Circassians of Kabarda entered into a short-lived alliance with Muscovy (1557–8),
symbolized by the marriage of the recently widowed Ivan IV to a Kabardinian
princess in 1561 (Mariia Cherkasskaia); her family, the princes Cherkasskie, ranked
among the richest and most influential boyars at the tsar’s court through the
seventeenth century. Moscow maintained a fortress on the Terek River (1567),
but under Ottoman pressure failed to consolidate a position in the Caucasus
until the eighteenth century. The Ottoman empire tried unsuccessfully to wrest
Astrakhan from Russia, but its allies the Crimean Tatars did manage to launch
devastating campaigns northward, reaching Moscow in 1571 and 1572.FOREST AND STEPPE, MIDDLEMEN
AND MIDDLE GROUND
Russian history was shaped by an interaction of steppe and forest that pivoted
between symbiosis and conflict. The steppe was home to nomadic pastoralists who
generally spoke Turkic and Tatar languages in this part of the world (the Black Sea
or Pontic and Caspian steppes). The forest was home to groups who lived from
forest resources (Finno-Ugric peoples, native Siberians) and to East Slavs who
farmed as well as exploited—fishing, hunting, gathering. Trade and alliance forged
symbiosis between forest and steppe. Since at least the ninth century goods—
amber, furs, slaves—had traversed the forest from the Baltic to the Black and
Caspian Seas, destined for Mediterranean and Middle Eastern urban centers.
Princes of towns in the forest allied with steppe nomads in war and trade. At the
same time, nomadic communities relied on a raiding economy to supplement
pastoralism; slave raids from the south were a scourge in these centuries. As we
have noted, a major turning point in the history of Europe and Eurasia developed
when settled agrarian empires—Habsburgs, Poland-Lithuania, and most success-
fully Russia—were able to conquer the lands of the steppe, block slave raids,
monopolize trade, and, most importantly, replace grazing with farming. The
process took the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries and required long decades of
reliance on middlemen.
As we have seen, Russia’s expansion westward put it in conflict with the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania, the kingdoms of Poland and Sweden, and the city republic of
Novgorod—all settled states with which Russia engaged through war and diplo-
macy. When Russia looked south and east towards the steppe and the Siberian
taiga, however, it faced a different political world. This was the Mongol sphere,
where Chinggisid lineage guaranteed legitimacy and Mongol practices of diplo-
macy, negotiation, alliance, and war governed. The dissolution of the Mongol
empire’s unity from the Qipchaq khanate to China from the late fourteenth
century on yielded splinter khanates claiming Chinggisid legitimacy—the strongest
in vibrant trade hubs (Crimea, Kazan) and weaker ones in steppe and forest (the
Nogai Horde on the lower Volga steppes, the Siberian khanate at Kuchum). In the
sixteenth and seventeenth century the Eurasian steppe was a volatile place, with
new groups arriving, pushing previous inhabitants to new pastures. In the lower
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