2 history post week7

The Mongol Origins of Muscovite Political Institutions Author(s): Donald Ostrowski Source: Slavic Review, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Winter, 1990), pp. 525-542 Published by: Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2500544 . Accessed: 05/08/2011 10:29

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REPRINTED FROM Slavic Review 49, no. 4 (Winter 1990).

ARTICLES

DONALD OSTROWSKI

The Mongol Origins of Muscovite Political Institutions

Sources of the first half of the fourteenth century provide evidence that a sharp rift in institutional continuity occurred in Muscovy. This rift constituted a kind of "punctu- ated equilibrium" in the evolutionary development of the Rus' political system. The political institutional structure inherited from the Vladimir-Suzdal' component of Kievan Rus' ended abruptly, and, concomitantly, a new political structure similar to that of the Kipchak Khanate was established.' I contend in this article that the Mus- covite princes introduced Mongol political and military institutions into Muscovy on a wide scale during the first half of the fourteenth century. The ensuing assimilation, modification, and adaption of these institutions resulted not from the Mongols' imposi- tion of their system, but from the Muscovite princes' deliberate use of the khanate's administrative and military structures as a model for the creation of their own adminis- trative and military structures.

In what follows, I will point out the parallels between Muscovite and Kipchak in- stitutions of the fourteenth century. Acknowledging that the existence of a parallel in- stitution does not in itself automatically signify direct borrowing, I will try to demon- strate that virtually all of the major political and military institutions of fourteenth century Muscovy parallel those of the Kipchak Khanate and that the infrastructure of the Muscovite political and military systems parallels that of the Kipchak Khanate. It is significant that the Muscovite princes made frequent trips to the khanate in a subordi- nate capacity and that their sons (future Muscovite princes) were kept in Sarai by the khans throughout much of their formative years as guarantees of their fathers' good faith. As a result, the grand princes and their sons obtained firsthand knowledge of the administrative structure of the khanate. Only when the Muscovite princes stopped going to the khanate, after the 1430s, did Muscovite institutions begin to be trans- formed along other lines (lines that we might, in part, call pseudo-Byzantine). I will

I would like to thank Daniel Rowland as well as the participants in the 1989 Workshop on Early Russian History at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana for their constructive criticisms. Beatrice Forbes Manz has provided ine helpful bibliographical references. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Edward L. Keenan for making me aware of the complexity of Mongol society. I am, however, solely responsible for my own opinions and the mistakes contained herein.

1. Throughout this article, I will use the contemporary term Kipchak Khlatiate instead of the anach- ronistic Goldent Horde. The latter term, as applied in reference to the Ulus of Djuchi, first appears in Russian sources in the late sixteenth century; see George Vernadsky, The Mongols and Russia, vol. 3, A History of Russia, (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1953), 140; and G. A. Bogatova, "Zolotaia Orda," Rus- skaia rech', no. 1 (1970): 74-75. V. L. Egorov guesses that the term derives from the golden tent of the Kipchak khan at Sarai and entered written sources from the spoken language where it had been maintained for more than two centuries (V. L. Egorov, "Gosudarstvennoe i administrativnoe ustroistvo Zolotoi Ordy," Voprosy istorii, no. 2 (1972): 34). It is more likely that the term is fraught with sixteenth century propagan- distic implications of Muscovy's being conqueror of the central (golden) component of the Mongol Empire, something the Kipchak Khanate never was and, so far as source evidence indicates, never claimed to be.

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argue, as a corollary, that the Muscovite political system bears no such extensive simi- larity with any other political system of the time. I will point out differences between Muscovite institutions and those of Byzantium and of western Europe where applicable.

If these points are accepted, then it seems to me that the burden of proof is on those who would argue that Muscovy developed its own indigenous institutions free of Mongol influence. I must remind the reader that our sources for both the Kipchak Khanate and fourteenth century Muscovy are meager at best.2 Much of what I am argu- ing, therefore, is based on inference, deduction, and a degree of speculation. I believe, nonetheless, that sufficient evidence exists to suggest that we can now consider the pos- sibility that fourteenth century Muscovite government was overwhelmingly influenced by Mongol political institutions and practices.

Among those who argue in favor of Mongol influence on Muscovy, there is no consensus concerning when and how the major part of this influence occurred. The only agreement seems to be that it was late. George Vernadsky asserts that "in certain cases the influence of the Mongol pattern on Muscovy achieved its full effect only after [Muscovite] emancipation from the Mongols," that is, after 1480. Vernadsky calls this phenomenon "influence through delayed action" and observes that it "increased rather than decreased after Russia's emancipation." Vernadsky seems to imply that the car- riers of this Mongol influence were the "throngs of Tatars [who] entered the service of the Moscow rulers."3 Karl Wittfogel accepts this idea of delayed influence and uses the phrases "remote control" and "institutional time bomb" to represent what he views as the Mongol implantation of the despotic concept in Russia, which he sees coming to fruition only later in the sixteenth century.4 This apparent "disjunction in time" prompted Alexander Yanov to ridicule both Wittfogel and Vernadsky for an "explosion of metaphors" that "even in a fantastic novel . . . would seem dubious." 5Yanov's ar- gument about the temporal and spatial differences between the Mongol presence and the perceived institutional outcome would seem to be valid. This unresolved problem of when and how the influence occurred may have contributed to historians' un- willingness to accept the idea of Muscovite institutional borrowing from Sarai.

Jaroslaw Pelenski attempts to avoid the concept of a "disjunction in time." He argues that, while "Muscovite institutional changes and bureaucratic reforms from above were patterned on the Mongol-Turkic model" and that "it was the Golden Horde and her successor states . . . that provided governmental and societal models for Mus- covite Russia," it was specifically by way of the Kazan' Khanate that the "Mongol- Turkic state system" was transmitted to Muscovy in the 1550s.6 Pelenski's argument

2. Our main set of sources for the administrative structure of the khanate is made up of the accounts of Arab travelers who were involved in diplomatic relations between the khanate and the Mamluks. For Mus- covy, we have a handful of documents, the wills of the grand princes, and the chronicles, which report events rather than describe structures.

3. Vernadsky, The Mongols and Russia, 335. See also I. R. [N. S. Trubetskoi] Nasledie Chingis- khana: Vzgliad na russkuiu istoriiu ne s zapada a s vostoka (Berlin: Evraziiskoe izdatel'stvo, 1925), 27.

4. Karl A. Wittfogel, "Russia and the East: A Comparison and Contrast," Slavic Review 22 (De- cember 1963): 635-636; reprinted in The Development of the USSR: An Exchange of Views, ed. Donald W. Treadgold (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964), 331.

5. Alexander Yanov, The Origins of Autocracy: Ivan the Terrible in Russian1 Historv (Berkeley: Uni- versity of California Press, 1981), 101.

6. Jaroslaw Pelenski, "State and Society in Muscovite Russia and the Mongol-Turkic System in the Sixteenth Century," Forschungen zur osteuropdischen Geschichte 27 (1980): 159, 164 n. 26, 165.

Muscovite Political Institutions 527

does not consider the question of why sixteenth century Muscovy, a successful con- queror-state, would give up its own successful state structures to adopt the political system of a state that it had just conquered. Nor does he consider why it was necessary for Muscovy to wait until it had conquered a state to adopt that state's institutions.

Charles Halperin, in contrast, argues that the Muscovite rulers "turned to the Mongol legacy for inspiration" in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries in order to implement "a full-scale administrative bureaucracy" because it was only then that "the unification of the Russian lands created the need for one."7 Halperin men- tions that the institutions borrowed at that time were more characteristic "of the world Mongol Empire of the thirteenth century" but provides no explanation for this charac- teristic. Halperin merely writes, "How Moscow was able to revive some of these com- plex obsolete practices is not known." He goes on to cite Vernadsky's "influence through delayed action" and Wittfogel's "institutional time bomb" explanations.8 Al- though he does not refer to Yanov's objections, Halperin does mention the possibility that these institutions were introduced earlier "without leaving traces in the surviving record." He then concludes that "it is safer" to believe that Muscovite rulers would not have introduced these institutions until they had need for them, that is, when they were unifying the Rus' lands. Such an argument leaves unexplained how the Muscovite rulers were able to borrow institutions that were no longer in existence.

Let us look at the possibility that Mongol institutions influenced Muscovite institu- tions earlier. From 1240 to around 1300, most of Rus' was under the direct administra- tion of the Kipchak Khanate with basqaqs as the main administrators, responsible es- pecially for tax collection and the maintenance of free trade.' We have no clear evidence, either direct or indirect, that the basqaqs influenced the transformation of Rus' institutions during the last half of the thirteenth century. At the same time that Muscovy began to rise to prominence in northern Rus', resident basqaqs were replaced by a daruga who resided in Sarai and who directed the activities of his agent, the grand prince. "

7. Charles J. Halperin, Russia and the Golden Horde: The Mongol Impact on Medieval Russian His- tory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 95.

