autour du xviiie siècle || tsarev ulus: russia in the golden horde

EHESS

Tsarev ulus: Russia in the Golden HordeAuthor(s): Charles J. HalperinSource: Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique, Vol. 23, No. 2, Autour du XVIIIe siècle (Apr. -Jun., 1982), pp. 257-263Published by: EHESSStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20169960 .

Accessed: 16/06/2014 06:36

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

EHESS is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Cahiers du Monde russe etsoviétique.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 06:36:08 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ehess

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20169960?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


NOTE

CHARLES J. HALPERIN

TSAREV ULUS: RUSSIA IN THE GOLDEN HORDE

One of the consequences of the Mongol conquest of Russia was

that the Russians became familiar with numerous Mongol political, administrative and fiscal terms. Some were retained after the

overthrow of Mongol rule if the Muscovites borrowed or could take

advantage of the Mongol institution; others disappear. The list

of such terms would include khan, iarlik, tamga, devter', iam,

daroga, tarkhan, baskak, t'ma and iasak. There is another Turco

Mongol term of even greater importance which also found its way into the medieval Russian sources, and which has not been inves

tigated as thoroughly as it should. That is the concept of the ulus.

Discussion of the meaning and evolution of the concept of the ulus among Inner Asianists seems to have led to the following consensus. The concept of the ulus was central to the Mongol Empire. Its original meaning was the entire Mongol nation/empire, for which purpose sometimes compound nouns with ulus were employed, such as ulus ulus or irgen ulus. Each of the heirs of Chinghis

khan was granted an ulus, the first devolution of the term; thus the Golden Horde, the Mongol successor state on the Volga which

governed Russia, was the ulus of Juchi. At this point the term

ulus meant a state structure and territory. Finally the term

became applied at the lowest local level, a petty nomadizing unit or administrative district (equivalent to the Russian volost'). Thus the term ulus mirrored in its evolution the progressive

disintegration of the world Mongol Empire.(1) For the history of the Golden Horde, the development of the

concept of the ulus can be traced not only in the Arabo-Persian

sources,.but also in the medieval Russian texts. The Russians were fully conversant with the term and use it in all of its

meanings. The most restricted sense is illustrated by several

quotations from the chronicles. In 1360, prince of the Horde Bulak

Temer looted all of the cities and ulusy along the Volga river.(2) In 1389 Ignatii of Smolensk, travelling down the Volga river in

the suite of Pimen, metropolitan-designate en route to Constan

tinople, identified the ulusy of Sarykhoza, Bek-Bulat and Ak

Bugin.(3) In 1411 tsar1 Temir expelled Zeleni-Saltan, son of

Tokhtamysh, and took and looted his ulusy on the Volga river.(4) But the medieval Russian sources apply the term ulus and a



258 CHARLES J. HALPERIN

Russianized variant, ulusnik,(5) not only to the zone of the Volga river in the Pontic and Caspian steppes. The term is also utilized

to refer to Russia, the Russian principalities and forest zone,

and the Russian princes. The pattern of such occurrences of the

words ulus and ulusnik deserves careful scrutiny. There seem to be no instances of the use of ulus to apply to

Rus1 before the middle of the fourteenth century. In the vita of

Fedor Rostislavovich of laroslavl1 and Smolensk at one point the

khan refuses the request of his wife, the tsaritsa, to marry

Fedor, of whom she is enamored, to their daughter, by saying that

he is an ulusnik.(6) Although these events are ostensibly set in

the late thirteenth century, the vita was not written until the

discovery of Fedor1s relics in late fifteenth century, and thus

this passage cannot be accepted as thirteenth-century evidence.

