In Moscow's Shadows 248: What If?

First, a round up of some current issues: Putin heading to China, two governors out (and two men with Ukraine war connections in), party politics and the jostling for second place, and how the Council of Europe is implicitly encouraging Putin to stay in power until he dies...

In the second half, the opening episode of a series of alternative history (the rest will be available to paying Patrons) exploring some of the great what-ifs. This time, what if Kyiv had surrendered to the Mongols in 1240 and never lost its pre-eminence? Following that single fork in the road leads to a different centre of gravity, different institutions, and maybe even a world where “Ukraine” never emerges in the way we know it. 

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You can also follow my blog, In Moscow's Shadows, and become one of the podcast's supporting Patrons and gain question-asking rights and access to exclusive extra materials including the (almost-) weekly Govorit Moskva news briefing right here. 

Transcript

Quick Headlines And What To Watch

MG 0:00

From China to the Council of Europe. Start with a few bits and pieces of current relevance that I want to cover. And then we'll first dive into an alternative history of Russia and indeed Ukraine. Hello, I'm Mark Galliotti, 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 as I said, I wanted to just basically cover just a whole mistellony of bits and pieces of relevance at the moment. So let's start with China. Now Donald Trump has just visited Komsolska Pravda concluded, Xi Jinping didn't give Trump a single card, which is probably true. Now Putin is heading to Beijing this coming week, 19th and 20th of May, to coincide with the twenty fifth anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Good Neighbourliness, Friendship and Cooperation, and also the opening ceremony of the Russia-China Years of Education. Resiska Gazeta helpfully notes that during his tenure as president, Putin has visited China more than two dozen times, again to sort of compare and contrast him with these here today, gone tomorrow American presidents. Although it is worth noting that this particular trip looks set to be rather low key, or lower key rather, than the overblown ceremonies of the Trump visit. And I suspect they're going to try and present this as a kind of working engagement vibe over empty pageantry. But that said, I suspect there are no more real cards forthcoming for Putin than for Trump, even if very warm words. However, things to watch out for. First of all, reassurances for Russia that China's diplomatic balancing act with Washington isn't affecting their partnership. Lots of talk of a multipolar world, implicitly the end of US hyperpower hegemony, and also the need to resolve the Iran war. Possibly some movement on the stalled power of Siberia to gas pipeline, though I honestly don't expect it. I think from the Chinese point of view they're just not that bothered at the moment. And also some agreements on space exploration, nuclear energy cooperation, and that kind of thing. I mean the key thing actually really is nothing to do with Russia so much, as that it definitely cements Beijing's role as a central hub for global diplomacy these days. I mean you think about it, the Chinese recently hosted French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister, as of broadcasting, I suppose I should add, Keir Starmer, then Trump, then Putin. That's the leaders of all four other permanent members of the UN Security Council within really just a few months. Clearly, multipolarity equals an ascendant China. With Russia, and this is a point that I made when I presented it as a middle power with nukes, really just hoping to be able to play the role that China did in the later Cold War days, playing two superpowers against each other. Anyway, let's move into domestic Russian politics and particularly gubernatorial politics. So we've had two governors dismissed, sorry, um resigning. Vyachislav Gladkov in Bjelgorod region and Alexander Bogomas in Briansk. Now one could ask, so what? Well, I mean, first of all, it's striking that these are both border regions, bordering in the area of the special military operation, especially hard hit by Ukrainian drone attacks, and just the general splashback, including growing armed and violent crime because of the spread of black market guns. And well, Gladkov, I can't help feeling in some ways a bit sorry for Gladkov. I mean, he was a rising star, and he probably did indeed overreach. He, for example, dared to break cover and criticize the attempts to constrain Telegram's social media channel, pointing out quite rightly that Telegram was actually a lifesaver in terms of sending out warnings of impending Ukrainian drone strikes. But, well, again, the cynic would also note that he had built himself really quite a powerful high profile presence on social media generally. But let's be honest, he does have every reason to feel aggrieved and may well have been fed up, actually. I mean he had been on an extended vacation at this point. As Yekaterina Schulman wrote on Telegram, it's now hard even to imagine and hard to remember the wealthy, comfortable, and exceptionally quiet Bielgorod region as it was before 2022. So he thought he was getting one thing when he became governor, and he ended up getting something very, very different. Now, he may be kicked up into a federal post, perhaps some deputy minister of economic development or the like. That's the usual