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Saint 'Alexander Nevsky' (Алекса́ндр Яросла́вич Не́вский in Russian; transliteration: ''Aleksandr Yaroslavich Nevskiy'') (May 30, 1220? – November 14, 1263) was the Grand Prince of Novgorod and Vladimir during some of the most trying times in the country's history. Commonly regarded as the key figure of medieval Russia, Alexander was the grandson of Vsevolod the Big Nest and rose to legendary status on account of his military victories over the German invaders against the background of shrewd conciliatory policies towards the powerful Golden Horde.

Contents

Great victories

Politician

Alexander's legacy

See also

Further reading

Great victories

From ''Tales of the Life and Courage of the Pious and Great Prince Alexander'' found in the ''Second Pskovian Chronicle'', circa 1260-1280, comes one of the first known references to the Great Prince:

"By the will of God, prince Alexander was born from the
charitable, people-loving, and meek the Great Prince Yaroslav, and
his mother was Theodosia. As it was told by the prophet Isaiah:
'Thus sayest the Lord: I appoint the princes because they are
sacred and I direct them.'

"...He was taller than others and his voice reached the people
as a trumpet, and his face was like the face of Joseph, whom
the Egyptian Paroah placed as next to the king after him of
Egypt. His power was a part of the power of Samson and
God gave him the wisom of Solomon...this Prince Alexander: he
used to defeat but was never defeated..."^[1]

Born in Pereslavl-Zalessky, Alexander was the fourth son of Prince Yaroslav Vsevolodovich and seemed to have no chance of claiming the throne of Vladimir. In 1236, however, he was summoned by the Novgorodians to become kniaz' (or prince) of Novgorod and, as their military leader, to defend their northwest lands from Swedish and German invaders. After the Swedish army had landed at the confluence of the rivers Izhora and Neva, Alexander and his small army suddenly attacked the Swedes on July 15, 1240 and defeated them. The Neva battle of 1240 saved Russia from a full-scale enemy invasion from the North. Because of this battle, 19-year-old Alexander was given the name of "Nevsky" (which means ''of Neva''). This victory, coming just a year after the disastrous Mongol invasion of Russia, strengthened Nevsky’s political influence, but at the same time it worsened his relations with the boyars. He would soon have to leave Novgorod because of this conflict.
After Pskov had been invaded by the crusading Livonian Knights, the Novgorod authorities sent for Alexander. In spring of 1241 he returned from his exile, gathered an army, and drove out the invaders. Alexander and his men stood up against the Livonian heavy cavalry led by the Magister of the Order, Hermann, brother of Albert of Buxhoeveden. Nevsky faced the enemy on the ice of the Lake Chudskoe and crushed the Livonian Knights during the Battle on Lake Chudskoe on April 5, 1242.

Alexander’s victory was a significant event in the history of the Middle Ages. Russian foot soldiers had surrounded and defeated an army of knights, mounted on horseback and clad in thick armor, long before Western Europeans learned how foot soldiers could prevail over mounted knights. Nevsky's great victory against the Livonian Brothers apparently involved only a few knights killed rather than hundreds claimed by the Russian chroniclers; decisive medieval and early modern battles were won and lost with forces small to modern eyes. The cultural value of the victory greatly outshone its strategic value, at the time and since.

