Nizhny Novgorod

At a glance

What was the Grand Principality of Nizhny Novgorod?

It was one of the Russian principalities of the north-east in the time of Mongol rule. Its princes descended from the house of Suzdal, an old town north-east of Vladimir, and from 1341 they also ruled Nizhny Novgorod and Gorodets on the Volga. Historians call the state they built the Grand Principality of Nizhny Novgorod-Suzdal, because its princes used the title of grand prince and because both towns were its centres. The historian Anton Gorsky writes that within this state Nizhny Novgorod "was regarded as the senior seat".

The principality lay where the Oka flows into the Volga. Upstream lay the lands of Moscow and Vladimir; downstream, the river led to the Bulgar towns of the middle Volga, to the Kama and to the Horde's capital at Sarai. To the south lived the Mordva, a Finnic people who were partly subject to the Horde. This position made Nizhny Novgorod a rich trading town and an exposed frontier at the same time. According to the historian Dmitry Talovin, who wrote his doctoral thesis on the principality in 2001, its territory grew mainly to the south-east, into the basin of the Pyana river and probably to a narrow strip along the Sura.

The principality was never fully independent: its princes held their lands by patents from the khans of the Golden Horde and travelled to the Horde to defend them.

When was Nizhny Novgorod founded?

The city is more than a century older than the principality. The Laurentian Chronicle records under the year 6729 (1221) that Grand Prince Yuri Vsevolodovich of Vladimir founded a town at the mouth of the Oka and named it Novgorod, that is, "New Town". The chronicle uses no other name; the epithet Nizhny, "Lower", which distinguished it from Novgorod the Great in the north, came into use later. In 1225, according to the same chronicle, Yuri laid the foundations of a stone church of the Saviour in the new town. This church became the burial place of the Suzdal princes in the fourteenth century.

The chronicle does not say why Yuri founded the town. Many modern accounts call it a fortress against the Mordva or the Volga Bulgars. That is a reasonable inference from its position, but the chronicle says only that he founded it and named it. Yuri himself was killed in 1238 in the Mongol invasion that ended the independence of the Vladimir-Suzdal lands.

Before 1341 the town was drawn into the struggle between Moscow and Tver. The historian Maria Pykina notes that in 1305 a Prince Mikhail Andreyevich punished the leaders of a revolt against the boyars, that in 1311 a Tver army set out against Yuri Danilovich of Moscow in Nizhny Novgorod, and that Yuri's brother Boris ruled there until 1320. She sees the town as an important station on the road to the Horde.

How did the principality begin in 1341?

With a decision of the khan. Talovin argues that Khan Uzbek had already split the grand principality of Vladimir once before, between 1328 and 1331, giving Vladimir, Nizhny Novgorod and Gorodets to Alexander Vasilyevich of Suzdal; after Alexander's death in the winter of 1331/32, Ivan Kalita of Moscow recovered them.

The decisive step came after Ivan Kalita died. The Rogozhsky Chronicler, a fifteenth-century compilation, records under the year 6848, directly after Ivan's burial, that Konstantin Vasilyevich of Suzdal took the grand princely throne "in Nizhny Novgorod and Gorodets". Historians date this to 1341, the difference being a matter of how the old Russian calendar years are converted. Gorsky describes it as the moment when Khan Uzbek detached the Nizhny Novgorod principality from the grand principality of Vladimir and gave it to Konstantin.

Not everyone accepted the new prince. In 1343, according to the Rogozhsky Chronicler, Semyon of Moscow disputed the principality with Konstantin, and the boyars of Nizhny Novgorod and Gorodets took Semyon's side. After a hard trial before the khan the principality was confirmed to Konstantin. The boyars were handed over to him, brought back to Nizhny Novgorod in fetters, led through the market and executed. The story shows that part of the local elite preferred Moscow from the very beginning, which is worth remembering when the same thing happened again in 1392.

Who were the princes of Suzdal?

They were Rurikids, descendants of Yaroslav Vsevolodovich of Vladimir, but their exact line is disputed. Most historians trace them to Andrei Yaroslavich, a brother of Alexander Nevsky, who ruled Suzdal in the thirteenth century. A second tradition makes them descendants of Nevsky himself, through his son Andrei Alexandrovich of Gorodets.