reward if you've been a decent and well regarded by the Kremlin governor. But he also could be kicked down. I mean there's talk of him being made envoy to the separatist Georgian region of Abkhazia. Well, I mean I'm Abkhazia, I'm told, is actually very pretty, but nonetheless no one would regard that as the next step in the Kursosanorem of a high flying Russian official. On the other hand, I mean Bogomas, look, he's been governor since 2014. He was a local industrial scale potato farmer and and good United Russia Party hack. And what's striking is that the Central Election Commission has already voted to give him a vacant State Duma seat. So he's been looked out looked after. But in a way that does kind of take him out of any further rise. But then again, there was no real sense that Bogomaz was a kind of a high flyer looking to make it into the federal government. So that's why it's a little bit trickier for Gladkov. So we'll have to see what happens to him. Perhaps more interesting though is that both have been replaced as acting and then quite possibly in due course actual governors by individuals with some kind of link to the special military operation in Ukraine. In Bielgorod, we have the new acting governor is Major General Alexander Shuvayev. Now he is actually from the region, but more importantly, he's a hero of Russia. He participated in the Time of Heroes campaign, which is his attempt to provide kind of political mentoring and training to veterans of the war in Ukraine to prepare them for positions within officialdom. And since January he had been deputy governor of the Urkutzka region. Hard to get in the few months he'd been there any real sense of if he was any good. TASS also adds that his recognition code when he was in service was Spartanets, Spartan. So on the one hand you have someone who gives the right impression of, you know, a hard fighting military man now come to help rebuild the motherland. Whereas in Bryansk we have Yeegor Kovalchuk, very different. He's been a career official. But since 2024 he had been chairman of the government of the Lugansk People's Republic, effectively Prime Minister of this particular region that obviously has now formally annexed into the Russian Federation. So this is definitely seen as a part of the kind of rise of the special military operation generation. Kinda. I think it also highlights some of the limits about it. So let's not talk about the militarization of the Russian elite yet, as which is one of the slightly sort of premature assessments that I've seen out there. The fact of the matter is that there is a lot of caution within the Russian elite and particularly within the presidential administration. You remember Kiryanko, deputy head, and this sort of, in some ways, the guy who seems to have taken upon himself a role as the shaper of the next generation of Russian rulers, leaders, elites, call them what you will. Now he was very much a driving force behind Time of Heroes. And in some ways, he's also actually, I think, backpedaling a little. And Time of Heroes, let's be honest, on the whole, it seems to be benefiting people like Kovalchuk, who are, and by the way, Kovalchuk, no relation to the banker, Kovalchuk, the close Putin crony, but you know, who are really officials who just happened by career or by choice to end up having a Ukraine connection. You know, Kovalchuk was sent to Lugansk People's Republic rather than s having had a long-term interest in going there. And you also see a lot of the quote unquote veterans are actually officials who chose to spend three months in one of the sort of safe courtier units, generally a drone unit well behind the lines or whatever, so that they could head back home, unlike all those poor sods who actually volunteered and they're stuck as long as this the SVO continues. But anyway, so they can go back home and exactly claim the plaudits of being a veteran and uh you know have a have a medal on their lapel and such like. So, you know, I think there's there's a certain degree of caution about this. And, you know, it's one thing to appoint a general. One thing we haven't seen is the rise of low-ranking veterans, the kind of people who probably had a rather harder, tougher, more miserable experience. Though, also on this point about now getting caution about the sort of the veterans and their various hangers on, it was interesting to see that the SVR, the Foreign Intelligence Service, has recently claimed that ever since April, the SBU, the Ukrainian Security Service, has been buying up pro-war and other sort of patriotic telegram channels precisely to use them to stir up discontent in Russia. The quote is the SBU now wants to organise work aimed at rocking the boat in our country under the guise of disseminating patriotic content. Now, it may well be true. I mean, to be honest, why wouldn't the SBU be doing this? It's a useful gambit in the political war that parallels the kinetic war. But it also reflects, I would suggest, a desire within the presidential administration and the wider government to preemptively delegitimise, particularly the the the Voyinkori, the mill bloggers. Because after all, they and the other so-called hurrah patriots at the moment are in the main supportive of the war and the government in its conduct of it, but they have also been quite critical, and there is a concern that they would actually turn their ire much more directly against the Kremlin, whether because there's some kind of a peace deal agreed that they regard as a stab in the