Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier, 1304-1589. byDonald OstrowskiReview by: Charles J. HalperinThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Summer, 1999), pp. 517-518Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2544735 .

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Book Reviews 517

Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier, 1304-1589. Donald Ostrowski. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998. xvi +329 pp. $59.95.

Donald Ostrowski's ambitious monograph attempts to reinterpret the impact of the Mongols and (despite its title) of Byzantium upon medieval Muscovy, in order to provide a new conceptualization of Muscovite political culture.The dates in the book's subtitle the accession of Iurii Danilovich to the throne of Moscow in 1304 and the establishment of the patriarchate of Moscow in 1589-personify Ostrowski's dual focus on the Mongol-influ- enced court and the Byzantine-influenced Church.

In part 1, Ostrowski analyzes Mongol influence on the political, social, intellectual, and economic history of Muscovy. He repeats conclusions from his earlier articles that the Boyar Council was copied from the council of four karachi begs of the Kipchak Khanate, the tysiatskii (chiliarch) and later bol'shoi namestnik ("senior lieutenant") from the beylarbey (bek- liarbek), the dvorskii (majordomo) from the vizier, and pomest'e ("conditional" land grant) from the Islamic iqta. Other Muscovite administrative offices are also tracked to Mongol institutional equivalents. He contends that further study would demonstrate that even the Muscovite system of mestnichestvo would derive from Mongol influence. Ostrowski denies most social influences. The seclusion of women in Muscovy owed nothing to Mongol influence, and there was only limited Mongol impact on Muscovite law. He labels Oriental Despotism a bogus projection of eighteenth-century French criticism of their own govern- ment, denying any Mongol contribution to Muscovite political theory. He disputes Mongol economic oppression of the East Slavs, attributing Muscovite prosperity to Mongol patronage of international trade. Although Ostrowski presents the most extensive claims for Mongol influence on Muscovite political life ever, this reviewer finds his evi- dence about the boyar duma, pomest'e, and other administrative institutions insufficient and sometimes contradictory. His conclusions on women, Oriental Despotism, and the econ- omy are not new, but his discussions of these issues are interesting and valuable.

In part 2, Ostrowski delineates the development of an anti-Tatar ideology by the Mus- covite Orthodox Church, with much textual history and interpretation. He claims that no anti-Tatar East Slavic texts were written between 1252 and 1448. Ostrowski discusses later anti-Tatar interpolations into earlier chronicle accounts, the depiction of the so-called "lib- eration" of Russia from the Tatars in 1480, and the escalating portrayal of the Muscovite ruler as a Byzantine basileus, including Moscow-the Third Rome. The Orthodox Church imposed this anti-Tatar ideology on Muscovy to divert the ruling class from its residual Tatar orientation. Ostrowski logically concludes the "TatarYoke" was a myth.

Sometimes Ostrowski merely chooses among existing interpretations of the dating and significance of Muscovite ideological texts, sometimes he introduces new views. This reviewer finds his distinction between pro-Tatar pre-1448 and anti-Tatar post-1448 sources simplistic and schematic. For example, he concedes that early anti-Tatar texts remained pro- Chingizid. His discussion of Third Rome texts is noteworthy, although doubts about the significance of the doctrine in sixteenth-century Muscovy are more widespread than Ostrowski allows. Ostrowski deserves recognition for discovering the earliest allusion to "the TatarYoke," but since it appeared in Daniel Printz's account of his 1575 mission in Latin, some readers may be less sanguine that it constitutes proof that the notion circulated in contemporary Muscovy.

Ostrowski tries to adhere to a rigorous methodology of identifying foreign influence, which requires reliable contemporary evidence in both loaning and borrowing societies,

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518 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXX / 2 (1999)

and a physical mechanism of transmission. He admits when he cannot adhere to his own standards, notably in. attributing the seclusion of women in Muscovy to Orthodox post- Byzantine bookish influence. Occasionally it is unclear what sources Ostrowski relies on, for example, in asserting that both Dmitrii Donskoi's and Mamai's armies in 1380 contained East Slavs and Tatars. More importantly, Ostrowski's analysis proceeds from a questionable cultural contrast of Church and court. After all, the brother of the leader of the Trans-Volga Elders monastic movement, Nil of Sora, was Andrei Maiko, an influential d'iak (clerk/ bureaucrat) of Ivan III. He attributes all chronicles to clerical authorship, a revolutionary proposition that is difficult to prove. Despite describing the frequent trips of Orthodox metropolitans to the khans and discussing the presence of a bishop of Sarai who nomadized with the Horde, Ostrowski derides clerical ignorance of Horde institutions.The chronicles and other "ecclesiastical" texts are major sources about the Mongols, with abundant infor- mation on Horde personnel, geography, population, and officials, and Ostrowski makes good use of them. It is therefore too convenient for him to dismiss the absence of chronicle references to Horde darugi in the thirteenth and early fourteenth century as clerical igno- rance, and then to rely upon those very same chronicles to document later activities of darugi.

Ostrowski's argument that pomest'e derives from iqta rests in part upon assertions of a sig- nificant Tatar immigration to Muscovy from the second half of the fifteenth century. Unfortunately, what is needed is a much more critical assessment of individual clan geneal- ogies to distinguish reliable from fictitious steppe origin, and a new calculation of the social contribution of the Tatars to the Muscovite elite, clearly a major task in itself.

The issue ofTatar descendents in Muscovite service raises broader and more compli- cated issues of cultural identity. Ostrowski's conclusion that the oprichnina was an attempt by Ivan IV to set up a Mongol/steppe state within a state partially depends on the belief of boyare of Tatar descent that they were "Tatars2" Ostrowski mentions steppe analogues of the concept of the widow's portion, but not the Slavic derivation of oprichnina from oprich. Evi- dence that the Muscovites projected the authority of the tsar into the steppe as the succes- sor of the Mongol khan cannot corroborate the conclusion that the secular court resisted the imposition of Byzantine-church ideology of the basileus because the court was pro- Tatar. Caution at the responsibilities entailed, plus vestigial ambivalence toward Byzantium, might better explain Muscovite slowness to assimilate Byzantine imperial ideology. Further documentation is required to prove that the Church and some members of the secular elite sought to abolish institutions of Mongol origin to oppose a pro-Tatar secular elite. Ostrowski implies a major cultural transformation in the mid-sixteenth century Muscovite court for which he offers neither evidence nor motivation. Moreover, if the Church could, as Ostrowski phrases it, have it both ways, propagating an anti-Tatar ideology in texts while invoking the model of the khan's iarlyki (patents) to protect their own lands and tax immu- nities, then it is equally plausible for the court to conceive of the tsar as both khan and basileus. To be credible, Ostrowski's evaluation of Ivan IV merits expansion. In particular, one craves elucidation of a mind-boggling text, brought to Ostrowski's attention by Craig Kennedy, in which Ivan IV is described as a descendent of Chinggis Khan, an even more astonishing, if unofficial, fictive genealogy than that of the brother of Augustus Caesar. Charles J. Halperin .............. Indiana University

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