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The Diplomatic Forms of Ivan III's Relationship with the Crimean Khan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Robert M. Croskey
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Extract

The final stage of Muscovy's subordination to the Tatars is a murky topic in Russian history. In the first half of the fifteenth century, the Golden Horde fragmented and new political entities emerged: the Great Horde, the Nogai Horde, the Khanates of the Crimea, Kazan', and Astrakhan'. The Great Horde claimed the same supremacy as the Golden Horde, and the khans of the Great Horde demanded the tribute and the submission which Muscovy formerly had given the khan of the Golden Horde. As the power of the Great Horde in turn weakened, Muscovy was able to emerge from its submission to the Tatars and function as an independent state.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , Summer 1984 , pp. 257 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1984

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References

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5. Ibid., p. 196. My impression, though difficult to document, is that the term iarlyk is avoided in the Russian ambassador's speech after 1490. In general, the diplomatic documents increasingly seem to avoid Turkicisms.

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8. SIRIO, 35:24, 232, 235, and passim.

9. Ibid., pp. 1,4,5,9,164.

10. Ibid., pp. 253,413,471.

11. Some anomalies in the usage just described: ibid., pp. 250 and 477.

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26. Ibid., p. 181; M. D. Poluboiarinova, Russkie liudi v zolotoi orde (Moscow, 1978), p. 9.

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28. Spuler, History of the Mongols, p. 91.

29. Quoted in Ilovaiskii, D., Istoriia Rossii, vol. 2, Moskovsko-Litovskii period, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1896)Google Scholar.

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32. Ibid., p. 59. One is tempted to believe that there is a tie here to the more aggressive policy toward Kazan', undertaken that same year.

33. Ibid., p. 136.

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35. SIRIO, 41:49.

36. Ibid., p. 539.

37. Ibid., p. 556.

38. SIRIO, 95:632–33.

39. SIRIO, 41:161: “ty by ego [Zabolotskii] tam [in the Crimea] zval boiarinom.” Also see Alef, Gustave, “Reflections on the Boyar Duma in the Reign of Ivan III,” Slavonic and East European Review, 45, no. 104 (1967): 120 Google Scholar, reprinted in Gustave Alef, Rulers and Nobles in Fifteenth-Century Muscovy (London, 1983). The question has been raised of whether the term boyar is not being used here in a general sense, meaning a “member of the highest non-princely social group” (Alef, “Reflections,” p. 81), rather than the specific meaning of senior member of the Boyar Duma. My conclusion that the specific meaning is intended is based on the passage cited above in which Zabolotskii, in the general sense a boyar, was evidently not called a boyar in Moscow. There are many examples of ambassadors who are called boyars in diplomatic documents but who are not members of the Boyar Duma. See, among others, Konstantin Malechkin, SIRIO, 41:200; Nikita Vasil'evich Beklemishev, ibid., p. 7, a blizhnii boyar; Aleksei Starkov, ibid., p. 12. None of these are known to Alef as members of the Boyar Duma in Ivan Ill's reign. Revealing about the meaning of the term boyar in this context are the cases of princes sent as ambassadors who are described as “prince and boyar”: Ivan Semenovich Kubenskii, ibid., pp. 300–301; and Vasilii Ivanovich Nozdrovatov, ibid., p. 37. In these instances, it seems that the term boyar must have been intended to indicate to Mengli-Girei that the ambassador was a member of the Boyar Duma, since the individual was not a boyar in the general sense of the word. Again, however, neither individual is known to Alef as a member of the Duma, either as a boyar or an okol'nichii.

40. Poluboiarinova, Russkie liudi, p. 21.

41. Ibid., pp. 8, 18.

42. SIRIO, 41:231–32.

43. Ibid., pp. 231–34.

44. Spuler, History of the Mongols, p. 40.

45. SIRIO, 41:231–33.

46. SIRIO, 35:81; Sobranie gosudarstvennykh gramot, i dogovorov khraniashchikhsia v gosudarstvennoi kollegii inostrannykh del (Moscow, 1813–1894), vol. 1, no. 129, p. 333.Google Scholar

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50. Ibid., pp. 13–14.

51. Ibid., p. 79 and passim.

52. Ibid., p. 8 and passim.

53. Ibid., p. 386.

54. Ibid.

55. Ibid., p. 311; Bazilevich, Vneshnaia politika, p. 184.

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58. Ibid., pp. 122,211,420.

59. Ibid., pp. 168, 193.

60. Ibid., pp. 56, 121, 168, 173, 211, 517.

61. Ibid., pp. 56, 211, 151, 267.

62. Ibid., pp. 197,220,267.

63. Ibid., pp. 56, 106, 151.

64. Ibid., p. 267.

65. Bazilevich, Vneshnaia politika, p. 185.

66. Herberstein, Notes upon Russia, 1:114.

67. SIRIO, 41:405.

68. Ibid., pp. 3, 39, 179, 229.

69. Ibid.,, p. 141.

70. Robert C. Howes, trans, and ed., The Testaments of the Grand Prince of Moscow (Ithaca, N.Y., 1967), p. 267 (hereafter Testaments).

71. Zimin, A. A., Rossiia na rubezhe XV-XV1 stoletii (Moscow, 1982), pp. 234–35.Google Scholar

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73. Roublev, “Mongol Tribute,” p. 52.

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75. SIRIO, 41:56.

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77. SIRIO, 41:268. Bazilevich, Vneshnaia politika, p. 185, SIRIO, 41:104.

78. Ibid., p. 476.

79. Ibid., pp. 80, 104, 117, 142, 179.

80. Testaments, pp. 295–97.

81. SIRIO, 41:272.

82. Edward Louis Keenan, “Muscovy and Kazan’ 1445–1552” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1965), pp. 379, 383; Pelenski, Jaroslav, Russia and Kazan: Conquest and Imperial Ideology (1438–1560's) (The Hague, 1974), p. 302 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83. SIRIO, 41:178, 222.

84. Spuler, History of the Mongols, pp. 82–83, 85.

85. Abundantly illustrated, for example, by Fennell and Bazilevich in the works cited above.

86. Usmanov, Zhalovannye akty, p. 196, S1R10, 41:85.