8. Ibid., 94 and n.24. 9. See, e.g., Gramoty velikogo Novgoroda i Pskova, ed. S. N. Valk (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Akademii

nauk SSSR, 1949), 57. Nasonov argues that, based on the names of settlements derived from "baskak," the basqaqs protected the fur trade along a line that ran from Rostov through laroslavl' to Vologda and then to Ustiug. A. N. Nasonov, Mongoly i Rus' (Istoriia tatarskoi politiki na Rusi) (Moscow and Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1940), 26, 58. See also Janet Martin, Treasure of the Land of Darkness: The Fur Trade and Its Significance for Medieval Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 88. For discussions of the available testimony about basqaqs in Rus', see Halperin, Russia and the Golden Horde, 33-40; and G. A. Fedorov-Davydov, Obshchestvennyi stroi Zolotoi Ordy (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1973), 30-31.

10. I am following here the line of interpretation initiated by I. N. Berezin and subsequently followed by G. S. Sablukov, Nasanov, and Bertold Spuler: I. N. Berezin, Tarkhannye iarlyki Tokhtamysha, Timur- Kutluka i Saadet-Gireia (Kazan': Tipograflia universiteta, 1851), 43 n. 43; I. N. Berezin, "Ocherk vnutren- nego ustroistva Ulusa Dzhuchieva," Trudy Vostochnogo otdeleniia Russkogo arkheologicheskogo ob- shchestva 8 (1864): 452-453; G. S. Sablukov, Ocherk vnutrennego sostoianiia Kipchakskogo Tsarstva (Ka- zan': Tipografiia Kazanskogo universiteta, 1895), 8; Nasonov, Mongoly i Rus', 104-105; Bertold Spuler, Die goldene Horde. Die Mongolen in Russland (Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1943), 303. Istvan Vasary argues that "no functional divergency can be detected between" a basqaq and a daruga: Istvan Vasary, "The Origin of the Institution of Basqaqs, " Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 32, no. 2 (1978): 205. In a previous article, Vasary had stated the similarity less categorically: "Though having the same

528 Slavic Review

At the end of the basqaq system, the Muscovite grand princes began making more frequent trips to Sarai and remained there for extended periods. In the seven years be- tween 1332 and 1339, the chronicles report that Ivan Kalita made five trips to Sarai," which prompted Nasonov to remark that "Kalita spent at least half, probably more, of his reign as grand prince either at the khan's court, on his way to the khan's court, or coming from the khan's court." 12 The chronicles report that Grand Prince Semen trav- eled to Sarai at least five times between 1340 and 1350. Under 1340 and 1354, the chronicles report that "all the princes of Rus' were then at the khan's court." 13

In addition, sons of grand princes, including those who were not from Muscovy, were required to remain at Sarai as guarantees of good faith on the part of their fa- thers ,14 with likely concomitant influence of Mongol court practice on the sons. During the 1380s, for example, Tokhtamysh held as bond the future grand prince Vasilii I, who was in his teens. Possibly influenced by his long sojourn at the khan's court, Vas-

meaning and very similar functions, their spheres of activity do not necessarily overlap in all details"; see Istvan Vasary, "The Golden Horde Term Daruga and Its Survival in Russia," Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 30, no. 2 (1976): 188. Janet Martin has suggested to me that a basqaq may have had a specifically military function that a daruga did not necessarily have. Zimin believes that a popular uprising against Tatar oppression resulted in the elimination of the basqaq system: A. A. Zimin, "Narodnye dvizhe- niia 20-x godov XIV veka i likvidatsiia sistemy baskachestva v severno-vostochnoi Rusi," Izvestiia Akade- mii nauk SSSR. Seriia istorii ifilosofli 9, no. 1 (1952): 61-65. For a discussion of the available evidence about the daruga in Rus', see Vasary, "The Golden Horde Term Daruga, " 187- 197. For a detailed discus- sion of the office in general, which goes beyond the title of her article, see Beatrice Forbes Manz, "The Office of Darugha under Tamerlane," Journal of Turkish Studies 9 (1985): 59-69.

11. On the trip of 1332, see Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei [PSRL], 38 vols. (St. Petersburg/ Petrograd/Leningrad and Moscow: Arkheograficheskaia komissiia and Nauka, 1843-1989) 7:203, 10: 205, 16: col. 68, 20: 179, 23: 104, 24: 116, 25: 170, 26: 112, 28:69, 28:229, and Novgorodskaia pervaia letopis' starshego i mnladshego izvodov [NPL], ed. M. N. Tikhomirov (Moscow and Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1950), 99, 344. On the trip of 1333, see PSRL 10: 206, and NPL, 346. On the trip of 1336, see PSRL 7:204, 10:207, 18:92, 20:179, 25:171, 26:112, 28:69, 28:230, 30:106, and NPL, 347. On the trip of 1338, see PSRL 10:208. On the trip of 1339, see PSRL 7:205, 10:208, 16: col. 70, 18:92, 20:180, 23:105, 24:117, 25:172, 26:113, 28:69, 28:230, 30:106, and NPL, 349. The Kholmogory Chronicle also lists five trips by Ivan Kalita, but the dates differ from those in the other chronicles: PSRL 33:81-82.

12. Nasonov, Mongoly i Rus', I 10. 13. On Prince Semen's trip of 1340, see PSRL 7:206, 10:211, 16: col. 70, 18:93, 20:180, 24:117,

25:172, 26:113-114, 28:70, 28:230, 30:106, and NPL, 351. On his trip of 1342, see PSRL 7:209, 10: 215, 16: col. 73, 18:94, 20: 181, 23: 107, 24: 118, 25: 174, 26: 114, 28:70, 28:231, 30: 107, and NPL, 355. On his trip of 1344, see PSRL 7:209, 10:216, 18:94, 20:184, 23:107, 25:175, 28:71, 28:231, and 30:107. On his trip of 1347, see PSRL 7:215, 10:218, 18:96, 20:185, 23:109, 25:177, 28:72, 28:232, and 30:108. On his trip of 1350, see PSRL 7:215, 10:221, 18:97, 25:178, 30:109. For the entry of 1340 regarding all the princes of Rus', see PSRL 7:206, 10:211, 18:93, 20:180, 23:105, 24:117, 25:172, 28: 70, 28: 230, 30: 106, and NPL, 351. For the entry of 1354, see PSRL 10: 227, 20: 187, 23: 111, 25: 179, 26: 116. 28: 73, 28: 234, 30: 110, and 33: 84. Some chronicles report that all the princes were also at Sarai in 1344: PSRL 25:175, 30:107, and 33:82.

14. Horace Dewey points out that such practice reflects the concept of collective responsibility. Horace W. Dewey, "Russia's Debt to the Mongols in Suretyship and Collective Responsibility (Poruka)," Com- parative Studies in Society and History 30 (April 1988): 253-254. For the available evidence on sons of Rus' princes at Sarai, see M. D. Poluboiarinova, Russkie liudi v Zolotoi Orde (Moscow: Nauka, 1978), 13- 15. Poluboiarinova suggests that some sons were sent by their fathers to defend their interests at the khan's court. See also Paszkiewicz's claim that in 1364 Dmitrii of Suzdal' sent his son Vasilii to Sarai to influence the khan; Henryk Paszkiewicz, The Rise of Moscow's Power, trans. P. S. Falla (Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs, 1983), 347. Neither Poluboiarinova nor Paszkiewicz cites any evidence to support such a conjecture.

Muscovite Political Institutions 529

ilii I, shortly after he became grand prince in 1389, forbade mention of the name of the Byzantine emperor in the service of the Rus' churches and is reputed to have stated, "We have a Church but no Emperor [basileus]." 15 Historians have offered a number of different explanations for why the Muscovites would forbid the name of the Byzantine emperor in the church service.'6 George Ostrogorsky, among others, has argued that Vasilii I was responding to the perception that Emperor Manuel II was a vassal of the Turks and, therefore, could not "maintain his position as head of the hierarchy of Christian rulers." 17 It is more likely that Vasilii, who himself was under the suzerainty of Tokhtamysh, would have been sympathetic to Manuel's position. The mention of the Byzantine emperor's name in the liturgy in place of that of the Kipchak khan could have been one of the changes introduced during the metropolitanate and regency of Aleksei."8 Vasilii may have been merely reinstituting the practice of having the Rus' churchmen pray for the khan as they had agreed to do more than a hundred years earlier. 19

Thus, during the fourteenth century, when the khans of the Kipchak Khanate granted more local control,20 and when the grand princes faced the need to find means to administer the region for which they were responsible, they would naturally adopt and modify institutions that they had seen work so well at Sarai. It is difficult to imag- ine that the Muscovite princes would have adopted the political institutions of Con-

15. Acta patriarchatus Constantinopolitani, 1315-1402, ed. Franz Ritter von Miklosich and Joseph Muller, 2 vols. (Vienna: Karl Gerold, 1860-1862) 2:188-192; Russkaia istorichieskaia biblioteka [RIB], 39 vols. (St. Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad: Arkheograficheskaia komissiia, 1872- 1927). 6 ('1908), Pri- lozhenie, no. 40, cols. 272-274; and John W. Barker, Manuel II Paleologus (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1969), 107- 108.

