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Grand-Dukes at Vladimir

In the northeast, the territory that eventually became Muscovy was colonized by East Slavs who intermingled with the Finno-Ugric tribes of the area. The city of Rostov was the oldest center of the northeast, but was supplanted first by the city of Suzdal' and then by the city of Vladimir. By the twelfth century, the combined principality of Vladimir-Suzdal' had become a major power in Kievan Rus'. In 1169 Prince Andrei Bogoliubskii of Vladimir-Suzdal' dealt a severe blow to the waning power of the Kievan Rus' capital of Kiev when his armies sacked the city. Prince Andrei installed his younger brother in Kiev and continued to rule his realm from the city of Suzdal'. Political power had shifted to the northeast. In 1299, in the wake of a Mongol invasion, the head of the Orthodox Church in Kievan Rus' -- the metropolitan -- moved to the city of Vladimir. Thus Vladimir-Suzdal', with its increased political power and with the metropolitan in residence, acted as a continuator of Kievan Rus'.

Russian historians held that the Ruthenians were Russians of the Russians ; the whole people of Red Russia (Galicia), White Russia (Vladimir), Great Russia (Moscow), and Little Russia (Kiew and the whole Dnieper valley) were said always to be homogeneous ; and the Poles merely intruders who took advantage of the temporary weakness of Russian states to push their conquests eastward. The principality of Galicia-Volhynia, which had highly developed trade relations with its Polish, Hungarian, and Lithuanian neighbors, emerged as another successor to Kievan Rus' in the southwest. In the early thirteenth century, Prince Roman Mstislavich united the two previously separate principalities, conquered Kiev, and assumed the title of grand prince of Keivan Kievan Rus'. His son, Prince Daniil (1230-64), was the first ruler of Kievan Rus' to accept a crown from the Roman papacy, apparently without breaking with Orthodoxy. Early in the fourteenth century, the patriarch of the Orthodox Church in Constantinople granted the rulers of Galicia-Volhynia a metropolitan to compensate for the Kievan metropolitan's move to Vladimir. A long and losing struggle against the Mongols, however, as well as internal opposition to the prince and foreign intervention, weakened Galicia-Volhynia. With the end of the Mstislavich Dynasty in the mid-fourteenth century, Galicia-Volhynia ceased to exist: Lithuania took Volhynia, and Poland annexed Galicia.

The real nucleus of the Russian Empire was the little duchy of Vladimir, called after St. Vladimir, whom his wife Anna, sisterof the Greek Basil II, converted in 998. Here ruled the younger line of the race of Rurik, while the elder line was decaying at Kiew. Of these Grand Dukes of Vladimir the most famous was Andrew I (1057). In 1320 the elder line at Kiew was conquered, and its territories annexed by the Lithuanians; and at the same time the Grand Dukes made Moscow their capital, and the Muscovite kingdom was fairly started. All this time, since Baton, grandson of Genghis Khan, had overrun the country in 1223, the Russians had been the humble slaves of their Mongol conquerors; and all sorts of stories are told of the contempt with which the Mongols treated them.

Rostov in the twelfth century was in no sense a newcomer to the family of Russian cities. Its origins are lost in the darkness of the ages. It was mentioned for the first time in the Chronicle in the year 862 as one of the cities distributed by Riurik to the members of his military retinue on his arrival in Novgorod. In the early part of the tenth century Rostov was already the capital city of an independent territory and had its own prince.

In the middle of the twelfth century the city of Suzdal came to the fore as Rostov's competitor, and in the second half of the same century the city of Vladimir made a strong bid for political supremacy. Following the changing fortunes of its three leading cities, as well as their own predilections, the chroniclers referred to the principality as the principality of Rostov, Suzdal, Rostov-Suzdal, Suzdal-Vladimir, or, finally, as the grand duchy of Vladimir. The land of Rostov was not only an ancient member of the loose confederation known as Kievan Russia but also an active participant in the life of the country, in spite of its geographical remoteness from Kiev. It had had its own bishop since the days of Vladimir I. According to the Chronicle, Gleb, son of Vladimir I, was prince of Rostov. Vladimir II Monomakh, absorbed as he was in his struggle with the Cumans, displayed considerable interest in Russia's northeastern outpost and visited Rostov several times. He was the founder of the city Vladimir-on-Kliazma, which eventually became the capital of the principality and of northeastern Russia.

His son, Yuri Dolgoruky, was prince of Rostov for some forty years, and it was under his rule that Suzdal, his favorite city, came into prominence. There seems to be no real ground, therefore, for considering Rostov as having been outside the big political currents of Russian life before the middle of the twelfth century.

The predilection of Yuri Dolgoruky, prince of Rostov, for Suzdal, where he established his capital, and the transfer of the political center of the principality from Suzdal to Vladimir by Andrew Bogoliubsky were due to the same cause. Rostov, like the ancient cities of Kiev, Volynia, Chernigov, and Galicia, had already in the first half of the twelfth century a strong and influential aristocracy, the boyars, who derived their power from tenure of political offices and from the ownership of landed estates. This aristocracy very largely controlled the affairs of the land, either independently or with the concurrence of the veche, which it dominated. The boyars and the princes often found themselves in conflict.

The influence of the boyars was too strong for the princes to break down; and as the aristocracy was particularly powerful in the older cities the princes of Rostov-Suzdal tried to escape its immediate authority by transferring their capital to smaller and younger cities. That was why Yuri Dolgoruky went from Rostov to Suzdal. In the middle of the twelfth century Suzdal had already developed its own aristocracy, and Andrew Bogoliubsky moved his capital from there to Vladimir, so bitter was the opposition of the older aristocracy to the princes who, refusing to bow to its will.