In Moscow's Shadows

In Moscow's Shadows 237: How A 1552 Siege Explains A 2022 Invasion

• Mark Galeotti • Episode 237

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A frozen river swallows cannons in 1550; a traffic jam of armour stalls outside Kyiv in 2022. Different centuries, same lesson: wars are won by planning, logistics, and the courage to listen to people who know what they’re doing. Ivan the Terrible took Kazan in 1552, learning crucial lessons of warfare and statecraft that Putin the Not So Great neglected when invading Ukraine in 2022.

Spinning off my new book, Siege of Kazan 1552: Ivan the Terrible breaks the Kazan khanate (Osprey), I look at how that campaign showed the power of five disciplines: promote competence, raise the right army for the fight, plan supply first, empower specialists, and build morale on a story that endures contact with reality. And how the Ukraine was has shown the cost of neglecting them. The war will change Russia—its economy, its veterans, its ties to Europe—just as Kazan changed Muscovy. The only open question is whether leaders choose the lessons that build a state, or the myths that break one.

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MG:

The invasion of Kazan in fifteen fifty-two, the invasion of Ukraine in twenty twenty-two, four hundred and seventy years a pump, but not entirely distinct. Hello, I'm Mumk Galeontti, and welcome to my view of Russia in Moscow Shadows. This podcast of varying length, frequency, and format, yet always reassuringly low production values, is supported by generous and perspicacious patrons like you, and also by the Crisis Exercise software company Conductor. So I'm recording this on Sunday the 22nd of February, just two days short of the terrible fourth anniversary of the war against Ukraine. And I had originally been thinking of using this as a sort of four-year retrospective, but there's a few people that I wanted to talk to, largely in Russia, that I haven't been able to yet for that. So instead that'll probably be next week. And today Well yes, today I wanted to draw a rather different kind of discussion about Russian invasions. I sing of Russia liberated from the barbarians, the Tatar power trampled and pride overthrown, the movement of ancient forces, labours, bloody battles, the triumph of Russia, the destruction of Kazan. From the circle of these times, the beginning of calm years, like a bright dawn, it shone in Russia. That's the introduction to Mikhail Karaskov's pompous epic poem The Rossiada, a ten thousand verse work written in the late 18th century. And it was intended to remind Russians of their heroic past and frame the 1552 capture of Kazan, the capital of the Kazan Carnate, as a pivotal moment in their story. As an historical source, it is deeply, deeply flawed. But as a symbol of the genuine importance of this engagement, as well as a reminder that Putin is hardly the first Russian to try and reframe his country's history in terms of a single historic narrative. It is priceless. I've written a number of Osprey's short but lovingly illustrated paperback military histories, but one I was especially interested to write, and which they were indulgent enough allow me to tackle, comes out this week, though frustratingly I've not yet received my own copies, is Siege of Kazan 1552. Ivan the Terrible breaks the Kazan carnate. So today I want to do two things. One is do one of my periodic historical deep dives into discussing this particular campaign, but then to talk about its modern resonances and significances. And this is not so much about Tatastan, the modern Russian Federation constituent republic whose capital is Kazan, which is though nonetheless a very interesting case study of some of the pitfalls and successes of post-Soviet federalism. I discussed this just over a year ago in Moscow Shadow 187, Tatastan, the 9th of February 2025. But the actual campaign. So Ivan Vasilievich, who became Grand Prince of Moscow and all Russia in 1533, at the age of just three, needless to say, there was a rather exploitative regency that actually dominated most of his childhood. And he would become the first ruler of Muscovy to be crowned Tsar in 1547. And as Ivan IV, he would acquire the epithet Grozny, generally translated as the terrible, even if in fact really a better translation is the awesome. Yes, I know it makes him sound like a Californian, but never mind. Because it's really trying to convey the sense of a man of capacities that are beyond the usual and mortal. Anyway, in many ways his would be a reign shaped not just by the ambitions of Ivan as a monarch, and he did play a key role in shaping the institutions of the emerging Russian state, but also his fears. Along with coup and conspiracy by the Boyars, the aristocrats, whose intrigues had after all shaped his regency during his minority, and who he thought was behind the murder of his mother, well, he was also keenly aware of the threats he faced from abroad. To the northwest was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, one of the great military powers of the age, and with whom Muscovy had fought a series of wars. To the south and to the east were the Carnates formed by the breakup of the Mongol Tatar Golden Horde, which had conquered most of the cities of the Rus in the 13th century, and claimed and for a while asserted suzerainity over them until the reign of Ivan's grandfather, Ivan III, who in the late 15th century essentially threw off the last vestiges of what will be known later as the Mongol Yoke. Anyway, these Carnates periodically raided the Russians for plunder and especially captives. Crimea, the Carnate of Crimea, became a crucial market for slaves, Russian Slavic slaves sold to the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, I mean the Crimeans actually nearly took Moscow in 1521 and continued to be able to project forces into the really deep Russian heartland for another century or so. Now, the Khanate of Kazan was not quite at the scale of the Crimean Khanate, but still it was one of the greatest of the Turkic successor states to the Golden Horde. And it grew in wealth and power, not least by raiding Moscovy. As early as 1439, that was it, they had besieged Moscow, and while they retreated after eleven days, they plundered the cities of Kolomna, Yazan, and other towns along the way. In 1444, the Khan even captured Grand Duke Vasili II of Moscow, demanding a huge ransom for his release. And the Khanate's territories continued to expand eastwards and northeast into the lands of the Udmutz and eventually all the way to the Ural Mountains while still pressing Muscovy. And Kazan did well off the bat, not just of the slave trade, but also more generally as a hub on the so-called Great Volga route, one