By and large, however, Soviet specialists in Russian history during the Tatar period did not, as Egorov observed, progress much further than the hostile and limited perspective of Imperial Russian historiography.^[39] While Soviet historians no longer called the Tatars “barbarians” or “infidels,” their own vocabulary was just as prejudicial; the Tatars were “predators” (zakhvatchiki) and “plunderers” (khishchniki); only a legitimate state could expect tribute, taxes and recruits from its conquered subjects. To be sure, there was significant progress within these narrow confines. Nasonov’s ground-breaking analysis was the first to fully incorporate Horde political narrative into the framework of Rus’-Tatar relations, paying special attention to political divisions in the Horde under Nogai and Mamai, as well as innovatively using toponymic evidence.^[40] Cherepnin continued Presniakov.^[41] Kargalov made use of new archeological data.^[42] I. B. Grekov projected extremely sophisticated political strategies, probably too sophisticated, onto the Horde’s actions at the cost of neglecting the often decentralized nature of the Horde, which made coordinating central policy problematic,^[43] although most Soviet historians acknowledged that some Tatar raids were independent, not state-sponsored, endeavors. A later popular synthetic work by I. B. Grekov and Shakhmagonov does not advance matters much because of its unsubstantiated conclusions and occasional confusion on Horde matters.^[44] A popular pamphlet by Kuchkin, while rejecting some ignorant mass press articles on the Tatar role as devoid of value, is itself professional and informed, but very selective and hence woefully incomplete even as a overview.^[45] Outside of political narrative, Kobrin and Iurganov attributed to the Tatars the model for the transition from free princely servitors to unfree, servile ministeriales. Since the ruler possessed the entire land, there was no concept of private property, so another Tatar political concept also contributed to the development of despotism in Muscovy.^[46]
Post-Soviet scholarship did not rush to revise previous positions.^[47] Kniaz’kii, despite a balanced presentation of the relations between Kievan Rus’ and the steppe, retreated to old and non-Soviet verities concerning the Mongols, concluding that the worst aspect of Tatar rule was not the raids or tribute, but the transformation of the political structure. He quotes Berdiaev and Fedotov to the effect that the Muscovites borrowed Horde administrative institutions (which Kniaz’kii otherwise does not discuss) and accepted Horde immigrants into Muscovite service, that Horde rule altered Russian national psychology, that Ivan IV imitated Chinggis Khan, not Vladimir Monomakh. Although Kniaz’kii devotes much space to refuting Gumilev’s contention that there was a Horde-Rus’ symbiosis, he endorses Gumilev’s conclusions that the Kievan Rus’ and the Muscovites were different “peoples” (narody), and that the Mongols were responsible for the division of the East Slavs (a very old notion Kniaz’kii erroneously thinks insufficiently studied). Thus Kniaz’kii fuses Imperial Russian and йmigrй scholarship on the Horde.^[48]
Krivosheev’s monograph is thematic, not chronological in structure, and self-consciously revisionist in conclusion. He attempts a bi-cultural analysis of Rus’-Mongol relations, paying close attention to Mongol religion, ritual, and notions of honor, which is sometimes productive, for example in analyzing the symbolic nature of tribute or diplomatic ceremonial, but as often flounders since Krivosheev repeatedly insists that the Rus’ failed to understand Mongol ways, as if Polovtsy literally and figuratively could not have “interpreted” for them. Krivosheev acknowledges that Rus’ became a tributary of the Golden Horde, but insists it was not part of the ulus, actually an unresolved question, that the Mongols did not change the Rus’ social and political structure of city-states (lands). Urbanization in fourteenth-century northeast Rus’ proves that the Mongols did not permanently distort the economy, although Horde international trade is not mentioned in this connection. The Mongols were not, in Krivosheev’s opinion, responsible for the development of autocracy in Muscovy, which arose after the overthrow of the Horde’s yoke; the Horde had been only one factor among many influencing Russian politics. Krivosheev’s stimulating monograph is more convincing in approach than in details.^[49]
