Mogilev, Belarus
Occupied with the struggle for Vladimir, Rostov, and the minor principalities of Northeastern Rus’, the Moscow princes were still eyeing the inaccessible lands of Western Rus’. However, both powers gradually expanded their territories, and their borders inexorably approached each other. Even during the time of Gediminas, one can note the first, albeit small, military clashes (the campaign of Kalita with the Tatars against the allied Smolensk of Lithuania, the attack of Olgerd on Mozhaysk in 1341, which had been taken a few years earlier by the Moscow prince from the Smolensk principality). But it was only under the successors of Ivan Kalita and Gediminas that this conflict took on the character of an open struggle for the possession of “all Rus’.”
From the mid-15th century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania lost its previous offensive momentum. After the death of Vitautas, his successors abandoned the all-Russian program, focusing their efforts on maintaining the integrity of this state. The transition of the Gediminas’ descendants from offense to defense coincided with the successes of Moscow’s unification policy.
In the process of forming the Moscow state, the Moscow princes achieved victory over their political opponents, primarily due to their Tatarophile actions, cunning, and treachery. In this regard, the “Tatar element,” as noted by G. Fedotov, seized the soul of Rus’ not from outside, but from within. In this respect, the Moscow princes proved to be the most consistent in the “gathering” of Russian lands, which was carried out using “eastern methods”: violent territorial seizures, treacherous arrests of rival princes, the removal of the population to Moscow and its replacement with newcomers, and the uprooting of local traditions and customs. Therefore, an important feature of the formation of the Moscow state was the establishment of an eastern style of political activity among the Moscow princes [1, p. 90].
In the 1450s–1480s, the relations between Vilnius and Moscow were regulated by the 1449 treaty between Casimir and Vasily II. The “Great Act of the Division of Rus’ between Moscow and Vilnius” stipulated that Vasily II would not claim Casimir’s estates—Smolensk, Mtsensk, and other border territories—while Casimir renounced claims to Veliky Novgorod and Pskov. However, in 1478, Ivan III proclaimed a program for the return of all Russian lands—Polotsk, Vitebsk, Smolensk. The Russian tsar considered the Berezina River to be the western border of his state [2, p. 85].
Those who could join Moscow with their possessions due to their proximity to Moscow’s borders accepted the conditions of dependency established in Moscow for voluntarily surrendered princely lords: they became permanent and subordinate allies of the Moscow sovereign, were obliged to serve him, but retained their court, retinues, and not only remained or became landowners of their possessions but also enjoyed administrative rights in them, maintaining their own governance. A similar situation befell the owners of small principalities along the upper Oka, and somewhat later, the princes of Chernigov and Novgorod-Seversk [3, pp. 104–105].
The grand princely authority had various means of influencing the policy of the serving princes. One of them was the replacement of their lands, as a result of which the servants lost connections with the local landowner corporations of the Southwest. Another means was disgrace. Retaining part of their ancient rights and privileges on their estate lands at the periphery of the Russian state for their services, the government formally placed them above the old Moscow princes and boyars [4, p. 241]. They could not compete with the serving princes. At the same time, the serving princes were removed from real governance of the country. They did not enter the boyar duma, did not participate in negotiations with ambassadors, and were not sent as governors. Gradually, as the state apparatus was formed and strengthened, their political role diminished.
The growing differences in the structure of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Grand Duchy of Moscow, and in particular, the more privileged position of the residents of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, primarily the local feudal lords, compared to the feudal lords of Moscow Rus’, did not contribute to the widespread popularity of the “Moscow” unification program among them. Hence, there was a decisive reluctance to recognize the authority of the Moscow sovereign, that “state patriotism” for which modern Russian historians somehow reproach them. Ultimately, the program of “reunification” put forward by the Moscow princes at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries represented a political chimera intended to justify the annexation of the borderlands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The situation would change in the 17th century due to the intensification of religious contradictions in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Counter-Reformation.
Naturally, the active policy of the Moscow state on its western borders met with energetic resistance from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The shaky peace on the Russian-Lithuanian border, accompanied by numerous conflicts that affected the population and economy of the border regions, trade conflicts between the merchants of the Moscow and Lithuanian principalities, and attempts to interfere in each other’s internal affairs, ended with yet another war.
In 1512, the fourth war in just over twenty years broke out, the war of the Moscow principality with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The goal of the Russian side was to seize the strongest fortress on the Dnieper—Smolensk. The Russian army, equipped with 300 cannons, was well prepared for the assault and siege of the fortress. Nevertheless, it took three campaigns for the Moscow side to capture the city, part of whose inhabitants fled to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
The conditions for the townspeople were generally quite lenient. Vasily III agreed to allow the voivodes and “soldiers” (warriors) who did not wish to remain in Russian service to leave the city without hindrance; he ordered the townspeople to “submit their charters as to how they should be in the city of Smolensk.”
