The Story of Russia

A gradual change came over the Golden Horde after the Tartars departed from their nomadic life and settled in and about Saraï. They lost their warlike habits, and with them much of their vigor. They began to farm out the poll-tax, that is, they sold the right to collect the tax to merchants of Khiva, whose oppression was so great that the people of Souzdal revolted in 1262, Koursk in 1284, Kolomna in 1318, and Tver in 1327. But the oppression was greater when the dukes of Moscow farmed this tax, not only from their own subjects, but also from neighboring dukedoms. They were absolutely pitiless in collecting from the poor people as much as they could extort, and this was the disgraceful foundation of their wealth and power. The poll-tax, thereafter, was always a favorite source of revenue in Russia.

Besides this tribute, the dukes were compelled to furnish soldiers to their masters. Soon after the conquest, we read of Russian dukes marching with the Tartars at the head of their drujinas, and of supplying them with infantry. In 1276 Boris of Rostof and others, followed Mangou Khan in the war against the tribes of the Caucasus, and helped to sack the town of Dediakof in Daghestan. This was excusable, because the enemy was an alien; but what can be thought of Prince Andrew, the unworthy son of Alexander Nevski, who, in 1281, induced the Tartars to aid him in pillaging Vladimir, Souzdal, Mourom, Moscow, and Peréiaslaf, and led in profaning churches and convents? In 1284, when two descendants of Oleg were dukes of Koursk, one of them put his brother to death for having insulted the khan, and Russian historians blame not the murderer, but the victim, because he had aroused the khan's anger! In 1327, the dukes of Moscow and Souzdal marched against Tver at the command of their Asiatic master. Such was the influence of the Tartar yoke.

The Russian dukes and their nobles lost not only the principle of patriotism, but also that of personal honor. The unfortunate Russians henceforth were to them, not fellow-countrymen but "tcherné"  "black people." The khans, with true political instinct looking to the perpetuation of this condition, gained the friendship of the Church, as they had that of the dukes. In 1313, the Khan Uzbeck, at the request of the Metropolitan or head of the Church of Moscow, ordered that the Church should retain its privileges, and that it should not be deprived of its property, because, he says, "these possessions are sacred, as they belong to men whose prayers preserve our lives and strengthen our armies." The churches and convents grew enormously rich. They received gifts of land, and the priests, so bribed, allied themselves with the heathen masters, and aided further in oppressing the people.

The descendants of the dukes and drujinas lost the large and generous impulses of the old Norsemen, to make way for the Asiatic deformities of treachery, cruelly, cunning, and disregard of honor. Whatever came in the way of their own interests, was trampled under foot by fair means or foul. The boyards, too, were tainted by the example of the chiefs. The vast extent of the country, the sparsity of the population, the difficulties in the way of communication, and above all the general ignorance, prevented the appearance of a patriot who might have raised a truly national banner, and shaken off the yoke of the servile lackeys of the Tartars.