The second version is not a modern invention. The sixteenth-century Nikon Chronicle, in its English translation by Serge and Betty Jean Zenkovsky, gives the princes' ancestry several times and once calls Boris Konstantinovich "gr. gr. grandson of Andrei Aleksandrovich". In the obituary of Andrei Konstantinovich it continues the line to "Aleksandr (Nevskii)". Pykina has shown that the same descent appears in the Piskaryov copy of the Book of Degrees, a late-sixteenth-century genealogy, and in the short text "These are the Russian princes" in a fifteenth-century copy of the Novgorod First Chronicle. She notes that Vasily Shuisky, who came from this family and became tsar in the early seventeenth century, had every reason to claim Nevsky as his ancestor, but concludes that the Nevsky version "cannot be finally dismissed" until the sources of that earliest text are understood.

The princes who matter here are Konstantin Vasilyevich and his sons Andrei, Dmitry and Boris, and Dmitry's sons Vasily, called Kirdyapa, and Semyon.

Was Nizhny Novgorod the capital?

Yes, but the often-repeated date of 1350 for the move, which this site's earlier text also gave, is not found in the sources consulted here. The Rogozhsky Chronicler already places Konstantin's enthronement of 1341 in Nizhny Novgorod and Gorodets. In the later 1340s he had a great bell cast for the church of the Saviour, and under 6858 (1350) the Nikon Chronicle records that he "laid the foundation of a stone church in Novgorod", that is, in Nizhny Novgorod. Talovin calls the transfer of the capital from "economically weak Suzdal" to Nizhny Novgorod Konstantin's first major act, but gives no year.

The safest statement is that by about 1350 Konstantin had made Nizhny Novgorod his main residence and was rebuilding its cathedral in stone. He was buried there in 1355, in the church of the Holy Saviour that he had built, after taking monastic vows. The Nikon Chronicle says he had ruled for fifteen years and protected his patrimony against stronger princes and the Tatars.

Konstantin also tried for the highest office. In 1353 he disputed the grand principality of Vladimir with Ivan Ivanovich of Moscow before Khan Jani Beg; Novgorod the Great backed Konstantin, but the khan chose Ivan. Talovin sees another sign of ambition in the marriage of Konstantin's son Boris to a daughter of Grand Duke Algirdas of Lithuania, which he dates to 1352.

Who ruled the Grand Principality of Nizhny Novgorod-Suzdal?

Talovin dates Dmitry's patent for Vladimir to 1359; the chronicles describe his entry into the city on 22 June 1360. Boris's installation in Nizhny Novgorod is dated to 1386 or a little later.

How did Dmitry of Suzdal become grand prince of Vladimir?

Through the turmoil in the Horde. After the murder of Khan Jani Beg in 1357, the Horde entered years of civil war, which the Russian chronicles call the "Great Troubles". In 1359 the young Dmitry Ivanovich of Moscow, the later Dmitry Donskoy, was a child of nine, and Khan Navruz gave the grand principality of Vladimir to Dmitry Konstantinovich of Suzdal. The Nikon Chronicle comments that "this was done contrary to the tradition of their fathers and grandfathers". It adds that the khan had first offered the throne to Dmitry's elder brother Andrei, who did not want it.

For two years the Suzdal brothers stood at the top of the Russian princes: the Nikon Chronicle calls Dmitry grand prince of Vladimir and Andrei "Grand Prince Andrei Konstantinovich of Nizhnii Novgorod".

The Moscow party, led by Metropolitan Alexis, won the throne back. In 1362 a patent from Khan Murad gave the grand principality to Dmitry Ivanovich, and Dmitry Konstantinovich fled to Suzdal, "after having remained grand prince of Vladimir slightly more than two years". In 1363 he returned with a patent from Murad's envoy, but Moscow's army came after him. The Nikon Chronicle says he held Vladimir "exactly twelve days" before being chased to Suzdal, where he made peace and went to his brother Andrei in Nizhny Novgorod. This site's earlier text gave his reign as 1360–1363; it is better described as 1360–1362, with a brief return in 1363.

Why did the brothers fight over Nizhny Novgorod in 1364–1365?

