Dress
Rehearsal for Master and Margarita.
The Rise and
Fall of the Golden Horde.
A Historical
Note.
The birth and especially the collapse of the Golden
Horde makes a fascinating political thriller. During the reign of Khan Uzbek
[1313-1341], a direct descendant of Genghis-Khan, he was visited by a famous
guest. He was the Arabic traveler and merchant Muhammad ibn Battuta (1304-1369).
This man happened to visit all countries of the Islamic World from Spain to
China, from the Volga to Sub-Saharan Africa, leaving extensive accounts of his
travels, which constitute a priceless treasury of our knowledge of those times
and those places.
Finding himself at the court of Uzbek-Khan, and
apparently greatly impressed by its splendor, he called Uzbek’s Ulus (domain) for the very first time “Urdu-i Zarrin, The Golden Marquee.” Thus
we owe the familiar historical name “The
Golden Horde” meaning “The Golden
Marquee,” to the fancy of the great traveler Muhammad ibn Battuta, and not
to the way it was called by its owners and dwellers. To them, it was the most
important “Ulus” of the Mongol Empire.
(It is probably from here that Bulgakov gets his “marquee” inside the study of K. S.
Stanislavsky, for, in this study hangs his portrait, and it is probably
Stanislavsky’s study that Bulgakov is fancifully describing in this part of the
Theatrical Novel. Mind you, the
contract with Maksudov is being drawn by the personal secretary of “Ivan
Vasilievich,” that is, K. S. Stanislavsky.)
As for Uzbek-Khan, ibn Battuta called him “one of the
seven greatest rulers of the world.” The name Uzbek is of Turkic origin, traced
back to the 12th century, that is, before the era of Genghis-Khan.
Uzbek-Khan adopted the religion of Islam in 1321. His
reign is commonly recognized as the apogee of the “Golden Horde’s” power and
splendor. Its birth goes back a hundred years, during the westward push of
Genghis-Khan’s brilliant grandson Batu-Khan, its founder. We will be talking
about that time shortly, in connection with the Russian prince and saint
Alexander Nevsky.
The end of the Golden Horde is even more spectacular
than its birth. The great Ulus was visited by the death of a thousand cuts.
The demise actually started in 1380. What happened had
been long-awaited, and therefore inescapable. The Grand Prince of Moscow and
Vladimir, Dmitry Ivanovich, a Rurikovich, that is, a direct heir of the first
dynasty of Russia’s rulers, a “moskal,” as some will call him, routed the army
of Khan Mamai of the Golden Horde in the historic battle of the Kulikovo Field
on the river Don, for which he was dubbed Dmitry Donskoy and made a saint of
the Russian Orthodox Church.
As a result of this battle, the Russians were eager to
stop paying taxes to the Golden Horde, but it wasn’t quite the way it happened.
After Mamai’s rout and eventual demise, another
descendent of Genghis-Khan, Tokhtamysh, was chosen by the Kurultai (the Council
of Elders of the Golden Horde) as the new Khan. Unhappy with the turn of
events, Tokhtamysh gathered a new army and marched against the Russian princes,
determined to restore their taxes to the Horde by force. Moscow and other
Russian cities were devastated. Dmitry Donskoy was not in Moscow at the time of
this calamity, so he had an opportunity to engage in some clever diplomacy.
Prince Dmitry had an excellent example to emulate in
the person of the Great Prince of Novgorod Alexander Yaroslavich, dubbed Nevsky
for his triumph over the invading Swedes in the battle of the river Neva.
Russia’s esteem for the military and political accomplishments of Alexander Nevsky
has been so great that in a fairly recent national poll he was pronounced the
greatest Russian of all time, before Stolypin (#2) and Stalin (#3).