16. For a survey of these explanations, see Charles J. Halperin, "The Epistle of Patriarch Antonius I to Grand Prince Vasilii I: A New Look," Catnadian-American Slavic Studies 1, no. 4 (1977): 539-541.

17. George Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzacntine State, rev. ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: RLutgers Uni- versity Press, 1969), 553. See also A. A. Vasiliev, "Was Old Russia a Vassal State of Byzantium?" Specu- lum 7 (July 1932): 358-359; Ernest Barker, Social and Political T'hought in Byzantium (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), 195 n. 1.

18. But see John Meyendorff, Byzantium and the Rise of Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 255-256, where he asserts that Metropolitan Kiprian, Aleksei's successor, was the one who initiated this change.

19. See, for example, V. A. Kuchkin, "Skazanie o smerti mitropolita Petra," Trudy Otdela drev- nerusskoi literatury [TODRL] 18 (1962): 77. The iarlvki contained the stipulation to the metropolitans that the Rus' clergy should pray for the well-being of the khans and their families. On the iarlvki, see, M. D. Priselkov, Khanskie iarlyki ruisskim mitropolitam (Petrograd: Nauchnoe delo, 1916), esp. 96-98 for the text of the iarlyk from Khan Mengu-Temir to Metropolitan Kirill; A. P. Grigor'ev, "K rekonstruktsii tekstov Zolotoordynskikh iarlykov XIII-XIV vv.," Istoriografiia i istochnikovedenie istorii strati Azii Afriki 5 (1980): 15-38; M. A. Usmanov, "Termin 'iarlyk' i voprosy klassifikatsii ofitsial'nykh aktov khanstv dzhuchieva ulusa," Aktovoe istochnikovedenie: Sbornik statei (Moscow: Nauka, 1979), 218-244; Nasonov, Mongoly i Rus', 14-15; and Fedorov-Davydov, Obshchestvennyi stroi Zolotoi Ordy, 34-35. The patriarch of Constantinople, Antonios (1389-1397), wrote a letter to Vasilii and scolded him for- his action. An- tonios's letter, which expounds the power of the patriarch as Christ's representative on earth, reflects the growing power of the patriarch in Byzantine affairs during the second half of the fourteenth century. We do not have any evidence about the immediate reaction to Antonios's rebuke. The testimiony is mixed concern- ing which side prevailed at the time. See Meyendorff, Byzanttiumn and the Rise of Russia, 256.

20. Elizabeth Endicott-West has commented on the willingness of the Mongols to rely on local "ex- perts" especially over sedentary populations, rather than try to rule directly themselves: Elizabeth Endicott- West, Mongolian Rule in China: Local Adminiistration in the Yuan Dynasty (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asia Studies, Harvard University: Harvard-Yenching Institute, 1989), 45. See also idem, "Imperial Governance in YQian Times," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Stludies 46, no. 2 (1986): 541-542.

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stantinople, with which they had little familiarity21 or try to revert to the institutions of then defunct Kievan Rus', especially when one considers that there is no mention of Kiev in the sources of that time. If we compare Muscovite political institutions and practices with those of Kiev, we do see a few similarities but also many more differ- ences. In almost every case, similarity in institution or practice-such as a communi- cations system, lateral succession, or collective responsibility-has its origins in steppe institutions and practices. That is, either they were ongoing practices typical of lands influenced by the pre-Mongol steppe nomads 22 or they were introduced into Mus- covy anew but given a significantly different sense according to the difference between Mongol institutions and practices and those of the steppe nomads (for example, iam, poruka, and the office of tysiatskii). While one can see similarities of individual Mus- covite institutions to one or more institutions of western European polities (such as the presence of a hereditary ruler, an army, a treasury, and so forth), and while one might argue that Muscovy was similar enough to other European societies that they found similar solutions to similar problems, I contend that deep similarities can be found only with the Kipchak Khanate. What the Muscovite princes were most familiar with, and what was now part of their own experience, was the government of their overlords, the Mongol khans at Sarai.

In addition to the evidence that tells us Muscovite princes. were familiar with Mongol institutions, we have fourteenth century sources telling us more directly of Muscovite political institutions and practices similar to those at Sarai. In particular, both Muscovy and the khanate set up dual administrative structures typical for other lands under Mongol domination. The major institutions of Muscovite secular admin- istration in the fourteenth century can be seen as direct cognates of those in the Kipchak Khanate (see diagram). In addition, their interrelation within each administra- tive system corresponded as well. 23

The position of dvorskii at the Muscovite court paralleled that of the vizier or major-domo of the khan at Sarai. Our information about the vizier in the Kipchak Khanate is indirect. We have an Islamic source, a Mamluk chancery handbook, that describes the vizier in the Ilkhanate of Persia as being "the true ruler" and further states that "the vizier of the present sultan is the sole authority who directs the financial

21. It is indicative of this relative unfamiliarity that Grand Prince Semen sent a letter to the Byzantine emperor John Kantakouzenos to ask whether he (Semen) understood the concept of the power of the basileus. We know this from Kantakouzenos's reply written in 1347 in which he assures Semen that his understanding was correct. While it does show the grand prince's interest in the power of the basileus, Se- men did not have to send such a letter to the khan since he was at the khan's court frequently and could see for himself: Acta patriarchatus Constantinopolitanii 1: 263-265; RIB 6 (Prilozhenie, no. 5): cols. 25-30. Cher- niavsky judges the grand prince's understanding of the power of the basileus to be "rather vague"; Michael Cherniavsky, "Khan or Basileus: An Aspect of Russian Mediaeval Political Theory," Journal of the History of Ideas 20 (January-March 1959): 74 n. 3; reprinted in The Structure of Russian Histoy: Interpretive Es- says, ed. Michael Cherniavsky (New York: Random House, 1970), 65-79.

22. For discussions of aspects of this influence, see Peter B. Golden, "Imperial Ideology and the Sources of Political Unity amongst the Pre-Cinggisid Nomads of Western Eurasia," Archivum Eurasiae Me- diiAevi 2 (1982): 37-76. See also Halperin, Russia and the Golden Hoorde, 10-20.

23. On dual staffing and duplication of duties as a Mongol innovation, see Endicott-West, Mongolian Rule in China, 14, 16, 44-45. For discussion of the administrative structure of the khanate, see Egorov, "Gosudarstvennoe i administrativnoe ustroistvo," 32-42; and Fedorov-Davydov, Obshchestveninyi stroi Zolotoi Ordy, 89-103. I based my diagram of the administrative structure of the Kipchak Khanate on the one presented by V. L. Egorov, "Zolotaia Orda pered Kulikovskoi bitvoi," Kulikovskaia bitva: Sbornik statei (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), 176.

Kipchak Administrative Structure of the Fourteenth Century

khan

coub vdaruga and basqaqs

foreigntreas ury

4 4qarachi beys | |heads council of state of tiimans

army

heads of regions and towns

Muscovite Administrative Structure of the Fourteenth Century

|grand | prince

prince's tysiatskii cd'iaki court s - _ _ (to 1374) dvr

- - puti (prikazi)

foreign affairs

(boyar duma) volosteli council of state

army

namestniki regions and towns

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sector, administration and dismissal [smesheniem], even the most important matters, as the beklaribek is the sole authority who directs military matters." 24 We can, to a certain extent and with caution, apply a description of the administration of the Ilkhan- ate to the Kipchak Khanate not only because we can suppose a similarity between them but also because we have a contemporary source that says so: "The army and govern- mental apparatus of the rulers of this country [the Kipchak Khanate] is set up just as the Ilkhanate with respect to the number of emirs, the legal prescriptions, and the roles of the officials, but the ulus emirs and the vizier do not have the same administrative pow- ers as there."25 Nonetheless, Schamiloglu argues that the Kipchak Khanate did not have a separate vizier as did the Ilkhanate. He sees the duties of the Ilkhanate vizier being performed by one of the qarachi beys at Sarai.26 For Muscovy we can be rela- tively certain that the dvorskii was a different person from the heads of clans who sat on the council of state. The people who occupied the position during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries seem to have been so unimportant in social rank that their names never appear in the sources.27 The Prikaz bol'shogo dvortsa or chancellery of the grand court eventually replaced the dvorskii in Muscovy.28

One of the Muscovite offices that maintained a pre-Mongol name, the tvsiatskii, was the Muscovite equivalent of the beklaribek, that is, the head of the army and for- eign affairs. Like the beklaribek at Sarai, the Moscow tysiatskii also sat on the council of state, that is, he was the equivalent of being a qarachi bey.29 If the office of tysiatskii in Muscovy was similar in many of its functions to that of the justiciar under Henry II, as has been suggested to me by Vincent Hammond, then it might be possible to argue that the tysiatskii acted as regent while the grand prince was away in Sarai, just as the justiciar acted as regent when Henry II was visiting his domains in Normandy.30 The

24. V. G. Tizengauzen [Tiesenhausen], Sbornik materialov otnosiashchikhsia k istorii Zolotoi Ordy, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: S. G. Stroganov, 1884; rep. ed., Moscow: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1941) 1:249. Schamiloglu pointed out that Safargaliev mistakenly described this passage as referring to the administration of the Kipchak Khanate. Uli Schamiloglu, "The Qara,i Beys of the Later Golden Horde: Notes on the Organization of the Mongol World Empire," Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 4 (1984): 286. See also M. G. Safargaliev, "Raspad Zolotoi ordy," Uchenie zapiski Mordovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta [Sa- ransk] 11 (1960): 68-69.