of the great trading routes of the region, attracting merchants as far as Bukhara in Central Asia, who flocked to an international fair that was held annually on what became known as Guest Island. Still, for all that, Kazan did lack the muscle of either of the Age's two dominant powers of the region, Muscovy and the Crimean Carnate. So it thus often survived by playing them off against each other. I mean in 1512, for example, we had this, it has to be said, rather optimistically and unrealistically named treaty. The Treaty on Eternal Peace and Unbreakable Friendship. Sounds a little bit like something that Putin was signing with Xi Jinping, but never mind. Anyway, which was signed between Kazan and Moscow by Grand Duke Vasili III and Khan Muhammad Imin. However, after that Khan's death, Kazan was soon joining the Crimean Khanate in a massive attack on Moscow. Likewise, within Kazanian politics, individuals and factions within the elite would often actually align themselves with either Crimea or Moscow, and indeed other polities like the Nogai Khanate, such that some people actually even regard Ivan the Terrible's conquest of the city as actually an intervention into a Tatar civil war as much as much as an act of Russian imperialism. So, why did Ivan become so determined to finally break the power of the Karnate of Kazan? First of all, it was just simply fear. Remember, it was 1537 when he was just seven and in the hands of the Regency. And then again, two years later, you had these huge Tatar forces pushing deep into Muscovy, and he was apparently terrified at the time, terrified that they would take Moscow. And in 1545, while he was still not yet in power, Muscovy made its own move on Kazan, but this failed. And kind of as a corollary, the second point is look, Russian sources in particular tend to explain the conflict in essentially defensive terms, that the emerging state of Muscovy had to defend itself from Tatar slave-taking raids in the immediate term, and the threat of a rising Ottoman Empire, which was very happy and eager to bring the Khanates under its wing in the longer term. And that is perfectly true. Thirdly, there's a human-level issue. I mean, this insecure new Tsar, who was insecure, strange sort of combination of insecurity and confidence, he wanted to prove himself and thus legitimate himself, get out thoroughly from under the shadow of the boyar families, the great aristocratic families which had dominated his regency. There was probably also a degree of faith as a driver. Ivan, we know, was deeply, deeply religious, and in particular, his personal confessor was a priest by the name of Silviestro. And Silviestro was very keen on the idea of what I suppose in other contexts we would call crusade. And in about 1550, he presented this pious and superstitious young Tsar with a mishmash of doctored quotations from scripture to try and persuade him that it was foreseen that with divine favour he was destined to break the power of the pagan Tsars. So there was an element of not just the hubris of feeling that, but also a sense that it was indeed his genuine religious duty. And a final and very, very practical issue, he needed land to reward his Pameshiki. Now, the Pameshiki were service gentry. So unlike the aristocrats, the traditional aristocrats who actually had land of their own, formally speaking, in due course, it needed to be approved by the Tsar at any inheritance. But essentially, they owned this land, that was the basis of their power, their wealth, and thus their military might. Well, the Pameshiki essentially were granted land so long as they remained in the service of the monarch, generally military service. And so, given that Ivan was deeply mortally worried about the power of the aristocrats, suspicious of them and was looking for a counterweight, expanding the Pameshiki, giving him a force of people who were by definition loyal to him, and who he could raise as a military force if need be, that was really important. And Ivan Piresvietov, who very much championed the interests of the gentry over the boyars, urged Ivan to, quote, send daring warriors to the Kazan lands and order them to burn and ravage and take captive of it of the people. Why? Well, because of its wealth, because it offered all sorts of totally new lands. Remember, you know, new land conquests, it's up to Ivan then to partition that. It's kind of free land for him to buy his allies. And he warned the young Tsar that the Khan was his worst enemy. So all of these forces coming together. And in 1547, the 16-year-old Ivan was crowned. And after this regency, in a period in which he very much felt he'd been taken for granted and underestimated, he was determined to make his mark. Young, mistrustful of his court, overconfident, he decided to lead a campaign against Kazan personally, setting off from Vladimir in the winter of his very first year of reign. Now, typically in deep winter, the frozen rivers of the area, of the region were crucial transport arteries. I mean, these were basically the motorways of the era, and cannon and sleds of supplies could be dragged with relative ease down them. But this proved to be an unexpectedly wet and mild season. From the first it was hard to move the army's cannon, obviously crucial for any kind of siege, because the ground was thick with mud. And then particularly when the army encamped on the island of Robotka, on the frozen Volga River east of Nizhinovgorod, they awoke on 4th February 1548, which should be in the middle of the harshest hard winter. Anyway, they awoke to a calamity. In the words of the Nikon Chronicle, by some act of God it grew warm and a thaw came, and all the ice was covered with water. And when they tried to ford their way to the banks of the river, many cannons and guns fell into the water and many people drowned. Look, the army battled on to reach Kazan later that month, but without its siege guns, exhausted by struggling through mud and rain, it really couldn't muster a serious challenge to the city's defences. It stayed encamped around the city for a week, as much as for a rest and also to save face as anything else, before heading back home tail between its legs. So that was 1547-48. In 1550, Ivan led a renewed campaign against Kazan. This time at first his luck seemed better. His forces swept aside the Tata pickets, settled into a siege of the city in once again February. Again, this is the irony, deep winter is actually campaign season in this kind of context. Once again, though, mild weather, unexpectedly mild weather would be his undoing. His siege lines were pelted with heavy rain, high winds made aiming his guns all the harder, water got into the gunpowder stocks. The chronicler again recounted that the winds were strong and