Politician

After the Livonian invasion, Nevsky continued to strengthen Russia’s Northwest. He sent his envoys to Norway and, as a result, they signed a first peace treaty between Russia and Norway in 1251. Alexander led his army to Finland and successfully routed the Swedes, who had made another attempt to block the Baltic Sea from the Russians in 1256.[1]
Nevsky proved to be a cautious and far-sighted politician. He dismissed the Papal curia’s attempts to cause war between Russia and the Golden Horde, because he understood the uselessness of such war with Tatars at that time since they were still a powerful force. Historians seem to be unsure about Alexander’s behavior when it came to his relations with Mongols. He may have understood that Catholicism presented a more tangible threat to Russian national identity than paying a tribute to the Khan, who had little interest in Russian religion and culture. It could also be argued that he intentionally kept Russia as a vassal to the Mongols in order to preserve his own status and count on the befriended Horde in case someone challenged his authority (he forced the citizens of Novgorod to pay tribute). Nevsky tried to strengthen his authority at the expense of the boyars and at the same time suppress any anti-feudal uprisings in the country (Novgorod uprising of 1259).
According to the most plausible version, Alexander’s intentions were to prevent scattered principalities of what would become Russia from invasions of the Mongol army. He is known to have gone to the Horde himself and achieved success in exempting Russians from fighting beside the Tatar army in its wars with other peoples.
There is also a version presented by recent historians that advocates the view that Mongols or Tatars were not ethnic Asians, but not Christianized Russian tribes. The claim is based on the fact that Mongolians per se are not mentioned in Russian historic documents. This version of history supposes that Moscow principality, one of the most powerful ones at the time, either made up or hugely dramatized the threat to what would become Russian state, and claiming authority over other principalities as one that united all and supposedly freed scattered principalities from oppression.

Alexander's legacy

Thanks to his friendship with Sartaq Khan, Alexander was installed as the Grand Prince of Vladimir (i.e., the supreme Russian ruler) in 1252. A decade later, Alexander died in a town of Gorodets-on-the-Volga on his way back from Sarai, the capital of the Golden Horde.

From the ''Second Pskovian Chronicle'':

"Returning from the Golden Horde, the Great Prince Alexander,
reached the city of Nizhney Novgorod, and remained there
for several days in good health, but when he reached the
city of Gorodets he fell ill...

"Great Prince Alexander,who was always firm in his faith in
God, gave up this worldly kingdom...And then he gave up
his soul to God and died in peace on November 12, [1263] on
the day when the Holy Apostle Philip is remembered...

"At this burial Metropotian Archbishop Cyril said, 'My
children, you should know that the sun of the Suzdalian land
has set. There will never be another prince like him in the
Suzdalian land.'

"And the priests and deacons and monks, the poor and
the wealthy, and all the people said: 'It is our end.' "^[2]

Though he died in Gorodents, Alexander was laid to rest in the city of Vladimir, in the Great Abbey at The Church of the Navitity of the Holy Mother of God. He was later canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1547. His feast day is November 23. Some of Alexander's policies on the Western border were continued by his grandson-in-law, Daumantas of Pskov, who was also beatified in the 16th century.
In the late 13th century, a chronicle was compiled called ''Alexander Nevsky’s Life'' (Житие Александра Невского), in which he is depicted as an ideal prince-soldier and defender of Russia. By order of Peter the Great, Nevsky’s remains were transported to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in St. Petersburg where they remain to this day. On May 21, 1725, the empress Catherine I introduced the Order of Alexander Nevsky as one of the highest military decorations. During the Great Patriotic War (July 29, 1942) the Soviet Order of Alexander Nevsky was introduced to revive the memory of Alexander's struggle with the Germans.

In 1938, Sergei Eisenstein made one of his most acclaimed films, ''Alexander Nevsky'', on Alexander's victory over the Teutonic Knights. Music for the film was written by Sergei Prokofiev, who also reworked the score into a concert cantata. At Stalin's insistence, the film was rushed into theaters and the resulting soundtrack was notably disappointing, while the visual images were quite impressive, especially in the spectacular battle on the ice. Alexander's phrase from the movie, "Whoever will come to us with a sword, from a sword will perish," (a paraphrasing of the biblical phrase "He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword") has become a slogan of Russian patriots. There is a long tradition of Russian naval vessels bearing Nevsky's name, such as the nineteenth century screw frigate Alexander Neuski and a nuclear submarine currently being built for the Russian Navy.

See also

★ Alexander Nevsky Cathedral — an incomplete listing of Eastern Orthodox cathedrals which bear his name.

★ Famous military commanders

Further reading

★ Isoaho, Mari. ''The Image of Aleksandr Nevskiy in Medieval Russia: Warrior and Saint (The Northern World; 21)''. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 90-04-15101-X).