Because the youngest brother would not give way. In 1364 plague struck Nizhny Novgorod, where, according to the Nikon Chronicle, "every day fifty or a hundred people, or more, would die". Andrei Konstantinovich died soon afterwards and was buried beside his father.

By seniority the city should have passed to Dmitry, who came to Nizhny Novgorod with his mother Elena and Bishop Alexis of Suzdal. Boris, the youngest brother, refused to hand it over and won support in the Horde. At the same moment Dmitry's son Vasily Kirdyapa arrived from Khan Aziz with a new patent for Vladimir. Dmitry refused it and gave up the grand principality to Dmitry Ivanovich of Moscow, asking him in return for troops against Boris.

What followed is told in the Nikon Chronicle, a sixteenth-century compilation, and should be read with that date in mind. Metropolitan Alexis took the sees of Nizhny Novgorod and Gorodets away from the bishop of Suzdal. The abbot Sergius of Radonezh came from Moscow and asked Boris to come to Moscow; when Boris refused, Sergius "closed all the churches" in the city. Dmitry then marched from Suzdal with his own men and Muscovite troops. At Berezhets, Boris met him, submitted and gave up his claim. Dmitry became prince of Nizhny Novgorod, and Boris received Gorodets.

This episode is often described as a mediation by Saint Sergius. In the chronicle it is closer to an interdict imposed on Moscow's orders, backed by a military threat. The alliance was sealed with a marriage: in January 1366, according to the editors of the Pushkin House edition, Dmitry Ivanovich married Dmitry Konstantinovich's daughter Evdokia at Kolomna. Their son Vasily I would later annex his grandfather's principality.

How did Nizhny Novgorod face the Volga frontier?

By fortifying it, raiding beyond it and suffering from it. The years between 1365 and 1377 were, in Talovin's judgement, the principality's high point, and they were also years of constant fighting on the Volga.

Forts and expansion. According to Talovin, the princes built forts on the rivers Kisha and Sara from the early 1360s, and in 1372 Boris founded Kurmysh on the Sura. In 1367 the brothers drove the Horde lord Bulat-Temir beyond the Pyana, where many of his men drowned.

The stone fortress. In the 1372 section of the Nikon Chronicle, Dmitry Konstantinovich "laid the foundation of a stone fortification in Nizhnii Novgorod". The city's own encyclopaedia dates the attempt to 1374 and says that it went no further than a single tower.

The river pirates. The ushkuiniki, freebooters from Novgorod the Great who sailed in light boats called ushkui, struck Nizhny Novgorod twice. In 1366, according to the Rogozhsky Chronicler, 150 boats came down the Volga and killed a great many Muslim merchants in the city; the Nikon Chronicle gives 200 boats and speaks of "Tatars and Armenians", along with Tatar and local merchants whose boats were hacked to pieces. In 1375 seventy boats under Prokop and Smolyanin took Kostroma, plundered and burned Nizhny Novgorod, and sold their captives to Muslim merchants at Bulgar. They were finally killed at Astrakhan.

Mamai's envoys. In 1374 the townspeople killed envoys of the Horde lord Mamai and, in the words of the Nikon Chronicle, "one and a half thousand Tatars" with them. The National Library of Russia adds that the envoys' commander, Saraika, aimed an arrow at Bishop Dionisy. The reprisal came in 1375, when Mamai's Tatars ravaged "the entire land of Nizhnii Novgorod", asking why it had joined Moscow's campaign against Mikhail of Tver.

The Bulgar campaign. Dmitry Konstantinovich then sent his sons Vasily and Ivan, with Moscow's commander Dmitry Mikhailovich Volynsky, against Bulgar, the old capital of Volga Bulgaria, now under Mamai. They reached the town on 16 March. Its defenders "sent thunder from the city", which the translators note as the earliest mention of gunpowder in the Russian chronicles, and rode out on camels that frightened the Russian horses. The Bulgar rulers Hasan and Muhammad Sultan paid 1,000 roubles to each grand prince and 3,000 to the commanders and troops, and accepted a Russian official and customs officer. The Nikon Chronicle places this in the winter of 1376; the National Library of Russia dates it to spring 1377 and calls it the first Russian offensive against the Horde since the start of Mongol rule. The chronicle calls the town "Kazan", which the translators note is an anachronism.

