Medieval Russia, 980-1584

by Janet Martin

This book is a concise, yet comprehensive narrative history of Russia from 980 to 1584. Exploring the realm of the Riurikid dynasty from the reign of Vladmir I the Saint, who monopolised political power over the eastern Slav lands, through the reign of Ivan IV the Terrible, who sealed the end of his dynasty's rule, it delves into social and economic issues as well as political history, foreign relations, religion, and culture. Janet Martin's analysis of these issues and emphasis on the dynamic qualities of Russian society form a basis for understanding the mechanisms and results of change in the principalities of Rus'. Her lines of argumentation are clear; her conclusions and interpretations provocative. They combine to make Medieval Russia, 980-1584 an informative, broadly accessible, up-to-date account of the states and society of early Rus' from the Kievan to the Muscovite eras.

Genres: History, Russia, Nonfiction, Russian History, Historical, Medieval, Medieval History

477 pages, Paperback

First published January 26, 1995

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

Introduction
This is a mixed bag of a book. On the one hand it is a single volume history and it does what it says on the tin; it is an introductory textbook aiming to cover a wide area and a long time but while I am starting to feel the gravitational pull to revisit Oblonsky's The Byzantine Commonwealth and other long neglected dust covered, spider inhabited books on my book shelf, Martin's effort, in the first edition at least, is not consistently inciting or rewarding.

A Textbook: Good, Bad and Ugly
The scope of the work is a problem. The time period is arbitrary, although starting with the Vladimir (claimed by both Russia and Ukraine as the founder of their states) who converts to Christianity (destroying the pagan shrines that he had put up himself a few years previously in an earlier phase of religious experimentation in the process) which is a starting point if she then went on to follow the development of the Church and use that as a lens to examine and understand the country, but she doesn't do that. The choice of starting date does sidestep the need to discuss in detail the origins of the Rus' state as silver hungry Vikings followed the money down the river routes to Byzantium and Baghdad. This might have been a wise way to avoid the controversies and debate around the subject, but also avoids a topic that is intrinsically interesting. The end date of 1584 with Ivan the Terrible (1530-1584) is completely bizarre. While it is a dramatic low note, country in a ruinous state after wars and political experimentation including Ivan murdering his son in a fit of temper (allegedly) over his pregnant daughter-in-law's clothing, it runs counter to Martin's stated plan of following the history of the Riurikid dynasty since Ivan was succeeded by his other son Feodor. While Feodor's reign wasn't hugely exciting - he was that ideal type of autocratic ruler, not in possession of an applicable and everyday level of intelligence, instead he was fond of praying and being pious which must have come as a blessed relief after years of his father tearing around, fighting, debauching himself and threatening to abdicate. So we are short sold the last fourteen years of Riurkid rule.

A Digression
Anyhow. The Riurkids were the descendants of Riurik (died 879ish), a Viking, who according to the legend recorded in Russian chronicles, was invited along with his two brothers (there are always brothers in this kind of story) to rule a part of Russia (which didn't exist as such at the time, well obviously it did in terms of there being a land mass and rivers and birch trees in the place that we now call Russia, but for the sake of convenience...). Later it turned out that Riurik was himself a descendant of Prus who was a brother of the Roman Emperor Augustus, Augustus though, as we know from legend, was a descendent of Aeneas so it turns out that the ruling dynasty of early Russia were Trojans. And if you believe that take care not to trip over that hut on frog's legs as you go out the door. Riurik's descendants established, or established themselves in charge of, a spread of settlements from the Baltic down towards the Black Sea, the most impressive and important of which was Kiev. Here Vladimir established himself as Grand Prince in 980, with which event Martin's book begins.

Vladimir's descendants practised lateral succession (rather like Saudi Arabia, but with more vikings and axes involved). So each ruler was succeeded by their brother, or eventually their nephew or son. This had the advantage of providing an adult ruler, but the disadvantage that it quite quickly became horribly complicated as the succession was open to dispute.