Chukaeva’s study of the Russian principalities and the Golden Horde has some admirable points. She incorporates Ukrainian-language Imperial, Soviet and post-1991 scholarship into the discussion, recognizes that the terms “Tatar Yoke” and “Golden Horde” are anachronisms, and makes the acute observation that studies of the Golden Horde often turn out to be studies of Horde influence on Russia. She is refreshingly cynical about the motives of princes such as Alexander Nevskii, whom Chukaeva sees as looking only for the best deal for himself, not choosing between “East” and “West.” However, on the whole this slim book is mostly derivative, contrasting the vassalage of the northeastern princes and northwestern city-states with the lesser Mongol influence over Galicia-Volynia, which replaces one national myth with another, deploring the baneful Mongol influence on Russian morals, and attributing Muscovite autocracy to imitation of “eastern despotism.”^[50]
A stimulating anthology from a recent conference of archeologists sheds considerable new light on the question of Rus’ in the thirteenth century. While not rejecting the destructive role of Tatar conquest and raids, its articles find more continuity than previously thought, and less evidence connecting changes in material culture, such as in settlement landscape, to the Tatars. Archeological research is sometimes more balanced than that of many historians on the issue of the Horde because it sticks closer to evidence.^[51]
A. A. Gorskii has departed most from previous Russian scholarship, not so much in his analysis of the influence of the Tatars on the political realignment of the Rus’ territories after the Mongol conquest,^[52] but in his depiction of Muscovite attitudes towards Golden Horde authority.^[53] From Tatishchev on, Russian historiography rejected the legitimacy of Tatar rule and projected that rejection onto the medieval East Slavs. Gorskii argues that the Rus’ recognized Tatar rule as legitimate and assimilated the principles of Chingissid legitimacy according to which only direct male heirs of Chinggis khan could assume the title of “khan.” This is significant, since even recent Russian scholarship sometimes confuses the status of Horde political figures, making Mamai or Edigei “khans” when they were not. Gorskii goes so far as to define a Russian “Chingissid complex” which made opposition to Horde rule psychologically difficult, which may confuse Muscovite propaganda with reality.
On the other hand, Kargalov’s old-fashioned post-Soviet book remains focused exclusively on the “heroic struggle” of the “Russian people (narod)” against the Tatars, although it does provide a superb geographical context for the stand on the Ugra.^[54] The continuing gap between orientalist and Russianist concepts of the Horde is epitomized by the contrast between the contributions of Grekov and Iakubovskii to “Zolotaia orda i ee padenie”; Grekov seems not to have read, let alone appreciated, anything Iakubovskii wrote about the nature of the Horde.
Russian historiography as a whole about Rus’-Tatar relations has yet to fully integrate the results of Russian-language Oriental studies of the Golden Horde. The Golden Horde was a symbiosis of nomadic and sedentary political, social and economic elements, not just a band of greedy, conniving bandits. A bureaucratic administrative apparatus copied from the Muslim world was superimposed on top of a clan-tribal social base. It contained cities engaged in the “silk road” trade from the Far to the Middle East as well as nomads who lived by their herds. This complexity should give Russian historians pause when analyzing Horde political actions before they accept at face value the motives and intentions ascribed to the Horde by partisan medieval chroniclers.