The Smolensk residents received all the privileges they had enjoyed under the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Alexander. The city was to be governed “according to the old ways.” The Moscow sovereign promised not to interfere in the estates of the boyars and monasteries. “All duties” were permitted to be collected for city needs. The tax (100 rubles), which previously went to the Lithuanian grand princely treasury, was now abolished. Considering the interests of the townsfolk, Vasily III prohibited the acceptance of townsmen and commoners as “pledge-takers” and forbade collecting transport from commoners and townsmen for the grand princely couriers. The latter was particularly important, as Smolensk was located on the route of diplomats and the army from Moscow to Vilnius [5, pp. 348–349].
The lenient nature of the charter of 1514 can be explained by the need to achieve the capitulation of Smolensk before the main Polish-Lithuanian forces arrived at the theater of military operations. But Vasily III’s government looked further. Since it was impossible to win the war for the western Russian lands without the support of the like-minded population of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, it was necessary to provide such benefits to this population that would improve their situation compared to what they experienced under Lithuanian rule. The example of Smolensk could attract more and more circles of townspeople (which was especially important), “lords,” and peasantry to Russia’s side.
However, perhaps even more difficult than annexing new territories was holding onto them: the absence of a mass base of support in Western Rus’ was felt. The transfers of Toropets in 1508, the conspiracy in Smolensk, the loss of Lyubech and Gomel vividly demonstrated the fragility of this annexation. The Moscow government faced the task of consolidating the acquired lands, and it must be acknowledged that it coped with this task quite successfully—thanks to a system of well-thought-out measures, the most effective of which was the resettlement of serving people from the “indigenous” districts of the Moscow state to the western borders. As historian M.M. Krom notes, settlers in the territory of modern Belarus appeared only after the liquidation of the principalities—by 1525–1538 [6, p. 223].
Another instrument of the Moscow government’s policy, previously tested in Novgorod, Tver, and Pskov, was “expulsion”—the forcible eviction of local population groups from various social strata. Now it was applied in Smolensk. There were several “expulsions” here: one around 1514–1515, and another ten years later, with the second eviction affecting not only the boyars but also the Smolensk merchants. This expulsion is based on the fact that the evidence from sources about this action concentrates around two dates: 1514 and 1524 [6, p. 225].
Methods of ideological influence and outright demagoguery were widely used: the role of defenders of Orthodoxy in Lithuania, which the Moscow sovereigns appropriated for themselves, along with statements about their hereditary rights in the western direction. However, these diplomatic demarches of the Russian government were intended for the Vilnius court and, more broadly, for Europe as a whole. In Western Rus’ itself, the emphasis was certainly not on the religious sentiments of the like-minded. Thus, Ivan III, enticing the upper princes to his side, skillfully portrayed himself as a defender of princely antiquity, while Vasily III, in 1514 at the request of the Smolensk residents, issued a charter that repeated the main provisions of the privileges of the Lithuanian rulers. However, in both cases, this turned out to be merely a tactical maneuver: many principalities were liquidated immediately after their annexation to the Moscow state, and the charters for Smolensk remained in force for only a few months—until the pro-Lithuanian conspiracy in the city was uncovered.
The special order established in the Smolensk land after its incorporation into the Russian state was apparently the main reason why materials about Smolensk found weak reflection in Moscow’s orders. Smolensk lived a life isolated from the rest of Russia for a long time. Even the Smolensk bishop took relatively little part in church affairs concerning all of Rus’. As in Novgorod and Pskov, antiquity in Smolensk was also expressed in the preservation of merchant and craft organizations that had existed earlier [5, pp. 349–350].
Thus, the reaction of different layers of the urban population to the annexation of their city to the Moscow state was varied. The greatest loyalty to Lithuania was demonstrated by the church hierarchies and the boyar elite of the grand princely cities. The majority of the residents—both townsmen and provincial boyars (in Smolensk)—if there was no opportunity to defend themselves, showed a willingness to compromise, trying to negotiate “in a good way” with the new power. However, pro-Lithuanian sentiments continued to dominate the consciousness and behavior of various layers of the local population for a long time.
LIST OF REFERENCES
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History of the Fatherland. – Rostov n/D, 2002.
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Khoroshkevich, A.L. The Russian State in the System of International Relations / A.L. Khoroshkevich. – Moscow-Leningrad, 1988.
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Kliuchevsky, V.O. Works: in 9 vols. / V.O. Kliuchevsky. – Moscow, 1988. – Vol. 2.
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Zimin, A.A. Russia at the Turn of the 15th–16th Centuries / A.A. Zimin. – Moscow, 1982.
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Tikhomirov, M.N. Russia in the 16th Century / M.N. Tikhomirov. – Moscow, 1962.
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Krom, M.M. Between Rus’ and Lithuania: the Western Russian Lands in the System of Russian-Lithuanian Relations at the End of the 15th and the First Third of the 16th Centuries / M.M. Krom. – Moscow, 1995.