New Book: Bessudnova on Russo-Livonian Relations

H-EarlySlavic New book: Bessudnova on Russo-Livonian relations

Discussion published by Daniel Waugh on Thursday, August 6, 2015

Posted by Daniel C.Waugh

M[arina] B[orisovna] Bessudnova. Rossiia i Livoniia v kontse XV veka. Istoki konflikta. Moskva: Kvadriga, 2015. 448 pp. 16 pp. ill. ISBN 978-5-91791-173-1.

The name of Marina Borisovna Bessudnova, who teaches at Lipetsk State Pedagogical University, may not yet be well known to specialists on early modern Russia and the Baltic region. She has previously published a book on Novgorod as reflected in Livonian sourcesIstoriia ( Velikogo Novgoroda kontsa XV-nachala XVI veka po livonskim istochnikam, Velikii Novorod, 2009) and has edited a volume devoted to the 770th anniversary of the famous battle on Lake Peipus Ledovoe( poboishche v zerkale epokhi, Lipetsk, 2013). Several recent articles, not all published in readily available places, anticipate the impressive monograph under consideration here. While I can but suggest why it should be of interest (in that as a non-specialist I cannot provide a proper review), my sense is that it will establish for the author a bright place in the firmament of those who are writing seriously about foreign relations in early modern Eastern Europe.

Despite the fact that there is a long scholarly tradition of primary source publication and monographic study of the relations between Russia and Livonia, much of what we thought we knew about that history is now undergoing serious revision in Russian-language scholarship. One might cite, for example, A. I. Filiushkin’sIzobretaia pervuiu voinu Rossii i Evropy (reviewed on H- EarlySlavic 30 June 2014) or A. I. Ianushkevich’sLivonskaia voina (like Bessudnova’s volume published by Kvadriga [2013]; reviewed by V. A. Arakcheev in Quaestio Rossica 2014, No. 2). Just as Ivan IV’s “Livonian War” is being reassessed, so now Bessudnova invites us to reconsder the events leading up to the Russian-Livonian war of 1501-1503.

In so doing, she takes on entrenched views which have tended for nationalistic or other reasons to depict the relations in rather simplistic terms of hostility and aggression (heroic Livonians vs. barbaric, imperialistic Russians or vice versa, depending on which side of the confessional boundary one stands). Rather, she argues for a much more nuanced picture where neither side was particularly interested in provoking a conflict, where relations across the borders generally were peaceful because of mutual interest in trade, and where domestic and other international political considerations were usually the more important ones for the political actors. The often inflammatory rhetoric in the sources tends to conceal the realities.

As the author recognizes, the Russian sources unfortunately leave more to hypothesis than one would like. It is easy enough to suggest Ivan III was more interested in consolidation of his hold over Russian territories and increasingly insistent that his new “imperial” status be recognized in Europe. It can be difficult prove though what exactly he may have been thinking in closing the Hanse factory in Novgorod and then taking his uncompromising stance in negotiations with Livonia and the Hanse following the deterioration of relations in the early 1490s. The primarily German sources from Livonia and the Hanse are far more revealing about the making of policy, in particular that by the head of the Livonian Order Wolter von Plettenberg. Livonia was far from a united entity, and von

Citation: Daniel Waugh. New book: Bessudnova on Russo-Livonian relations. H-EarlySlavic. 08-06-2015. https://networks.h-net.org/node/3076/discussions/77734/new-book-bessudnova-russo-livonian-relations Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-EarlySlavic

Plettenberg no “national hero.” Bessudnova’s extensive quotation from the well-preserved correspondence and reports of negotiations undertaken by the various Livonian actors explains convincingly (in my view) von Plettenberg’s extreme caution due to the weakness of the Order and his difficulty in gaining either domestic support (for example, from the major commercial cities such as Reval/Tallinn) or assurances of foreign support as relations with the new power to the east deteriorated. She argues that Livonia was caught in the middle of events involving much more powerful forces at a time when the consolidation of the Russian lands around Moscow was significantly changing the balance of power in the region. The failure of the Livonian actors to appreciate the significance of Moscow’s takeover of Novgorod (with the replacement there of many of the elite families) and subsequent de facto control over Pskov meant it was impossible to expect negotiations to resolve conflicts could proceed as they had when those cities were still independent. In her view, Ivan III’s closure of the Hanse factory in Novgorod in 1494 had little to do with any particular interest of the Grand Prince in controlling Baltic trade but rather was a symbolic assertion of his power to enhance his stature and exact a kind of “revenge” for what he considered to be his demeaning treatment in the failed negotiations with the Holy Roman Empire. At the same time though, he did not appear to have explicit plans regarding territorial expansion into Livonia. Ivan’s political world view was very different from that in the Hanse cities. They might reasonably invoke the rule of law in cases involving Russian merchants and insist that their own merchants and diplomats likewise be subject to the rule of law in Russia. But the Russia of Ivan III had become one where, if he so willed, the Grand Prince would rule by fiat, and he had the unreasonable expectation that his negotiating counterparts would submit to his demands, even if that in fact was for them unthinkable foreign meddling in their domestic affairs.

Undoubtedly some of Bessudnova’s conclusions will be disputed, but arguably she has looked much more closely at the details in the documents than have most of her predecessors. And the devil seems to be in the details of what those documents reveal. One might fault her book for its distinct emphasis on the Livonian part of the history, although for this reader precisely that emphasis is welcome for its encouragement to look through a lens other than the Russian one if one would wish to understand the foreign policy of Ivan III. Some may wonder whether she lets Ivan get away with too much, although I fail to find in her text any evidence she has a political axe to grind at a time when our daily news is rarely free of opinions about “Russian intentions.” At very least, readers of this ambitious book should come away with a new appreciation that for any analysis of foreign relations amongst “regional actors” to be persuasive, it will have to take into account their domestic concerns and also look at the big picture of international diplomacy.