Translated material
Lord of Ashes
In the summer of 6751, Grand Duke Yaroslav went to the Tatars to visit Batyev, and sent his son Kostyantin to Kanovi; Baty almost honored Yaroslav the Great and his men, and let him go, and the rivers to him: “Yaroslav, be the oldest prince in the Russian language”; Yaroslav returned to his land with great honor."
This is from the Laurentian Chronicle - a record from 1243, marking the actual beginning of what we used to call the "Tatar-Mongol yoke." That is, vassal dependence of the north-eastern Russian lands on the Golden Horde with the obligatory payment of regular tribute - “exit”, as they said then, tracing the Turkic “chekish”.
In essence, the above paragraph names the essence of the phenomenon, known to everyone from school. It is unlikely that anything fundamental could be added to it, to this essence - what is interesting here, however, are the nuances, which in their multitude not only color the picture, but also lead to all sorts of meaningful reflections - allowing us to try on that old drama on the patterns of the present common sense.
So, let's begin. Let's start with the date. 1243, after all - five years have passed since Batu’s destruction of the Vladimir-Suzdal Grand Duchy in December 1237 - April 1238. During this time, there were practically no serious contacts with the Mongols. In 1239, however, the nomads carried out a raid on Murom, Nizhny Novgorod and nearby Ryazan lands, i.e. to areas not affected by last year's devastation. In the autumn of the next year, 1240, Batu invaded the southern Russian lands with his main forces - that campaign, as is known, smoothly developed into a European invasion and ended in the spring of 1242, but did not affect the North-East at all. The Vladimir-Suzdal system of principalities remained all this five years left to its own devices - healing wounds, restoring governance, trying to return the fled residents to their former places of settlement. During these years, she, of course, did not pay any tribute to the Mongols - because there was nothing to pay, and there was no one, by and large. The survivors of the pogrom fled in all directions: others even reached Saxony.
Pereyaslavl Prince Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, who became the legitimate ruler of all this ashes after the death of his brother Yuri in the Battle of the City River, was then already middle-aged (over 40) and a very sophisticated politician. His “record” included a rebellion against his brother and the taking away of his ancestral Chernigov from Mikhail Vsevolodovich (the same one who would die in the Horde in 1245 and would be canonized by the church for this). In general, by the end of the 30s, this man was an active participant in various kinds of adventures in the south of Rus', where he usually acted as an ally of Daniil Galitsky, whose wife’s sister he was married to. Batu's invasion of the North-East found him in Kyiv. Obeying the orders of his brother, who was trying to unite the forces of his vassals in the camp on the City, he moved to the North - but very slowly. On the way, he stopped in Novgorod, where he had previously reigned several times with varying degrees of success - this, however, was quite logical, since it was Novgorod that could provide the most significant military contingents. However, before his mission brought any noticeable success, it was all over: the Russian camp was destroyed by an unexpected blow from Burundai, Prince Yuri was killed, and the Mongols, having taken Torzhok, subject to Novgorod, moved back. Now there was no one to fight with, and there was nothing for it. All that remained was to edit.
Which, however, was no easier. The defeat was terrible: only the Novgorod possessions remained untouched (except for Torzhok), Murom, Nizhny Novgorod (their turn, as we know, will come a year later), and ancient Rostov, which somehow managed to capitulate on honorable terms and, thereby, saved himself from the fire. The rest lay in ruins and ashes - most of the urban population, including artisans, builders and merchants, were slaughtered or driven into slavery. Many cities will then make up for these losses for several centuries, while others will never reach the level of development of the beginning of the 12th century. Northeastern, “Zalesskaya” Rus', which was once created by immigrants from the south fleeing nomadic raids, not only did not know anything like this - but was generally not accustomed to considering nomads a real danger. And here it is...
It was necessary to carry out spring sowing, bury decaying corpses, restore fortifications and churches. But first it was necessary to understand the meaning of what happened - whether it was a one-time episode, or whether the Mongols were now serious and for a long time. The Murom raid of 1239 apparently provided the answer to this question.