The earliest reliable allusion to Rus1 as the ulus occurs

in 1348-1349. Envoys from Olgerd, grand prince of Lithuania,

tried to persuade the Horde to align itself with Lithuania against Moscow. Muscovite lobbying, no doubt sweetened with bribes and

influence-peddling, led to a denouement other than Olgerd intended:

his envoys were arrested and deported to Moscow. To add insult

to injury, Olgerd was compelled to ransom his envoys from Moscow, the object of his diplomatic machinations. Aside from indicating

Muscovite clout at the Horde and the political finesse, if not

sense of humor, of the Horde, this incident also contains a speech,

supposedly made in public debate at the Horde, on behalf of

Muscovy against Olgerd's proposal. Moscow, the grand principality,

Rus1, was the tsarev ulus, the ulus of the khan,(7) the grand

prince's patrimony; Olgerd wanted to devastate (putoshiti) the

khan's ulus and insult (obidit) the grand prince, the khan's

loyal subject. This argument was intended to convince the Horde

not to abandon its pro-Muscovite policy, and apparently it

succeeded.(8) Whether Muscovite oratory or Muscovite money played the

greater role in the political conflict of 1348-1349 is a moot

point; what is intriguing is that the chronicler expected the

contention that Rus' was the tsarev ulus to carry ideological and

political weight in the Horde and to be fully comprehensible to

his own, domestic Russian, audience, which we may presume to be

the princely and ecclesiastical elite.

In the Skazanie o Mamaevom poboishche, a highly religious narrative about the battle of Kulikovo Field in 1380,(9) grand

prince Olgerd (erroneously for Jagailo in this, the Basic Redac

tion) writes to Mamai that he knows of Mamai's intent to punish

(kazniti) his ulus, his servitor (sluzhebnik) Dmitrii Donskoi,

who had insulted Mamai's ulusnik Oleg of Riazan'.(10) Thus both

the terms ulus and ulusnik appear, and apparently both the prin

cipalities of Moscow and Riazan' are included under the rubric

of these terms. In the Expanded Redaction of the Skazanie, Dmitrii

Donskoi is called the ulusnik of Mamai.(11) Another manuscript which mixes several redactions imputes to Mamai a speech to

Donskoi's envoy Tiutchev, in which he boasts that if he wanted

to, he could punish not only his ulusnik Dmitrii and so small an

ulus (sego malogo ulusa) but even Jerusalem, a comparison he is

unlikely to have imagined but which reflects the Muscovite book



NOTE 259

man's frame of reference.(12) The Skazanie o Mamaevom poboishche was combined with the "chronicle tale" (letopisnaia povest') about the battle of Kulikovo by the Nikon chronicle to create the

Kiprian Redaction of the Skazanie, in which uses of ulus and

ulusnik are compounded with typical Nikon legerdemain.(13) Even

the Chronicle Redaction of the Skazanie in the Vologodsko-Permskaia chronicle contains a sentence in which Jagailo conveys to Mamai

his familiarity with Mamai's plan to punish his ulus,(14) despite the correction of the name of the Lithuanian grand prince in this

redaction of the Skazanie.

The fullest versions of the tale of the sack of Moscow by

Tokhtamysh in 1382 contain a speech by which the Tatars deceived

the inhabitants of the city into opening its gates under a promise of lenient treatment. (15) In one variant of this episode the

Suzdal' princes, Dmitrii Donskoi's brothers-in-law who vouch for

the integrity of Tokhtamysh's word, inform the Muscovites that

Tokhtamysh did not and could not intend any harm to his ulus. (16)

Once again one notes that this argument is supposed to have been

efficacious in persuading the Muscovite townsmen to surrender, and the chronicler presents it without explanation so that it is

assumed his audience generally understands why. In the so-called epistle of Edigei, emir of the Horde, written

to grand prince Vasilii I after his only partially successful

siege of Moscow in 1408,(17) Edigei laments that Rus' used to be

the tsarev ulus, whose princes and merchants travelled regularly to the Horde and which paid the tribute (vykhod) punctually. Now

this idyllic situation has come to an end because of Vasilii I's

political ingratitude, and the Horde receives no respect from its

former ulus.(18) In the events leading to the Muscovite dynastic civil war of

the mid fifteenth century, the Horde played a significant and

not entirely appreciated role. In 1432 a great debate took place in the Horde. Vasilii II was supported by the ulus doroga Moskov

skii Min Bulat, his opponent Iurii Dmitrievich by prince of the

Horde Taginia of the Shirin clan of the Crimea. The Muscovites

and their Horde adherents pictured Iurii as an agent of Svidrigailo of Lithuania, an enemy of the Horde. In his speech boyar Ivan