The greatest achievement of Alexander Nevsky
(1221-1263), which earned him Sainthood from the Russian Orthodox Church was a
combination of great military victories with an amazing political acumen, which
prevented quite a few military confrontations and basically saved Russia from
ruin. Ironically, Alexander had to choose the worse of two evils: the threat
from the West, which was manageable, and the threat from the East, which was
apocalyptic. He therefore decided to turn the invaders from the East into his
allies against the European threat. Accepting the supremacy of the Golden
Horde, he made peace with the Mongols, and Sartak, the son of Batu-Khan, became
his “anda,” that is, his sworn blood-brother, a great symbolic gesture,
securing Alexander the Horde’s military help against the invaders from the
West. With the promise of heavy tribute to the Golden Horde, Alexander made
further ravaging of the Russian land by the Mongols senseless, and redirected
the thrust of their military onslaught against Europe, causing great grief to
the Europeans and making the English call the Tatar-Mongol invaders “Tartars,”
alluding to Tartarus, Hell, as their fearsome origin. Eventually, though, the
invasion stopped, but not due to any European military success. It was the
death of the Great Khan of All Mongols Ugedei that compelled Batu to return to
Karakorum to participate in the Kurultai gathering to choose his successor.
Mind you, this did not prevent him from subjugating much of Eastern and Central
Europe (including large parts of Austria, all Bulgaria, all Hungary, all
Romania, the lands of the Southern Slavs, and even large chunks of Poland) by
the time his attack force was ordered to retreat.
***
As we’ve seen, soon after the founding of the Golden
Horde by Batu-Khan, its territory expanded quite dramatically to include large
territories from east of the Volga to the Danube and beyond. Its domain covered
the areas adjacent to the Black and the Caspian Seas. The power of the Mongol
Empire seemed boundless, and its surge unstoppable.
Who knows what would have happened to all continental
Europe, with the possible exception of Scandinavia, whose cold winters held no
attraction for the Mongols (as for the British Isles, in spite of all the
fears, the invaders had no fleet and were unlikely to build any, to cross the
water divide), had it not been for the “Moskals,” that is, the enterprising
Princes of Moscow.
Still, the Europeans refused to consider Russia as
their allies against the threat from the East, and tried to take advantage of
Russia’s plight no matter what.
In the year 1240, Swedish forces under the command of
the celebrated hero of Sweden Jarl Birger, founder of Stockholm, attempted to
annex some northern Russian lands, but were rebuffed at a great cost to them in
the battle of the Neva.
Stories were told by the Russian historians that
Prince Alexander crippled Jarl Birger in a one-on-one combat with a blow of his
sword on the Swede’s head. Swedish historians were mum about this fact until a
much later examination of Jarl Birger’s remains established that his skull had
indeed exhibited a crack caused by a sword.
Alexander’s later incursion into Finland, to prevent
its subjugation by the Swedish Crusaders, finished the job of showing Jarl
Birger his true limitations. It was only half-a-millennium later that the
Swedes clashed with Russia again in a major way. That was the battle of
Poltava, with the Swedish wunderkind King Karl XII confronting Peter the Great
of Russia, and of course we know what happened there. Karl’s fateful
recklessness left him with a permanent limp, and, even worse, in a state of
deep depression for the rest of his life.
***
Returning to Prince Alexander Nevsky, another decisive
battle took place under his command in 1242 on the Russian Lake Chudskoye on
the border with Estonia (where it is called Lake Peipus).
This time it was against the German Crusaders,
Teutonic Knights, invading Russia from Livonia.
The original Teutonic knights were the remnants of the
Crusader Armies ingloriously returning to Europe from the Middle East, where
they had been no match to the military brilliance of Sultan Saladin. Finding
themselves still armed and dangerous, but pitifully homeless, they set up their
home in Prussia, giving their name Teuton, or Teutsch, to modern Deutschland.
Their eastern branch in Livonia was bent on Drang nach
Osten, which meant a further expansion at Russia’s expense. This was obviously
in conflict with Russia’s vital interest, and the outcome had to be predictable,
except for the Knights, blinded and made stupid by their arrogance.
All they had to know was about the most recent rout of
the Swedes by Alexander Nevsky. Yet it taught them no lesson. Woe to them who
refuse to learn or for any reason are incapable of learning. Reinforced by experienced
Mongol troops sent by Sartak to his anda, the Russian force destroyed the
Germans on the ice of the lake, and when the ice broke under the weight of the
heavily armed German cavalry, Alexander’s and Russia’s enemies were treated to
a remarkable baptism in frozen water, which they would never recover from. The
knights were utterly humbled, to which Sergei Eisenstein’s brilliant movie Alexander Nevsky powerfully testifies.
To be continued…
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