Principality of Beloozero

At a glance

Where was the Principality of Beloozero?

Beloozero lay in the far north of the Rus' lands, around Lake Beloye, which drains south through the Sheksna River into the Volga. The translators of the Primary Chronicle placed it "midway between modern Vologda and Lake Onega, connected with the Volga by the Sheksna river". The Sheksna tied Beloozero to Rostov and the Volga. In Zakharov's reading the town was also a junction on the water routes north to Zavoloch'e, the lands beyond the portages, and to Pomor'e on the White Sea coast.

The town itself stood where the Sheksna leaves the lake. The principality around it covered the lake shores and the valley of the upper Sheksna. Its southern neighbour and parent state was Rostov; to the west and north lay the lands of the Novgorod Republic.

The Primary Chronicle names the first people of the region: "At Beloozero are situated the Ves', and on the lake of Rostov, the Merya." The Ves' were a Finnic-speaking people. Archaeology complicates the picture. A 2012 survey of the Rus' archaeology of the ninth and tenth centuries, as summarised in its review, concludes that the area around Lake Beloye was "not the core of the tribal territory of the Ves', but its periphery". In the tenth century two streams of Slav settlers met in this almost empty country, one from Novgorod and Ladoga in the west and one from the Volga in the south.

How old is Beloozero?

Younger than the chronicle says. The Primary Chronicle, compiled in Kiev in the 1110s, tells under AD 862 that three Varangian brothers came to rule: "The oldest, Rurik, located himself in Novgorod; the second, Sineus, at Beloozero; and the third, Truvor, in Izborsk." Two years later, it continues, "Sineus and his brother Truvor died, and Rurik assumed the sole authority. He assigned cities to his followers, Polotsk to one, Rostov to another, and to another Beloozero." It adds that "the first settlers were … at Beloozero, Ves'". Cross, the chronicle's English translator, noted that the historicity of Rurik, Sineus and Truvor "remains until today a subject of learned controversy". This is the chronicle's story of how the Varangian Rus' came to rule, and the name Sineus has been explained in several ways. A popular modern etymology reads it as an Old Norse phrase, sine hus, "his house". The scholarly readings reported by L. P. Grot (2022) are different: in the nineteenth century A. Kunik took the name as a Norse adjective meaning "victorious", and the Scandinavianist E. A. Mel'nikova identified it with Signjótr, a personal name attested in runic inscriptions.

Excavation has not found that town. The archaeologist S. D. Zakharov, whose monograph Drevnerusskii gorod Beloozero (2004) analyses all the finds from the site, concluded that the newest research has shown "quite definitely the absence of deposits of the ninth and early tenth centuries". According to the review of his book by A. E. Medovichev, the oldest finds point to the middle of the tenth century, or more broadly its second third. Ninth-century layers are also missing at Novgorod, Smolensk and Murom.

The Varangians themselves left few traces. Zakharov's chapter in the 2012 survey, as summarised in its review, finds clear evidence of Scandinavians at three places in the region: the settlement of Krutik, a site called Nikol'skoe V, and Beloozero itself. All of it dates to the middle or second half of the tenth century, and the finds are far fewer than at Ladoga, in the Yaroslavl Volga region or at Riurikovo Gorodishche near Novgorod. There are no Scandinavian burials in the region at all. "The scale of the Scandinavian presence in central Belozer'e and the time when the Varangians appeared here", the review concludes, "do not correspond to the chronicle version of the Tale of their calling."

Some scholars proposed that the "early Beloozero" of the chronicle was Krutik, a settlement of about 0.6 hectares on the northern shore of the lake. It has layers of the right date, fur-trapping and craft finds, and objects of Scandinavian type. Zakharov rejects the identification: Krutik's Scandinavian finds do not stand out among the lake's sites, and it is far smaller than Ladoga, Riurikovo Gorodishche or Gnezdovo. In his reading Beloozero was a junction on the water routes to the north from the moment it was founded, while Krutik was "apparently just one of the starting points of fur supply". He considers it a mistake to see Krutik as Beloozero's direct predecessor.

What did old Beloozero look like?