What is the Laurentian Chronicle's link to Nizhny Novgorod?

The Laurentian Chronicle was copied for Dmitry Konstantinovich. It is, in the words of the National Library of Russia in St Petersburg, which keeps it under the shelfmark F.п.IV.2, "the oldest surviving dated Russian chronicle", meaning the oldest whose scribe wrote down when he made it. It contains the oldest surviving copy of the Tale of Bygone Years, the foundational history of Kievan Rus, and its narrative runs to 1305.

At the end of the manuscript the monk Lavrentii, after whom it is named, left a note. He wrote that he copied the chronicle for Grand Prince Dmitry Konstantinovich with the blessing of Dionisy, bishop of Suzdal, Nizhny Novgorod and Gorodets, starting on 14 January and finishing on 20 March 1377. He compared himself to a merchant who rejoices at a bargain and a traveller who reaches home, and asked readers to correct his mistakes rather than curse him, because, as he put it, the books were worn and his mind young.

The manuscript has 173 parchment leaves. Lavrentii wrote most of it in a semi-uncial hand; two other scribes wrote the first forty leaves and a few later pages. The library's catalogue gives its place of origin as "Nizhny Novgorod (?)", with a question mark. Talovin states without qualification that it was written in Nizhny Novgorod, and many popular accounts name a particular monastery there; the library itself does not commit itself.

The library also suggests that the codex, finished just as the Bulgar campaign began, was meant as Dionisy's spiritual send-off for the princes. That is an interpretation, not something the colophon states.

What happened at the Battle of the Pyana River in 1377?

A disaster for Nizhny Novgorod. The Tale of the Battle on the Pyana, preserved in the Simeonov Chronicle and the Rogozhsky Chronicler, tells it in detail. In the summer of 1377 a Tatar prince named Arapsha (Arab Shah) crossed from the Blue Horde beyond the Volga and threatened Nizhny Novgorod. Dmitry Konstantinovich called on his son-in-law Dmitry Ivanovich, who came with a large army, heard no news of Arapsha and went home. He left his commanders with the levies of Vladimir, Pereslavl, Yuriev, Murom and Yaroslavl. Dmitry Konstantinovich sent his son Ivan and a Prince Semyon Mikhailovich with them.

The army crossed the Pyana and heard that Arapsha was far away. The chronicler describes what happened next with bitter detail: the men put their armour on carts or in sacks, left their spearheads unfitted, rode with their coats off their shoulders in the heat, and drank whatever mead and beer they found, while their commanders went hunting "as if at home". He sums it up with a pun on the river's name, which means "drunken": "Поистиннѣ — за Пьяною пьяни!" ("Truly, beyond the Drunken they were drunk!").

Meanwhile, the tale says, the "pagan Mordva princes" secretly led a Tatar army "from Mamai's Horde" against them. On Sunday 2 August 1377, at the Shipara, the Tatars split into five regiments and struck the army from behind. Semyon Mikhailovich was killed. Ivan Dmitrievich, who was twenty-two according to the editor, rode into the Pyana and drowned, and many boyars and men drowned with him.

The tale names no commander of the attacking army: Arapsha was the original threat, but the attack is attributed to Tatars of Mamai's Horde guided by Mordva princes. The Nikon Chronicle makes Arapsha a fugitive who had joined "Mamai's Horde, which was on the Volga". Many modern accounts simply credit Arab Shah with the victory.

Three days later, on 5 August, the Tatars reached Nizhny Novgorod. Dmitry had no army left and fled to Suzdal; the townspeople escaped by boat up the Volga to Gorodets. The Tatars killed those who remained and burned the town, its churches and monasteries: "32 churches burned in the town". Arapsha himself then plundered the land beyond the Sura. Vasily Kirdyapa had his brother's body recovered from the river, and Ivan was buried on 23 August in the stone church of the Saviour.

The frontier stayed open. In 1378, according to the Rogozhsky Chronicler, Tatars came again without warning and the townspeople fled across the Volga. Dmitry offered a ransom; the Tatars refused it and burned the town on the feast of Saint Boris, 24 July. That winter Boris and Dmitry's son Semyon, with Muscovite troops, devastated the Mordva lands, and some of the prisoners brought to Nizhny Novgorod were, in the Nikon Chronicle's account, set upon by dogs.