back, or just simply because they feel that the Kremlin is being insufficiently effective and vigorous in prosecuting it. So I think there is this sense of being concerned about the beast that they encouraged. And by the way, just some closing on this particular segment, a little bit of sad news from Bryansk. Sasha Kon, Sasha the Horse, was this thirty year thirty-seven year old Russian who had set out with the task of walking to Brazil. Now okay, yes, he was also going to be talking boat taking boats. So he was at the moment walking across Russia, pulling a homemade little cart home, hence the nickname Sasha the Horse. Anyway, he has apparently been killed by a Ukrainian drone as he passed through Bryansk region. And yes, look, I know, civilians on both sides of the border are being killed every day. But for whatever reason this struck me as, I don't know, especially poignant an example of the human costs of the war. But if continuing on politics, let's talk about party politics, because after all, just four months or so to go until the single voting day, that is of course actually three days, eighteenth to the twentieth September, in which we'll see the elections of deputies to the ninth State Duma Convocation, and also eleven governors, probably including the ratification of those two acting governors. Now, if you want my prediction, United Russia will win. Yeah, okay, that's not exactly a dramatic one. Of course they're going to win. But the question is, of course, what kind of results will the presidential administration's political technologists want and feel that they have to register? Now, at the moment it looks like they are willing to let the Communist Party scrape narrowly ahead of the Liberal Democrats into second place. The current polling, this is according to Polit Pro, and it's based on a number of separate polls from different agencies, puts United Russia on 43.2%, which is actually 6.6% down since the November 2021 elections. The LDPR on 14.2%, so actually above the Communist Party, but we'll have to see about that. That's up 6.6%. The Communists at 13.5%, down 5.4%. The New People Party at 11.9%, so really only just behind the Communists and the Liberal Democrats, and that's up 6.6%. That's exactly the amount that United Russia is down. Then we have Adjust Russia at 5.8, and other parties like the Liberal Yabloka and the Greens below the 5% threshold that you need in order to get representatives to the State Duma. So look, there is still room for the Liberal Democrats to rise, or indeed for the rather wild cardish new people to emerge from the pack. I mean at the moment it looks as if new people are being allowed to have quite a bit of coverage, even the even given the fact they're actually playing very heavily on the issue of the internet outages and so forth. I mean, uh Wutzion, polling in April after all, showed them second only to United Russia at 13.4, with the Communists at 10.9 and the Liberal Democrats at 10.1. So, look, as I say, obviously the result will be whatever the presidential administration decides. But let's remember, they want these elections, like all of these elections, to be legitimating forces for the state. And therefore, the bigger the gap between the results as they really are and the results that they end up announcing, the less legitimacy, the more chance that it sparks the kind of public protest that, for example, we saw with the Balotnaya protests in 2011 to 2013. And these are absolutely not the time to this is absolutely not the time to be running any kind of risk. So to a degree they'll be trying to pre-rig it as much as possible, but they will be cautious, I would suggest, even though they have all sorts of opportunities, particularly with the online polling, to basically just declare whatever result they want, they would like it not to be too outrageously obviously false. And also, the numbers of the polls currently registering often reflect really how the presidential administration political technologists want to frame the campaign. I mean, despite, as I say, new people's strong position on internet controls, uh the administration is clearly happy to use this party to create some sense of artificial drama and also to really be a warning to the two heavyweight systemic opposition parties, brackets, fake opposition, close brackets, that they can indeed be replaced. But one thing I did notice Adjust Russia is in many ways aligned closely with uh the the perspectives of the Communist Party. And in fact, you know, Adjust Russia's leader, Mironov, acknowledged in an interview in Viedmosti this week that they are that close. Well, if you put together their respective shares of the vote, you actually get twenty per cent, which is I think actually a pretty respectable vote share in the current uh political environment. So it is clear that there is a strong strong drift that way, and in part that's just simply because if you want to show that you're not entirely happy with the status quo, but don't want your vote to be wasted, the Communist Party reflects that. But it is also the kind of Soviet nostalgia that in fact Jeremy Morris, I think, talked about this very well in a recent episode. He had an interview on the Eurasian Knot podcast, well worth listening to. That it's not actually that you want the Soviet system. It's you want certain things that you have now come to associate with the Soviet system, about predictability, about perhaps a sense of less of a gap between rich and poor, about that sense that there was a