World History

Unit 3: The World in Transition

Chapter 8: The Byzantine Empire, Kievan Russia, and the Mongols

18. Thu, Oct 31, 2013

This chapter introduces us to a whole new ethnic group, the Slavs, in their various groups.

One thing that your book has almost completely overlooked is the influx of Slavic peoples into the Balkan Peninsula in the midst of the Byzantine Empire, notably the Bulgars (from whom modern Bulgaria takes its name). Like many others, these were nomads sweeping down into Europe off of the Central Asian steppe, and they brought their own language and religion. Most Slavic peoples eventually converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and after the Turks conquered Constantinople in many ways they were Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The languages they kept, however, as well as their distinct identity, and that has had profound consequences for the world right up to the present day. Because of the affinity between the Slavic peoples (by history and ethnicity if not outright language), all the various powers that have ruled in Moscow have always been extremely interested in the fate of the Balkan Peninsula, and generally opposed to Islamic countries and peoples in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Perhaps more than anything else, this has shaped Russia's interaction with the wider world ever since.

So who are the Slavs, and the Russians in particular? What has shaped them and built them into such an enormous power in the history of the world?

• Environment is particularly key to understanding Russia. Ukraine (i.e., the area around Kiev and southward to the Black Sea) is the most fertile farmland, and quite productive; outside Ukraine, however, it's been joked that the growing season is the 23rd of June. One historian attributed all of Russia's problems to "the decision made some thousand years ago to become agricultural." How did this environment influence the character of the Slavs?
• The Slavs first enter written history as captives being traded by the Greeks — in fact our word "slave" derives from "Slav." The book goes over this rather lightly, but it's worth recalling, as it seems to be a bit of a pattern: the Greeks and their successors carried Slavs off for labor for centuries, the Vikings dominated much of what is now northern Russia (and the "Rus" were probably Vikings themselves); the Mongols swept over Kiev and Novogorod and made them pay tribute. The invasions continued, as we'll see in our later studies, but this is where they began. How might such repeated conquests shape a culture?
• Factoring in environment and invasion, what might have enabled a distinctive Slavic people and culture to endure? We've already discussed the influence of environment on the development of civilization; this is more about the persistence of civilization when everything goes wrong.

Side note: we also get our first mention of the Mongols here. The Mongol empire was so vast that it has apparently sprawled into no less than three separate chapters (8, 9, and 12). Most annoyingly, this chapter has their name in the title but only mentions their influence on Russia. If there's confusion about who these people are after reading just this chapter alone, set it aside for now; we'll deal with the Mongols in full when we reach Ch. 12.

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