Talovin sees 1377–1378 as the start of a sharp decline, but argues, against what he calls a widespread opinion, that the alliance with Moscow held and that the principality still took part in the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380. The literary historian Maria Ponomareva also calls Dmitry Konstantinovich an ally of Dmitry Donskoy at Kulikovo. The chronicle passages read for this entry do not settle the point.

What role did the princes of Nizhny Novgorod play in 1382?

They helped Khan Tokhtamysh into Moscow. In 1382 Tokhtamysh, who had united the Horde after Mamai's fall, marched on Moscow. According to the Tale of Tokhtamysh's Invasion, Dmitry Konstantinovich sent his sons Vasily Kirdyapa and Semyon to the khan; they caught up with his army near the border of Ryazan.

Dmitry Donskoy had left for Kostroma, and the city was defended by Ostei, a grandson of Algirdas of Lithuania. After three days of siege, Tatar lords came to the walls with "two princes of Suzdal, Vasily and Semyon, sons of Prince Dmitry of Suzdal". They promised that the khan only wanted to see the city. The princes of Nizhny Novgorod added an oath of their own: "Believe us, we are your Christian princes" (in the tale's words, "Имѣте вѣры намъ, мы есмы ваши князи христианскые"). The defenders opened the gates and came out with gifts and crosses. Ostei was killed first, and the massacre and plunder of Moscow followed. The Nikon Chronicle tells the same story and calls the two princes Dmitry Donskoy's brothers-in-law.

Tokhtamysh kept Vasily with him in the Horde. Dmitry died the next year. The Nikon Chronicle says he sent Semyon to the khan in 1383 "because he, himself, was growing old" and that he died on 5 July, having taken monastic vows; his baptismal name was Foma and his monastic name Feodor.

After Dmitry's death his brother Boris of Gorodets and his sons Vasily Kirdyapa and Semyon fought over Nizhny Novgorod. Talovin calls the years 1383–1392 a period of internecine war that greatly weakened the principality. Boris won the first round in the Horde: the Nikon Chronicle records under 6894 (1386) that he went to Tokhtamysh and returned in the autumn with his patrimony, "Nizhnii Novgorod, Gorodets and Suzdal'". Vasily Kirdyapa escaped from the Horde in the same year, was caught and, according to the chronicle, badly tortured.

How did Moscow annex Nizhny Novgorod in 1392?

By buying the patent and turning the local boyars. In the summer of 1392 Vasily I of Moscow, Dmitry Donskoy's son and Dmitry Konstantinovich's grandson, went to Tokhtamysh. Gorsky points out that the khan, defeated by Timur the year before, needed money. According to the Nikon Chronicle, Vasily asked for the grand principality of Nizhny Novgorod, bribed the khan's lords, and the khan himself "also accepted much gold, silver and large gifts".

Vasily returned with a Tatar envoy and sent him on to Nizhny Novgorod with Moscow boyars. The Nikon Chronicle and the Rogozhsky Chronicler tell the scene in almost the same words. Boris summoned his boyars and begged them in tears to remember their oath. The senior boyar, Vasily Rumyanets, assured him that they were ready to die for him, while secretly arranging to hand him over. When the envoy and the Moscow boyars arrived, Boris wanted to keep them out; Rumyanets persuaded him to open the gates. The bells rang and the people gathered. When Boris appealed to his boyars a second time, Rumyanets answered: "Do not rely upon us. As of now, we are no longer yours. We are not with you but we are against you."

Boris was taken prisoner. Vasily I came to Nizhny Novgorod, installed his own governors and had Boris, his wife and children and his supporters sent to different towns under guard. The Rogozhsky Chronicler records that Vasily returned to Moscow on 20 October, and the Nikon Chronicle that Tokhtamysh gave him Nizhny Novgorod and Gorodets with all their lands, together with Meshchera and Tarusa. Gorsky quotes another version of the grant that also includes Murom. Boris died in 1394 and was buried on 6 May in Suzdal, "the city of his forefathers".

Did the principality end in 1392?

