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Europe: Ancient and Medieval
of Montaillou can be seen stalking the whole countryside of southern France.
HENRY KAMEN
Higher Council for Scientific Research,
Barcelona
DONALD OSTROWSKI. Muscovy and the Mongols: CrossCultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier, 1304-1589.
New York: Cambridge University Press. 1998. Pp. xvi,
329. $59.95.
Donald Ostrowski's bold, wide-ranging, argumentative
book examines the competing influences that shaped
Muscovy in its formative centuries and how Muscovites
reconciled, incorporated, or adapted those influences
and made them their own. Identifying Mongol
(Qipchaq) and Byzantine influences as the key rival
forces that contributed to Muscovite political development, Ostrowski concludes that "the secular administration was heavily Mongol influenced and the ecclesiastical administration was heavily Byzantine
influenced. The two influences clashed, to a certain
degree, both with each other and with the indigenous
East Slavic culture in Muscovy" (p. 246). Mongol
influence predominated in the fourteenth century,
particularly in the administrative and military spheres.
Byzantine influence reasserted itself forcefully through
the rising power of the church in the sixteenth century.
The turning point, according to Ostrowski, came in
1448. The moment marked not a dramatic shift in
geopolitical relations with the steppe but rather a
radical change in relations with Byzantium. Until the
Greek Orthodox Church disgraced itself in Russian
eyes at the Council of Florence, Muscovy followed the
Byzantine lead in a policy of accommodation with the
khanates of the steppe. Only after the break with
Byzantium in 1448 does Ostrowski detect the rise of
anti- Tatar propaganda in Muscovy, and then only from
ecclesiastical pens. Until the end of the sixteenth
century, he argues, secular forces continued to orient
themselves toward the steppe, both practically and
ideologically. Meanwhile, ecclesiastical writers strove
to create a "virtual past" in which the Rus' land had
suffered under and struggled against a mythical "Tatar
Yoke."
Ostrowski works this argument out in rich detail in
the second half of the book. Part one runs through a
more familiar list of features commonly attributed to
Mongol influence: administrative practice, the seclusion of women, oriental despotism, and economic
oppression. Here not all of the arguments prove
convincing (particularly the section on the origins of
the pomest'e system), and the overall conclusions are
predictable. Ostrowski finds that Mongol administrative and military practices influenced Muscovite practices, but Mongols were not responsible for the rest. As
Mongol government was not despotically structured, it
could not have served as the model for any putative
Muscovite despotism. On the contrary, the "steppe
principle" in Muscovite politics dictated the active
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
participation of a boyar council and of wise advisers.
Ostrowski effectively recasts the Mongols' so-called
"economic oppression" of Rus' as economic integration into the lucrative trade routes protected by the
Pax Mongolica.
Part two of the book breaks new ground and reaches
new heights. The contention that anti-Tatar rhetoric
appeared in texts only after 1448 provides Ostrowski
with a basis for reconsidering many long-disputed
questions of source analysis and dating. Moreover, his
vision of two competing orientations-of the secular
elite with a Qipchaq orientation and the ecclesiastical
hierarchy with a Byzantine orientation-allows him to
reopen and develop Edward Keenan's intriguing "two
cultures" theory about the sharp divide between
church and secular cultures. Ostrowski uses this bifurcated vision to analyze the puzzling behavior of Ivan
the Terrible. "The discrepancy between the secular
administration's Mongol-based political practice and
the Church's Byzantine-based theoretical outlook
helps provide a rational understanding of the seemingly irrational and 'crazy' actions that Ivan IV is
described as having taken" (p. 189). The two-cultures
theory explains the meaning of the zemskii sobor, the
consultative "assembly of the land," and the reason
that it appeared when it did. The assembly, Ostrowski
argues, was modeled on the Mongol quriltai, a council
of notables that advised the khan and met to select new
khans, precisely the functions of the Muscovite sobor.
Although most administrative borrowing from the
Mongols occurred in the fourteenth century, the quriltai made no sense as a Muscovite institution until the
grand prince assumed tsar or khan-like status in 1547,
after which the assembly made its appearance. Comparative assessments of the Muscovite assemblies as
pallid, powerless versions of western parliaments "view
a Muscovite institution through the wrong lens" (p.
186).
A superb chapter in part two addresses the "Third
Rome" theory. So much has been written on the topic
that it seems there could be little left to say, yet
Ostrowski's discussion brings together the on-going
debate in a revealing way and fits it convincingly into
his theory of the triumph of Byzantine-oriented church
culture in the second half of the seventeenth century.
The book contributes to a historiography sharply
divided between those who pay no attention to external influences and those who consider all of Russian
culture an import. Ostrowski's presentation of competing external influences, combined sometimes happily,
sometimes conflictually, in an indigenous Muscovite
variant, advances the field greatly. If at times the
distinctions between Mongol and Byzantine principles
seem too stark and the struggle between khan and
basileus too clearcut, and if occasionally the connections between points are difficult to follow, the book is
nonetheless an extraordinary feat, daring in its scope,
its ambitions, and its successes.
VALERIE A. KIVELSON
University of Michigan
APRIL
1999