25. Tizengauzen, Sbornik mnaterialov, 1: 229. 26. Schamiloglu, "The Qara,i Beys," 288-289. 27. Dukhovnye i dogovornye gramoty velikikh i udel'nykh kniazei XIV-XVI vv. [DDG], ed. L. V.

Cherepnin (Moscow and Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1950), no. 5:20; no. 11:31; no. 13:38; no. 17:47, 48; no. 27:71; no. 45:131, 133, 137, 139; no. 56:171, 174; no. 58:181, 185; no. 66:215.

28. A. A. Zimin, "O slozhenii prikaznoi sistemy na Rusi," Doklady i soobshcheniia instituta istorii AN SSSR 3 (1954): 173- 174.

29. I am accepting here Nancy Shields Kollmann's argument that the tysiatskii in Muscovy was dif- ferent from the tysiatskii in Kiev: "the sole sources . . . associate the Moscow thousandman with high power at the grand-princely court, not with urban administration" as was the case in Kiev, and furthermore "fourteenth-century source references more frequently depict the thousandman . . . as a primus inter pares amongst the boiars." Nancy Shields Kollmann, "Tysiatskii," Modertn Encyclopedia of Ruissian and Soviet History [MERSH], ed. Joseph L. Wieczynski, 53 vols. (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International Press, 1976- 1990) 40:130-131. See also Nancy Shields Kollmann, "The Boyar Clan and Court Politics: The Founding of the Muscovite Political System," Cahiers du monde russe et sovietique 23, no. 1 (1982): 12-13.

30. The English justiciar differed most notably from the Muscovite tysiatskii in that the justiciar also had jurisdiction over the exchequer. See Francis West, The Justiciarship in England 1066-1232 (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 45-46. In addition, English kings chose their justiciars from

Muscovite Political Institutions 533

very fact that it is not clear whether the tysiatskii or the dvorskii was in charge when the grand prince was away can be seen as a characteristic of the system of dual administra- tion. The last tysiatskii, Vasilii Vel'iaminov, died in 1374 and was replaced by a bol'shoi namestnik. We do not have direct evidence that the Moscow tysiatskii had a judicial function, but there is evidence that the bol'shoi namestnik did.3"

The qarachi beys, the heads of the four leading clans in the Kipchak Khanate, acted as a council of state in advising and helping to make decisions with the khan.32 A parallel arrangement may have been forming in fourteenth century Muscovy, as is evi- dent in the practice of having four secular signators to important civil documents.33 This council of state evolved in Muscovy into the boyar duma, which by the end of the fourteenth century was not limited to four members. In Muscovy, as in the Kipchak Khanate, the council of state could act to limit the authority of the ruler; it was not merely an extension of the ruler's authority. The Muscovite administrative districts, the volost' and put' have their corresponding equivalents in the tiiman and daruga. The puti, which eventually evolved into the prikazi, were most likely under the control of the dvorskii. 34 While Vernadsky, Howes, and Vasary all assert that the heads of the puti were independent of the dvorskii and reported directly to the grand prince, they do not cite any supporting evidence.35 If the heads of the puti reported directly to the grand prince, then there would seem to be no other major function for the dvorskii than to

nonbaronial ranks whereas the tysiatskii and the beklaribek could be considered the leading "barons" in Muscovy and in the khanate. See S. B. Chrimes, An Initroduction to the Administrative History of Medieval England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1952), 19.

31. See Akty, sobrannye v bibliotekakh i arkhivakh Rossiiskoi imperii Arkheograficheskoi ekspeditsiei Imperatorskoi Akademnii nauk, 4 vols. (St. Petersburg: V tipografii II Otdeleniia Sobstvennoi E. I. V. Kan- tseliarii, 1836) 1: 87-88, no. 115. On the position of bol'shoi namestnik in general, see M. N. Tikhomirov, Srednevekovaia Moskva v XIV-XV vekakh (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1957), 174-176.

32. Schamiloglu, "The Qara, Beys," 283-284. Schamiloglu argues that, according to two Islamic sources, "there existed at the court of the Yuan emperor a 'Great Divan' in which four officials participated in the administration of the state much in the same way as the ulus emirs and the qaraqi beys of the other ?ingisid states" (ibid., 294). No description of this "Great Divan" appears, as Schamiloglu points out, in the official dynastic history, the Yuan shih, possibly because it was compiled at the beginning of the follow- ing dynasty. See Schamiloglu, "The Qara,i Beys," 292-295.

33. As with almost every other claim about fourteenth century Muscovy, our evidence is minimal-in this case, three documents: DDG, no. 2 (dated by the editor to around 1350 or 1351), 11-13; no. 6 (dated by the editor to 1371), 21-22; no. 8 (dated by the editor to around 1375), 24-25. The document from 1350 or 1351 has six signators, but three of them are from the same clan, the Vel'iaminovs (see Kollmann, "The Boyar Clan and Court Politics," 16). Thus, only four "clans" are represented.

34. Vasary, "The Golden Horde Term Daruga," 189, 194. One would also like to ascertain whether there is a connection between the put', on the one hand, and the Chinese administrative offices of tao (cir- cuit) and lu (route), on the other. See Endicott-West, Mongolian Rule in China, 10- 11. On the evolution of the puti, see F. I. Leontovich, "K istorii prava russkikh inorodtsev drevnii mongolo-kalmytskii ili oiratskii ustav vzyskanii (Tsaadzhin-Bichik)," Zapiski Imperatorskogo Novorossiiskogo universiteta 28 (1879): 251-253. For a discussion of the historiography concerning the development of prikazi in Muscovy, see Peter Brown, "Early Modern Russian Bureaucracy: The Evolution of the Chancellery System from Ivan III to Peter the Great 1478-1717" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1978), 4-56.

35. Vernadsky, The Mongols and Russia, 361; Robert Craig Howes, The Testaments of the Grand Princes of Moscow (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967), 85; Vasary, "The Golden Horde Term Daruga, " 193. See also V. 0. Kliuchevskii, Boiarskaia dumna drevnei Rusi, 3rd ed. (Moscow: Sinodal'naia tipografiia, 1902), 101-108, 121-123, and 538-539; and V. 0. Kliuchevskii, Sochineniia, 8 vols. (Moscow: lzdatel'stvo Sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoi literatury, 1956-1959) 6:192- 195.

534 Slavic Review

preside over the treasury, which presumably was the duty of the kaznachei. In my dia- gram, therefore, I have connected the puti to the office of the dvorskii with a dotted line to indicate an even greater degree of tentativeness than exists for the rest of the dia- gram. Mongol chancellery practice dominated in the puti as is evident from the use of such Turkic terms as bumaga, defter, zhikovina, karandash, as well as in the use of scrolls for recording documents.36 In the regalia of the grand prince, the supreme sym- bol of authority, the crown or shapka Monomakha, dates most likely to the beginning of the fourteenth century and, according to A. A. Spitsyn, "has the closest relationship in terms of ornament and technique with items from the Golden Horde." Muscovite diplomatic ceremony reflected Mongol practice until the sixteenth century37 when a pseudo-Byzantine ceremonial practice replaced it.

