Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-cjp7w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-23T00:07:55.788Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Diplomatic Forms of Ivan III's Relationship with the Crimean Khan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Robert M. Croskey
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The final stage of Muscovy's subordination to the Tatars is a murky topic in Russian history. In the first half of the fifteenth century, the Golden Horde fragmented and new political entities emerged: the Great Horde, the Nogai Horde, the Khanates of the Crimea, Kazan', and Astrakhan'. The Great Horde claimed the same supremacy as the Golden Horde, and the khans of the Great Horde demanded the tribute and the submission which Muscovy formerly had given the khan of the Golden Horde. As the power of the Great Horde in turn weakened, Muscovy was able to emerge from its submission to the Tatars and function as an independent state.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , Summer 1984 , pp. 257 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Ocherki istorii SSSR: period feodalizma, IX–XV vv, pt. 2 (Moscow, 1953), p. 292; Fennell, John, Ivan the Great of Moscow (London, 1961), p. 87 Google Scholar.

2. Vernadsky, George, Russia at the Dawn of the Modern Age (New Haven, 1959), p. 77 Google Scholar; Keenan, Edward L., “The Jarlyk of Axmed-Xan to Ivan III: A New Reading. A Study of Literal Diplomatics and Literary Turcica,” International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics, 12(1969): 33–47.Google Scholar

3. Vernadsky, Russia, p. 77.

4. Usmanov, M. A., Zhalovannye akty Dzhucheva ulusa XIV–XVI vv. (Kazan', 1979), p. 8 Google Scholar.

5. Ibid., p. 196. My impression, though difficult to document, is that the term iarlyk is avoided in the Russian ambassador's speech after 1490. In general, the diplomatic documents increasingly seem to avoid Turkicisms.

6. See Sergeev, F., Formirovanie russkogo diplomaticheskogo iazyka (L'vov, 1978), p. 60.Google Scholar

7. For example: “gosudariu velikomu kniaziu Ivanu Vasil'evichu vsea Rusii, kholop tvoi Ivanets Kubenskoi chelom b'et,” in Sbornik imperatorskogo russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva (hereafter SIRIO), vol. 41 (St. Petersburg, 1884), p. 321. Other examples may be found in ibid., pp. 332, 354, 358, and passim.

8. SIRIO, 35:24, 232, 235, and passim.

9. Ibid., pp. 1,4,5,9,164.

10. Ibid., pp. 253,413,471.

11. Some anomalies in the usage just described: ibid., pp. 250 and 477.

12. Valk, S. N., ed., Gramoty Velikogo Novgoroda i Pskova (hereafter GVNP) (Moscow, 1949), pp. 39–44.Google Scholar

13. GVNP, pp. 44–45.

14. Ibid., p. 133.

15. Kazakova, N. A., Russko-livonskie i russko-ganzeiskie otnosheniia: konets XlV-nachala XVI v. (Leningrad, 1975), p. 193 Google Scholar.

16. Pamiatniki diplomaticheskikh snoshenii drevnei Rossii s derzhavami inostrannymi (hereafter PDS) (St. Petersburg, 1851), vol. 1, cc. 80–81 Google Scholar.

17. SIRIO, 35:367; Kazakova, Russko-livonskie i russko-ganzeiskie otnosheniia, p. 241; GVNP, pp. 331–37; for further development of this issue, see Shaskol'skii, I. P., “Russko-livonskie peregovory 1554 g. i vopros o Livonskoi dani,” in Mezhdunarodnye sviazi Rossii do XVII v. (Moscow, 1961), pp. 376–99.Google Scholar

18. “A v iarlyke tvoem pishet zhaluichi mene bratom sobe i drugom nazval esi,” SIRIO, 41:1—37, passim.

19. SIRIO, 41:136, 487.

20. Lakier, A., “Istoriia titula gosudarei Rossii,” Zhurnal ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia, pt. LVI (1847) sec. II, nos. 10–11, p. 103 Google Scholar. See also n. 47.

