Now Playing on X: Mr. Putin’s Historical Fantasy: I’ve studied the obscure field of Early East Slavic history for most of my life.
It’s decidedly unsexy.
There is never a “news hook” for Early East Slavic history. So it was with some surprise that I saw mention of Vladimir Putin’s July 12, 2021, essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” in my news feed. I read it and thought it was daft, but I held my tongue. Who else was going to read it? Then, however, Putin expounded the same wrongheaded ideas in an interview with Tucker Carlson published on X on February 8, 2024, and seen, apparently, by 204 million people. Much of what Putin has to say, particularly about the supposed links between medieval Kyivan Rus’ and modern Russia, is badly informed and tendentious.
Putin presents the case that Muscovy (as sixteenth-century Russia is generally called by historians) was the successor to Kyivan Rus’, the medieval polity on the Dnipro river. He did not invent this line. For centuries, nationalist Russian historians and intellectuals have made the Kyivan Rus’-Muscovy-Russia claim. Like many overblown, self-serving notions, this proposition contains an element of truth. The Muscovite tsars (among them, the infamous Ivan the Terrible) were certainly related by blood to the Rurikid founders of Rus’ (so were thousands of other princes, for that matter).
Moreover, the Muscovites certainly claimed to be the imperial successors to the Kyivan throne, at least when they found themselves in pompous ceremonies (coronations and such) or in sticky political contexts where such a position would be useful (the annexation of left bank Ukraine, for example). But all one has to do to dispel the idea of unmitigated succession from Kyiv to Moscow is to look at a map of Eastern Europe, consider the supposed chronology of succession, and think a bit about what imperial succession might sensibly mean.
Kyiv is located in the south on the Dnipro in the Steppe; Moscow is located far to the north on the Moskva in the forest. These are radically different places. Of course, empires sometimes move from one locale to another. Oddly, Constantine transported the capital of the Roman empire to a Greek city on the Black Sea. But Russian history has no parallel to Constantine. No Kyivan ruler ever decamped to Moscow permanently, nor would he ever have considered doing so—Moscow was too far up the river and too far down the hierarchy of towns for the prideful princes of Kyivan Rus’ to consider making it their capital. As Kyiv declined in the twelfth century, such a migration took place, but it was hardly ever billed as “succession.”
Not only are Kyiv and Moscow two very different places, but they also existed in two very different times: Kyiv flourished in the eleventh century, a time in which Moscow was a muddy outpost on a minor river; Moscow rose to glory in the sixteenth century, a time in which Kyiv was firmly in Lithuanian hands. The point is that a good three centuries transpired—historians sometimes call this the Appanage Period—in which there was no unified East Slavic empire east of Lithuania: not in Kyiv, not in Moscow, not anywhere. Empires do relocate, as the case of Rome demonstrates. But they do not travel through time, disappearing in one period and reappearing in another.
Believing Moscow succeeded Kyiv is a bit like thinking Aachen succeeded Rome in the era of Charlemagne. It was pleasing for the Muscovite tsars to imagine they were latter-day Kyivan grand princes, just as it was pleasing for the Franks to imagine they were latter-day Roman emperors. But both notions were more comforting for the victors than they were in accordance with historical reality.
Moscow did, however, “succeed” something, but that something was more likely Sarai, the seat of a division of the Mongol empire—the Kipchak Khanate (or “Golden Horde,” as it is called in Russian sources)—on the lower Volga. In the era between the fall of Kyivan Rus’ (13th century) and the rise of Muscovy (16th century), the Kipchaks used the Rus’ princes as agents in their imperial endeavor. They often played favorites, turning from one prince to another, turning one prince against another, and turning a tidy profit in the process. But the Muscovites, it turned out, were their most dutiful servants. The Kipchaks repeatedly made them chief tax-subcontractors—thereby making the Muscovites rich—and made them grand princes—thereby making them powerful.