safety net. Yes, it was a rubbishy safety net if you really think about it, but that sense that you had less precarity in your life. That's what people really are going to be voting for if they vote communist or just Russia, I would suggest. And their strong share strong showing does, I think, reflect precisely a sense that people do feel that there is precarity in their lives. One area in which actually we have considerable stability though is of course in Putin's presidency. And in this case, let me congratulate the Council of Europe for helping ensure that Putin remains in power until his death. How? Well, this week the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers, they were meeting in Kishinyov, Moldova, and they approved an agreement to establish a steering committee for the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine. Now, unsurprisingly, also informally called the Tribunal for Putin. And we had all sorts of fine words. Council of Europe's Secretary General Alain Berset said the time for Russia to be held to account for its aggression is fast approaching. Well, good luck with that. But above all, the tribunal's terms of reference specifically say that they will not be able to try Russia's president, prime minister or foreign minister while they remain in office. So well done, Council of Europe. You have generated yet another reason for Putin not to relinquish power so long as he still draws breath. Because that way he remains I mean not that, frankly, I can see any chance of this Council of Europe actually being able to hold anyone seriously to account, but nonetheless, if you just want to be sure and be safe, well this mean this is one way in which you can do so. Just stay as president, and the this tribunal can't consider you. I do sometimes wonder if people actually think about what they're doing, or whether they are just looking to give the appearance of action and decision. But anyway, on that rather jaundice note, let me end this half of the podcast, and then let's move on to a a chronicle of a different Russia. 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 in Moscow 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, MarkGalliotti on Russia. Now back to the episode. As I mentioned in a previous podcast, I have been playing around with some of the what if scenarios. You know, what if different things had happened, how might Russia had evolved that way? And this was prompted by my continued work on a forthcoming book, Russia in Hell, that, despite its name, is an attempt to be optimistic about the potentiality, and I stress that, the potentiality for Russia to work out well and essentially to evolve in a different direction. And with that a desire to push back against the perverse predestination that says no Russia is doomed forever to be an authoritarian, imperialist, etc. nation, which is both politically unhelpful and in broader terms historically illiterate. All countries' stories branch at different times. And considering the what-if scenarios gives us a better sense of the forces at work and what were the genuinely pivotal moments, because they're not always the most high profile, the most loudly proclaimed ones. So what I've decided to do, not least because actually I think it's quite fun to play this what if game, is to produce a self indulgently sporadic series of these for paying patrons. But I thought the very first one I would tackle I would actually make make public. By the way, to my patrons, this may well seem a bit weird because you will also get this first Chronicle of a different Russia as a separate post. Simply because I want to make sure that they're all available, the whole spread is available for future patrons who sign up. So don't be surprised that you'll get this, and then you'll get this again. So, as I say, I have a whole bunch of these various ideas from whether we really could have seen Cossack cavalry alongside British redcoats during the American War of Independence to what the odds are that Russia, czarist Russia, rather, could have had its own its own analogue of Gorbachev. But today I want to go early. But let me just preface this with the fact that I'm going to take projections. These are maybes. These are just one way in which perhaps Russia could have evolved. There's certainly not definite statements about how if that had happened, then this would have followed. So you know, treat this all as an exercise in imagination, but hopefully informed, interesting and entertaining imagination. So, as I say, we're going early. In 1237, the Mongols under Batu Khan began to sweep across the lands of the Rus. And by 1239, they're looking towards Kiev. Kiev the Golden, the most powerful individual city within these territories. Now they sent envoys to demand its submission. Grand Prince Michael of Chernygov, who at the time controlled the city, had them executed. This was not a good move. In any case, I mean Michael would actually flee to Hungary after Cernigov was then seized, and Kyiv was then claimed by Rostislav Mstislavich of Smylensk, who in turn lost it. This is almost like playing past the parcel on the deck of the Titanic, but he then lost it to Danil of Galizia Volchinia. Anyway, November 1240, the Mongol army, under its general Subutai, who was really one of its best commanders, reached Kyiv. Now the Mongols, obviously they're particularly known as a cavalry army, but they had learned the arts of siegecraft in China and in Central Asia. And its armies swept aside, its walls battered by