the rains were great, and the mud was immeasurable, and the cannons and aquebuses were impotent, and it was not possible to approach the city for mud. This time it was eleven days, and then Ivan lifted the siege and came back home. This was the result of poor planning and bad luck rather than actual military defeat, and Moscow's forces were essentially intact, and they could be mobilised again. Remember, this is a feudal army, you can't keep it in the field too long because the soldiers, particularly the infantry, are also the people who have to harvest the crops. However, Ivan was already thinking about the future. On the way back, Ivan paused at the confluence of the Svyaga and Volga rivers east of sorry, west of Kazan, and decided to build a fortress there. Now this was a very shrewd move, and this fortress, Svyajsk, would provide both a kind of fortified advance base, but also a logistical hub for future operations. And symbolically it was a clear expression that although Moscow has had to withdraw, it would be back. It was determined to extend its authority down the mighty Volga River. And building this fortress, or at least the initial stages of it, was completed within a month, which was an extraordinary feat, possible thanks to Russians' traditional skill in woodcrafting. This fortress was perhaps the world's first prefab prefabricated castle. It was built in sections upstream at Uglitch of wood, each piece numbered and accompanied by a plan showing how it fit together. And these wooden pieces could then be floated down the river to be assembled in place. And unlike so much modern flatback furniture, it actually worked. So, while his first two campaigns had been failures, although according to the sycophantic Kazan Chronicle, which emerged later after the conquest of Kazan, this was because the Tatars overcame him not by their strength, but by their cunning and military slyness. Because the point is you can't admit it's all about the weather, because weather is deemed to be something that is within the hands of divine providence. Anyway, because cunning evil Tatars. Still, Ivan Ivan. It's always difficult to kind of keep transitioning from a standard British pronunciation to a more accurate Russian one. Anyway, Ivan learnt their lessons well. It wasn't simply that he realised how unpredictable weather could be, though clearly that was a factor, but and how far it could make the traditional style of Russian siegecraft just unfeasible. It was also that Ivan realised he would need not just new tactics, but different kinds of forces to deliver the kind of decisive blow for which he was looking. So this time he mustered a force of well, force size is always an issue when you're looking at ancient sources, because you end up with huge amounts of debate because the ancient chronicles tend to exaggerate the numbers to utterly implausible levels. I mean, on the whole, the contemporary chronicles put the Muscovite force at anything up to, well, the Kazan Chronicles says 150,000 people. Now, 150,000 people might not sound that huge today, but the point is we have to bear a this is a time of much smaller and more thinly spread populations. It would have been in practice very, very difficult to raise and field many more than 30 to 40,000 men. Although it is possible that with non-combatant labourers, camp followers, hangers-on and the like, this might have brought the total to 70,000 at the absolute top level. And this includes actually Ivan's own Tatars, including the so-called Service Tatars, from communities which had sworn their allegiance to the Tsar, such as the Kasim Karnate. And also Cossacks from the so-called wild fields in what is now southern southern Ukraine. Anyway, so he's got a force of essentially 30, 40, maybe, maybe 50,000 actual combatants, though I think that that's very much on the high end. And they were up against the Tatar force, which is likewise often willfully overestimated, 70,000 or whatever. I mean, the city and its food supplies and water supplies could not have accommodated 70,000 fighting men. Probably we're talking more like something like 30,000, of which at least two-thirds were cavalry, and there were also small numbers of their own allies and mercenaries. So maybe we're talking about, say, 50,000 Russians at most, probably more like 30 to 40,000, against at most 35,000 defenders. But see, for the defenders, like the Mongols, the culture that had preceded them in many ways, arguably their greatest strength was in the attack, using speed and ferocity. Selim the Great, Salim I, who was the Ottoman Sultan until 1520, had written I fear the Tartars most of all. They are as fast as the wind upon their enemies, for when they march, they cover five or six days road in one day, and when they run away, they disappear as quickly. When they come to a river, they do not wait for a boat like our troops. Their food, like their bodies, is nothing much. Their strength is shown by the fact that they do not care for comfort. But that said, I mean that was the kind of the the traditional Tartar way of war. Strike fast, strike hard, and if need be, disappear as quickly as you can. The need to resist a sizable Muscovite force, the need to actually defend and secure a city, led to a growing importance of both infantry and artillery for the defenders. So they were actually somewhere halfway between. They were no longer the old fashioned raiding army entirely, nor yet were they a more modern settled one. And this was going to be a crucial flaw. And to a large extent, frankly, they relied on the city's own defences, which were, it has to be said, formidable. Had a double wall made of oak beams filled with rubble and clay silt on a three to four meter high earth bank. And at its thickest along the Kazanka River that flanked the city, this was six metres broad. The walls were topped by a wooden roofed walkway, so provided sort of a basically a place for soldiers to stand on a so-called fire step and fire guns and arrows at any attackers. And around this wall there were fourteen towers, most of them made of limestone. So to the north of the city, it was flanked by the Kazanka River, while on the other side was a dry moat that its widest stretched some seven metres. And then there was also the Bulak River along the western half of the city. And where the Bulak met the Kazanka north of the walls, the ground was swampy to the point of near impossibility. And if that wasn't enough, The so-called Khan's palace was, I suppose, much like a Russian Kremlin, was actually an a fortified complex in its own right, a fortress within a fortified city. Now look, I don't propose to go through the actual siege day by day. That probably would be taxing your patients too much, and anyway, you can go buy