Other institutions and practices that we can associate with the Mongol system con- tinued into more recent times. The chelom bit'e, a petition, is a direct calque of the Turkic bag ur-, which in turn is a calque of the Chinese k'ou t'ou.38 The petition to the ruler served the important function of providing a means of upward communication of the needs of Muscovite society, and again one can propose that the practice came through the Kipchak Khanate.39 The Mongol-Kipchak system of taxation prevailed, as is evident through such Turkic terms as bakshei (public servant), dengi, kazna, kazna- chei, kostka (a per capita toll tax), tamga (a seal or stamp and a type of customs duty), and tamozhnik (customs official).40 The system of tens for both taxation and military

36. A. P. Grigor'ev has made the point that Turkic served as the intermediary language with Muscovy; A. P. Grigor'ev "Ofitsial'nyi iazyk Zolotoi Ordy XIII-XIV vv.," Tiurkologicheskii sbornik 1977 (Moscow: Nauka, 1981), 81-89. See also Peter B. Golden, "Turkic Calques in Medieval Eastern Slavic," Journal of Turkish Studies 8 (1984): 104- 105. Although other countries used scrolls, such as the English pipe rolls, the general scholarly consensus is that the use of scrolls came to Muscovy from the Tatars; see Brown "Early Modern Russian Bureaucracy," 147, and M. N. Tikhomirov, "Prikaznoe deloproizvodstvo v XVII veke," Rossiiskoe gosudarstvo XV-XVII vekov (Moscow: Nauka, 1973), 358.

37. A. A. Spitsyn, "K voprosu o Monomakhovoi shapke," Zapiski Russkogo arkheologicheskogo obshchestva. Otdelenie russkoi i slavianskoi arkheologii 7, vyp. 1 (1906): 163. See also A. V. Soloviev, "Die Entwicklung der Idee des Staates in den slawischen Monarchien," Corona Regni: Studien iiber die Krone als Symbol des Staates im spdteren Mittalter, ed. Manfred Hellmann (Weimar: Hermann Bohlaus Nachfolger, 1961), 190- 191. Subsequently, in the late fifteenth century, the church co-opted the signifi- cance of the crown by providing a legend of an origin in Byzantium (See Spitsyn, "K voprosu," 162). On diplomatic ceremony, see N. [I.] Veselovskii, "Tatarskoe vliianie na posol'skii tseremonial v moskovskii period russkoi istorii," Otchet o sostoianii i deiatel'nosti Imperatorskogo S. -Peterburgskogo universiteta za 1910 god (St. Petersburg: B. M. Vol'f, 1911), 1- 19. As late as 1504, documentary sources report that Ivan III and his son and coruler, Vasilii, made obeisances in the Tatar manner to ambassadors of the Crimean khan; see Sbornik Imperatorskogo Russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva, vol. 41, Pamiatniki diplomatiche- skikh snoshenii Moskovskogo gosudarstva s Krymskoiu i Kachaiskoiu ordami i s Tuttsiei, vol. 1: 1474- 1505, ed. G. F. Karpov (St. Petersburg: Russkoe istoricheskoe obshchestvo, 1884), 556.

38. Golden, "Turkic Calqiies," 109- 110. 39. According to Dewey, the earliest Rus' document to include the "headbeating" phrase is a

Novgorod birchbark gramota from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century (Dewey, "Russia's Debt," 268 n. 90). This does not necessarily mean that chelom bit'e was first introduced in Novgorod, although it could have been, since Aleksandr Nevskii made several trips to the Mongols. It merely indicates that our earliest evidence of it in Rus' does not predate the Mongol presence.

40. On the relationship of poshlina and dan' to Turkic qaldn and yasaq see H. F. Schurmann, "Mongolian Tributary Practices of the Thirteenth Century," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 19 (De- cember 1956): 352-359; and John Masson Smith, Jr., "Mongol and Nomadic Taxation," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 30 (1970): 46-60, 83. See also various terms connected with commercial enterprise: ba- zar, balagan, bakaleia, barysh, kumach, stakan. For other terms of Turkic-Tatar origin, see Franz Ritter von Miklosich, "Die tiirkische Elemente in den sudost- und osteuropaischen Sprachen (Griechisch, Albanisch, Rumunisch, Bulgarisch, Serbisch, Kleinrussisch, Grossrussisch, Polnisch)," Denkschriften der Kaiser-.

Muscovite Political Institutions 535

purposes also developed in the fourteenth century in Muscovy. The system of posts survived in Muscovy well into the seventeenth century. Gustav Alef rightly points out the Mongol antecedents of this system and its establishment in northern Rus' by the Mongols. V. A. Riasanovsky, among others, argues that the Kievan povoz, not the Mongol system, was the predecessor of the Muscovite system of posts. Against this view, Halperin argues, quite rightly in my opinion, that "[t]he povoz was not in the same universe administratively as the yam," that povoz "merely provided sustenance to traveling officials," and that the term povoz is not attested to in Muscovite sources.4"

In addition, poruka increased during the period of Mongol hegemony. As Horace Dewey and Ann Kleimola point out, although poruka existed in Kievan Rus', it "was far from being the hydra-like institution it was to become in Muscovy."42 Elsewhere, they assert that, by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Muscovy, "a great web of poruka lay over the land."43 They attribute this intensification of poruka to the Mongols who "provided an oriental model of collective responsibility (and suretyship) par excellence." They also suggest that the Mongols inspired the Muscovite form of political poruka "with their punitive forays against rebellious Russian cities,-and their practice of holding members of Russian princely families as hostages."44 Al- though most of our documentary evidence of poruka in Muscovy dates from the late fifteenth century and later, Dewey and Kleimola do allow for the likelihood that un- written poruka existed before then.45

Finally, the entire military and cavalry system of Muscovy was based directly on the Mongol system, including tactics, strategies, formations, weapons, and materiel. Vernadsky has pointed out that during "the Mongol period, . . . the prince's dvor must be considered the cornerstone of the Russian army organization" and that "the dvor was not unlike the ordu of the Chingisid princes."46 The introduction of the office of

lichen Akademnie der Wissenschaften: Philosophisch-historische Classe (Vienna) 34 (1884): 239-338; 35 (1885): 105- 192; 37 (1889): 1-88; 38 (1890): 1-194; and L. Wanstrat, Beitrige zur Charakteristik des russischen Wortschatzes (Leipzig: Markert and Petters, 1933), 63-82, 97-98.

41. Gustav Alef, "The Origin and Early Development of the Muscovite Postal Service," Jahrbiicher fiir Geschichte Osteuropas 15 (March 1967): 4. On the operation of iam under the Yuan dynasty, see P. Olbricht, Das Postwesen in China unter der Mongolenherrschaft im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1954). For a description of it in the Kipchak Khanate, see Spuler, Die goldene Horde, 404-415. Riasanovsky argues for a Kievan origin in V. A. Riasanovsky, "The Influence of Ancient Mongol Culture and Law on Russian Culture and Law," Chinese Social and Political Science Review 20 (January 1937): 529. For Halperin's view, see Halperin, Russia and the Golden Horde, 150 n. 15.

42. Horace W. Dewey and Ann M. Kleimola, "Russian Collective Consciousness: The Kievan Roots," Slavonic and East European Review 62, no. 2 (1984): 189.

43. Horace W. Dewey and Ann M. Kleimola, "Suretyship and Collective Responsibility in Pre-Petrine Russia," Jahrbucher far Geschichte Osteuropas 18 (September 1970): 343. See also Horace W. Dewey, "Political Poruka in Muscovite Rus'," Russian Review 46 (April 1987): 117.

44. Dewey and Kleimola, "Suretyship and Collective Responsibility," 342, 343. 45. The earliest poruchnaia zapis' in east Slavic territory dates to before 1390. Akty, otnosiashchiesia

k istorii iuzhnoi i zapadnoi Rossii, 15 vols. (St. Petersburg: Arkheograficheskaia komissiia, 1863- 1892) 1: 2, no. 2.

46. Vernadsky, The Mongols and Russia, 363. We can consider the term dvor to be the Muscovite equivalent of ordu. See the Nikon Chronicle where ordu is translated by the chronicler as dvor (PSRL, 12:7). After the conquest of Kazan', the chancellery put in charge of that khanate was called until the early seventeenth century the Kazanskii dvorets (or Kazanskii i Meshcherskago dvortsa), not prikaz or izba. M. G. Kurdiumov, "Opisanie aktov, khraniashchikhsia v arkhivakh Imperatorskoi Arkheograficheskoi komissii," Letopis' zaniatii Imperatorskoi Arkheograficheskoi komissii za 1906 god 19:165, no. 50. Other dvortsy in the sixteenth century within the Muscovite government were those of Dmitriev, Nizhnii Novgo-

536 Slavic Review

okol'nichii is especially instructive. We know that in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- turies the okol'nichii had a different function from the one that it developed by the sixteenth century.47 Vernadsky argues that before the sixteenth century it was equiva- lent to the bukaul, that is, quartermaster general in the army of the Kipchak Khanate. We find mention of it in a Smolensk source from 1284 at the time of Grand Prince Fedor.48 Fedor had spent several years at the court of Tuda-Mangu and had married a Mongol princess, possibly the daughter of Mangu-Temir, so his connections with the khanate are well documented. The first mention of an okol'nichii in any Muscovite source, however, may not be until 1350 or 1351.49 Either the term was introduced anew by Grand Prince Semen after his trips to Sarai or he could have borrowed the office from Smolensk or Riazan'. In either case, the Mongol antecedent is the most likely source. Those who would argue that many armies have quartermaster generals would then also have to explain why the Muscovite army was structurally similar to that of the Kipchak Khanate with a highly mobile five-unit formation, why the tactics of the Mus- covite army were similar to those of the Kipchak Khanate, that is, based on a system of both light and heavy cavalry, and why the armor and weapons of the Muscovite army were similar to those of the Kipchak Khanate, including reflex bows and lassos.50 To reject the idea that the Muscovite army was influenced by the army of the Kipchak Khanate, an army that the Rus' princes had observed firsthand as the result both of

rod, Riazan', Tver', and Uglich, each of which at one time had their own courts. See Zimin, "O slozhenii prikaznoi sistemy," 175. For a general discussion of the different uses of the term ordu, see B. P. ludin, "Ordy: Belaia, Siniaia, Seraia, Zolotaia," in Kazakhstan, Sredniaia i Tsentral'naia Aziia v XVI-XVIII vv., ed. B. A. Tulepbaev (Alma Alta: Nauka, 1983), 106- 165. My thanks to Craig Kennedy for pointing out this article to me.