It was an open town without walls. Old Beloozero, on the right bank of the Sheksna where it leaves the lake, had no earthen fortifications and therefore no visible division into a citadel and a suburb. L. A. Golubeva excavated it from 1949 to 1965 and opened about 5,500 square metres. The site is largely waterlogged and has almost no stratigraphy, so it is dated by comparing objects with finds from Novgorod. Glass objects make up 38 per cent of the finds collected from the surface.

From the spread of these finds Zakharov reconstructed the town's growth:

• End of the tenth century: the first settlement on raised ground covered about 1.4 hectares.
• Eleventh century: the town grew fivefold, to 7 hectares by 1100.
• Second half of the twelfth to early thirteenth century: it reached 54 hectares, enough to place Beloozero "among the largest towns of north-eastern Rus'".
• From the second half of the thirteenth century: it shrank gradually, to no more than 7 hectares by the early to mid-fourteenth century.

The finds show a wealthy town. Zakharov grouped them by status. The prestigious objects include gold and silver work with granulation, filigree and cloisonné enamel, small stone icons, document seals and glass vessels. A second group points to trade: lead seals for goods, weights and parts of scales, dirhams and denarii. Book clasps and writing styluses show that some people could read and write. No birchbark letters have been reported from the site; the find-site list of gramoty.ru, the online corpus of birchbark letters, does not include Beloozero. Weapons are rare, and Zakharov saw this, together with the missing walls, as a sign that the town faced little military danger. He found several districts with concentrations of high-status finds and wrote that "one cannot fail to see certain analogies with the social topography of Novgorod".

The town dominated its countryside. A survey by N. A. Makarov, Zakharov and A. P. Buzhilova (2001) recorded 186 medieval sites around the lake. At 54 hectares, by their reckoning, the town held about a third of the population of the whole region. The economy rested on fur. The land was poor for farming, so the town lived above all from trapping and selling pelts. Buzhilova's study of skeletons found an average age at death of 42.5 years in the Beloozero region, against 32.3 in the Novgorod land, which she linked to higher living standards and a peaceful position away from the main wars.

What happened at Beloozero in 1071?

The Primary Chronicle's most vivid Beloozero story is a rising led by pagan sorcerers. During a famine in the district of Rostov, two "magicians" from Yaroslavl went along the Volga and the Sheksna. At each trading post they accused the handsomest women of holding back the grain, honey, fish or furs, killed them and took their property. "Then they arrived at Beloozero, and about three hundred men accompanied them."

By chance Yan, son of Vyshata, was there "to collect tribute in behalf of Svyatoslav". He had twelve armed men. The followers refused to hand the magicians over and escaped him in the forest, killing his priest. Yan then told the people of Beloozero that if they did not surrender the magicians, "he would remain among them for a year". They seized the sorcerers at once. Questioned, the magicians said they believed "in Antichrist", who dwelt "in the abyss". At the mouth of the Sheksna Yan let boatmen whose kin had been killed take revenge. The magicians were hanged on an oak, and a bear ate the bodies.

The historian E. A. Shinakov (2016) reads the episode as a rising of peasants, the smerdy, which closed a period of crisis in 1067–1071. In his view Yan's twelve professional retainers easily beat three hundred peasants, but could not catch the leaders in the forests. Yan used features of Rus' mentality and law to make the townspeople do it, and handed the killing to the victims' kin because Rus' law, in Shinakov's reading, had no death penalty. Shinakov also notes that Scandinavian sagas mention the town as "Alaborg".

Beloozero men also appear as soldiers: in 1096–97 Mstislav, son of Vladimir Monomakh, fought Oleg of Chernigov with "men from Novgorod, Rostov, and Beloozero". The historian A. M. Kondreskul (2015) adds that a Beloozero detachment took part in Andrei Bogoliubskii's campaigns against Kiev in 1169 and Novgorod in 1170.

How did Beloozero become a principality?

Through the division of the Rostov lands. For two centuries Beloozero belonged to princes of the house that ruled Kievan Rus'. According to the 1891 Brockhaus and Efron encyclopaedia (ESBE), it passed with Rostov and Suzdal' to Vsevolod Iaroslavich after 1054, then to Vladimir Monomakh and his descendants, the rulers of Rostov-Suzdal and later Vladimir-Suzdal. Its last princes before the separation were Konstantin Vsevolodovich of Rostov and his son Vasil'ko.