the book for that come Thursday. Though, trust me, it has sorties and sallies, it has explosions, it has reversals, it will make you laugh, it will make you cry. Oh, and by the way, such as the Osprey model that I get paid a flat fee, so I'm not even basically hawking myself for royalties at the moment. I actually do think it is a fascinating campaign. Anyway, to summarize it quickly, then we'll go to a break and talk about the big issue things. Ivan started with a resumption of a non-off blockade of Kazan's river traffic in late 1551 to try and strangle it economically, spent months drawing up plans and above all gathering everything that his campaign would need. So by the end of March 1552, barges were heading along the Volga from Nizhny Novgorod to Svyajsk, bearing supplies, ammunition, and the first of the great siege guns Ivan planned to use to break Kazan. That's in March. He musters his forces in Kolomna, and I'll come to the significance of that in a moment, and actually set off in August. So he spent months building up the supplies, and obviously mustering his force. On the 23rd of August 1552, the first Muscovite's forces reach the Archa Field, which is southeast of Kazan, which is going to be in a way where the Russian forces are going to base themselves. And the siege itself begins shortly thereafter. The Muscovites build siege lines around the city, fighting off occasional Tatar sallies, battering its walls with their guns, undermining it with tunnels designed to either sort of collapse the walls or for them to be able to then place gunpowder under them to explode as a mine. Indeed, building a huge siege tower, some 13 meters high, which mounts guns that can thus fire down on the city. And interestingly, again, the power of woodworking. Its components were prepared by carpenters in pieces to the rear of the army over several days, but then they were actually assembled together at night. So next morning it looked to the dismayed defenders that magically sprung from nowhere. Then, on the 2nd of October, it was a foggy morning, suddenly ripped by explosions as these barrels of gunpowder packed into tunnels under a stretch of walls and gates were blasted apart. Ivan's forces storm into the city. The Kazan Chronicle, whose unnamed author claimed to have consulted eyewitnesses who were there, who knows, paints a picture of chaos and carnage. And the Kazanians heard the sounds of trumpets from all the Russian regiments, and the Russians came from all sides with all their strength, horsemen and footmen, and broke down all the gates of the fort, and they cut down the Kazanians, some sleeping, others running as if mad, throwing themselves into the fire, forgetting about their horses and not remembering their weapons. Well, look, it certainly wasn't a one-sided conflict, particularly inside the maze of narrow and crooked streets of the city. There the Muscovites began to falter. Firstly, they the impetus of the initial charge was lost, people got to get tired. Secondly, it was hard for the commanders to maintain control of their forces in these winding, narrow streets. And let's be brutally honest, the temptation to loot often proved irresistible. Nonetheless, although a counterattack looked as if it might push the Russians back, Ivan, who had not actually been in the thick of the battle, he'd been attending a private religious service at the time, praying for victory, I'm sure that was a great comfort to everyone. Nonetheless, he was prevailed upon to lead his sovereign's regiment, which is a sort of personal or large personal guard, and also the Russians' reserve, into Kazan through the rubble of the Nurali gate, under the banner of Dmitry Dunskoy. Again, come to him in a moment. So the tide of battle turned yet again. The Khan's palace was stormed, and in the confused and bloody brawl that followed, the Khan Ediger Magmet, he was captured and the siege was won. Perhaps ten percent of the attacking force had actually been killed, and probably rather more Tatars. Ediger Machmed was brought back to Moscow as hostage and prisoner, and the traditional regalia of the Khans was appropriated by the Tsar. Ivan was greeted in the capital by cheering crowds, hailed as the champion of Christendom, which is after all what he was aiming for anyway. But so what? Well, look, I would like to draw a parallel, however fanciful it may seem, with Putin's own southern campaign, his invasion of Ukraine, and certain commonalities and especially failures on Ivan's current successor's part. But let's talk about that in the second half of this podcast. Just the usual mid-episode reminder that you're listening to the In Moscow Shadows podcast. Its corporate partner and sponsor is Conductor, which provides software for crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counter-terrorism, civil affairs and the like. But you can also support the podcast yourself by going to patreon.com slash inMoscow Shadows. And remember that patrons get a variety of additional perks depending on their tier, as well as knowing that they're supporting this peerless source on all things Russian. And you can also follow me on Twitter at MarkGaleotti or on Facebook, MarkGaleotti on Russia. Now, back to the episode. Now I don't want to suggest that Ivan did everything right and Putin did everything wrong, and indeed it is worth noting that there are some distinct commonalities. For example, the fact that Ivan was not, given his druthers, actually in the real fighting any more than Putin has shown himself willing to be anywhere near the front line. But nonetheless, it is worth noting the degree to which Ivan had learned some very powerful lessons that actually came to play in his conquest of Kazan. First of all, that he needed commanders of demonstrable competence, not just high birth. And in some ways, precisely his mistreatment at the hand of the boyars helped him be fully aware of this. Russia was still at the time, or Muscovy was still at the time, in a situation where military command was dominated by a system called Mestnitzstva, placism. In other words, your position, your rank within an army depended on your social status. So that you could be the most moronic commander around, but if you were also of the highest birth, you had to be placed in, if not overall command, but nonetheless, you know, a very substantial position. And likewise, this other guy could be the most cunning strategist and tactician this side of Alexander the Great. But if he was of relatively mean birth, there was no way he would be given a major command position. That clearly is not at all a functional and useful system. And Ivan did what he could. He couldn't just simply sweep it away. But nonetheless, he did what he could in part by essentially trying