21. John Ferguson, English Diplomacy 1422–1461 (Oxford, 1972), p. 154.

22. SIRIO, 35:256; 41:295.

23. Ibid., 41:295.

24. See for example the instances cited in Spuler, Bertold, History of the Mongols based on Eastern and Western accounts of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (Los Angeles, 1972), pp. 72–73, 79.Google Scholar

25. Ibid., p. 193.

26. Ibid., p. 181; M. D. Poluboiarinova, Russkie liudi v zolotoi orde (Moscow, 1978), p. 9.

27. Bazilevich, K. V., Vneshnaia politika russkogo tsentralizovannogo gosudarstva, vtoraia polovina XV veka (Moscow, 1952), p. 120 Google Scholar. Bazilevich is quoting Ilovaiskii here, who takes the story from Dhigosz, the Polish chronicler. Neither Bazilevich nor Ilovaiskii gives a precise citation, and I have been unable to find the passage in Dlugosz.

28. Spuler, History of the Mongols, p. 91.

29. Quoted in Ilovaiskii, D., Istoriia Rossii, vol. 2, Moskovsko-Litovskii period, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1896)Google Scholar.

30. von Herberstein, Sigismund, Notes upon Russia, Being a Translation of the Earliest Account of the Country (London, 1851–52), vol. 1, p. 25.Google Scholar

31. SIRIO, 41:1–2.

32. Ibid., p. 59. One is tempted to believe that there is a tie here to the more aggressive policy toward Kazan', undertaken that same year.

33. Ibid., p. 136.

34. Bazilevich, Vneshnaia politika, p. 119.

35. SIRIO, 41:49.

36. Ibid., p. 539.

37. Ibid., p. 556.

38. SIRIO, 95:632–33.

39. SIRIO, 41:161: “ty by ego [Zabolotskii] tam [in the Crimea] zval boiarinom.” Also see Alef, Gustave, “Reflections on the Boyar Duma in the Reign of Ivan III,” Slavonic and East European Review, 45, no. 104 (1967): 120 Google Scholar, reprinted in Gustave Alef, Rulers and Nobles in Fifteenth-Century Muscovy (London, 1983). The question has been raised of whether the term boyar is not being used here in a general sense, meaning a “member of the highest non-princely social group” (Alef, “Reflections,” p. 81), rather than the specific meaning of senior member of the Boyar Duma. My conclusion that the specific meaning is intended is based on the passage cited above in which Zabolotskii, in the general sense a boyar, was evidently not called a boyar in Moscow. There are many examples of ambassadors who are called boyars in diplomatic documents but who are not members of the Boyar Duma. See, among others, Konstantin Malechkin, SIRIO, 41:200; Nikita Vasil'evich Beklemishev, ibid., p. 7, a blizhnii boyar; Aleksei Starkov, ibid., p. 12. None of these are known to Alef as members of the Boyar Duma in Ivan Ill's reign. Revealing about the meaning of the term boyar in this context are the cases of princes sent as ambassadors who are described as “prince and boyar”: Ivan Semenovich Kubenskii, ibid., pp. 300–301; and Vasilii Ivanovich Nozdrovatov, ibid., p. 37. In these instances, it seems that the term boyar must have been intended to indicate to Mengli-Girei that the ambassador was a member of the Boyar Duma, since the individual was not a boyar in the general sense of the word. Again, however, neither individual is known to Alef as a member of the Duma, either as a boyar or an okol'nichii.