The break came with the Mongol invasion. Vasil'ko was taken prisoner at the battle on the Sit' River on 4 March 1238 and killed. Beloozero, according to ESBE, was then "assigned as an appanage to his younger son, Gleb Vasil'kovich", and "separated from Rostov to form an independent Beloozero principality". The Russian Biographical Dictionary (RBS) adds an important detail: Gleb had been born only in 1237. RBS cites a chronicle note that in 1238 he "sat at Beloozero", but takes this to mean only that the town was set aside for him; the child lived with his mother in Rostov.

The first firm date of residence is 1251. The Laurentian Chronicle records under that year: «Поѣха Глѣбъ на Бѣлоѡзеро . в свою ѡчину» ("Gleb went to Beloozero, to his patrimony"), and the Nikon Chronicle agrees that he "went to his patrimony of Belozero, and this year was peaceful". ESBE instead suggested that he settled there "probably not before 1254". In short, the principality was created on paper in 1238 and had a resident prince from 1251.

Who was Gleb Vasil'kovich?

The first prince of Beloozero, who lived between his northern town, Rostov and the Horde. In 1249 he travelled to the Golden Horde to Sartaq, son of Batu, who, according to the Laurentian Chronicle, received him with honour and sent him back to his patrimony. In 1257 he married in the Horde; the Nikon Chronicle's translators add that the bride was a Tatar princess. RBS calls her a relative of the khan, baptised as Feodora; the Laurentian continuation records the death of Gleb's princess Feodora in 1273.

Gleb kept close ties with Rostov, where his elder brother Boris ruled. The Nikon Chronicle shows "Boris of Rostov and Gleb of Belozero" together at the consecration of the church of Saints Boris and Gleb in Rostov in 1253, and at the consecration of Ignatius as bishop of Rostov in 1262. When Boris died in 1277, "Gleb Vasil'kovich of Belozero became grand prince of Rostov". He died the next year; RBS gives 13 December 1278, after which Boris's sons took Rostov.

The chronicle obituary, preserved in the Nikon Chronicle, gives Gleb a political epitaph: "After the Tatar conquest [of Russia] [this Prince Gleb] from his youth served the Tatars, and thus he succeeded in protecting many Christians from the Tatar offenses." RBS adds a strange sequel: Bishop Ignatius of Rostov, who had buried him in the cathedral, had the body dug up at midnight nine days later and reburied in the monastery of the Saviour, for no reason the encyclopaedia records.

ESBE also credits Gleb, without citing a chronicle, with two monasteries, two canals and an earthen rampart around Beloozero. The rampart sits badly with the archaeology, which found no defences at the old town.

The sources disagree about Gleb's son born in 1263: the Nikon Chronicle calls him Mikhail, the main Laurentian text Dem'ian. RBS lists both as sons.

Who ruled Beloozero?

Gleb's descendants, then sons of the Moscow house. After Mikhail the local line is poorly documented, and much about it rests on later genealogies.

Mikhail Glebovich succeeded his father in 1278, according to the Nikon Chronicle, "in his domain of Belozero". The next year his cousin Dmitrii Borisovich of Rostov "took away some districts from Prince Mikhail Glebovich of Belozero … sinfully and unjustly". He "settled in Belozero" again at the Rostov division of 1286/87 and died in the Horde in 1293.

Roman Mikhailovich, called "Romanchuk", appears once: in 1339 "Prince Romanchuk of Belozero" went with Vasilii Davydovich of Yaroslavl to Khan Uzbek. RBS says the journey was for the khan's judgement on Aleksandr Mikhailovich of Tver'. His son Fedor Romanovich joined Dmitrii Ivanovich of Moscow against Tver' in 1375 and fell at Kulikovo in 1380 with his son Ivan. In 1363 Ivan had brought the khan's patent for the grand principality of Vladimir from the Horde to Dmitrii Konstantinovich of Suzdal'.

The principality then broke into small holdings. ESBE lists sub-appanages from the late fourteenth century, among them Sugor'e, Kargolom, Vadbol', Andoga, Ukhtoma, Kema and Belosel'e. Their princes became service nobles under Moscow.