to stop some senior figures who he didn't rate as commanders from actually joining him on his campaign. In other cases, by taking people who are able and just simply attaching them to his staff, so even if they weren't commanding, they could advise him. But also in particular with the increasing importance of the Pamishiki. Precisely it was a way of elevating people who he really felt could be loyal to him, yes, but also who could be competent. So there's a very clear degree to which Ivan was demonstrating he understood the limitations of a command structure which was reliant on status and tradition rather than actual competence and capacity. Now, if one looks at 2022 and indeed since, obviously, look, there's there's no hereditary misdmechisva in in modern Russia, except when it comes to Putin's family, but never mind. But we can certainly question, for example, Putin's continued retention of chief of the general staff Girasimov and the dismissal of figures like Sorovikin, who was not a pleasant man, but a highly competent general, seen by many as Gerasimov's obvious successor, and yet because he was politically suspect, he was rusticated and he's now sitting as basically air defense coordinator for the Commonwealth of Independent States, as nothing a job as one could come up with. The Pamirschik system was intended to allow the Tsar to promote for competence. Now, its modern equivalent, again, people who are powerful not because of anything but the continued tolerance and loyalty of the monarch, so people like Gerasimov who are there because Putin wants them to be there, but also other generals who rise clearly because of favour from either Putin or Gerasimov or other powerful figures within it, in other words, patronage. Well, the modern version of patronage does not allow the bringing in of the competence, it seems, but the protection of the incompetent. And indeed, this is even more the case when we look at certain institutions. I mean, the classic one is Putin's continued indulgence of the Federal Security Service. The FSB that has blundered time and time again from the advice it gave him before 2022 to the extent to which only 10% of Ukrainians would be willing to fight, and most of the rest would welcome a Russian intervention, all the way through to its failure to prevent a slew of generals from being killed. But nonetheless, it seems to be entirely immune to any kind of repercussions because of Putin's patronage. So again, the the use of patronage is in many ways in completely diametrically opposite directions. Secondly, Ivan realized he needed the right kind of army. One that was suited to obviously the emerging style of war in the gunpowder age, but also the specific needs of this campaign. And for this campaign, that meant infantry, more of them, and infantry who were better trained and equipped than the traditional sort of auxiliaries. I mean, on the whole, the infantry were the hangers-on. The cream of a feudal Muscovite army was militia cavalry raised from and by the boyars and the gentry, and indeed led by the boyards. So this was just basically a feudal levy. The boyars of their personal retinues. Now that was increasingly anachronistic, especially because of the advent of the gun. Now, although the first handheld gunpowder weapons in Russia, very, very simple ones, date back to the end of the 14th century, having been imported from Germany, by the beginning of Ivan's reign, units of archers and of close combat infantry were already beginning to be supplemented by contingents of so-called Pichalniki, who were armed with the Pichal, which is this very clumsy sort of aquebus or matchlock musket. But nonetheless, it was clear that this was the way of the future. And in 1550, Ivan made the first moves towards establishing his own standing army, so a royal army, shall we say, rather than just simply having to rely on the obedience to the loyalty of his boyars. These were the so-called strelzi. Now the name literally means shooters, but perhaps is best translated as musketeers, because while at this stage not all of them actually were armed with a pichal, this was going to be one of their signature weapons, along with the Birdish, which is this sort of short crescent bladed pole axe that you can't that you can use not just to whack your enemy, but also actually is a stand for the very heavy arquebus. Anyway, Streltsy were unlike the local militia infantry, they were recruited for life. They were granted small holdings in Moscow's Zamoskvarece over the Moskvariva neighbourhood. They were granted rations of rye, oats, and salt, an annual salary of up to seven rubles, which may not sound so much these days, but seven rubles salary for a year that was comparable to a Pamishik cavalryman's. And they also had the right to engage in small scale business such as artisanal handicrafts, whatever, while they weren't on campaign. And in due course, the Stratzi would expand to a much more sizable force, but it would be at Kazan that they would first be able to demonstrate their value. So, the right kind of army for the campaign. Now, well, in some ways Putin has the right kind of army for the way the war is currently being fought, this dispersed drone-controlled war of infiltration and brawl, an army of not necessarily ineffective but pretty uncontrolled, almost kind of ragamuffin rogues. But the irony is that the military reform which had been taking place through the 2010s and into the 2020s was actually to create an army that I would suggest was less suited for this kind of mass war. The army that was being built for Putin before 2022 was particularly built around the use of what were called battalion tactical groups. The idea that a brigade, for example, could generate from within itself a battalion tactical group which would be only staffed by professional soldiers, so that anyway the conscripts would be left behind, and would be granted a disproportionate share of the brigade's support elements, artillery, air defence, all that kind of thing. So the idea is you actually have this little kind of mini intervention force which could be oper you know, could be deployed on its own, and we saw these deployed throughout the conflict in the Donbass from 2014 onwards. And it was actually quite effective for intervention operations. You know, the battalion tactical group was pretty good, but you needed to quickly surge a relatively competent force with, shall we say, lots of teeth, but not much staying power. So it could go in, it could fight, and then it could be withdrawn and if need be replaced with another. Point is because you might say its fire firepower was not matched by its numbers of soldiers, uh once it took once it began to take casualties, it quite quickly degraded in effectiveness. This