On Vladimir’s death in 1015, and following a civil war which ended in 1019, Russia fell into three major subdivisions, Novgorod-Kiev, Chernigov-Tmutorokan, and Polotsk. Vladimir’s son Yaroslav was able to reunite them and reestablish a single principality from 1036. He defeated the Pechenegs, pushing them south-westwards into the north Danube plain whence they began raiding Byzantine territory. Although he launched a disastrous attack on the empire in 1043, friendly relations were quickly restored. Raiding from the Oguz or Cumans (Polovtsy) weakened Kiev, and on Yaroslav’s death (1054) Russia again split into autonomous and often warring principalities, Novgorod and Vladimir-Suzdal (capital at Moscow) being among the most important. In 1060 a joint attack defeated the Oguz, but in 1067 a war between Kiev and Polotsk led to the sack of Novgorod. In spite of a major Polovtsy raid into Kiev in 1068, precipitating further internal strife (involving also the principality of Poland on one side), diplomatic and marriage alliances enabled prince Svyatoslav Yaroslavich to bring the competing principalities together again by 1076.
Although Kiev was sacked by the Polovtsy in 1093, a series of successful campaigns (1103-1116) contained them, and a degree of stability was reached, with Pecheneg and minor Oguz groups
Map ]].? Russia and the steppes c. 1000-1453.
Contracted to safeguard the frontier. Fragmentation followed the death of Grand Prince Vladimir Monomakh in 1132, and after 1139, with local and long-distance trade flourishing, the Russian principalities were increasingly at odds over control of routes. When the prince of Suzdal sacked Kiev in 1169, his own territory briefly became the pre-eminent principality. A limited Mongol raid defeated a joint Russian-Polovtsy force in 1223, but withdrew and the situation appeared to return to normal. But as the prince of Suzdal prepared an attack on the Volga Bulgars (who controlled the trade route through the middle Volga basin) in 1237, the Mongols launched a second raid in strength. The Volga Bulgars were overwhelmed and the central Russian principalities were ravaged, their wealthiest centres being sacked in the process. In 1239 the southern principalities were destroyed; in 1240 Kiev was sacked; and in the north, although Prince Alexander of Novgorod (Alexander Nevsky) was able to defeat and turn back invasions by both the Swedes and the Teutonic Knights in 1240 and 1242, he was forced to pay tribute to the Mongols. On the steppe the Cumans were defeated and incorporated into the Great Khanate, and in the north Caucasus the Alans were overrun.
The ‘Mongol yoke’ devastated the economy of the Russian principalities, forced the peasantry into an ever greater degree of servitude and poverty, and encouraged a much more autocratic form of rule among the surviving principalities. Mongol overlordship also weakened the ability of the Russian princes to resist external aggression or interference: the territories formerly ruled from Kiev split into eastern and western regions, the latter absorbed by the princes of Lithuania and later becoming part of the kingdom of Poland, the former under tribute to the Mongols. The Russian princes attempted from time to time to throw off Mongol suzerainty - in 1382 the prince of Vladimir-Suzdal attempted to gain his independence, but was defeated and his capital, Moscow, sacked. Yet the weakening power of the Golden Horde and the interfactional strife between the different Mongol hordes enabled the Grand Princes of Vladimir to extend their power across much of the original principality between 1302 and 1420. By the 1470s they were styled Grand Princes of Muscovy, by 1478 they had incorporated Novgorod into their realm, and the way was prepared for the rapid incorporation of the other principalities and the push to the Ural river in the sixteenth century.
On the steppe to the south and east the Pechenegs were forced westwards by a combination of assaults from Kiev and the Oguz and Cumans. Residual groups survived to ally themselves with the Russians during the twelfth century, but their place was taken by the Cumans, who seized the Crimea from Byzantine control in 1068. To the east were the Oguz, divided from the related Seljukid clans, who had adopted Islam, by the Muslim Karakhanid Turks. In 1037 the Seljuks rebelled against their nominal overlords the Ghaznavids, whom they had ousted from eastern Iran by 1055. Penetrating into central and western Iran at the same time they subjected the Buyids, whom they replaced, establishing a Seljuk Sultanate stretching from Transoxiana to the Byzantine frontier. By 1073 they had extended their power to the north-east and conquered the Karakhanids (the first Turks to adopt Islam). The Seljuk sultanate soon broke up into a number of lesser emirates (see page 147), with rebellious Oguz clans overthrowing the sultanate of Merv in the 1150s, and to the north the establishment of the khanate of the Karakhitai, a confederacy led by a Buddhist Mongol clan. The Cumans continued to dominate the south Russian steppe across to the Danube (the last Pecheneg attempt at re-asserting their power was defeated by the Byzantines in the 1120s), although in the period from the 1190s to 1210 the Oguz and the Karakhitai were overthrown by the Sultan of Khwarizm, who established a new Irano-Turkish empire across eastern Persia and Transoxiana.
Between 1237 and 1241 the Mongol invasion overran the Cumans in the Russian steppe, the Alans, the Russian principalities, the Shahdom of Khwarizm, and the Seljuk sultanate. Mongol expansion westwards was only halted by the Mamluks at Ain Jalut in 1260. But in 1260 the Khanate was divided among the sons and grandsons of Chingis, creating a number of rival hordes. Although the conversion of most of these to Islam by the 1420s created an ideological unity, political and territorial rivalry remained. In 1380 the White Horde and Golden Horde fought for supremacy, with victory going to the former, although the term Golden Horde continued to describe the new formation. The conquests of Timur from the 1360s brought considerable disruption to this pattern, creating for a short period another unified Mongol empire stretching from Turkestan to Anatolia. But this in turn soon broke up into a number of smaller emirates, and by the 1460s no major Turkish or Mongol power was permanently in power in either Iran or the steppe - the Akkoyunlu in Persia had been destroyed by Ottoman and Safavid Persian power by 1502.
World History