How did Moscow acquire Beloozero?

Nobody knows exactly, and the question is one of the classic puzzles of Muscovite history. The key text is the testament of Dmitrii Donskoi of 1389. In the Nikon Chronicle's version he gave his third son Andrei "Mozhaisk with all its land, and he also gave him [the principality of] Belozero with all its land and including the Volok district with Shagotie and the Miloliub districts … and which had been bought by his grandfather". He describes Galich and Uglich the same way. Dmitrii's grandfather was Ivan I Kalita of Moscow (died 1340). But Kalita's surviving testaments do not mention Galich, Uglich or Beloozero at all.

Historians have offered many explanations, which the review of K. A. Aver'ianov's book on the problem (2018) lists. Karamzin thought Kalita bought the towns after his testaments were written. Solov'ev and Kliuchevskii noted that the chronicles still name independent local princes, and thought Kalita left them their rights. Sergeevich thought he left the towns to the sellers in return for service; Platonov that kuplia, "purchase", could mean a voluntary submission; Liubavskii that Kalita paid the princes' Horde arrears. Kopanev asked whether Kalita had owned them at all. Kuchkin and Gorskii proposed that he bought the khan's patent over the small principalities.

In his History of Russia Solov'ev also wrote that Kalita "was so rich that he could buy whole principalities, like Beloozero, Uglich and Galich", and that the princes sold "most probably" because they could not pay the Horde tribute. Aver'ianov himself began by stating that "this problem has still not been solved", and that every proposal has a flaw that the sources refute. His own answer is that kuplia here meant a marriage contract, and that the "purchases" were dowries. On his reading Beloozero came to Moscow through the marriage of Kalita's brother Afanasii Danilovich to Anna, daughter of Prince Vasilii Glebovich of Beloozero, so that "grandfather" in the testament covers Kalita's brothers too. He dates the acquisition of half the principality to the first third of the fourteenth century, and argues that by 1378 Beloozero was already an old Muscovite possession. The dowry thesis is one more hypothesis; the question remains open.

The sources show two powers side by side. When Novgorodians raided "the Belo-Ozero districts of the Veliki Knyaz" in 1398, "the Knyazes of Belozersk and the Voyevodas of the Veliki Knyaz" came out together to pay a ransom, according to the Novgorod Chronicle.

What did the Beloozero princes do at Kulikovo?

They fought and died for Moscow. At the battle of Kulikovo against Mamai in 1380, Fedor Romanovich and his son Ivan were among the princes killed. The Novgorod Chronicle records it briefly: "in the encounter Knyaz Fedor Belozerski was killed, also his son Knyaz Ivan". The Nikon Chronicle's list of the slain begins: "Prince Fedor Romanovich of Belozero and his son, Prince Ivan; Prince Fedor Semionovich".

The Nikon Chronicle also includes a longer literary tale of the campaign, written down long after the battle. In it "the princes of Belozersk, strong and valiant in battle" came to Moscow, and on the day of battle Dmitrii took them into his own force. After the battle, the tale says, searchers found "Prince Fedor Semionovich Belozerskii" and took him for the grand prince "because he resembled him very much". These are details of the later literary tradition.

The deaths of 1380 opened the way for Moscow. According to RBS, Iurii Vasil'evich, of the younger branch, became the senior prince after 1380 and held Beloozero until about 1389, when Donskoi began to dispose of it. According to RBS, Ivan's son Konstantin refused to submit and went to Novgorod; the Novgorod Chronicle records under 1393 that "Knyaz Kostyantin Belozerski came to Novgorod, and they received him".

Did the Black Death destroy Beloozero?

The chronicles say it did, twice; archaeology tells a slower story. Under 1352 the Nikon Chronicle describes "a very violent plague in Smolensk, Kiev, Chernigov, Suzdal' and the entire Russian land". In the town of Glukhov "not a single person survived. All died, and the same occurred in Belozero." A second epidemic spread in 1364 from Nizhnii Novgorod to Moscow, Tver', Vladimir and "all the cities", and the chronicle repeats: "In Belozero not one single man survived." These entries became the standard explanation for the move: ESBE says the town stood at the Sheksna until the "black death" of 1352, after which a new town was built 17 versts to the west.

