The Golden Horde

The Mongol west, ruled by Genghis Khan's grandsons, burned Kyiv and made the Russian principalities pay tribute for two and a half centuries. The Horde mostly governed at a distance: it kept the princes in place, taxed them, and required them to travel to the khan for approval to rule. Moscow, an unimportant town, made itself the Horde's tax collector and used the job to swallow its neighbours — and then, when the Horde weakened, to replace it. Russia's habit of centralized autocratic power has been traced by historians to this apprenticeship, though the claim is argued.