Russia

The answer was ambition, aggressive individualism, resentments enshrined in family memories, the prevailing sense of honour — familiar enough in western Europe at that time, where they also led to rebellion and civil war. Then in 1113 Vladimir Monomakh became grand prince of Kiev, and the old sense of family solidarity briefly reasserted itself.

Vladimir was born in 1053, a year before the death of Iaroslav, his grandfather. The offspring of Vsevolod of Chernigov and a Byzantine princess, he liked to boast of his toughness and prowess. In his autobiographical testament he wrote that

I [have] captured ten or twenty wild horses with my own hand … Two bison tossed me and my horse on their horns, a stag gored me, an elk trampled me underfoot, another gored me with his horns, a wild boar tore my sword from my thigh, a bear bit my saddle-cloth next to my knee, and another wild beast jumped on to my flank and threw [down] my horse with me … [Yet] God preserved me unharmed. I often fell from my horse, fractured my skull twice, and in my youth injured my arms and legs, not sparing my head or my life. ³³

Vladimir was literate as well as courageous. An heir to both the Slavonic tradition of Russia and the Greek tradition of Byzantium, it was in his reign that Slavonic replaced Greek on his official seal. Yet he treasured his Roman-Byzantine heritage too, having frescos painted in Santa Sophia depicting an emperor presiding over games in the hippodrome. Vladimir sponsored public works, building a bridge over the Dnieper and erecting Kiev’s ‘Golden Gate’, celebrated in one of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition; and he was also a loyal and generous son of the Church.

The Church in return was his staunch supporter. Though its head, the Metropolitan, was appointed by the Patriarch of Constantinople and was, as yet, usually a Greek rather than a Russian, the Grand Prince’s wishes on ecclesiastical appointments were heeded. The Church also provided a major source of political advice and administrative skill for him to draw on. The reinterment of Boris and Gleb — in effect their canonization - took place in 1115, the centenary of their murder, and must have been the fruit of deep discussion between Vladimir and his ecclesiastics. Vladimir and his son Oleg attended the ceremony, which was clearly intended to bolster their legitimacy. They were, after all, blood relatives of the infant martyrs (albeit also of their murderer).

When Oleg died, however, it proved impossible to keep the state together. The solidarity of the Riurikid clan on which the first Russian state, Kievan Rus, had been built was crumbling, and the descent into ruin became steadily faster. In large part this was because the narrow interests of each patrimonial principality began to outweigh consideration of the general good, and because of the bickering of the various princes. But secular changes were also important.

Between the years 1000 and 1200 Russia’s population is reckoned to have doubled. ³⁴ At the same time its centre of gravity, both demographic and economic, had begun to move north from Kiev. Novgorod was expanding into the vast, rich hunting grounds of Perm, and by the end of the century it was extracting tribute from native peoples in the Urals. Yet the chief beneficiary of the demographic change was not Novgorod but the new city of Vladimir, which ruled over the east-central region known as Suzdalia. By 1200 even the proud princes of the south looked up to the Prince of Vladimir as first among equals. ³⁵ Long important for the access it gave to the Caspian and the Orient, the mid-Volga valley had become a major source not only of food but also of furs, honey and other commercial products. And its population had been multiplying, both by natural increase and through immigration. It was coming to be seen as a land of opportunity, and it was also safer from predatory raiders than some districts further south.

These demographic changes led to some towns losing importance and the appearance of new ones: Iurev-Polskii, Dmitrov, Moscow. The prince most associated with developing and exploiting this trend was Monomakh’s son, Prince Iurii Dolgorukii (‘Long-Arm’) of Rostov and Suzdal. He invested in Vladimir, fortified the little commercial settlement of Moscow, and in 1155 ascended to the throne of Kiev. He died two years later, but his successor as prince of Vladimir was the doughty Andrei Bogoliubskii. Andrei was both a great builder (his Church of the Intercession on the river Nerl bids fair to being the most perfect in all Christendom) and a competitor for the throne of the Grand Prince in Kiev. He actually captured and plundered Kiev in 1169, though he could not hold it. For the moment the rival clans of the south, of Volhynia and Pereiaslav, held Kiev, but they enjoyed only a nominal pre-eminence. Kiev had lost the control of Russia it had exerted a century earlier.