The archaeologists reject this explanation. Zakharov found that the old town had been shrinking since the second half of the thirteenth century and was down to 7 hectares by the early to mid-fourteenth century, before either plague. In his view the old Beloozero declined "gradually", while a new centre rose and the region's economy changed. The town had lived from furs; when hunting exhausted the fur resources, it lost its basis. The new centre grew in country fit for farming. Makarov and his co-authors date the change to the fourteenth century, when large village clusters gave way to small hamlets near the fields. The established view linking the move to the epidemics of 1352 and 1363–1364, they wrote, "can hardly be considered correct".

The Novgorod Chronicle shows both towns standing at the same time: in 1398 the Novgorodians "burnt the old town of Belozersk", while the princes and governors came out "from the new town".

The new town is today's Belozersk. Its centre is an earthen kremlin, one of just two hillforts with earthen ramparts in the 2001 survey's list of medieval sites around the lake. ESBE writes that under Ivan III the new town was surrounded by a rampart and a wall. The Nikon Chronicle also records that in 1488, on Ivan III's order, "a new fortress was built in Kargolom on Beloozero, and it was ten versts distant from the old one"; whether this refers to Belozersk is unclear.

When was the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery founded?

Probably in 1397, though some historians now argue for 1407 or later. The founder was Kirill, born Kosma in Moscow in 1337, a former archimandrite of Moscow's Simonov monastery. According to the Pravoslavnaia entsiklopediia (PE), he founded the monastery "on the lands of the appanage prince of Mozhaisk and Beloozero Andrei Dmitrievich", Donskoi's son. The traditional date of 1397 comes from Kirill's Life, written by Pakhomii Logofet in the early 1460s: Kirill arrived at sixty and lived thirty years in the monastery until his death on 9 June 1427. In the early twenty-first century M. S. Serebriakova and M. A. Shibaev argued that the monastery was founded no earlier than 1407. The museum-reserve that now runs the site keeps 1397.

The Life tells the founding as a vision. One night Kirill heard the voice of the Mother of God telling him to leave Moscow for Beloozero. He set off with the monk Ferapont, who knew the region from the Simonov monastery's estate there. Kirill recognised the hill above Lake Siverskoe from his vision; a local tradition says he first saw it from Mount Maura. The elders set up a cross on the slope and dug an earth cell. A local landowner, a "boyar" named Andrei in the Life, tried to burn the cell, but the fire went out, and Andrei later became a monk there.

Kirill's relations with his prince survive in his own words. In a letter to Andrei Dmitrievich written after 1413, he urged him to judge without bribes and to allow "no tavern in your patrimony, for that, lord, is great ruin to souls", and asked him to abolish tolls as "unjust money". In his testament Kirill handed his monastery "to God and to the Most Pure Mother of God … and to the lord grand prince, my son Andrei Dmitrievich".

The monastery grew into one of the richest in Russia. It also became a place of political refuge and exile. In the winter of 1446/47 (PE: 1447) the blinded Grand Prince Vasilii II, released by his rival Dmitrii Shemiaka and given Vologda, "went with his entire [family and retinue] to the Kyrillo [-Beloozerskii] Monastery, where he gave supplies and alms to the brethren". According to the Ermolin Chronicle, quoted in PE, Abbot Trifon released him from the oath he had sworn to Shemiaka and, with the elder Simon Karlsmazov and the brethren, blessed him "to go to the grand principality in Moscow". Many of Shemiaka's men came over to him, the Nikon Chronicle says, and he left for Tver' and the road back to Moscow. Later the monastery held prisoners, among them, according to PE, Prince Vasilii Patrikeev, tonsured by force in 1499, and the deposed Patriarch Nikon from 1676 to 1681.

What is the Ferapontov Monastery?

The second great monastery of the Beloozero land, and today a UNESCO World Heritage Site. After helping Kirill, Ferapont left him and founded his own community on a low hill between Lakes Borodaevskoe and Paskoe. UNESCO dates it to 1398: "The Moscow monk Ferrapont founded the monastery in 1398." According to ESBE, Prince Andrei Dmitrievich called him to Mozhaisk in 1408 to found the Luzhetskii monastery, and he died in 1426.

