Russia under the Old regime

72

nominally at least, they were vassals of the Roman Emperor, and therefore not true sovereigns in the sense in which Moscow understood the term. In 1488 a legate sent by the Emperor Frederick in arrived in Moscow to seek help against the Turk. As an inducement he offered Ivan HI help in obtaining the royal crown. The answer given to this oflfer not only revealed the high opinion the Muscovite prince had of himself, but also, indirectly, what he thought of ordinary European royalty: 'We are, by the grace of God, masters (gosudari) on our land from the very beginning, from our first ancestors, and we have our investiture from God, like our ancestors... And as for investure, as we did not want it before from anyone, so we do not want it now.'18

The Byzantine model reached Russia almost exclusively through the clergy and ecclesiastical literature. Moscow had no direct links with Constantinople, either diplomatic or commercial, and therefore no way of learning from it what a king was or did. The church, for reasons stated above, was much interested in a strong Russian monarchy. It encouraged its ambitions, it helped it formulate a doctrine of absolutism, it devised an elaborate coronation ceremonial. But it is difficult to see how the church could have taught the princes of Moscow the craft of politics.

If we wish to find where Moscow learned about kingship not as an ideal but as a working institution, then we must turn to the Golden Horde. The subject of Mongol influence is a very sensitive one for Russians, who are quick to take offence at the suggestion that their cultural heritage has been shaped in any way by the orient, and especially by the oriental power best remembered for its appalling atrocities and the destruction of great centres of civilization. Still, the issue cannot be skirted; and with a few exceptions, Russian historians have been willing to assign a major and even decisive role in the formation of Muscovite statehood to Mongol influence. The spiritual and moral impact of Mongol rule on Russian politics has been touched upon in the preceding chapter; here we will deal with institutional influences.

The Golden Horde was the first centralized political authority which the Russian princes met face to face. For a century and a half, the khan was the absolute master of their fate. His power and majesty all but erased from memory the image of the Byzantine basileus. The latter was a distant thing, a legend: not one appanage prince had ever set foot in Constantinople; the road to Sarai was only too familiar to them. It was at Sarai that they had an opportunity of observing at close hand the operations of absolute monarchy, of 'authority with which one cannot enter into agreements but must unconditionally obey'.19 Here they learned how to impose taxes on households and commercial transactions, how to conduct diplomatic relations, how to operate a courier service, and how to deal with insubordinate subjects. The Russian vocabulary retains unmistakable traces of this influence. Its word for treasury - kazna - derives from its exact Mongol-Tatar equivalent, and so do the cognate terms designating money and customs (denga and tamozhnia), both of which are adapted from tamga, which under the Mongols meant a government seal placed on merchandise as proof that taxes on it have been paid. The postal service linking Moscow with the provinces (iamskaia sluzhba) was nothing but the Mongol^aw under new management. The Mongol-Tatar influence on the Russian vocabulary of repression has been mentioned previously (p. 57). Most importantly, perhaps, the Russians learned from the Mongols a conception of politics which limited the functions of the state to the collection of tribute (or taxes), maintenance of order, and preservation of security, but was entirely devoid of any sense of responsibility for public well-being.

During the time it served as the Horde's agent in Russia, Moscow had to build up an administrative apparatus geared to that which it served. Given the innate conservatism of political institutions, it is not surprising that much of this structure remained intact even after Muscovy had become a sovereign state. Thus the tribute which the Moscow Great Prince had collected for the khan was not done away with after the Russians emancipated themselves from the Mongols; instead, it became a tax levied on behalf of the Great Prince. Similarly, responsibility for the maintenance of the Mongol courier service was made into an obligation due to the Great Prince.20 In this manner, almost imperceptibly, Moscow took over many Mongol institutions. Because of the economic orientation of the appanage principality out of which the Muscovite state emerged, and the corresponding underdevelopment of political institutions, the Russians naturally tended to borrow from the Mongols that which they themselves lacked, that is central fiscal institutions, communications, and means of repression.

There are some indications that the early tsars viewed themselves as heirs of the Mongol khans. Although under ecclesiastical influence they sometimes alluded to Byzantine precedent, in assuming the imperial title they did not claim they were successors to the Byzantine emperors. V. Savva found that in seeking international recognition for their tsarist or imperial title, the rulers of Russia did not trace their authority back to Byzantium.81 On the other hand, there is no shortage of evidence that they attached critical importance to the conquest of the successor states of the Golden Horde, Kazan and Astrakhan. Already at the time of the final assault on Kazan and Astrakhan, Ivan called them his votchina - a claim which could only have meant that he saw himself as heir to the khan of the Golden Horde. Grigorii Kotoshikhin, an official of the Muscovite Office of Ambassadors who fled to Sweden and there in