What, besides administrative and restoration work, did this, still the most powerful Russian prince, do in the two-year interval between the two Mongol invasions - 1237 and 1240? Lived in silence, focusing on domestic politics? Strengthened the defense of your region? Or, as a nominal Kyiv prince, did he try to put together a united anti-Mongol front of Russian princes? Whatever the case! Having married his eldest son Alexander (after two and a half centuries (!), nicknamed Nevsky) to the Polotsk princess, Yaroslav made a victorious campaign against Polotsk and Smolensk, ruining these cities untouched by the Mongols and annexing them to his territory. Returning from there “ with many people, with great honor ,” in the fall of 1239, together with Daniil Galitsky, Yaroslav carried out a masterly two-step that undermined the power of Mikhail of Chernigov, who had previously concentrated in his hands power over almost all of southern Russia. Mikhail himself was then sitting in Kyiv, abandoned by Yaroslav, while his son, Rostislav Mikhailovich, reigned in Galich, which had been taken from Daniil. The Mongols were at the threshold - having wiped out the ancient Pereyaslavl South from the face of the Earth in the spring, in early October, an insignificant detachment by Mongolian standards took the city of Chernigov - this ancient Russian center would reach its former size and former population only by the 18th century. Parliamentarians were sent to Kyiv with a proposal to surrender, whom Mikhail executed - and after that he no longer dared to leave the city, however, sending his family to the “rear” Kamenets. What happened next was like something out of a detective novel: the Lithuanian princes allied with Daniil lure Rostislav and his Galician squad out of Galich. Daniel himself and his army make a 250-kilometer (where are the Mongols!) transition in three days and captures Galich. At about the same time, Yaroslav’s troops, having gone 500 kilometers deep into the Kyiv land, took Kamenets, capturing Mikhail’s family. At the same time, all communications between Kiev and Volyn are blocked. The result of such a large-scale operation is magnificent: Rostislav disbands his troops and flees to Hungary. A little later, at the beginning of 1240, his father fled there too, leaving Kyiv to the mercy of fate. Having become the de facto ruler of all southern Rus', Daniil Galitsky also does not stay in Kyiv: having transferred power to a certain local boyar Dmitry, he leaves for his Galich, and then, when the Mongols approach, he flees to Poland.
This same Dmitry, by the way, later led the hopelessly desperate defense of Kyiv, abandoned by the princes. For two and a half months, the inhabitants of the city with a population of fifty thousand resisted an army of more than one hundred thousand nomads. Having slaughtered almost everyone after a two-day assault, the Mongols, however, spared the wounded Dmitry, amazed by his courage: he became an honorary prisoner of Batu and even allegedly advised the latter during the preparations for the campaign against Hungary. In Kyiv, according to the testimony of the Italian Giovanni Carpini, who visited the city in 1245-1246, there were no more than two hundred inhabited houses left.
Thus, Yaroslav Vsevolodovich and other leaders of the Russian lands lived a rich and interesting life between the two waves of Batu’s invasion. Then a new fiery tornado followed, and then, when everything calmed down, in December 1242, Yaroslav received an urgent invitation from the khan to his headquarters - in order to put relations on a long-term basis.
Here too you should be careful. For the invitation did not come from Batu. He was sent by the Great Khan, the supreme head of the vast Mongol empire, who ruled from his new capital: distant Karakorum. Yaroslav was called exactly there, in the heart of what is now the Xiangjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. However, in 1243 he went specifically to Batu. Why? Apparently, because he felt the presence of uneasy relations between the two centers of Mongol power - the process of collapse of Genghis Khan’s empire was just beginning, but the tangled tangle of contradictions between the descendants of the “king” was already noticeable then to any experienced politician. In general, it was necessary to walk along the razor's edge: to establish loyal relations with the nearby overlord, without angering the distant thunderer. And so it happened: in response to the homage, Batu granted Yaroslav the “Kyiv table”, i.e. supremacy over all the princes of conquered Rus'. Moreover, the further movements of Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, reflected in the chronicles, clearly indicate that Batu included him in his political solitaire as a second-row player.
So, having returned to Vladimir (and not to the granted Kyiv!) in the middle of 1243, a year and a half later he repeated the trip to Batu - this time at the head of a delegation, which consisted of almost all the princes of North-Eastern Rus': Yaroslav's brothers and nephews . This, apparently, was the final solemn chord of establishing dependence, for, as the chronicle says: “in the summer of 6754 <…> Grand Duke Yaroslav Vsevolodovich <…> began to give tribute to the Golden Horde”
At the end of 1245, the princes returned to Rus', only Yaroslav went further - to Karakorum, where the elections of the new Great Khan were to take place. Of course, Yaroslav did not have the right to vote, but Batu considered him a completely acceptable representative of his ulus. He himself, however, did not go to the elections, saying he was ill - apparently considering the chances of his protege for the throne to be insignificant, and his presence at the kurultai as life-threatening. Apparently, he was right: Batu’s enemy, the Great Khan Guyuk, “did not show honor to the prince” - just as he did not show it to other rulers of similar status who arrived in Karakorum: the Seljuk Sultan Kilij-Arslan IV, King David V of Georgia, to the Armenian prince Sambat, etc., it is believed that during one of the dinners given by Guyuk’s mother, Yaroslav was poisoned and died among the Kazakh steppes on September 30, 1246. In the language of Mongol diplomacy, this was a warning to Batu. He listened and showed emphatic loyalty for several years: Yaroslav’s heirs - Andrei and Alexander - went to get the label not from him, but straight to Karakorum. And only in 1252, when Batu’s protege Mengke finally ascended to the Khan’s throne, Batu’s other faithful servant, Alexander Yaroslavich, felt that his time had come: with the help of Mongol troops, he overthrew his brother from the Vladimir table and brought a number of cities to submission. , who rebelled against the Khan's Baskaks, flooded Veliky Novgorod with blood, who opposed the census carried out by the Mongols. But this is another story - the story of the Holy Blessed Prince Alexander Nevsky, the savior and protector of the Russian Land.