Not completely. The site's dates end at 1392, the year of the patent, but Gorsky shows that only the core of the Nizhny Novgorod principality passed to Vasily I that year. Suzdal and Gorodets remained separate principalities under Moscow's control. Gorodets passed directly to Moscow only after Vasily Kirdyapa's death in 1403.

The Suzdal princes kept fighting, and they kept finding allies in the Horde:

• 1393–1394. Vasily I campaigned against Vasily Kirdyapa and Semyon, who then fled to Tokhtamysh to recover "their patrimony, Nizhnii Novgorod, Suzdal and Gorodets".
• Semyon's exile. Semyon and a young khan named Ektiak besieged Nizhny Novgorod without success. According to the Nikon Chronicle, he served four rulers in turn, including Tokhtamysh and Timur, trying to win his patrimony back; Ponomareva writes that he finally submitted and died at Vyatka.
• 1408–1415. After Edigei's campaign against Moscow in 1408, in which his troops also burned Nizhny Novgorod and Gorodets, the principality was restored with the Horde's sanction, under Boris's sons Daniil and Ivan. In January 1411 they defeated a Muscovite army under Pyotr Dmitrievich at Lyskovo, with Bulgar allies and men from Zhukotin; the chronicles say they "stood on the bones", that is, held the battlefield. In 1412 they received a patent from Khan Jalal ad-Din. Gorsky writes that Moscow retook Nizhny Novgorod by force by 1415, as soon as Edigei was back in power.
• 1419 and the 1420s. In 1419 the city briefly became the seat of Alexander Ivanovich, Vasily Kirdyapa's grandson and Vasily I's son-in-law. In 1423 or 1424 Vasily I had to accept the return of Daniil Borisovich, backed by Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania and Khan Ulugh Muhammad.
• The 1440s. In the mid-1440s Ulugh Muhammad, by then driven from the Horde to the middle Volga, tried to restore the principality in full; according to Gorsky it lasted only a few months. Ponomareva adds that in 1446–1447 the Shuisky brothers Fyodor and Vasily recovered the principality with the help of Dmitry Shemyaka, Vasily II's rival, before going over to Moscow for good.

The end came in 1449, when Ivan Vasilyevich Gorbaty, a prince of the Suzdal house, promised Vasily II to accept no more khans' patents for his ancestors' lands and received Gorodets in return. Nizhny Novgorod, in short, was annexed in 1392 and contested until the 1440s.

What did the principality leave behind?

More than its short life suggests. Talovin counts 40 rural settlements of the period within 20 kilometres of the city. Rye was the main crop; fishing, bee-keeping and salt-making mattered, and hoards contain the principality's own coins alongside those of the Horde, Moscow and Ryazan.

The princes built in stone: Talovin names the white-stone cathedrals of the Saviour and of the Archangel Michael, and writes that there are "grounds to suppose" that one of them was painted by Theophanes the Greek, which remains a hypothesis.

The walls that visitors see today are not from this period. According to the Encyclopaedia of Nizhny Novgorod, a city reference site, the stone kremlin was built under Moscow between 1500 and 1515, and the Italian master known in Russia as Pyotr Fryazin worked on its last phase.

The principality also plays a part in modern Russian memory politics. At the city's 800th anniversary in 2021, President Vladimir Putin said, as reported by Rossiyskaya Gazeta, that at the end of the fourteenth century the Nizhny Novgorod lands "played a huge role" in gathering the historic Russian lands. The sources show a more ambivalent picture: the same princes who allied with Moscow helped Tokhtamysh into it in 1382, and the principality was absorbed against its last ruler's will.

Common myths about the Grand Principality of Nizhny Novgorod

Timeline of the Grand Principality of Nizhny Novgorod

What the map shows next

The border data draws the principality from 1294 to 1394, longer than its historical dates of 1341–1392; the extra years at either end are an artefact of the border data. At 1370 on the map it lies east of Moscow, at the height of its power. Its great rival appears at Grand Principality of Moscow and the third contender for the throne of Vladimir at Tver. After 1392 the land belongs to Moscow, while the Golden Horde still claims overlordship. On the middle Volga, the Khanate of Kazan becomes Nizhny Novgorod's new neighbour, and the city eventually becomes part of the Tsardom of Russia.