Textbook Ugliness
Martin follows a traditional narrative line, following the Riurikid dynasty, from Kiev to the period of dominance of Vladimir-Suzdal (a power base that developed in northern Russia), finishing with Moscow and Ivan the Terrible. Martin's narrative tends to be at the high political level. What this means is that we have two chapters of brothers deposing each other to be Grand Prince of Kiev and this is also a problem. According to Franklin and Shepard in The Emergence of Rus the title Grand Prince is only used once in the Primary Chronicle and then to describe a Prince of Suzdal... for a few years before being toppled by their nephew. The Mongol conquest comes as a brief break before the feuding begins again - this time for control over Vladimir-Suzdal. To make matters worse Martin insists on revisiting the same conflicts from different perspectives. Having proceeded through a hundred years of throne swapping we are then dragged back to the beginning again to go through much of it again but this time from the angle of "Foreign Relations", because some of the Princes had wives from outside the dynasty and so could visit the in-laws to borrow an army to seize Kiev until the next brother, nephew or cousin turned up with their army. After this Martin then takes us through the same sorry events a third time but from the point of view of the Polovtsy, because some of the Princely lineages had long standing alliances with sections of the nomadic Polovtsy - often cemented by marriage and so could visit the in-laws, borrow an army and attempt to capture Kiev.

While there is an argument for pulling out the material on foreign marriages and the Polovtsy and discussing them separately, the repetition is wearisome reading, although at least it must have been worse to live through than just to read about. Nor did I get much sense of why there was a near perpetual struggle for the throne beyond that it appeared (self-evidently) to be intrinsically desirable, but becoming Grand Prince of Kiev from her account didn't appear to provide the ruler with any particular concrete authority over their kinsmen. I would have accepted this as simply reflecting the quality of the source material, but for the fact that I had previously read Franklin and Shepard's The Emergence of Rus which is a much rounder, richer and interesting account. Admittedly they cover a slightly different period of time (750-1200), but using the same source material they also discuss baths, beards, women, and literacy among other topics.

There is a tendency, demonstrated in the reference to King Harold II of England surviving the Battle of Hastings and being in exile in Denmark rather than being dead and dismembered which is the generally accepted version of events, towards a certain insularity in this book. As a result Martin misses the opportunity to set some of the changes from the fifteenth century onwards like the beginnings of the imposition of serfdom (eventually completed in 1649) or the development of new forms of military units in the context of the Ottoman Empire and eastern Europe where similar trends were under way.

Inescapable Ideologies
Martin has the odd habit at the beginning of a chapter of mentioning a scholarly disagreement having a footnotes refer to a relevant (and generally English language) journal article but then not returning to it in the the body of the chapter. To an extent prompting the reader to do their own research and make their own minds up is fine, provided you have access to academic journals of course, but was problematic when she raised the issue of if the correspondence between Prince Kurbsky and Ivan the Terrible was genuine.

It is only in the last chapter "Conclusions and Controversies" that Martin has a detailed discussion of some of the controversies surrounding some of the issues - but this was in some cases two or three hundred pages after they had originally been discussed.

Perhaps the intention was to write a basic text which wouldn't scare students by suggesting there were any undue complexities, however Martin could have produced a shorter book (or made some space to mention women, literacy, beards, and baths) by arranging the material differently, and possibly replacing the interminable squabbling over Kiev with a flow chart or a diagram with lots of thick black arrows.

Martin does follow a conservative, traditional narrative, following the Riurikids. This tends to imply a continuity of a Russian state idea and a certain inevitability to the eventual state borders. The problem is that you can't escape ideology in this way. The idea of a continuity from Kiev, to Vladimir-Suzdal, to Moscow comes from a tradition of conservative patriotic history writing, starting in the nineteenth century and which doesn't really stop, and this by implication denies the significance of regions not ruled by Riurikids (like Novgorod, Pskov and those regions under Lithuanian rule) which don't get much attention in Martin's account which also developed out of Kievan Rus'.

