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The Mongol Yoke
After Genghis Khan conquered the Khwarezmian Empire of Central Asia (1219 – 1221), he gave his two brilliant lieutenants Subutai and Jebe permission to lead a great cavalry raid that spelled the beginning of the end for Kievan Rus. While Genghis returned to Mongolia via a southern route, his lieutenants led 20,000 men via a northern circular route on a reconnaissance in force. Subutai and Jebe rode westward through northern Persia, then up through the Caucasus, around the Caspian Sea, before turning east to return to Mongolia.
En route, the Mongols met and defeated the Cumans, which brought them into conflict with the Cumans’ Rus allies. The Rus and surviving Cumans assembled an army of 80,000 men under the joint command of Mstislav III of Kiev, and Mstislav the Bold of Galich. The Mongols conducted a feigned retreat, and led their pursuers on a merry chase that lasted for nine days. They then ambushed the pursuers while they were crossing the Kalka River in May of 1223. The Mongols encircled and butchered the Rus-Cuman army, killing around 75,000 out of the 80,000 who had set out after them.
The victory at Kalka River set the stage for a Mongol return fifteen years later in 1237, this time in a full-force invasion led by Genghis Khan’s grandson, Batu Khan. By 1240, the Mongols had seized Kiev and brought Kievan Rus to an end. All Rus states were forced to submit to Mongol rule and become part of the Golde Horde empire established by Batu, with its capital at Sarai on the Volga. For the next two and a half centuries, the Golden Horde dominated Russia, appointing the rulers of its statelets, and exacting tribute from them as their overlord. During this period, which came to be known as the “Mongol Yoke“, Russia underwent dramatic social changes, as its hitherto free peasants were transformed into serfs.
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It was also during this period that the center of Russia shifted from Kiev to Moscow, whose rulers governed a forested realm, less vulnerable to Mongol horsemen than the open Steppe surrounding Kiev. That gave Moscow’s rulers some breathing room, as the Mongol Yoke sat lighter upon their neck than it did upon the necks of other Rus more readily accessible to Mongol cavalry. Moscow’s rulers, like the rest of the Rus, were Mongol vassals, but vassals with some limited independence. So long as they sent their tribute on time and caused no trouble, the Mongols largely left them alone.
Moscow’s rulers gradually became the most powerful of Russia’s Mongol vassals, and eventually claimed for themselves the titles of Grand Dukes and Grand Princes, once held by the rulers of Kiev. As their power grew, Moscow’s rulers began reasserting their independence, and in 1380, Prince Dimitri of Moscow defeated the Mongols at Kulikovo Field near the River Don, earning himself the title Dimitri Donskoi.
Donskoi’s victory did not end the Mongols’ domination of Russia, but it was a turning point. From then on, Mongol authority went into decline, while Moscow steadily gained power. In 1389, Donskoi openly challenged the Mongols’ right to appoint Russian rulers by selecting his son to succeed him, without seeking Mongol approval. The Mongol Yoke finally ended in 1480, at the Great Stand at the Urga River, a standoff between Grand Prince Ivan III of Muscovy and the Mongols, that ended with the Mongols retreating and abandoning their claims to Russian overlordship.