40. Poluboiarinova, Russkie liudi, p. 21.

41. Ibid., pp. 8, 18.

42. SIRIO, 41:231–32.

43. Ibid., pp. 231–34.

44. Spuler, History of the Mongols, p. 40.

45. SIRIO, 41:231–33.

46. SIRIO, 35:81; Sobranie gosudarstvennykh gramot, i dogovorov khraniashchikhsia v gosudarstvennoi kollegii inostrannykh del (Moscow, 1813–1894), vol. 1, no. 129, p. 333.Google Scholar

47. Lakier's quotation, Istoriia titula, p. 103: “A dobra mi emu i ego detiam khoteti vezde i vo vsem, a likha mi svoemu Gosudariu velikomu kniaziu i ego detiam ne mysliti ni khotiti nikkakovo [sic].” Vasilii's speech, SIRIO, 41:556: “A kak otets nash kniaz’ veliki tsareva dobra smotriti a dela ego berezhet a my takzhe khotim tsareva dobra vezde smotriti i dela ego berechi, skolko nam Bog posobit.” A similar phrase also appeared in the Russian ambassador's speech delivered before Mengli-Girei. This usage ceased in 1492 and was revived in 1503; ibid., pp. 136, 487.

48. Roublev, Michel, “The Mongol Tribute according to the Wills and Agreements of the Russin Princes,” in Cherniavsky, Michael, ed., The Structure of Russian History: Interpretive Essays (New York, 1970), p. 29.Google Scholar

49. SIRIO, 41:3–4.

50. Ibid., pp. 13–14.

51. Ibid., p. 79 and passim.

52. Ibid., p. 8 and passim.

53. Ibid., p. 386.

54. Ibid.

55. Ibid., p. 311; Bazilevich, Vneshnaia politika, p. 184.

56. Barbaro, Josafa and Contarini, Ambroglio, Travels to Tana and Persia (London, 1873), p. 10.Google Scholar

57. SIRIO, 41:54, 220, 267. The request on one occasion for strong Kraków cheese, “syr krepkii krakovskii,” is obviously an error for pantsir’ (armor); ibid., 41:152, 476.

58. Ibid., pp. 122,211,420.

59. Ibid., pp. 168, 193.

60. Ibid., pp. 56, 121, 168, 173, 211, 517.

61. Ibid., pp. 56, 211, 151, 267.

62. Ibid., pp. 197,220,267.

63. Ibid., pp. 56, 106, 151.

64. Ibid., p. 267.

65. Bazilevich, Vneshnaia politika, p. 185.

66. Herberstein, Notes upon Russia, 1:114.

67. SIRIO, 41:405.

68. Ibid., pp. 3, 39, 179, 229.

69. Ibid.,, p. 141.

70. Robert C. Howes, trans, and ed., The Testaments of the Grand Prince of Moscow (Ithaca, N.Y., 1967), p. 267 (hereafter Testaments).

71. Zimin, A. A., Rossiia na rubezhe XV-XV1 stoletii (Moscow, 1982), pp. 234–35.Google Scholar

72. Testaments, p. 151. On the use of vykhod in wills, compare concluding paragraph, below.

73. Roublev, “Mongol Tribute,” p. 52.

74. Spassky, I. G., The Russian Monetary System: An Historico-Numismatic Survey (Amsterdam, 1967), p. 101.Google Scholar

75. SIRIO, 41:56.

76. Bazilevich, Vneshnaia politika, p. 525; Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei, vol. 8 (St. Petersburg, 1859), p. 180 Google Scholar; vol. 25 (Leningrad, 1949), p. 303.

77. SIRIO, 41:268. Bazilevich, Vneshnaia politika, p. 185, SIRIO, 41:104.

78. Ibid., p. 476.

79. Ibid., pp. 80, 104, 117, 142, 179.

80. Testaments, pp. 295–97.

81. SIRIO, 41:272.

82. Edward Louis Keenan, “Muscovy and Kazan’ 1445–1552” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1965), pp. 379, 383; Pelenski, Jaroslav, Russia and Kazan: Conquest and Imperial Ideology (1438–1560's) (The Hague, 1974), p. 302 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83. SIRIO, 41:178, 222.

84. Spuler, History of the Mongols, pp. 82–83, 85.

85. Abundantly illustrated, for example, by Fennell and Bazilevich in the works cited above.

86. Usmanov, Zhalovannye akty, p. 196, S1R10, 41:85.