catapults, within nine days Kyiv had fallen. Accounts vary, and the most dramatic claims only emerge apocryphally later about what happened to Kiev. I mean, for example, in a later version of the Historia Mongolorum by the Italian diplomat Giovanni De Pian de Carpini, who passed through this area six years later, the following passage is added from nothing. When we were journeying through that land, we came across countless skulls and bones of dead men lying about on the ground. Kiev had been a very large and thickly populated town, but now it has been reduced to almost nothing, for there are at the present time scarce two hundred houses there, and the inhabitants are kept in complete servitude. Well that said, that was almost certainly just a little bit of dramatic license that was added. It's interesting, clickbait has a long and inglorious pedigree. But nonetheless, it is certainly the case that Kyiv was sacked, it was burned, most of its population was killed, driven out or enslaved. It was definitely golden no more, rather singed instead. Of course, Kyiv would in due course rebuild, but nonetheless it had lost its position of preeminence. But what if Dimitri, who is the voivode or governor there in command, had instead decided to surrender? See the Mongols, they regarded themselves as conquerors, not administrators. You know, their their great spirit deity Blue Sky Tengri had essentially mandated them to conquer all the lands that they were, and they were happy to go and give it a good go. But they were not like, I don't know, the Romans, who want to impose their own rules and their norms and so forth. The Mongols generally were happy to accept submission and then rule through local rulers, who, as long as they paid tribute, as long as they kept their people in line, well then that was fine. So if we imagine that Kiev the Golden had not fallen, that, like the great northern trading city of Novgorod, it had been shrewd enough to see where the wind was blowing, it was blowing from the east, and surrendered, and you had an opportunist Dmitri effectively happy to exchange Danil's rule for the Khans as the new grand prince of Kiev, and they probably would have been perfectly happy to acknowledge him as such. What might have happened? Well, to understand that, we first of all just a little note about the political structure of the Ruslands at this time. It was not a single polity, but it was a single or a common culture with linked together by dynastic ties, the movement of princes. I mean, a prince often would trade up or down. It's a little bit like actually being a governor in Putin's Russia today. You know, does Gladkov become a governor in a better region, or does he become a federal minister or something? Well, you know, what you actually get precisely is princes seeking to move from a C rank town to a B rank, and then maybe they can aspire to an A-rank one. I mean it's not in quite as uh fluid as that, but nonetheless, there is this sense that in fact you have a whole variety of separate principalities and city-states that are connected by the arteries of dynastic transfer as well as trade, common faith, common cultural identity. So, in that context, Kyiv was the first among equals. It was rich, it held the leadership of the Orthodox Church, it was a key trading point on routes to the west and to the south and to the east and to the north, and just generally it had the cultural capital. That was where you looked. That was where, for example, fashions could emerge, would be aped by other rulers and such like. Its fall and the humbling of Novgorod is what allowed an at the time trivial settlement, really a village that was still locked around a hunting reserve, of Moscow to rise. And its Rurikid dynasty emerged, quite frankly, as the leading, the most efficient, the most rapacious quislings working for the Mongols. And as they rose, well, power breeds power, wealth can generate wealth. They were able to expand their holdings and territories, bring more cities essentially under their vassalship, the Orthodox Church leadership moved to Moscow. And generally, I mean, actually, the period of Mongol conquest and the destruction that it brought had also scattered populations towards the relatively safer forested northeast of the Ruslands, particularly the Vladimir Sustal region, which basically meant that there were now more peasants and thus more tax base in the area around Moscow. So, you know, this is what happened, and this is why the centre of gravity ended up in Moscow. However, if Kyiv had survived, then it, not Moscow, would have risen. It probably would have been the force that gathered the Ruslands, this whole period of the gathering of the Ruslands to Moscow, but instead they would have probably been gathered to Kyiv. And probably rather sooner, because you're starting from a higher base than Little Moscow. So what we could have seen is actually the emergence of a rather more centralized state, initially absolutely as a Tatar vassal state. But as the centre of gravity shifts to the southwest, with Kyiv remaining the religious, economic, and political epicentre of the Rus lands, while, as I say, Moscow remains a village around a hunting retreat, well it would become the heart of an increasingly coherent nation. And perhaps that would also help to prevent or at least minimize the internecine wars of princely precedence, as well as Muscovite aggrandisement, that was such a blight on this territory, causing such damage, displacement, burning of cities, etc. And