Vsevolozhskii told the tsar' that Vasilii II was his kholop

(slave), and wanted to be grand prince of his ulus, according to

the khan's devter' (census) and iarlik (patent), by his grant

(zhalovanie), versus the claim of Iurii based upon the gramota

(charter, actually: testament) of the "dead prince" Dmitrii

Donskoi, who had left his patrimony to his son Vasilii I at a time

when Vasilii I did not have an heir and thus named Vasilii's

brother Iurii as next in line. Vsevolozhskii urged tsar' Mehmed

to honor the will of Vasilii I which named Vasilii II as his heir.

In effect this is what happened.(19) Vsevolozhskii does not make clear why the khan should value

the testament of Dmitrii Donskoi, Vasilii II's grandfather, less

than that of Vasilii I, Vasilii II's father, other than that he

can do so, as an imperial prerogative, and it is politically

expedient. Whatever the legalities of the case, in his highly tendentious and partisan speech, at least as recorded in the chron

icle, Vsevolozhskii again invokes the identity of Rus' as the ulus

of the khan.




In one of the passages of the tales of the Stand on the Ugra in 1480, supposedly the definitive liberation of Russia from the

Tatar yoke, accompanying the famous Epistle to the Ugra river of

bishop Vassian Rylo of Rostov, Ivan III the Great sends an envoy to the infuriated khan Akhmed of the Great Horde to try to buy him off. Ivan III reminds Akhmed that it is bad policy to make

war on his own ulus (voevati vash ulus). (20) Whatever the histo

ricity of this embassy, it is quite plausible that reference to

Russia's status as the ulus would have been obligatory in any

attempt to defuse military hostilities and restore peaceful rela

tions with the Horde. It is an odd slogan for Ivan III to have

proclaimed if he were thinking in terms of Russian liberation from

the Tatar yoke.(21) The Nikon chronicler of the sixteenth century was extremely

inventive in interpolating usage of the concept of the ulus into

his annals. In several cases the word is used synonymously with

patrimony (otchina). In 1400 Ivan Mikhailovich, on the death of

his father, sends his kilicheev (envoys) to Temir-Kutlui to ask

for a grant (pozhalovanie) of the iarlik of his "otchina i dedina

i ulus," the grand principality of Tver'. Instead the new khan

Shadibek sent an envoy with a iarlik for the ulus to Ivan. (22)

Similarly in 1402 on the death of his father, Fedor 01'govich of

Riazan' requested his otchina i dedina i ulus from Shadibek, and

likewise received it.(23)

But the most imaginative passage utilizing the concept of

ulus written by the Nikon chronicler was interpolated sub anno

1384.(24) Mikhail' Aleksandrovich of Tver' tried to take advantage of the decline in Moscow's fortunes subsequent to its sack in

1382 by requesting from Tokhtamysh the iarlik to be grand prince of Vladimir. In fact Tokhtamysh did not grant this request, but

the Nikon chronicler concocts the following speech by Tokhtamysh to explain why:

"I know myself my ulusy, and each Russian prince in" my

ulus, and in my otechestvo (homeland), who lives po sta

rine (according to tradition), and serves me properly

(pravdoiu), and I reward (zhaluiu) him; and for the

injustice before me of my ulusnik prince Dmitrii of Mos

cow, I chastized (postrashil) him, and (now) he serves me

properly, and I reward him according to tradition (po

starine) and patrimony; and you (Mikhail') go to your

patrimony and serve me properly and I will reward you."

In short the Russians were not only familiar with the evolving

meaning of the term ulus as applied to the Golden Horde and the

steppe, (25) but were sufficiently comfortable with it to apply it to themselves, and even russianize it to yield the term ulusnik.