47. Kliuchevskii, Sochineniia 6: 384-385. 48. Vernadsky, The Mongols and Russia, 364-365. See also B. D. Grekov and A. Iu. Iakubovskii,

Zolotaia Orda i ee padenie (Moscow and Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1950), 127. On the ranks in the Kipchak Khanate, see Josef von Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte der goldenen Horde im Kiptschak (Pest: C. A. Hartleben, 1840), 463-516 (esp. 473 on the bukaul), and I. N. Berezin, "Ocherk vnutrennego ustroistva," 439-442. For a correction in one of Berezin's references to the bukaul, see N. I. Veselovskii, "Mnimaia dolzhnost' bukaul'nogo tamgovshchika v imperii Chingiz-khana," Zapiski Vos- tochnogo otdela Ruisskogo arkheologichleskogo obshchestva 24 (1916/17): 201-204. For the Smolensk source, see V. I. Sergeevich, Drevnosti russkogo prava, 3rd ed., 3 vols. (St. Petersburg: M. M. Stasiulevich, 1908- 1911) 1:458. Sergeevich concludes that, because the term also appears in a Riazan' gramota of 1341, this institution was not just Muscovite but "all-Rus"' (1 :459). See also AktN istoricheskie, 5 vols. (St. Petersburg: Arkheograficheskaia komissiia, 1841-1842) 1:2, no. 2.

49. DDG, no. 2:13. The word okolinichii is reconstructed in the text. 50. For a firsthand account of the Mongol army, see John of Plano Carpini, "History of the Mongols,"

in The Mongol Mission. Narratives and Letters of the Franciscan Missionaries in Mongolia and China in the Thirteenth and Folurteenth Centuries, ed. Christopher Dawson (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955), 32-38. On the structure, tactics, and weaponry of the Mongol army, see B. H. Liddell Hart, "Jenghiz Klhan and Sabutai" in Great Captains Unveiled (London and Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1927), 3-34 (excerpts of which appeared as his "Mongol Campaigns" entry in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, 14th ed. [ 1 9291 15: 705-706); Erenzhen Khara-Davan, Chingis-Khan kak polkovodets i ego nasledie: Kul'turno-istoricheskii ocherk Mongol'skoi imnperii XII-XIV veka (Belgrade: published by the author, 1929), 63-93; H. Desmond Martin, "The Mongol Army," Journal of the RoyalAsiatic Society, 1943 (pt. 1/2): 46-85; idem, The Rise of Chingis Khan and His Conquest of North China (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1950), esp., 11-47; Spuler, Die goldene Horde, 373-384; and R. Ernest Dupuy and Trevor N. Dupuy, The Encyclopedia of Militaty History from 3500 B.C. to the Present, rev. ed. (London: Macdonald and Jane's, 1977), 340- 345. On the weaponry of the Muscovite army of the fourteenth century, see A. N. Kirpichnikov, Voennoe delo na Rusi v XIII-XV vv. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1976). For a discussion of the structure and tactics of the Muscovite army in the late fourteenth century, see A. N. Kirpichnikov, Kulikovskaia bitva (Leningrad: Nauka, 1980), 46-61.

Muscovite Political Institutions 537

being defeated in battle and of direct observation at Sarai, would border on the absurd. Yet such arguments appear in the literature and are accepted as legitimate.5'

Not only do all the important political and military institutions and practices of fourteenth century Muscovy, insofar as we are able to determine them, mirror political and military institutions and practices in the Kipchak Khanate, but also the various institutions seem to have a similar relationship to each other within each polity. The grand prince has the same relationship to his subjects as the khan does to his, that is, one based on kinship. The grand prince owned all the property that he controlled as did the khan.S9 In contrast to Kievan Rus', where the landowner took his land with him, in Muscovy when a votchinnik left the service of the grand prince for another prince his property reverted to the grand prince. The grand prince could also grant property as a reward for past service. In contrast to the situation in European feudalism, future ser- vice was not a condition of the grant, nor was any reciprocal obligation required of the ruler. In Mongol, as in Muscovite, society each individual, as a matter of course, owed service to the ruler. One did not need to specify it in a contractual arrangement.53

Beneath the Muscovite ruler, during the course of the fourteenth century, a clan polity formed that was similar to ungu bogol among the Mongols in which each clan's status depended on its relation to the ruling family. As Nancy Shields Kollmann has pointed out, Muscovite genealogies extend no further back than servitors of the four- teenth century. She adds, "Even when an individual's pre-Muscovite ancestors were known, they were not listed, for ancestral service [i.e., in Kievan Rus'] was considered irrelevant to establishing a place in the Muscovite elite." 54 This important point would

51. Kirpichnikov, for example, takes to task those who suggest there might be some connection be- tween the Mongol and Muscovite armies; see A. N. Kirpichnikov, "Fakty, gipotezy i zabluzhdeniia v izuchenii russkoi voennoi istorii XIII-XV vv.," Drevnieishie gosudarstva na territorii SSSR: Materialy i issledovaniia 1984 god (Moscow: Nauka, 1985), 233-234 n. 18. Kirpichnikov resorts to the argument that Muscovy could not have borrowed from the Mongols because such borrowing would contradict the concept of the "heroic struggle of the Russian people with foreign enemies" (ibid., 230 n. 3). Kirpichnikov con- cludes that "neither the Mongol nor other invasions . . . disrupted the development of our fatherland's cul- ture" (ibid., 233 n.31).

52. On kinship relationships as a basis of social status in the Mongol Empire, see Lawrence W. Krader, "Feudalism and the Tatar Polity of the Middle Ages," Comparative Studies in Society and Histor, 1 (October 1958): 86-87. In the sixteenth century the Muscovite grand princes and tsars, under the influence of the church, adopted, at least ostensibly, the Byzantine concept that all the ruler's subjects were his slaves (kholopv, in Russian, and douloi, in Greek). The idea that the grand prince owned the property he controlled has been expressed before; see A. D. Gradovskii, Istoriia mestnogo lupravlenie v Rossii (St. Petersburg: Golovin, 1868), 38.

53. Marc Szeftel, "Aspects of Feudalism in Russian History," in Feudalismn in History, ed. Rushton Coulborn (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1956), 171 n. 6. Krader, "Feudalism and the Tatar Polity," 97. The only exception to this lack of reciprocal contractual arrangements before the reign of Ivan III (that is, before the introduction of pomest'e) is in the Testament of Ivan Kalita where it states that Borisko Vor'kov may keep the village of Bogorodicheskoe as long as he provides service to one of Ivan's sons (DDG, no. 1, second version, 10). Otherwise, grants are unconditional. But see Jerorne Blum, Lord anzd Peasant in Russia. From the Ninth to the Nineteenzth Centuty (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961), 85, where he states that conditional land grants became more frequent during the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- turies. Blum does not cite any evidence to support this assertion.

54. On ungu bogol in the Kipchak Khanate, see Fedorov-Davydov, Obshchestvennyi stroi Zolotoi Ordy, 36-39. To make such a system work, the ruling family had to be willing to intermarry with subordi- nate clans. In 1345, Semen began the practice of marrying members of the grand princely family (in this case, his brother, Ivan Ivanovich) exclusively to members of subordinate and nonprincely clans within Mus- covy (in this case, the Vel'iaminovs) rather than to members of ruling princely families independent of Mus- covy. Kollmann, "The Boyar Clans and Court Politics," 14 n. 67, 15. For the date of this malriage, see PSRL 10:216; 15: pt. 1, col. 56; 24:118; 25:175. On the genealogies, see Nancy Shields Kollmann,

538 Slavic Review

seem to argue against those who see a continuity of secular institutions between Kiev and Muscovy.