is a structure that is built for intervention wars. For wars like, say, the war in Georgia, or indeed the operations in the Donbass. It it is not a war that is fought for a slugging match sorry, a structure that is really geared for a war that is going to be a slugging match, a mass war. And that's one of the reasons why the battalion tactical group really is being phased out. I mean it might recur after the war, but at the moment what we see are these sort of you know small assault groups, but essentially the Russian military shifting back to the larger division as its base structure, not even the brigade. So essentially Putin had built an army that was absolutely not geared, even if it had been deployed the way it was meant to be deployed. More on that in a moment, it was not geared for this kind of war. Thirdly, Ivan realized he needed to plan seriously, and in particular stockpiling all the necessary supplies and more, and actually having the means of ensuring that they could get to the battlefield. You know, building Sviajsk was not just crucial as an actual hub, it also demonstrated the importance he understood of his lines of supply and of the need to maintain a constant source of supply. And as it looked that the siege might drag on, as a precautionary measure, Ivan sent dispatches back to Nizhny Novgorod and to Moscow, ordering the preparation of winter clothes for his army and sleds, just in case the siege ended up lasting through the autumn and into the hard winter. What a comparison with the 2022 invasion, in which Putin had convinced himself, and no one was willing to try and unconvince him, that this was going to be this quick, victorious little war. So he didn't have enough men for a start. Against a fully mobilised Ukraine, he would have needed a much larger force to be able to kind of mount the kind of rapid seizure of power and of territory that he intended. He didn't launch enough of a what was called a mRO, a massed aviation rocket strike, a kind of preemptive strike against the enemy's air bases, arsenals, air defence assets, all that kind of thing. Really, because they were thinking, well, look, Ukraine is going to be in effect in our hands soon anyway, why destroy all this infrastructure, which we'll only and then have to rebuild? So, again, they missed the opportunity to launch truly debilitating attacks on Ukraine right at the beginning. But more broadly, precisely because they had no inkling, or Putin had no inkling, that the war could possibly stretch on beyond a few days and weeks, they just weren't the supplies built up. So we saw, for example, tanks in this sort of traffic jam on the way to Kyiv, which were forced to idle their engines, running out of fuel. So they had to be abandoned just simply because there wasn't enough petrol, or else that they became dependent upon tankers which were themselves very vulnerable targets for the Ukrainians. There was clearly no serious planning for the risk this war would drag on. And that's why 2022 in particular saw the Russians using all kinds of ad hoc measures. Whether it's bringing in Wagner to have extra troops. Remember, at the beginning they'd actually essentially told Wagner, we don't need you, because we have our own mercenaries of Redut. Their own mercenaries were very quickly shattered, and therefore they did have to go back cap in hand to Wagner. So for troops. They had to turn to Iran for their drones. They had to desperately try and sort muster forces from units all around the country, and they also found themselves often desperately short of necessary ammunition and other necessary logistical supplies. Ivan had contingency plans if the war dragged on, but didn't need to activate them. Putin didn't have contingency plans, and he really needed them. Ivan also realized that he needed specialists, particularly for a siege, engineers and logisticians, people who would handle all the supply and such like. And he was perfectly willing to hire them from abroad if need be. One of the relatively unsung heroes of the campaign was Ivan's chief engineer. Himself Ivan Grigorych Virodkov. At a time when military engineering was essentially regarded as a depressingly necessary but menial task, fit for foreigners and commoners, Virodkov was an absolute trailblazer, first such specialist who became known to posterity by name. Now he came from the Pamishik class. Again, this is the virtue of having this system whereby you could elevate people. His family had, admittedly, long served the Muscovite princes. And he himself, though, was not a soldier, was not a warrior, but he was unfashionably fascinated by the mechanics of warfare and construction. And he was, for example, behind the prefabricated assembly of Sviajsk fortress, as well as the siege tower and so forth. And he was assisted by a foreign specialist of still uncertain origin, known as Butler. Now, the traditional claim is that he was an Englishman, and that would have meant he was just simply one of many English and indeed Scotsmen who entered Moscow's service. On the other hand, considering the degree to which Russian military engineering had been dominated by Italians, such as Ridolfo Aristotele Fioravanti, who was the man who, for Ivan III, had built the brick walls of the modernised Moscow Kremlin, the walls we see today, as well as the cannon yard, the first real sort of factory, shall we say, for making artillery gun. So a spirited case has been made that in fact Butler was a skion of the Marini family of military engineers. Then there's also the suggestion that he was a German known as Herr Asmus. A Dane called Rasmussen, or even a Lithuanian called Erasmus. Whoever he was. In any case, the point is that in Kazan this engineer would prove a crucial Muscovite asset, particularly because he was a specialist in subterranean working, in digging the tunnels under the city walls and towers, which would in due course be packed with explosives to breach them. So Ivan realized he needed the military specialists, and he listened to them. And that's a crucial point. For example, there was a false start a couple of days a day beforehand, before the actual assault, in which one of the various mines detonated. And the boyars, eager for fighting, sick of just sitting in a siege line, were very much pressing Ivan to attack. On the other hand, Ivan listened to Virodkov, who was saying that basically, look, you know, we are almost at the point. Once we have the last supplies of gunpowder we need, which are on the way, then we will be able to actually make a major breach of the walls, which will put the Muscovite forces in a much better position to assault the city. And Ivan listened to Virodkov and the engineers, not the gung-ho boyars. Now let's look at Putin. Now, okay, if