The Russian princes describe their territories as the tsarev

ulus or put such a depiction into the mouthes of Horde khans or

emirs when they desire to emphasize Russian-Horde friendship, the

identity of Rus' and Horde political interests, the unification

of Rus' and the Horde in a single political entity, and the

foolishness of military hostilities as mutually destructive.(26)

Reference to Rus' as the tsarev ulus was therefore akin to waving



NOTE 261

the flag. As ulusniki the Russian princes are obedient and loyal servitors of the Horde, who should faithfully pay tribute and who

should be immune to plunder by the Tatars. The degree to which

the authors of these sentences in the chronicles manipulate the

Turco-Mongol concept of the ulus so as to present themselves to

the Horde in the most favorable light is very impressive, and

suggests a thorough assimilation of the significance and utility of the slogan, previously unappreciated by historians of Russo

Tatar relations.

It is well-known that the ulus of Juchi, the Golden Horde, consisted of four divisions: the Desht-i-Kipchak (the Polovtsian

steppe), Sarai, the Crimea, and Khwarizm in Central Asia. Periph eries such as Rus', the Volga Bolgars, or peoples permitted to

retain their own princes such as the Mordva, were not incorporated into his structure. (27) Does this not entail that Rus' was NOT

part of the ulus? The Russian forest zone was unsuitable for the

pastoral nomadic way of life of the Tatars; it was not located

on the most lucrative Eurasian trade routes; it could hardly match

the economic resources of the Muslim urban centers such as Khwa

rizm; it was not occupied by the Tatars nor administered directly

by them. Russia was not only on the periphery of the vital inter

ests of the Golden Horde, which lay toward the rich pastures of

Azerba?djan and the oases cities of Central Asia, but also pe

ripheral to Horde activities. Russia, far removed from the steppe

heartland, was not an integral element in the Golden Horde. There

is no conceptual framework or political terminology which seems

to accommodate Russia's position in the Golden Horde, since it

had its own princes but paid tribute, was only temporarily graced with Mongol officials (baskaki) but then only visited by envoys

(posoly), and which paid Mongol taxes but was not part and parcel of the administrative apparatus of the Golden Horde, the diwan

system.(28) But whatever else is true, it is fairly obvious that

Russia was NOT part of the ulus of Juchi in the strictest sense.

Therefore all Russian declamations of fealty to the ulus to

which they belonged, the tsarev ulus, must be invented fantasies,

exercises in bending the truth to suit tendentious political

purpose. The Russian elite must have known that Russia was not

truly part of the khan's ulus, and the role of the Russian princes as ulusniki was fictitious. Nevertheless the sources, to be blunt,

lie, just as Muscovite ideologues invented the crimes of l?se

majest? against non-Chingissid powers in the Horde like emir Mamai

or against Tamerlane himself.(29) One can scarcely believe that

the political establishment of the Horde was genuinely fooled

by this pose, but no doubt sufficient material compensations could be adduced to persuade the Tatars to humor the Russian

pretense.

During the Mongol period the Russians were compelled to ac

quire enormous expertise about the Horde, its geography, society,

language, economy and politics. This intelligence information

was essential to protect Russian interests vis-?-vis the Horde.

Manipulation of key Tatar political concepts and terminology was

an essential element of this phenomenon. Usage of the phrase tsarev

ulus to portray Russia's position in the Golden Horde is a classic

case study in the intellectual and political attitudes of Russia

toward the Tatars.(30)

New York, 1982.




1. G. A. Fedorov-Davydov, Obshchestvennyi stroi Zolotoi Ordy

(Moscow, 1973): 43-44, 111-118. As applied to the Golden Horde and

especially to its successor states such as the Kazan' and Crimean

Khanates, the word ulus was replaced sometimes by the word iurt.

2. Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei (hereafter PSRL), XXV:

181.

3. Ibid., XI: 96.

4. Ibid., XI: 215.

5. This was common practice. From t'ma (Mongol tumen) the

Russians derived the term temnik: commander of ten thousand; from

iasak (the tribute in furs), iasashchik; and from tamga (customs

tax, or tax-collector), tamozhnia, customs house.