The monastery's fame rests on its cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin, built in 1490, and the wall paintings inside it. They are the work of Dionisii and his workshop. UNESCO calls them "the only paintings of the greatest Russian master Dionisy the Wise, which have been entirely preserved to this day in their original form".

The paintings are dated by an inscription on the north portal of the cathedral, which records when the work began and ended. Its partly damaged date was long read in different ways, giving 1500, 1501 or 1503. According to PE, the restorer N. I. Fedyshin showed in 1985 that the dates refer to the feast of the Transfiguration on 6 August and the Nativity of the Virgin on 8 September. The whole cycle was painted in a single season, between 6 August and 8 September 1502. The inscription also names Vasilii Ivanovich, Ivan III's heir, as grand prince; his father had formally installed him as grand prince on 14 April 1502, which fits the date.

How did the Principality of Beloozero end?

In two stages. The first was its transfer to a son of Moscow's ruler. Under Dmitrii Donskoi's testament of 1389, Andrei Dmitrievich received Mozhaisk with Vereia, Kaluga and Medyn', and "the former Beloozero principality" with them, as ESBE puts it. He held it until his death in 1432. Beloozero served as a distant refuge: in 1480, during Khan Ahmed's invasion, Ivan III sent his wife Sofia there for safety.

After 1432 Andrei's younger son Mikhail took Vereia, and "Beloozero also went to the Vereia appanage". Mikhail Andreevich served Moscow's grand princes. He was captured by the Tatars with Vasilii II and ransomed with him, and he defended Moscow against Ahmed in 1480. He was also the patron of the Kirillov monastery. In 1478/79, PE records, he backed Abbot Nifont against Archbishop Vassian of Rostov, who claimed the right to judge the monks and collect church dues. Mikhail invoked a right of princely patronage over the monastery going back to St Kirill and to his father. The Nikon Chronicle, which blames the monks' "great pride, vanity, and wealth", records that Ivan III tore up the metropolitan's charter and placed the monastery under the archbishop of Rostov "as of old".

The second stage was the final absorption into the Grand Principality of Moscow. Mikhail's only heir, Vasilii, called Udaloi, fled to Lithuania in 1484. Ivan III then bound Mikhail by a series of treaties to bequeath his appanage to the grand prince. ESBE records that he "died in 1486, having bequeathed his appanage by force of the treaty of 1483 to the grand prince". ESBE's article on the principality and RBS give the year as 1485. From then on Beloozero was governed by Moscow's governors.

What remains of Beloozero today?

The town of Belozersk on the south shore of Lake Beloye carries the name. According to ESBE it became a district town of Novgorod province in 1777. In the same year Catherine II confirmed its old coat of arms: two crossed sterlets on a blue field, with a silver crescent and a gold cross above them. According to ESBE, the Beloozero arms were also placed in the first shield of the state coat of arms drawn up in 1857.

RBS records that the descendants of Roman Mikhailovich's younger son produced the families of Sheleshpanskii, Kemskii, Sugorskii, Kargolomskii, Ukhtomskii, Andomskii, Vadbol'skii and Belosel'skii. Under Paul I the name "Belozerskie" was added to the Belosel'skiis to preserve the memory of the extinct princes of Beloozero, creating the house of Belosel'skii-Belozerskii.

The old town site lies at the Sheksna near the village of Krokhino. In 1909 a wooden chapel stood there, which the photographer Prokudin-Gorskii described as standing on the site where the city was founded. The two monasteries, at Kirillov and Ferapontovo, form the Kirillo-Belozersky Museum-Reserve.

Common myths about the Principality of Beloozero

Timeline of the Principality of Beloozero

What the map shows next

The border data draws Beloozero only from 1294 to 1343; historically it existed from 1238 to 1486. The gap is an artefact of the border data, which starts drawing the principality in 1294 and stops drawing it separately after 1343. At 1319 on the map it appears around Lake Beloye. Its parent state, before the separation of 1238, appears at Rostov-Suzdal, and the older Kievan realm at Kievan Rus'. Its western neighbour, whose armies burned the old town in 1398, is at Novgorod Republic. The state that absorbed it can be followed at Grand Principality of Moscow and later in the Tsardom of Russia.