There is, certainly, common ground for reconciling the views of “Russianists” and orientalists. Fedorov-Davydov, for example, fully recognizes that the Mongol conquest was devastating, that the Volga Horde cities were built by slave labor from conquered peoples. He even describes the khan’s power as despotic.^[55] However, “Russianists” by and large continue to revere Pushkin’s observation that the Russians saved Europe from Mongol conquest by inflicting heavy losses on Batu’s forces, whereas most orientalists believe that the death of Kagan Ugedei explains Batu’s return to the steppe.^[56]
At the same time, the problematics of Horde influence on the East Slavs must be expanded to include institutional borrowing, especially of fiscal, administrative, military and even bureaucratic procedures and processes. The nature of the social interaction between the Rus’ and the Tatars can be explored by fresh reading of Slavonic literary works, which suggest a range of intimate familiarity with the steppe, bilingualism, and shared aristocratic ethos that also constitute elements of Rus’-Tatar relations. After Russia had recovered from the catastrophic devastation of the conquest itself, the “Pax Mongolica” definitely benefited new and reviving Volga river cities by fostering eastern trade in the fourteenth century. The degree to which Tatar concepts shaped later Muscovite autocracy, especially in the sixteenth century with the annexation of the Kazan’ and Astrakhan’ khanates, requires considerable additional study and has probably been exaggerated. Ivan IV did not call himself “White Khan,” he only let the Nogais flatter him with that designation. Recent studies emphasize the consensual nature of power in the Mongol Empire and its successor states, including the Golden Horde. If the khan of the Horde did not have absolute, unlimited power, then no ruler could become an arbitrary autocrat by imitating him.
The degree of interest aroused by the topic of Rus’-steppe relations is reflected in a massive, lavishly illustrated double-issue of the journal Rodina from 1997, “Forest and steppe IX – XVI centuries. Unknown pages.”^[57] It contains (approximately) fourteen original articles, all by scholars in Russia and Tatarstan, one translation of a medieval source (Juvaini), two excerpts from previous scholarship (the Imperial Russian church historian Golubinskii and the йmigrй Eurasianist George Vernadsky), an interview of Usmanov by Trepavlov, a map, an Imperial Russian painting, publication of the 1944 Communist Party decree criticizing the Tatar Nauchno-issledovatel’skii institut iazyka, literatury i istorii for ideological errors and nationalism in idealizing the Golden Horde, and a “round table” of seven Russia and Tatarstan scholars, whose tenor is encapsulated by its title: Polemic. Two scholars (including the Orientalist-specialist on Mongolia Gol’man) repeated the traditional view that the Mongol impact on Russia was entirely negative, one insisted it was not negative on the Tatars, and the remaining four (including the “Russianist” A. A. Gorskii) dismissed the question as to whether the Mongol influence was entirely positive or negative as simplistic. The perspectives of the articles were as diverse as the exchange of opinion in the “round table.” The disciplinary reversal of positions of Gol’man and Gorskii is noteworthy but the exception.^[58]
A more recent “virtual round table” on the pages of Ab Imperio suggests the disciplinary divide.^[59] Orientalists criticize the views of specialists in Russian history about the Golden Horde and the Tatars. Usmanov complains that Mongolophobia remains evident in Russian scholarship and dismisses as stupid attempts to reduce the Tatar role in Russian history to all negative or all positive^[60]; Rykin invokes Edward Said on Eurocentrism and cultural imperialism; Kradin notes that although Russian historians admit the Mongols conquered Russia, in textbooks their maps show Russia somehow outside the boundaries of the Mongol Empire, and he describes the polemic over the Tatar Yoke as an “unhealthy hullabaloo” (nezdorovyi azhiotazh). Kradin also invokes the conclusions of the Eurasianists and George Vernadsky on institutional borrowing and derides “Oriental Despotism” as a false model.^[61]
Russian historiography would benefit from a less insular, more multi-disciplinary approach which integrates the orientalists’ understanding of the Golden Horde, its political, social, economic and cultural structures and institutions, into analysis of Horde policies toward its Rus’ subjects.^[62] The obstacles such a reorientation of Russian historiography will encounter may be indicated by Kargalov’s derisive remarks about “apologists” of the Mongol conquest who seek some “benefit” (blago) to the Rus’ from their subordination in the “world empire” of the “chosen genius” Chinggis Khan; the quotation marks are Kargalov’s sarcastic commentary.^[63] The exchange of opinions on the pages of journals and “round tables,” on the other hand, provides some grounds for optimism.