History of the Swamps: Golden Horde Created Muscovy

November 26, 2017November 14, 2025

Everything must start from the moment when Moksha, Erzya, Ves, Muroma, and other peoples inhabiting the central regions of present-day Russia became some kind of unified community that later received the name “Muscovy”. In reality, those processes that Kyivan princes launched didn’t happen here. They independently pushed the borders of their state where it was profitable. Understanding how the Golden Horde created Muscovy is key to understanding what Russia is today.

Kyiv expanded onto fertile lands and trade routes. The logic of this expansion was understandable and even classic. The state’s core — Kyiv — spread its interests beyond its existing borders to live richer and become stronger. Actually, this is how everything happened for several hundred years in a row.

How the Golden Horde Created Muscovy

Muscovy became some unified space not because the conditional center — Moscow — realized its economic interests and started growing where trade boiled, where rich harvests were, or where all this was easy to arrange on level ground. It was the Golden Horde that came here and brought this region into a single administrative system.

Moreover, Muscovy’s territory itself was extreme for the Horde. Harsh climate and absence of anything useful made these lands not too desirable a prize. Therefore, they appointed gauleiters there like Alexander “Nevsky” or Dmitry “Donskoy”. They knocked out the due tribute from local settlements. If it was impossible to obtain such in monetary or commodity terms, then slaves went as payment. Precisely for centralizing tribute collection, the Golden Horde united these lands into a single ulus.

Characteristically, Muscovites gladly entered the khan’s service and were quite a noticeable part of his army. Starting from the lands of future Muscovy and further west, all the way to the extreme points that now are Czech Olomouc and Italian Trieste, all battles occurred with the participation of recruits from Muscovite lands. The storming and destruction of Kyiv — including that. After reaching the extreme western point of its expansion, the Horde began to gradually withdraw. The peoples it captured slowly began to throw off the Horde’s viceroys. At this very moment, Muscovite recruits acted as punishers who beat rebels back into the master’s stall. Not yet having gained formal independence, Muscovy already took upon itself the functions of a police officer.

From Vassal to Expansionist

The decline of the Horde led to the expansion of the Muscovite principality into lands that had previously belonged to the Horde. After Ivan IV proclaimed himself tsar, the principality became a tsardom, yet Muscovy itself remained a vassal of the Crimean Khan, who had become the Horde’s successor in that part of the world.

Moscow became a city that captured new lands around itself — Novgorod, Pskov, Tver, Smolensk, Tula, and others. The word “captured” is chosen deliberately here. Moscow called these conquests “unification”, but the conquered peoples had a different view.

Not far from Stara Russa, on the banks of the Shelon River, there’s a plaque. It declares (in Russian):

Here, on July 14 (27), 1471, a battle took place between the armies of Moscow and Novgorod — for the unification of the fragmented Russian principalities into a single Russian state.

A battle. For unification. Apparently, Novgorod was so desperate to unite with Moscow that it raised an army to stop them. Fought to the death. Lost. And thus, unity was achieved — through slaughter, looting, and executions. After “unifying” the relatively wealthy and developed principalities around itself, Moscow demonstrated expansion mainly to the north and east.

Now it’s known that oil and gas deposits were discovered on the Volga and in Western Siberia. But then all these lands were barren. They represented no value either regarding trade routes, agriculture, or natural resources. Moreover, in those places of Siberia where there are no natural resources, there’s nothing to do even today. But Muscovy already then demonstrated its strange peculiarity — craving for capturing unnecessary lands.

Darkness While Europe Flourished

At the time when the Renaissance was already in full swing in Europe, Muscovy was in darkness. It lowered into that same darkness all those whose lands it managed to capture. European innovations that reached Moscow through Genoese and Venetian merchants were rejected. Their carriers were persecuted. Because the Golden Horde created Muscovy, it felt cozy in the Horde paradigm. Therefore, not wanting to change, it tried to convert its newly captured peoples into the Horde swamp.

Until 1700, Muscovy lived as the Horde, with its concepts of world order and everything else. It habitually paid tribute to the descendant of the Golden Horde — the Crimean Khan — and saw nothing wrong with it. Tsar Peter Alexeyevich Romanov personally distinguished himself in the epistolary genre by writing a petition to the Crimean Khan regarding the tribute he transferred.

This legacy — a state built on tribute collection and darkness — persists to this day.