The use of phrases like 'oriental despotism', or the diametrically opposed conceptions of the meaning of the period of Mongol suzerainty over most of Russia (eg either blaming it for any perceived 'negative' element in Russian life or the creation of a eurasianist viewpoint and therefore a generally positively understood idea about the future unity and power of the region), conceptions of appropriate Russian borders, or the degree to which Russia was culturally self-sufficient or linked to its neighbours, ideas of progress or backwardness or feudalism all reflect struggles fought out in the historiography and later in Russian literature and art. We can even see (for example in Russian and the Golden Horde or Visions of Glory) that even the source material itself can be deeply committed to ideological positions which were then interpreted by people working within Imperial Russia, the Soviet Union, or the exile community before then feeding into non-Russian scholarship (not that I wish to claim that this was without ideology either). The project of a neutral, non-ideological textbook is inherently flawed, the alternative is to bring the ideological elements to the forefront so the reader can see the context that the interpretations are coming from rather than to hide them away in a separate chapter at the end of the book.

Textbook goodness
The narrative improves in the second half of the book as the Princely line, despite some violent disagreements including the repeated deposing and eventual blinding of Vasily II (1415-1462), more by accident than by design according to Martin, shifted from lateral to liner succession. After having been blinded by his cousin Vasily II's luck improved as he managed to fight his way back into power to be succeeded by his son.

As the political situation simplified Martin was able to expand the scope of the study. There's an interesting discussion of St.Stephen of Perm - whose work in converting a Finno-Ugric tribe to Christianity won their region from the control of Novgorod to Moscow. There is some consideration of the spread of monasticism northwards over several generations ending with the foundation of the Solovetsky Monastery on an island in the White Sea at the beginning of the fifteenth century.

The source material isn't great for much for much of the period that Martin considers. Indeed Martin cites Miller's article on the construction of buildings as an economic indicator repeatedly, its an article in which Miller simply plotted the number of known buildings (generally churches and fortresses) constructed in any one year over several centuries of early Russian history to give an indication of the state of the economy - as you might expect there is an abrupt fall with the Mongol invasion and a long slow recovery. Naturally one might take issue with Miller's use of building as a proxy for the state of the economy, as it only reflects the ambitions of Princes and the church and their ability to mobilise skilled workers and materials - which may tell us more about their legal and coercive power than the state of the economy.

Agriculture is mentioned twice, once in the early period when we are told that the peasants had a slash and burn approach and then in the later period when they had settled into a three field rotation system. Commerce gets more of a mention - this imbalance quite possibly because it is simply better attested to in the sources even though presumably throughout the period people were doing their best to raise crops, milk cows, and collect honey.

As an introductory text to the fourteenth century onwards Martin's book is quite readable and provides a through, if sometimes too brief, overview. Footnotes do refer to specialised articles, mostly English language, and occasionally to source material in translation. The account of the period up to the reign of Dmitri Donskoi (1350-1389) is sometimes unnecessarily tedious. The second edition is considerably longer and hopefully this has given Martin the space to branch out and consider something more than Princely politics in the first few chapters.

[icaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un buon libro. Ampio e ben articolato. Interessante la prospettiva cronologica di un 'medioevo russo' che termina con la morte di Ivan IV (1584). Qualche errore secondario (elencato nei commenti di lettori inglesi). Molte ripetizioni nella prima parte, fino al XVI secolo (es. sul rapporto tra mongoli e russi a certa data: se ne parla discutendo dell'evoluzione dello stato moscovita, poi dell'evoluzione del commercio, poi nella analisi delle relazione internazionali della Moscovia, poi quando di affronta il tema dello sviluppo statuale lituano ecc.)
Del resto si presenta come un testo di studio di livello universitario e dunque anche le ripetizioni aiutano.
La scrittura è quella che è, 'dry', dicono gli inglesi : ma è questo il linguaggio principale dell'accademia, sotto tutti i cieli

[Lauren Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was not an easy read but a fruitful one. I didn’t realize how little I knew about early Russia. I was fascinated by her description of horizontal versus vertical royal descent. We are used to vertical-from father to son but the early Russians practiced horizontal-from brother to brother in age order. The Mongols interrupted this when they preferred a different member of the family.
I also didn’t realize how long it took for Russia to become Russia-for the fragmented pieces to come together.