in due course, it, not Moscow, would have taken advantage of the Golden Horde's decline and convert itself, as Moscow did, from lead collaborator to champion of the nation. You know, if we look at the Battle of Kulikova in 1380, well, that was a point in which a collection of Rus forces under Dmitry Donskoy of Moscow beat off a Golden Horde invasion. Now, that wasn't the end of Golden Horde control. Indeed, they would come under a different uh Khan a year or so later, and uh Khan Tokhtamish actually takes and burns Moscow, but it's really marking the beginning of the end of this period that was subsequently and rather inaccurately described as the Mongol yoke. So Kyiv could have taken that role. And meanwhile, well, let's be honest, there would have been considerable cultural, political, and economic influence from this period of Mongol control. Obviously, the lands of the Rus would be adopting to a degree as they would as they did as is, Mongol administrative practices and institutions, visible in everything from parts of the language, I mean words like dengi, for example, money, actually has Mongol roots, all the way to the tactics employed by its cavalry. And obviously the Rus would continue to be integrated into Eurasian trade networks stretching to the east. But the fact of the centre of this Rus land being Kyiv rather than Moscow, Kyiv after all, distinctly further to the south and to the west, also probably means it would be more connected to precisely southern and western trade routes. I mean there is this myth that during the 200 or so years of Mongol rule, that Russia was locked out, totally cut away from the rest of Europe and the political and cultural evolution of the time. Well that that isn't the case. I mean, yes, of course, there was a degree of restriction, but no, in fact there were there was continuing sort of connectivity. But certainly being centred on Kyiv instead of Moscow would have meant deeper connections, above all, with the intertwined Polish-Lithuanian polity immediately to the west, which at the time went with two states under a single dynasty, later brought together into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. So there we have the rise of Kyiv, and then the throwing off of the Mongol yoke. Not so much, really, as I say, about Kulikova in 1380, but a hundred years later, the so-called Great Stand on the Ugra River, a showdown which decisively means no more tribute, no more so much fear of the Golden Horde, and frankly the starting or the process of the fragmentation of the Golden Horde into a variety of separate carnates. And that in this scenario would leave a European-facing Eastern Slavic Empire, changing the balance of power, obviously, across Europe during the Renaissance and the early modern periods, and in fact, I would suggest reshaping history to this day. So let me just project that forward. We might have had a Russia, and again, okay, we'll come to whether we call it Russia, but anyway, that was not so isolated feeling, not so eastward looking, because it already had an experience of greater connectivity with Europe. A political culture that was less influenced by the Mongols, though it is worth noting, it is easy to overstate, then we're into sort of George Kennan Muscovite political folkways, overstate the degree to which Moscow was a sort of almost replica or a cosplaying of Mongol political structures. It's not. But nonetheless, I would suggest that a successful Kiev would have been probably more conventionally feudal in the European sense. The process of rotating princes would have declined, and instead we would have likely seen that giving way to a settled aristocracy. I mean, bear in mind, let me just pin the concept of the Magdeburg rights. I'll come on to that in a moment. Anyway, a settled aristocracy, which could in one in turn one day have represented a more effective check on the powers of the Tsar than as happened in Muscovy and then in Romanov czarist Russia. Most controversially, maybe there would be no Ukraine. Now bear with me. Ukraine, as we understand it, really did emerge from the later crucible of contestation between different nations and cultures. So let's just think this through. This is an area which was subject to struggles between successor carnates and their slave-taking raids, carnates of Kazan, Crimea, and so forth, constantly raiding through, which forced and created depopulation. Also, the wars between Muscovy and Poland Lithuania, and in the process, the influence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. See, this is where we come back to the Magdeburg rights. I mean, one of the things that happened is that in common with a number of other European countries, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth incorporated the Magdeburg rights, which enshrined a degree of autonomy for cities and local protections and so forth. And that actually helped develop the idea of locally entrenched aristocracies, which were both responsible for their regions, but also had a certain degree of security and autonomy within their regions. So actually, again, that sense, rather than just simply a prince comes and goes, but essentially it's distant Moscow that calls the shots, there is that sense of we have our prince, and our prince might sometimes represent our views to Moscow rather than anything else. So within this conflict there would have been political influencing in turns. And the struggle between Poland, Lithuania and Moscovy in many ways kept this region separate