it comes to foreign specialists, one can make the point that he drew on, as I said, Iranian drones, North Korean artillery rounds, and due course North Korean soldiers, and now mercenaries from wherever they can be recruited. And also, unlike Muscovy, modern Russia does have massive indigenous technical expertise. The contrast I would draw, though, is on the last point I made about Ivan. Ivan's willingness to listen to the engineers, not the boyars. For me, one of the lightmotifs of this conflict has been the struggle between technocracy and autocracy. In other words, those people who are the practical, pragmatic managers of the Russian state, and Putin's cronies, the people who simply their power is based purely on their access to the monarch, and their capacity to convince the monarch that more or less whatever he decides, the little people, the technocrats can arrange. And that continues to be a crucial problem for modern Russia. That the technocrats are ignored when it comes to decision making and then expected to perform miracles after stupid decisions have been made. This is clearly an area in which Putin continues to kid himself that he is this masterful manager of the state. In fact, those people who are actually managing the state for him are often demonstrating that they are masterful in essentially coping with whatever nonsense he throws at them next. And fifth, Ivan realized that he had to consider the morale of his own men. I mentioned that Ivan mustered his army at Kolomna. Now this was deeply symbolic, as it was, where in 1380 Moscow's Grand Prince Dmitry Dunskoy had assembled his army before heading off to defeat the Golden Horde at Kulikova. Now that was a again, you know, one can I I've made a podcast in uh about this this whole conflict. One could argue that it was only a partial victory, that it was only symbolic, but nonetheless, historically speaking, this was the first time the Russians had defeated the Mongol Tatar Horde. It was a very, very big deal. And Ivan was very self-consciously invoking that memory to essentially put this battle, this war against Kazan, in that same historic timeline. And in fact, to draw even more heavily on his mythologized ancestors' example, Ivan even actually brought with him, as I mentioned, Donskoy's own war banner that he accompanied into Kazan when he did actually move in there. In the early days of the siege, Russians were also battered by a rainstorm that once again turned earth into mud and trenches into puddles. A supply barge was flooded and sank, and then in what seemed a terrible omen in those superstitious times, high winds blew away the Tsar's own tent. And as I mentioned before, there was a sense at the time that the weather could be considered to be a gauge of divine favour. So Ivan didn't just simply depend on having mustered his army at the right place and carrying the right battle banner. What he did was he actually addressed the superstitions themselves. The word had spread after all that this deluge was brought on by Tartar sorcerers, old men and old women who went up onto the city walls at sunrise to shout invocations at the invaders. And actually that probably was happening in terms of there were these people, you know, Tartar sorcerers doing this, so I don't actually believe for a moment they were they were bringing the rain. But Ivan himself, who after all was himself extremely superstitious, nonetheless exerted himself. I mean he showed himself amongst his soldiers, he ordered the priests accompanying him, he course had a large contingent of them to hold a service, to reassure the men, and then they held a procession around the army bearing what were, well, believed to be, claimed to be, take your pick, fragments of the true cross to ward off further enchantments. So, you know, Ivan, although he clearly was not one to go and be sort of glad-handing his own troops and sitting with them round the campfire, nonetheless he exerted himself, he did go amongst them to try and reassure them, and he carried out what was necessary in order to address their morale. Now, of course, today, very different time, sure, although it is quite noteworthy the degree to which Putin has in effect mobilized the Russian Orthodox Church to support the special military operation. But the wider issue is of the morale of Russia, of ensuring that Russians really know and believe in why they're fighting. And yes, of course, there are all the propaganda lines about the neo-Nazi Ukrainian state persecuting its Russian speakers, acting as a proxy for a hostile NATO, blah blah blah. There's very little evidence that this is having, shall we say, deep traction in the Russian public, and in particular with the frontline fighters. Look, frontline fighters obviously they fight to survive, they fight to avenge their fallen comrades, and they fight to protect their living ones. But the idea of a grand cause, and remember, if Russians truly believed in this cause, why aren't they just volunteering to fight rather than having to be offered life-changing sums of money to do so? But anyway, especially in the actual front line, this kind of sense of belief in their conflict is being replaced with the gangsterish discipline of so-called zeroing, which is in other words of officers killing those who do not obey their orders, of the mercenary inducements, not just of the huge payoffs waiting for them after the war, but again of looting on a huge scale during it. I mean, is this sense of a true connection between the monarch, the cause, and the fighting man does seem to be in many ways, I think, painfully absent in this conflict. And Putin himself is in no way putting himself on the line here. As I mentioned, he's not a man to go to the front line. So look, am I just simply saying that Putin is a less competent military commander than Ivan the Terrible? Well, yeah, yes, in part I am, but there is a much wider point. For all the murderous and destructive paranoia of its latter part, the early half of Ivan's reign was a time of genuine state building. Indeed, many of the institutions of the modern Russian state, from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, really look back and cast their roots all the way back to Ivan's reign, specifically in the banditry and ambassadors' offices, respectively. Putin's reign, as I've noted in the past, and again I seem to be making lots of little footnotes here, you see my In Moscow Shadow 63 terrible crimes, terrible rulers, terrible dilemmas of 3rd April 2022. Anyway, Putin's reign, I think likewise, can be split into a relatively successful early phase and an increasingly dysfunctional and disruptive, and indeed destructive, late Putinism. But if we're playing the parallels game, let's more specifically dwell