[Erik Champenois · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Medieval Russia, 980–1584" is a somewhat dry but academically robust book covering Russia from Vladimir the Great through Ivan IV the Terrible. I personally find "The Emergence of Rus 750-1200" a better written book, but "Medieval Russia" takes us beyond this time period to explain the impact of the Mongols and the emergency of Muscovy out of the polity of the Golden Horde. She focuses particularly on the rules of succession and on the institutions of Muscovy. She also supports the thesis that the Mongol influences for early Muscovy were significant rather than ephemeral, arguing that Muscovy's expansion (across Kazan, Astrakhan, and Sibir) initially took place within the framework of the Horde rather than outside of it. At the end of the book, she shows a Muscovy deeply engaged in interacting with the Crimean Khanate, the Ottomans, the Lithuanian-Polish commonwealth, and the Danes and the Swedes. While Muscovy expanded territorially, she shows that underlying economic foundations were weakened under Ivan the Terrible, eventually giving way to the "Time of Troubles" that preceded the Romanovs.

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to be honest, I skim read large segments of this book.

That is not something to be proud of but the book frustrated me or one could say it is a quintessential take what you like book. For me personally I was most interested in the stories of Novgorod and the role of the nomadic steppe peoples be they Cumans or golden horde or later khanates. These stories, how they interacted with their settled neighbors, through trade, raid, domination, political submission and diplomacy was for me the highlight of the book. The lowpoint for me were the often overly detailed princely conflicts of the Rus lands, plots, backstabbing, conspiracy, betrayal goes on for whole chapters and yes these do lead to increased power for some principalities and impacts the amount of centralization of either Kiev or later Muscovy but it wore down my attention span.

A fair comment some have made here is that the over emphasis on the political has come at the cost of the social and economic with exception of the trade/urban economy which does get some attention. I get that but I also get that the story being brought by Janet Martin is one about state power and for them the trade was a core part of their power and diplomatic attention especially for a city like Novgorod. But on the other hand I do concur that we get very few insights on the vast majority of the people in these lands. Both the slavic farmer and the pagan peoples of the north east who were so vital for supplying all that trade material of furs and the like. With exception of one incident of a Muscovite successfully converting a smallish nation that was in theory under the diocese of the bishop of Novgorod which brought upon a diplomatic conflict between Moscow and Novgorod, no real attention is given to these peoples which is a shame.

I concur with Janet Martin that looking at the history of this region, it is easy to write it in nationalistic lense of Ukraine and Russia with the glossing over of such uncomfortable truths such as Kiev been on a downward spiral decades before the golden horde arrived and Moscow not as the paragon of Russia but rather its princes supplanting the old systems of legitimacy with their supplication to mongol rule and tribute system (until they were strong enough to cast it off).

If this book has taught me anything, it is how important it is to either stick to details in a book on a shorter period of time or talking about the big picture in a longer period. Janet Martin tried to do both by going into detail on some aspects while glossing over others. Unfortunately the details glossed over were the ones I would have liked more off and the ones given, did not entice me at all with exception of the golden horde but that is my long standing fascination with nomadic cultures speaking.

[Cheri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite a dry academic book and rather a difficult read. There’s no narrative at all since this book is essentially sourced directly from the Russian Primary Chronicle. As such, the bulk of the main topic is about the ascendancy of the Kievan Rus state (predecessor of Muscovy) and its demise as well.