from the rest of Muscovy. And in particular, it created room for the rise of the distinctive culture of the Cossacks, which has become such an important element of Ukrainian national mythology and identity. The democratic dimension to Cossack society again is often overplayed and mythologized warmly, often by the same people who underplay the democratic traditions of the Russian Vieche, the gathering of free menfolk, which is a key part of political tradition, especially in Novgorod and the lands that it controlled. But nonetheless, we have to accept that it was definitely a thing. There was much more this sense of the voice of the individual Cossack mattering. And we could have seen, again, if if Kyiv had been the cradle of this new nation, that might well have spread more broadly and indeed in some ways had a kind of political cultural synergy with the concept of the Vieche. And also, well, religious struggles shaped the emergence of a distinct Ukraine, with Roman Catholicism in the West and Orthodoxy in the East, and particularly with 1596 Union of Briest, which united a big chunk of the Ukrainian clergy with the Roman Catholic Church, creating the Greek Catholic Union Church. But the point is, a stronger Kyiv, one that actually had been able to hold the Polish Lithuanians at bay, might well have meant a stronger Russian Orthodoxy, as I say, based in Kiev, not in Moscow. And frankly, this is also a linguistic issue. The Ukrainian language, which is indeed distinct from Russian, but it began its particular evolution, phonetic and grammatical, away from Old East Slavic, again also there's a root of modern Russian, around the 14th to the 16th centuries, particularly under the influence of and indeed rule of Poles and Lithuanians. So put all that lot together. If instead the region we now call Ukraine is not subject to constant conflicts, questions as to who actually controls it, and as a result, the emergence of a distinct culture, if instead it is the cradle, well does that mean I mean, and look, one has to accept that nonetheless Kiev could still have fallen to other pressures, again, whether it's the Poles and Lithuanians raids by the Karnates, I mean in 1482 the Crimean Khanates sacked the city. But nonetheless, if it manages to retain its role as the capital of an increasingly united state, we probably would not have had the notion of a separate Ukraine. Now, does that mean that all of Muscovy would have been Ukrainified? Well, maybe, but the point is it would have been very different. It wouldn't have had the same kind of cultural and political influences that created our modern Ukraine. There also would have been no Ryurikid dynasty, which means no Ivan the Terrible killing his son and heir, so perhaps no time of troubles, this period of dynastic social and political crisis, which saw foreign invasion, indeed it saw Moscow occupied by a Lithuanian Polish force, and as a result also no Romanov dynasty, because they really emerged as the sort of compromise candidate to end the dynastic chaos of the time of troubles. Now, of course, there's no absolute guarantee that the same dynasty would have survived in Kiev since 1240 all the way to the present day, but the point is it certainly would have been a different one. And another interesting possibility, so we we have a stronger Rus state anchored in Kiev. Strongly more strongly Orthodox. Might that have meant that in 1453, when Constantinople was besieged by the Ottomans, that in fact they would have come to assist it. It's worth remembering after all that the fall of Constantinople was a really close run thing, and it hinged on the Ottomans' lucky discovery of an unlocked sally port in the city's walls, and also the wounding of the extremely able Genoese commander Giovanni Giustiniani, because in the height of the attack he was wounded, badly wounded, and therefore he was evacuated to a ship, and this sparked widespread panic amongst his troops because they thought that he was fleeing and that therefore clearly the jig was up. As it was, I mean there's strong grounds, it's not known for certain, but there's strong grounds for suggesting that the Ottoman Sultan Mechmet II actually had been on the very verge of lifting the siege, maybe even just hours before the breakthrough. Well, if they have been stiffened by Russian forces, or indeed if there was a Russian relief force on the way, quite possibly Constantinople would have survived. And we might have seen in the future a strong, powerful alliance between a Byzantine Empire which is still clinging on, and a powerful Eastern Slavic Empire I've mentioned. Raises the question of whether or not a future Cold War would have been between Catholic Europe and an Orthodox Slavic Byzantine alliance. One way or the other, who knows? But the point is, on these issues, an extraordinary potential range of different timelines branch out. But you know, if he instead had been a little more opportunistic, a little more cunning, a little more cowardly, then maybe Russia would be a very, very different country today. Or maybe not. Again, we we we have no idea about how elastic history may be. But it is worth thinking about these things. Anyway, I hope you found this useful. As I said, for paying patrons, you will, from time to time, be getting another one of these chronicles of a different Russia. But for now, thanks for listening. 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 Mark Galliotti or Facebook, MarkGaleotti on 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.