Russian History: A Very Short Introduction

In the late 15th and the 16th centuries, the Muscovite state assumed a durable form, which it bequeathed to the Russian Empire. Eurasia was undergoing major upheavals, as the dominant horse-borne steppe overlordships finally yielded to firearms-bearing empires: Ching, Safavid, Mughal, Ottoman, and Muscovite. The Golden Horde had long ago broken up into various smaller khanates, which themselves had little control over raiding Tatar, Nogai, and Kalmyk nomadic bands. By the mid-16th century, the decline of the Hanseatic League and the final eclipse of the Teutonic Knights was creating new opportunities for the nearest powers – Sweden, Denmark, Poland-Lithuania, and Muscovy – but also new dangers, to which all the states responded by far-reaching reforms of governmental control, taxation, and military establishment.

In the Muscovite case, this meant regularly calling up troops to patrol the frontiers or be sent as fast as possible to where they were needed. The Great Prince could do this only by mobilizing the power of junior princes and boyars. Holders of both votchiny (hereditary estates) and pomestia were required to report regularly for military duty together with their own weapons, horses, and armed men.

The longest and most vulnerable frontier was in the south and east, where nomadic raiders periodically destroyed property and deported local people into slavery. These raiders could be really dangerous: in 1571, Crimean Tatars sacked Moscow itself. To defend its territory, Muscovy began to construct defence lines, consisting of stockades of tree trunks obstructing known raiding routes. Wooden blockhouses and earthen forts were sited at intervals between them. Garrison towns acted as supply depots, bases for the stationing of troops and the despatch of reconnaissance patrols. Initially, the core of the frontier defence forces consisted of light cavalrymen armed with bows, well adapted to steppe warfare. They reported for duty in the spring, summer, or autumn. As military technology advanced, they had to be supplemented by infantry with firearms

Muscovy also enlisted the aid of Cossacks on the Don River – as Poland did those along the lower Dnieper. Cossacks were self-governing military communities who occupied the steppes abandoned by the Golden Horde, hunting, fishing, and occasionally raiding towns or villages on their fringes. Moscow offered them money, arms, and provisions in return for patrolling territory beyond the defence lines. Cossacks, though, were unruly and the arrangement proved at times unreliable.

To coordinate this fighting force over such huge territories required an unprecedented degree of central control. Ivan III and Vasilii III (r. 1505–33) absorbed other Rus princely lands, especially the extensive Novgorod territories, and converted them into pomestia. The lesser princes and boyars were given extensive powers to require local communities to fulfil their obligations. The precise terms of military service were laid down by the Service Decree of 1556, which stipulated the weapons, horses, and armed men each pomeshchik (estate-holder) had to provide in return for a given quantity of land. Pomeshchiki who failed in their duty would lose status and eventually their land as well. A Military Chancery oversaw the implementation of these arrangements: it kept service rosters, ensured that servicemen reported for duty properly equipped, that they were drawn up in formations and directed to their postings, along with all their supplies. This required a complex system of record-keeping – the kernel from which developed the formidable Muscovite/Russian bureaucracy.

The remarkable success of this system eventually gave Muscovy the muscle to conduct offensive operations against the Golden Horde’s successor khanates. It conquered Kazan in 1552 and Astrakhan in 1556, thus establishing its ascendancy in the Volga basin and gaining a departure point from which it conquered the Khanate of (Western) Siberia in the late 16th century.

Muscovy also had contested frontiers in the west and north-west, where it launched a campaign in 1558, to gain a direct outlet to the Baltic Sea and prevent any other power dominating the region. The campaign was unsuccessful, since here artillery and trained infantry formations with firearms were vital; Muscovy learned this form of warfare only gradually. Besides, all its fighting there had to be conducted with one eye to the rear, to the danger of raids from the south. This meant its army had to be flexible, disproportionately large for the size of its population, and that good intelligence was crucially important. For this purpose, Muscovy kept envoys posted with all the main Tatar Hordes, collecting information. It was always alert to the possibility of utilizing disagreements within those Hordes and detaching discontented clans to fight on Muscovy’s side. This was normal steppe diplomacy.