SUMMARY:

Chapter 4 of the history course A New Imperial History of Northern Eurasia covers the period of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that witnessed a new political dynamics in the region. The former isolated polities that had emerged as a result of spontaneous self-organization processes began integrating into complex hierarchical states. Acknowledging the suzerainty of a power outside of the “domestic” political sphere helped to resolve the impasse of rivalry by equals, otherwise unable to legitimately impose domination on their peers. Structurally, the Rous Land did not allow political centralization, as all members of this loose commonwealth enjoyed equal status. However, when the rulers of the northeastern Vladimir principality accepted the status of vassals of the Mongol khan, they found themselves in a superior position vis-à-vis other principalities as “viceroys” of the Mongol empire. The Great Duchy of Lithuania as heir to the western and southern parts of the Rous Land experienced its own crisis of legitimacy when faced with pressure from the colonizing Teutonic Order and conflicting political interests and cultural identities of the territories amalgamated into the Duchy. The crisis was resolved through partial integration with another external great power, the Kingdom of Poland. The greatest military power of the continent, the Mongol empire, began disintegrating just one generation after its triumphant conquests. Its heir in Eastern Europe and West Siberia, the Golden Horde, began falling apart a century later, in the 1360s. With the weakening of its grip over former vassals, a possibility emerged for some of them to secede. However, as Moscow’s prince Dmitry found in the early 1380s to his dismay, the end of suzerainty by the Golden Horde meant the demise of his own authority over other Russian princes, who accepted his seniority only as a plenipotentiary of the khan’s superior authority. Now the Moscow rulers had to resolve a controversial task: to renounce paternalism of the weakened Golden Horde while preserving their status as grand dukes of all Russian principalities granted solely by the authority of the khans of the Golden Horde.