Rapidly, the clans in Muscovy, as in the Kipchak Khanate, gained an exclusive lock on the upper positions in the civil and military hierarchy. Such a lock contrasted with the situation in Byzantium where anyone, no matter how lowly born, could rise to a position of power. This clan arrangement also differed significantly from that in Kiev where competing clans and branches of clans, each headed by a prince whose father had been grand prince and each controlling a particular territory, fought for the plum of the grand princely throne. In Muscovy, only the royal family, the Daniilovichi, could rule, as in the Mongol Empire only Chingissids (cagan yasun or white bone) could rule.5 All other Riurikids were excluded from being princes in Moscow. When Fedor Ivanovich died in 1598, it was the end of the Daniilovich line, not of the Riurikid, as is so often asserted.56 The irony is that Daniil Aleksandrovich, the first of the Muscovite line of princes, never ruled as grand prince. Thus, according to the rules of succession that applied in Kievan Rus' as well as in Muscovy at that time, Daniil's descendents should have been excluded automatically from being grand princes. One might imag- ine that the laroslavichi of Tver' would have contested the grand-princely position at least partially on this basis. If they did, the point has been dropped in the Muscovite- edited chronicles. In Byzantium, although dynasties often carried on the succession from father to son, anyone could in theory rise to become emperor as the result of being chosen by the senate, the army, or the citizenry.57

In the Mongol Empire, as in Muscovy, the other clans (qara yasun or black bone) jockeyed for proximity to the ruling family. I contend (although this contention will require detailed elaboration in a further study) that in Muscovy this ungu bogol ar- rangement developed into the mestnichestvo system. As far as I can ascertain, F. I. Leontovich has been the only scholar to argue that mestnichestvo may have derived from the Mongols.58 No one, thus far, has tried to follow up on the similarities that

Kinship and Politics: The Making of the Muscovite Political System, 1345-1547 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987), 27. See also S. B. Veselovskii, Issledovaniia po istorii klassa sluzhilykh zemlevla- del'tsev (Moscow: Nauka, 1969), 465-519.

55. See Martin Dimnik, Mikhail, Prince of Chernigov and Grand Prince of Kiev, 1224-1246 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1981), who delineates the struggles among the Ol'govichi of Chernigov, the Rostislavichi of Smolensk, the Vsevolodovichi of Rostov-Suzdal', and the Iziaslavichi of Galicia-Volynia during the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. As long as one grand prince's son from each generation of each clan could become grand prince and as long as he had male heirs who survived him, that clan was assured of continuing to have a piece of the political pie. Concern about being left out of that system led Iurii Dolgorukii to remark, according to the chronicler, "there is no part in the Rus' land for me and my sons" and to try to recover the Kievan throne from the Mstislavich branch of the Monomachi (PSRL 1: col. 321 and PSRL 2: col. 374; cf. PSRL 9:179). On the Daniilovichi, see Michael Cherniavsky, "Ivan the Terrible and the Iconography of the Kremlin Cathedral of Archangel Michael," Rus- sian History 2, no. 1 (1975): 12-13.

56. See, for example, Richard Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974), 64.

57. Leo I (457-474) had worked as a butcher; Justin I (518-527) had been a swineherd; Phokas (602-610) rose from the rank of centurion; Leo III (717-740) had been a handy man; Michael III the Drunk- ard (842-867) had been a servant; Basil I (866-867) had been a peasant; and Romanos Lekapenos (919-944) was the son of an Armenian peasant and entered Byzantine service as a caulker of ships. See Ren6 Guerdan, Byzantium: Its Triumphs and Tragedies, trans. D. L. B. Hartley (New York: Capricorn, 1962), 31.

58. Leontovich, "K istorii prava russkikh," 262-270. V. A. Riasanovsky disputes Leontovich's con- tention in his "The Influence of Ancient Mongol Culture," 529-530.

Muscovite Political Institutions 539

Leontovich saw between the sources of Muscovite and Mongol system of clan rank- ings. Other historians have argued that mestnichestvo was an indigenous Muscovite institution that did not rise until the late fifteenth or sixteenth century.59 Aithough we do not have extant evidence of the mestnichestvo system before disputes of the late fif- teenth century, logically some kind of ranking system based on genealogy must have been in effect since the early fourteenth century when genealogical relations of non- princely clans began to be tracked. Within the Muscovite clans a lateral system of suc- cession, that is, a nomadic or steppe system, which Muscovy inherited from Kiev, was maintained.60 Thius, mestnichestvo may have represented the fusion of two systems: a Mongol (by way of Sarai) system of ranking among the clans and a pre-Mongol, nomadic (by way of Kiev) system of ranking of individuals within each clan.

The ruling fanmily also maintained lateral succession until Vasilii 11 succeeded his father Vasilii I in 1425 despite having living uncles who were next in line. Although father-son succession had been occurring since 1359 when Dmitrii Donskoi succeeded his father Ivan II, the principle of lateral succession was not breached during that time.6' None of the sons of Ivan II's elder brother, Semen, survived him. The other brother of Semen and Ivan II, Andrei, had died in 1353; thus, the succession was left to Ivan II's eldest surviving son. Since none of the sons of Dmitrii Donskoi's uncle, Se- men, had ruled, Dmitrii's line was the only one with ruling charisma when Dmitrii died in 1389. Dmitrii's younger brother Ivan had died in 1364. The next in line, therefore, was Dmitrii's eldest son, Vasilii. When Vasilii died in 1425, the succession should have gone to his eldest brother, Iurii Dmitrievich; instead, it went to Vasilii's son, Vasilii. A long civil war ensued during which the steppe principle of lateral succession contested with what we can by that time call a Byzantine dynastic principle of vertical succes- sion.62 When Iurii captured Moscow in 1432, he declared himself grand prince. The Mongol khan adjudicated the case in favor of Vasilii II, but apparently the dynastic principle was not the basis of the decision. In Mongol practice any male of the ruling

59. See A. I. Markevich, 0 mestnichestve: Russkaia istoriografiia v otnoshenii k mestnichestvu (Kiev: M. P. Frits, 1879); and idem, Istoriia mestnichestva v rnoskovskom gosudarstve v XV-XVII v. (Odessa: Odesskii, 1888). See also Ann Kleimola, "Status, Place, and Politics: The Rise of Mestnichestvo During the Boiarskoe Pravlenie," Forschtungen zur osteuropdischen Geschichte 27 (1980): 195- 196. Zimin does allow that it may have been developing earlier but then points out the paradox that "in that period when . . . mestnichestvo relations should have been established and developed, i.e., from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries, we have almost no significant traces in the sources"; A. A. Zimin, "Istochniki po istorii mestnichestva v XV-pervoi treti XVI v.," Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik za 1968 g. (Moscow: Nauka, 1970), 110. For a description of how mestnichestvo worked in theory, see Kliuchevskii, Sochinieniia, 2:149-166.

60. Kollmnann, Kinship and Politics, 67-70. For a description of lateral succession among steppe nomads of pre-Kievan times, see L. N. Gumilev, "Udel'no-lestvichnaia sistema u Tiurok v VI-VIII vekakh (K voprosu o rannikh formakh gosudarstvennosti)," Sovetskaia etnografiia, no. 3 (1959): 11-25. In con- trast, the Mongols invoked the principle of the best qualified male of the ruling family (see below n. 63).

61. But see John Fennell, The Crisis of Medieval Russia, 1220-1304 (London: Longman, 1983), where he asserts that lateral succession had ceased by the end of the thirteenth century (162), and that the title of grand prince "only passed from brother to brother when there was no male heir" (164). Elsewhere, he indicates that he considers "the law of lateral succession" to be still in effect as late as 1339 among the laroslavichi of Tver'; John L. I. Fennell, The Emergence of Moscow 1304-1359 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 226.

62. The dynasty of the Paleologi had ruled in Byzantium since 1261 and had followed mainly a father- to-son (and on two occasions a grandfather-to-grandson) line of succession. By 1425, the vertical line of succession had become well established in Byzantium, and the principle most likely had entered Muscovy through the church.

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family was eligible to be chosen ruler.63 In this case, the Nikon Chronicle suggests that Khan Ulug-Mehmed feared an alliance between lurii, the Crimean Tatars, and Lithuania.' Ulug-Mehmed's decision in favor of Vasilii represented the second time a Mongol khan had intervened to violate the steppe principle of lateral succession for the Daniilovichi. The first had occurred in the early fourteenth century when Khan Uzbeg made his brother-in-law Iurii Daniilovich grand prince of Rus', despite the fact that Iurii's father had not been grand prince. The khans had also intervened, on occasion, to declare the prince of Tver' to be the grand prince. So, we could say that as late as the mid-fifteenth century lateral succession was alive but contested in the ruling family. It was brought to an end, in part, by a decision of the Kipchak khan.