6. PSRL, XXXIII, Khol'mogorskaia letopis', s.a. 1277: 74-75.

7. On the significance of the Russian translation of the

Mongol title khan as tsar', the Russian term for the Byzantine

basileus, see Michael Cherniavsky, "Khan or basileus: an aspect of Russian medieval political theory," Journal of the History of

Ideas, XX (1959): 459-476. 8. Troitskaia letopis'. Rekonstruktsiia teksta, ed. M..D..Pri

se lkov (Moscow-Leningrad, 1950): 369. Apparently the term ulus

does not appear in the Laurentian chronicle, but that is consistent

with its omission of such terms as vykhod or iarlik, common in

later chronicles. It is possible that 1348 was the first occasion

on which it seemed efficacious to employ the concept. 9. On the Skazanie o Mamaevom poboishche, see Charles J. Hal

perin, "The Russian land and the Russian tsar: the emergence of

Muscovite ideology, 1380-1408," Forschungen zur osteurop?ischen

Geschichte, 23 (1976): 23-37. 10. Povesti o Kulikovskoi bitvy, ed. M. N. Tikhomirov,

V. F. Rzhiga and L. A. Dmitriev (Moscow, 1959): 46.

11. Ibid.: 114. Mamai also informs his soldiers not to sow

grain in his ulus (in the steppe) since they will feed on Russian

grain in the fall (p. 112). 12. Ibid.: 451-454.

13. PSRL, XI: 46-69, especially 48.

14. PSRL, XXVI: 125 ff.

15. On these tales, see Ch. J. Halperin, art. cit.: 44-48.

16. PSRL, XV: 442. B. D. Grekov and A. Iu. Iakubovskii, Zolo

taia orda i ee padenie (Moscow-Leningrad, 1950): 324, attribute

to Tokhtamysh the motive of transforming the Russian Land into

a simple Horde ulus in 1382, which hardly seems credible.

17. On the various texts about this event, see Charles J. Hal

perin, art. cit.: 53-56.

18. PSRL, IV: 110-111.

19. PSRL, XVIII: 171-172.

20. PSRL, XX: 346.

21. In fact the concept of the "Tatar yoke" (tatarskoe igo) is conspicuous by its absence in medieval Russian texts, and arose

only much later. I hope to examine the relevant material in a

separate article. Moreover, the Russian sources never deal with

concepts of conquest or liberation in conceptualizing Russo-Tatar

relations. I hope to discuss this problem in chapter VI, "The

intellectual history of Russo-Tatar political relations" of a

monograph now in preparation, Russia and the Golden Horde: the

impact of the Mongols on Russian history.



NOTE 263

22. PSRL, XI: 183.

23. PSRL, XI: 188.

24. PSRL, XI: 84.

25. The Tverian chronicle records the intention of Tokhtamysh after his defeat by Timur in 1389 to return to his ulus, which

seems to be a new and later reading. See PSRL, XV, Rogozhskii

letopisets, cols 156-157. The iarliki from the khans to the met

ropolitans of the Russian Orthodox Churches in their Russian

translation refer to ulusnye kniazi (princes of the ulus). See

M. D. Priselkov, Khanskie iarliki russkim mitropolitam (Petrograd, 1916): 57, 59, 60.

26. However I have never seen the expression the russkii

ulus (Russian ulus) in the sources. It is used now and then by A. E. Presniakov, Obrazovanie velikorusskogo gosudarstva. Ocherki

po istorii XIII-XV stoletiia (Petrograd, 1918): e.g. 109. It is

uncharacteristic of Presniakov to have invented a term not found

in the sources.

27. For example, V. L. Egorov, "Gosudarstvennoe i administra

tivnoe ustroistvo Zolotoi Ordy," Voprosy istorii, 2 (1972): 40, and G. A. Fedorov-Davydov, op. cit.: 89-93.

28. See the penetrating remarks of V. L. Egorov in his review

of Fedorov-Davydov, Obshchestvennyi stroi Zolotoi Ordy, Voprosy

istorii, 1 (1974): 173-175.

29. Ch. J. Halperin, art. cit.: 41-42, 49-51.

30. Specialization of labor among the various disciplines which are concerned with Russia and the Mongols, notably scholars

in Old Russian literature (literaturovedy), in medieval Russian

history per se, and in the Golden Horde (vostokovedy), perhaps

explains why the data on Russian usage of the term ulus to describe

Rus' has never heretofore been juxtaposed to its meaning within

the Golden Horde.



autour du xviiie siècle || tsarev ulus: russia in the golden horde

Documents