Russia takes a new look at an old enemy: Genghis Khan

The Christian Science Monitor ^ | August 17, 2018 | Fred Weir Correspondent

[Jagermonster]

Mukhorshibirsky District, Russia - In the south of Buryatia, near the present-day border with Mongolia, there is a mountain-sized rock outcropping known locally as the Merkit Fortress, which looks out over the arid, rolling steppe that gradually fades into the Gobi Desert a few hundred miles away.

According to legend, this formidable natural fortification was stormed more than 800 years ago by the forces of a young Mongol warlord who claimed his bride had been stolen by the Merkit tribe, which had made its home base here. He seized the rock, and went on to unite most of the nomadic Mongol tribes of northeast Asia, including the ancestors of today’s Buryats. Taking the name Genghis Khan, which means “universal ruler,” he flung his vast army of highly disciplined, horse-mounted shock troops to the south and west, conquering China, most of Central Asia and the Middle East, present-day Russia, and parts of Eastern Europe.

At its peak the Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous land empire in history, and it left its imprint everywhere. For the West its impact was mainly positive, because the Mongol-secured land passage to China – the fabled Silk Road – enabled travelers like Marco Polo to bring home Eastern wonders such as spices, silk, gunpowder, the compass, and the printing press.

But Russian historians have traditionally treated it as an unmitigated catastrophe. The first wave of Mongol invaders smashed the European-like Kievan Rus state in present-day Ukraine, sending the survivors fleeing into the northern forests, where they congregated around small statelets like Moscow. It took the Russians 200 years of hard struggle to unite themselves and throw off what they still refer to as the “Mongol yoke.” To this day Russian schoolchildren learn that the Mongol occupiers, known as the “Golden Horde,” brought nothing but pain...

[minnesota_bound]

#4 Filmed in Utah and is where many of the cast and crew got sick and or died from the radiation from the atomic bomb tests. John Wayne must have been drinking to have accepted that role.

[fidelis]

"Or the biggest mismatch of actor to character ever, if you leave out John Wayne’s German sea captain in “The Sea Chase”

Or if you leave out his cameo as the Roman centurian in "The Greatest Story Ever Told".

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Jagermonster.

[advance_copy]

The Mongols did some of the most horrible killing ever done. Women, children... didn’t matter. They killed everyone in awful ways for spectacle.

[Jagermonster]

You’re welcome. I thought it was an interesting article.

[WilliamWallace1999]

Only use of the word Tsar to describe their autocrat.

Read a tiny bit about Basil II, his battle with the Fatimid Caliphate, war with the Bulgars, alliance with the Rus, campaign against the Khazar Khaganate, and spread of Orthodoxy into Russia. The concept of autocratic rule took root in this part of the world a bit before the Golden Horde.

Then review the Byzantine-Mongol alliance. There is a reason the byzantine became and adjective when describing convoluted diplomacy.

Finally check out:

Byzantium and the Rise of Russia: A Study of Byzantino-Russian Relations in the Fourteenth Century Paperback – March 5, 1997
by John Meyendorff