Vasilii II's declaration of his son Ivan as coruler in 1449 represented a clear depar- ture from lateral succession within the ruling family itself. Ivan III's succession to the grand-princely throne in 1462, although again not without turmoil, confirmed the abandonment of lateral succession by the ruling family. Vasilii II's elevation of his son to the status of coruler enhanced the ruler's ability to pick his successor. Although Mongol khans had been known to designate their successors, the raising of that desig- nated successor to the position of coruler in Muscovy was an arrangement that was Byzantine, a fact that was made clear when Ivan III adopted the Byzantine ceremony on the elevation of his grandson Dmitrii to coruler status in 1498.65 If the Muscovite rulers did not borrow the concept of corulership from Byzantium, why did they adopt the Byzantine ceremony? One would have to argue that the Muscovite rulers thought up the concept of corulership independently but were unable independently to think up a ceremony to go with it.

Nonetheless, the steppe-nomadic lateral system of succession remained in effect within the nonruling clans of Muscovy at least until 1682 when the mestnichestvo books were burned. The relatively early abandonment of lateral succession made the ruling family stronger; maintaining it may have made the boyar clans weaker. In the Kipchak Khanate, lateral succession within the nonruling clans weakened the power of individual members of the aristocracy. It has been estimated that by the year 131 1, there were more than 1,400 princes in the khanate.66 The bubonic plague, which swept through the steppe in the mid-fourteenth century, pruned this princely tree."7 The resul- tant strengthening of the power of the surviving princes may account for the brief re-

63. Joseph Fletcher calls the Mongol method of selection "the principle of tanistry"; see Joseph Fletcher, "The Mongols: Ecological and Social Perspectives," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 46, no. I (1986): 17: "the succession . . . was supposed to go to the most competent of the eligible heirs. " See also idem, "Turco-Mongolian Monarchic Tradition in the Ottoman Empire," Harvard Ukrainian Studies 3/4, pt. 1 (1979/80): 239-241. Eligibility did not require that one's father have been the khan. The Daniilovichi, probably for practical reasons, never adopted tanistry.

64. PSRL, 12: 15-16. 65. The reigning Byzantine emperor could declare anyone he wanted as coruler; it did not have to be,

though it often was, his son. The most extreme example of this practice may have been when Leo III had his son, who was less than a year old, crowned co-emperor in 719; Theophanes, Chronographia, ed. Karl de Boor, 2 vols. (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1883-1885) 1:401. Coruler status did not necessarily entitle one to automatic succession to the imperial throne, but it helped.

66. Larry Moses and Stephen A. Halkovic, Jr., Introduction to Mongolian History and Clultlure (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985) 86.

67. See William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1976), 132-175, where he attributes the shifting disease balance between Asia and Europe (in particular the spread of plague to Kaffa on the Black Sea from where it traveled to Italy) to the effect the Mongols had on steppe ecology.

Muscovite Political Institutions 541

surgence of the khanate in the early fifteenth century before it broke down into feuding successor states.

The forms of civil and military institutions in fourteenth century Muscovy were overwhelmingly Mongol in origin. They were modified, altered, and transformed through various influences, both internal and external, both by the influence of the church and as a result of changing socio-economic conditions, throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries into the institutions of the seventeenth century with which we are more familiar. If we accept the point that Muscovy was already adopting Mongol institutions in the first half of the fourteenth century, then we do not need to resort to disjunctures in time, delayed actions, or institutional time bombs to explain the influence.

We do not have direct evidence of this introduction. We have no contemporary source that states explictly that a Muscovite institution was based on a Mongol model. Such absence of post facto verification will be solace to those who argue against Mongol influence on Muscovy. Those who argue against Muscovite borrowing of Mongol institutions can cite the cultural anthropological principle that similarity in in- stitutions does not in itself signify borrowing between societies. They might argue, for example, that no one says the Nuer borrowed their inheritance practices from England merely because the two are similar in this regard. The argument is valid to a certain extent. If we were to find, however, that not only Nuer inheritance practices, but also every one of the Nuer's major political and military institutions as well as their inter- relationship paralleled that of England's, and if we also had direct evidence that Nuer leaders made frequent trips (ten in seventeen years) to England as subjects of the En- glish crown, then it would seem obtuse to reject the idea of institutional influence in favor of arguing that similarity of institutions between two societies does not mean cul- tural borrowing.

Those who argue that since they see some similarity in institutions between Mus- covy and western Europe (for example, the dvorskii of Muscovy and the chancellor of the west), Muscovy could not have borrowed its institutions from the Mongols are overlooking the point that we have no evidence during this period that any Muscovite prince, or any prominent Muscovite, traveled to Europe or had any familiarity with western institutions. We do, however, have direct evidence, if we can believe the chronicles, that all the Rus' princes traveled to Sarai. The Rus' princes also went there as subjects, a fact that would explain why they might want to set up their political ad- ministration in imitation of their sovereigns. It is striking, as Janet Martin pointed out to me, that such a similarity of institutional structure shows up in two rather disparate societies-a steppe nomadic society (the khanate) and a sedentary society (Muscovy). Robert Crummey has asked the question in regard to the Mongol conquest: "Why is it intrinsically impossible that conquest by a foreign power be a formative event in a na- tion's history?"68 Likewise, one can ask, if it is acceptable to suggest that Russia may have been influenced from the west, why is it not equally acceptable to suggest that it may have been influenced from the east? Given its location, Russia was in a position that would allow it to choose and adapt over the course of centuries what it needed from both the east and the west.

68. Robert 0. Crummey, "Periodizing 'Feudal' Russian History," in Russian and Eastern European History: Selected Papers from the Second World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies, ed. R. C. Elwood (Berkeley: Berkeley Slavic Specialties, 1984), 29.

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I end with two caveats. First, I want to make it clear that I reject Wittfogel's the- ory that Muscovy acquired "oriental despotism" from the Mongols. As David M. Farquhar and Elizabeth Endicott-West have argued, Yuan rule in China was notably undespotic and the Mongols had no tradition of despotism.69 The major characteristic of the Mongol rule throughout Asia and into Muscovy was decentralization what Beatrice Forbes Manz has called "division and confusion of responsibilities" under Temur.70 In addition, the various Tatar khans had limits on their power within their own realms.7' Similar limits seem to have existed in fourteenth century and fifteenth century Muscovy.

Second, although I may have in places asserted my argument rather strongly, I have done so with the full realization of the tenuousness of any assertion based on sparse source testimony. The late I. F. Stone's observation concerning classical studies applies even more to the study of Muscovy:

Almost every point . . . was engulfed in fierce controversy. Our knowledge re- sembles a giant jigsaw puzzle, many parts of which are forever lost. Scholars of equal eminence are able to fashion from the surviving fragments contradictory re- constructions of a vanished reality. These tend to reflect the preconceptions with which they began.72

While I do not exempt myself from having preconceptions, I do know that I have no vested interest in whether the Mongols influenced Muscovy or not. I have tried to indi- cate at every turn the tentativeness of my conclusions and the sparseness of the source testimony. As A. M. Hocart has remarked in a different context: "Absence of records means nothing: Comparative evidence alone can decide." 73 If someone could construct the same administrative diagram for another country of the time not under Mongol he- gemony, then my argument may be compromised. Also, if someone could show that Egorov's diagram for the administrative structure of the Kipchak Khanate is fundamen- tally incorrect, then I would have to reconsider my argument. Finally, if someone could show through the citation of source evidence (not just his or her opinion, or what other historians have thought or did not think) that my assessment of fourteenth century Mus- covite institutions is incorrect, then my argument could be faulty. Otherwise, the argu- ment should be taken seriously. The forcefulness with which I have expressed the argu- ment rests solely on my belief that this interpretation (speculative though it may be) explains the available evidence (meager as it is) more coherently than any other inter- pretation advanced thus far.

Finally, suggesting that Muscovy may have assimilated and adapted institutions and practices from non-Muscovite societies in no way disparages Muscovy or the ge- nius of its leaders. Instead, it demonstrates the pragmatism of Muscovite leaders who were able to adopt and to modify institutions and practices as needed, and, thus, to triumph over their competitors in northeastern Rus'.

69. David M. Farquhar, "Structure and Function in the Yuan Imperial Government," in China under Mongol Rule, ed. John D. Langlois, Jr. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), 51-55. En- dicott-West, Mongolian Rule in China, 44.

70. Manz, "The Office of Darugha," 64. 71. Edward L. Keenan, "Muscovy and Kazan, 1445-1552: A Study in Steppe Politics" (Ph.D. dis-

sertation, Harvard University, 1965), 84- 114. 72. 1. F. Stone, The Trial of Socrates (Bostoii: Little, Brown, 1988), x. 73. A. M. Hocart, Kings and Councillors: An Essay in the Comparative Anatomy of Human Society,

ed. Rodney Needham (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). 24.