Overall, what I really appreciate from this book is the insight into the state of Kievan Rus’ commerce, of what commodities they naturally produced that initially attracted the Varangians (Scandinavian raiders) to plunder their land and sell the stolen goods to the market of Constantinople. Fur pelts, honey, wax—with fur pelts the most valuable commodities. It was an economic necessity that compelled the Kievan princes to establish relations with the Byzantines and to defend themselves from the roaming Pecheneg nomads while they travelled to Constantinople. Apart from that, state formation within the Kievan Rus state also developed gradually (such as choosing one single faith to unify the various Slavic tribes under the Riurikid dynasty).

Janet Martin’s Medieval Russia is informative but not an easy read.

[Fred Dameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is NOT a primer on Russian history. This is a translation of source documents from 980 - 1584. If this time period of Russian history is your bag, great read. If not it will be a slog.

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based upon my own experiences, this book was used in a college course I took as an undergrad, aptly titled "Medieval Russia." Oddly enough, it was only one of two books for the course, considering the professor had a pretty difficult time obtaining information for it.

In any event, this book served its purpose quite well, even if it is a tad difficult to read. Perhaps a bit technical, I suppose, certainly not the casual reader. These sort of historical works are generally aimed at the student or those interested in the subject. In all honesty, I had no intention of learning much about Medieval Russia going into the course, since I was far more compelled by my German history courses and my courses that focused specifically on American military history and conflicts.

After the semester was done, my interest in Russian history was sparked, that also largely due to my professor's passion and unique way of teaching (very unique actually, he went far beyond general note taking as I didn't take a single note in his entire class!) Naturally this book played a role. History as early as this is often mired by heroic tales and its often hard to discern fact from exaggeration. I felt Janet Martin did a sufficient job of this, and while not the most interesting form of writer, she does a decent job at keeping the reader coming back for more considering this is an episode of history that is usually beyond the grasp of conventional history.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very informative look at this six hundred year formation of Rus', but Cambridge in recent years has been moving away from comprehensive texts like this that are made to be read cover to cover and turned them into a collection of thematic studies chronologically ordered, apparently in an effort to accommodate the lazy scholar who just wants to read this or that portion. The result is a lot of repetition when read in its entirety. This wouldn't seem such a bad thing, but in conjunction with the amount of detail presented, it becomes very confusing. You're constantly jerking back in time and recounting things you have already read and, unless you stay extremely attentive through all 450 pages of a rather dry recounting, you're going to constantly be thinking, didn't I already read this? Why are we talking about this again?

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very thorough, and by the time I was done with it, I really felt as though I had a decent grasp of the major themes running through ancient Rus' from its founding to the Time of Troubles. Clearly, the book isn't for those who aren't interested or directed to read it, but if anyone were to want a solid overview of the time with notes on conflicting viewpoints and an extensive bibliography, this would be the book to read.

[Grant Turnage · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a really informative book, just difficult to read. And although it was meant to be chronological, she does jump around some. This was problematic for me because I am new to this era of Russia's history. It is definitely worth reading if you're interested in this era, but it might take some work. My hat is off to Dr. Martin though; putting this book together was quite an achievement.

[Nicholas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a voluminous account of Medieval Russia spanning several centuries. Although Janet Martin's book delineates an incredible history of Rus', it can feel like she is shoving a fire hose full of information down your mouth. Her writing style is quite wooden and can probably cure minor cases of insomnia.

[Bettie]

From Jan-Maat's status update:

44 of 450 of Medieval Russia, 980-1584: "It had actually been the Danish king who, while acting as host to the exiled Harold after the Battle of Hastings in 1066, had arranged the marriage [between Vladimir Monomakh & Gyda/Gytha]"
Sloppy, Harold II died at Hastings in what is possibly the most famous death in English history...

[Valerie Sherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book with Morgan in a class called - shock! - Medieval Russia. It was good - not always readable, but I remember being able to get through it without too much of a problem, and enjoyed learning about the topic.

[Gina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found it a bit dry, but there is not much available as far as introductory works to this subject so it serves a useful purpose. I probably wouldn't recommend it to the casual reader.