28
As a result of a positive response from the Ottomans, the Russian envoy
Plescheyev arrived in Istanbul in 1495. However, as the Ottoman protocol
did not consider the Great Kniaz as peers to Christian Kings, the Sultan did
not send any envoy to Ivan III. Peaceful relations between the Ottoman
Empire – Crimea and Russia denigrated in the 16
th
century as a result of
Russian policy to replace the Golden Horde and acquire control in Eastern
Europe.
63
Although Russia started a war against Crimea, the Russian armies
were defeated in 1559 by the support of the Ottoman Empire to Giray’s
armies. Therefore, the Russians had to postpone their plans to conquer
Crimea.
The Crimean defeat didn’t stop Russia’s aim to conquer the former
territories of the Golden Horde. After the 1580s, Russia intended to conquer
the Siberian Khanate. In 1581, Russian armies and the Cossacks under
Ataman Yermak supported by rich, entrepreneur families such as the
Stroganoff family, crossed the Ural Mountains and moved to Siberia, where
Turkic, Uighur and the other northern peoples were living. With the help of
firearms, Russians could easily prove their superiority. The Cossacks, who
were functioning as Russia’s military instrument, were confronted only in
southern Siberia by an enemy with equal arms. Thus, it took a long time to
conquer the land of the Buriats. Sixty years after Ataman Yermak’s military
expedition, the Russian armies were seen on the Pacific shores. So, it took
only two generations to conquer a region as big as Siberia. They founded
63
nalcık, op. cit., in note 51, p. 26.
29
the cities of Tumen (1586), Tobolsk (1587) and Tomsk (1604) to strengthen
their authority in Siberia.
64
3.2 The Orthodox Church and Russian Religious Expansion
The rise of the Muscovy first among the other kniazdoms, then its
independence from the Mongol hegemony and moving to territories left by
the Mongols changed the mentality of sovereignty of the Muscovy. The Udel
system, which emerged after the kniaz of Yaroslav, Vladimir, and based on
the principle of sovereignty of every kniaz only in their own territory,
changed after Ivan III and Vasili II, when other kniazes acknowledged their
sovereignty.
65
Consequently, the Muscovite kniazdom became the kniazdom
of all Russia. When Ivan III united all Russian kniazes and established a
contact and then struggled with the non-Russian peoples that created “the
idea of unity” among the Russians. The idea of unity of the Orthodox
populations in Russia not only led the Church to give full support to the
expansion of the Russian state, but also the activities of the Church in the
East helped the development of oriental studies in Russia. Additionally, the
marriage of Ivan III and Byzantine princess Sophia Paleolog produced
organic relations between the Church and the State and created a positive
perception of the state within the Church hierarchy. Accordingly, following
the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire (1453), he was told
to be the heir of Byzantine emperors. Consequently, the Muscovite kniaz
64
Yemelianova, op. cit., in note 25, pp. 32-33.
65
Kurat, op. cit., in note 57, pp. 83-87.
30
was presented as the most superior protector of the Orthodox community,
who had lost their protector by the fall of Constantinople. As a result, the
Russian Orthodox Church started to claim, Moscow as the third Rome. This
claim elaborated by Philophei, a priest from Pskov monastery, is as follows:
“
Previously, the centre of world hegemony used to be Rome; then it became
New Rome (Constantinople). Both cities of Rome have fallen down. However,
the Third Rome survived, that is Moscow. According to the principle of
“divine trinity” of Christianity, there won’t a be a Fourth Rome; thus, Moscow
is the new center of the world hegemony… Muscovite sovereigns are the
heirs of Byzantium Empire and the superior protectors of Orthodoxy.
Because Orthodoxy is the single true religion and faith, Moscow is the center
of truth and hegemony in the world.
”
66
As a result, the Orthodox Church’s claim of Russian hegemony over
their co-religionists helped the Russian sovereigns to form their principles of
sovereignty and their desire to “rule the world”. The ambitions of the Russia
should follow her historical destiny and Constantinople would be certainly
conquered by the Russians one day. In order to strengthen that claim they
produced myths about the Byzantine roots of the Russian Empire and the
Byzantine coat of arms, the double-headed eagle, was acknowledged as the
Russian coat of arms.
67
The Orthodox Church’s idea of religious hegemony consolidated the
effect of the church in state affairs. Also at the time of Ivan the Terrible the
idea of the Third Rome was encouraged by metropolitan Makarii. That period
after the conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan, as we have already mentioned,
66
Ibid., pp. 139-141.
67
Ibid., pp. 139-141. For more information see Dmirti Obolensky. "Russia's
Byzantine Heritage." Oxford Slavonic Papers I (1950).
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