on the reasons why Ivan went after Kazan and why Putin went after Kyiv. First of all, fear. Now, look, I know it seems very hard to believe, but I think Putin does genuinely fear that Ukraine is being stolen or was being stolen, quote unquote, by the West. Remember, this is a man who doesn't believe Ukraine has true agency. And it's possible that he felt that Ukraine, if it was successful, would present a kind of alternative model that Russians would look to. I'm not quite sure about that latter part, because I'm not sure if he believed Ukraine could be successful. Again, remember his own cultural blinders. But nonetheless, I mean I think there was a sense that he saw an encroachment by the West that he had to push back while he could. Now again, I'm not in any way rehearsing the whole it's all NATO expansion fall or anything like that argument. But nonetheless, that is Putin's worldview. Secondly, well, in Kazan, an insecure new Tsar wanted to prove and thus legitimate himself. I mean he knew if that Kazan was going to be a tough nut to crack, but nonetheless this was going to be the making of his monarchy. Putin conversely thought Ukraine was ripe for the picking, and therefore was going to be an easy target. But in this case it was not an insecure new Tsar, but an insecure old Tsar, who was again looking to shore up his legitimacy and possibly also establish an escape route, that he could actually afford to safely step away from being president if he had this grand triumph under his belt. But again, driven by insecurity, driven by a sense of what his particular reign needed. Thirdly, this notion that it was defensive, that the emerging state of Muscovy had to defend itself from Tatar slave-taking raids in the immediate term, and the long-term Ottoman threat. Well, likewise, I think that on the one hand Putin saw Ukraine as an immediate term threat to his position in the Donbass, the so-called People's Republics of Lukansk and Danetsk, but that really this was already part of a long-term threat from Europe and NATO. That they wanted Ukraine as a get just like Crimea wanted Kazan, or and the Ottomans wanted Crimea and Kazan, they wanted to use it as a kind of advance base from which to threaten Muscovy. And obviously, particularly Kazan was a worry for Ivan because it coincided with a threat from the Northwest, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Well, in some ways, Ukraine and NATO are a particular concern because of rising potential threats from elsewhere, maybe Turkey, but certainly China. Ivan went after Kazan because of faith, because of a sense that it was part of his religious duty. Well, I don't believe, although the lot was made about Crimea as a birthplace, the cradle of Russian Orthodoxy and so forth, you know, I don't think that Putin was motivated by religious belief. But one could almost say an almost religious belief in the fact that he was the necessary figure to make Russia great again, to reassert it on a global stage, and a sense that Russia had had eastern Ukraine stolen from it by Lenin, and that therefore there was some sense of a kind of almost messianic duty, not just an opportunity, to actually reassert Russian control over Ukraine. And then finally, Ivan was looking for land to reward his Pemieshiki. Well, look, probably this is only as a retrospective gain, but certainly Putin's cronies have been benefiting from his imperialism. I mean, after 2014, the annexation of Crimea, we then had, for example, the Crimean Bridge construction contract going to his friends, the Rotenberg brothers. And since then we have seen another one of his close friends and allies, Sergei Chemizov, the head of the arms and industrial conglomerate Rostek. Well, he's benefited because Rostek has taken over a variety of industrial assets in occupied territories, like the Stakhanov railway car building plant, the Luhansk aircraft repair plant. And on a less elevated scale, in some ways there are new Pamishiki, the graduates of Kiryenko, first deputy head of the presidential administration, his leaders of Russia and School of Governors programs, which are precisely intended to groom the next generation of Putinist elites. Well, many of them hold key positions in the occupied territories. So, you know, in some ways, in a 21st century incarnation, the Pamishiki are back. Now look, to conclude, history is rarely a predictive tool, or at best is one to be used with the very greatest caution. But nonetheless, I do think there is this fascinating comparison to be made between Ivan the Terrible and Vladimir the simply pretty bad. And obviously this extends well beyond Kazan, but the conquest does represent a fascinating case study. The point is that the conquest of Kazan changed Muscovy. It was the start of the process of turning from being an essentially homogeneous Slavic Russian state into a multi-ethnic land empire. Not least because the conquest of Kazan was then followed by the conquest of the Khanates of Astrakhan and Sibir, and the beginnings of Russia's role eastwards, as well as in due course Crimea, wars with the Ottomans and the like. And arguably, in very, very different ways, the Ukraine war is going to change Russia. One way or the other. Russia is never going to be the same again in terms of its relationship with the West, in terms of obviously its relationship with Ukraine, but also I would suggest in terms of the relationship of the state with society. And although it's a slow burn impact, and particularly will be the result once those battle scarred and war weary veterans return home, but nonetheless that will happen. So it is sometimes worth dwelling on historical incidents, and admittedly, of course, I'm doing so nakedly and shamelessly because this particular engagement and Ivan the Terrible fascinate me. But anyway, it is also worth dwelling on them precisely for the potential echoes and resonances they can provide for the future. But as is so often the case when I indulge myself with history, I have wandered well over my usual planned time frame. So I shall now, with great thanks for you sticking with me for just over a full hour, I shall now end. Thanks very much. Well, that's the end of another episode of the In Moscow Shadow Podcast. Just as a reminder, beyond this, you can follow my blog, also called In Moscow Shadows. Follow me on Twitter at MarkGaleotti or Facebook, MarkGaleottion Russia. This podcast is made possible by generous and enlightened patrons, and you too can be one. Just go along to my Patreon page, that's patreon.com slash inMoscow Shadows, and decide which tier you want to join, getting access to exclusive materials and other perks. However, whether or not you contribute, thank you very much indeed for listening. Until next time, keep well.