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Muscovy’s Conquest of Kazan: Two Views Reconciled

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Ihor Ševčenko
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Extract

The war of conquest presents the conqueror with two major problems: first, the isolation of the adversary by diplomacy and his liquidation by force; second, the justification of such aggression to his own supporters and to the outside world. Two tasks of the historian follow: the first is to fit into an understandable pattern what happened before, during, and after the conquest; the second is to tell us how the conquerors explained why the conquest should have happened, why it had to happen as it did, and—whenever there is evidence—how the conquered viewed the same sequence of events.

Type
Discussion
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , December 1967 , pp. 541 - 547
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1967

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References

This discussion section is based on a session, “Muscovite Imperialism and Kazan,” held April 1, 1967, at the second national convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Washington, D. C.

1 Example : When in his prayer at the coronation ceremony of 1547 Metropolitan Macarius asked God to “subdue unto him [i.e., Ivan IV] all barbarian nations,” his words could have been invested with an anti-Tatar meaning by those who listened to him (see Professor Pelenski's article, p. 575 and note 70). Originally, however, the passage had nothing to do with Tatars or with Russia, since Macarius’ prayer was a translation of the Patriarch's prayer at the Byzantine Emperor's coronation. At the corresponding spot of the Greek, we read hypotaxon auto panta ta barbara ethnē. See J. Goar, Euchologium sive rituale Graecorum (1730), p. 726; P. Schreiner, “Hochzeit und Krönung Kaiser Manuels II. im Jahre 1392,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift, LX (1967), 77, lines 14-15; and, for Slavic texts, E. V. Barsov, “Drevne-russkie pamiatniki sviashchennogo venchaniia Tsarei na tsarstvo,” Chteniia v Imperatorskom Obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh (ChOIDR), 1883, Book 1, pp. 27-28, 34, 51.

2 In January 1553 Ivan IV wrote to the Nogai Mirza Ismail : “God … put Kazan into our hands. And such men as were in the city of Kazan, all of them died by our sword. As for their wives and children, our men led them into captivity” (Prodolzhenie Drevnei rossiiskoi vivliofiki, IX [St. Petersburg, 1793], 64). However, the parallel texts in letters to other mirzas, sent out at the same time, have a mitigated version : “And whoever insulted us (in Kazan), all of them died by our sword” (ibid., pp. 61, 67, 69, 71).

3 Example : In 1524 there was only one master gunner in the city of Kazan; see S. M. Solov'ev, Istoriia Rossii s drevneishikh vremen (Soviet ed.), III (Moscow, 1960), 270. About 1521 Vasilii III was rumored to have sent thirty thousand pishchali (small firearms) and several master gunners as a form of military aid to the ruler of Persia; see Sbornik Imperatorskogo russkogo istoricheskogo Obshchestva (SRIO), XCV (1895), 706.

4 See the list of incursions in S. O., Shmidt, “Predposylki i pervye gody ‘Kazanskoi voiny’ (1545-1549)” Trudy Moskovskogo Gosudarstvennogo Istoriko-Arkhivnogo Instituta, VI (1954), esp. 229-34.Google Scholar

5 The grand old man Solov'ev made a similar juxtaposition as early as 1855; see Solov'ev, III, 269. In general, his treatment of the Kazan affair is superb. For the attempt at making Kazan into another Sviiazhsk, see note 11 below.

6 See Sochineniia I. Peresvetova, ed. A. A. Zimin (Moscow and Leningrad, 1956), pp. 177, 183; for parallel passages in other versions of Peresvetov's text, see ibid., pp. 204, 208, 242, 245. See also A. A. Zimin, I. S. Peresvetov i ego sovremenniki (Moscow, 1958), pp. 377-79, 384.

7 V. P. Adrianova-Peretts, ed., Khozhenie za tri moria Afanasiia Nikitina 1466-1472 gg. (Moscow and Leningrad, 1958), esp. pp. 18, 20, 22-23, 25, 27 (“God alone knows the right faith“).

8 Sochineniia I. Peresvetova, pp. 162, 182, 196, 208.

9 Letter to Prince Aleksandr Borisovich Shuiskii-Gorbatyi, in D. P. Golokhvastov and Leonid, “Blagoveshchenskii ierei Sil'vestr i ego pisaniia,” ChOIDR, 1874, Book 1, pp. 89, 99-

10 Instruction to Vasilii Mikhailovich Tretiak-Gubin, SRIO, XCV, No. 38, esp. 695-96.

11 Demand for “strengthening“ : chtoby ukrepil gorod velikogo kniazia liudmi Ruskymi. Khan's reply : busurman de esmi ne khochiu na svoiu veru stati. Nikon Chronicle, Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei, XIII (1904, reprint 1965), 173.

12 The text I am using is a letter to Ivan IV transmitted anonymously in the so-called Sil'vestrovskii Sbornik and published in Golokhvastov and Leonid, pp. 69-87. For discussion of authorship, attribution of the letter to Sil'vestr, and date of 1550, see Zimin, I. S. Peresvetov, pp. 50-61; for attribution of the same letter to Metropolitan Macarius, see I. I. Smirnov, Ocherki politicheshoi istorii russkogo gosudarstva 30-50-kh godov XVI veka (Moscow and Leningrad, 1958), pp. 233-39. I wish to add that the letter contains a quasiquotation or two from the prayer pronounced by Metropolitan Macarius at the Coronation of Ivan IV in 1547; compare esp. p. 69 (suditi liudem svoim v pravdu i nishchim tvoim istinnoiu i sudom pravednym) with Barsov, pp. 28 and 51 (da sudia liudi tvoia pravdoiu i nishchiikh tvoikh sudom). Such a textual reminiscence would rather speak in favor of Macarius’ authorship.

13 See Golokhvastov and Leonid, p. 70. The pertinent quotation is Isaiah 45 : 1-3, from which the name of King Cyrus was removed; the sentence was adapted to Ivan IV, and the words “kings” and “cities” changed into “pagan tsars” and “pagan cities” respectively.

14 Golokhvastov and Leonid, p. 71. See esp. pravoslavnykh velikikh kniazei Gospod'.. .ot nechestixjykh poganykh Tsarei svobodi. In the letter to Prince Gorbatyi, ibid., p. 93, “Sil'vestr” quotes the wise “Demokrit” not in the form in which it appears in various Old- Russian Pchely but verbatim as it occurs in Vasian Rylo's famous letter “na Ugru” of 1480. For other borrowings from Vasian Rylo by “Sil'vestr” (including the quotation from Isaiah 45 : 1-3 which, however, is not doctored up in Vasian), see Zimin, /. 5. Peresvetov, p. 53, n. 190.

15 This explanation elegantly supplements the “plot theory” discussed by Jack M. Culpepper, “The Kremlin Executions of 1575 and the Enthronement of Simeon Bekbulatovich,” Slavic Review, XXIV, No. 3 (Sept. 1965), 503-6.