Reading the Muscovite chronicles of the era, one might get the impression that the Kipchaks were ruthless oppressors, bent on martyring Orthodox princes and destroying the Orthodox Church. The truth is otherwise. The Kipchaks patronized the Muscovite princes, in essence entering a mutually beneficial deal with them: the Kipchaks would acknowledge Muscovite authority in Rus’, and the Muscovites would deliver tribute to the Kipchaks. The monks who wrote the chronicles, obviously, could not countenance this duplicity, nor could later historians who perhaps read it between the lines. So it was buried beneath the tale of the “Tatar Yoke,” the Russian nationalist idea that “Russia” was first destroyed and then held in bondage by the Mongols.
Without a third party to enforce it, no deal is really final. In the case of the Kipchaks and Muscovites, the terms of the deal were subject to constant re-negotiation as the balance of power between the two parties changed. Usually, the talks were peaceful and the terms calmly adjusted. Sometimes, however, diplomacy was pursued by other means. This is what happened in 1380 at the battle of Kulikovo Pole (mentioned by Putin) and in 1480 at the Stand on the Ugra River. In the Orthodox Russian chronicles and the nationalistic Russian historiography based on them, these battles are depicted as the first and last moments in the throwing off the hated Tatar Yoke.
Such an interpretation is both self-serving (for the Russians) and highly unlikely (from our point of view). In addition to the fact that there is no primary evidence of any sustained campaign to destroy any Tatar Yoke, such an endeavor would be manifestly against Muscovite interests. The Kipchaks protected and promoted the Muscovite princes, making them powerful regional lords. It is much more reasonable to suggest that in these two instances the Kipchaks and Muscovites failed to reach an agreement peacefully and decided to up the stakes. Of course, full-scale war was very expensive and very disruptive. And you might lose. So the two sides did a lot of posturing, a little fighting, and sat down again to negotiate. In both cases, the Muscovites continued to pay the Tatars tribute.
But Mongol power was definitely waning in the fifteenth century. The charismatic flame of the Jingisids (the ruling line) had been largely extinguished; the Golden Horde had broken into khanates; and the ancient states on the southern rim of Eurasia were reforming and becoming gunpowder empires—the Ottomans, the Safavids, the Moguls, the Ming. In Rus’, it was becoming clear that the Kipchaks could not command the respect they once had. An imperial void was created, one that a series of remarkable Muscovite leaders—Ivan III, Vasilii II, and Ivan IV (“the Terrible”)—were only too happy to fill. Ivan III completed the process of subordinating the Rus’ principalities to Moscow, thereby uniting the northeast Rus’ under one monarch for the first time (not counting, of course, the Mongol khan).
As in the case of the Mongol invasion, this development was radically misrepresented by nationalistic Russian historians relying too heavily on stilted Muscovite clerical accounts. The Muscovites had no desire to be remembered as conquerors of the people they ruled. So they—or rather their monkish publicists—cooked up the story of the “Gathering of the Russian Lands,” a story Putin cites and apparently buys. “Gathering,” of course, is a rather inappropriate word for the coercion of foreign princes into Muscovite “protection.” But the idea was useful, and it remained so in the nineteenth century when all manner of non-Russian territories were being “gathered” and Russified. Hence the “Gathering of the Russian Lands” took its place alongside the Invitation of the Rus’ and the “Tatar Yoke” in the pantheon of hallowed Russian historical myths.
It was around this time that “Russia” drifted into the European orbit. Beginning in the late fifteenth century, European powers began to approach Moscow with proposals of alliance, sometimes against other European states though more frequently against the Ottomans. The Europeans also offered trade. The Muscovites made commercial deals with the English, Dutch and others and began to eye of European trading cities on the Baltic. As they moved into Europe, the Muscovites shed their Eurasian identity and gradually adopted a form of self-presentation that was more in tune with European habits.
In his pronouncements, Putin pays no attention to any of this greater Eurasian context or the Muscovite effort to “Europeanize” its identity. Like the sixteenth century Muscovite ideologues, he wants to erase the Tatar connection, and particularly its importance in the rise of Muscovy. He prefers, as they did, a heritage that permits him to make claims on territories that were decidedly outside the orbit of Moscow. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
About the Author: Marshall Poe
Marshall Poe studied, taught, and wrote about Early East Slavic history for 30 years. He is the author of, among other works, The Russian Moment in World History (Princeton UP, 2003). He is now the founder and editor of The New Books Network.
