Talk:Armies of the Rus' principalities

Title

If we really want to claim "stable version" then let's move the page back to Medieval Russian army and start a WP:RM. Mellk (talk) 09:45, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

You’re move-warring over the title and changing the scope of the article without consensus. The title was unchanged and un-discussed from May 20, 2022 until you moved it March 5, 2023. The previous title, “Medieval Russian army” is a POV anachronism when applied to the subject: is that what you want? You need to start an RM either way.  —Michael Z. 19:55, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

You mean, the title and scope from 2018 until you changed it without discussion? Mellk (talk) 22:00, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

I didn’t change the scope. There were no objections.  —Michael Z. 03:37, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

I think this article is trying to do 2 jobs at once. I would recommend a split at 1240 (already present in this article), name the first part Military of Kievan Rus' and second part Military of Muscovy (or Military of the Grand Duchy of Moscow to match the main article, but it's quite a long name). That way both titles can accurately describe the contents of both articles. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 10:28, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

That probably makes more sense. Mellk (talk) 10:51, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Alright, if we do so, the destruction of Ryazan (1237) and the Battle of the Sit River (1238) would be in the first part, and the Battle on the Ice of 1242 would be in the second part. It might be a bit difficult to make a clean split, but some overlap is probably okay. Any relevant post-1240 events / developments could be mentioned under a 'Legacy' section in the first part, and any pre-1263 (or even pre-1240) events or developments relevant to the second part could be mentioned under a 'Background' section. (I would limit both the Legacy and Background sections to the 13th century though, to prevent WP:OVERLAP). Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 11:50, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes I think that works. Here it is only comparing numbers of infantry anyway so I think it is also fine in the first part. Mellk (talk) 12:05, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Good to hear. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 12:06, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

For technical and page-historical reasons, I think it's best to split off the first part as a new separate article, and rename this current article as the second part. Because the page at creation was more focused on Muscovy (with the first image caption reading "16th-century Muscovite cavalry."), was called "medieval Russian army" [sic] and had the Template:Armies of Russia next to it, the page history is more closely associated with Muscovy than with Kievan Rus'. Even though the first part has more supporting references at the moment, they, as well as the Template:Armies of Ukraine, were only added later. The current page will need a lot more sources in general once we split off the first part, because the second part is poorly sourced; it may thus be vulnerable to deletion after the split.

If @Mzajac also agrees with the split, I'm willing to carry it out. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 12:05, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree with taking some material from this article and creating a stub on the Armies of Muscovy or whatever, to fill in the omission of the pre-imperial period among the articles listed in Russian Army (disambiguation). And some earlier for a “Background” section there.

But this article still deserves a section on the post-Mongol invasion period. It’s not like the armies in Novgorod, Muscovy, Polatsk, Volyn, and Halych suddenly became completely different. Every statement in the last section that doesn’t refer specifically to Moscow probably applies to them all.

Given the level of specificity and referencing in the last section, I see more like an WP:OKFORK/WP:SPINOFF of the section than a full amputation, to pave the way for a better epilogue here and a better article there.  —Michael Z. 15:41, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Well, I agree with part of what you say about Every statement in the last section that doesn’t refer specifically to Moscow probably applies to them all. Most 13th-century information will probably be about Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, Principality of Polotsk, Novgorod Republic, Principality of Tver, Vladimir-Suzdalia etc. anyway, not so much about Kievan Rus' (anymore) or about Muscovy (yet). But for pragmatic reasons I think we already agree on a split at 1240.

Perhaps the second part could better be called "Armies of the Rus' principalities"? Rus' principalities is the WP:COMMONNAME for the remaining post-1240 Kievan Rus' successor states. (These sometimes include states like Lithuania, but that is already covered in Lithuanian Armed Forces#Grand Ducal Lithuanian Army). Muscovy certainly became the most prominent of them towards the end of the 1240–1550 period, but in the beginning, it didn't even exist yet, and only started to rise to prominence around 1350, by which time Galicia-Volhynia has already disappeared. Perhaps this is a better idea than "Military of Muscovy" that I thought of initially?

We can always later work on some spin-offs for specific principalities like Muscovy, Galicia-Volhynia, (Vladimir-)Suzdalia or something. Splitting them all now would probably result in deletion for lack of relevant and cited content. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 19:11, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Alright, I've made the split. Hopefully it is a significant improvement to what we had. I named the first part Military of Kievan Rus' as agreed, I named the second part Armies of the Rus' principalities as proposed. Since I discovered that Landed Army already existed for Muscovy, there was even less of a reason to focus the rest of the current article entirely on Muscovy, but a section for Muscovy with a link to Landed Army as main article is justified. I hope this solves most issues. Of course, we still need additional citations to RS for verification. This goes for both articles, but especially the second. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 20:45, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. A milestone improvement.  —Michael Z. 13:34, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

List of wars involving Kievan Rus'?

@Mellk @Mzajac Thanks both of you for your feedback, I'm glad we found a solution. While we are at it, might it be a good idea to merge the following three duplicate list sections...

• List of wars involving Russia#Kievan Rus'
• List of wars involving Ukraine#Kyivan Rus' and the Kingdom of Ruthenia (800s–1349)
• List of wars involving Belarus#Principality of Polotsk

...until the year 1240 under the name of List of wars involving Kievan Rus'?
The current lists are a bit of a WP:REDUNDANTFORK. Given that the three modern countries didn't exist yet at the time, but all trace their origins to Kievan Rus', I think it would make sense to merge these three sections into one and put them into Category:Military history of Kievan Rus'. Most of the battles are already in Category:Battles involving Kievan Rus'. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 16:57, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

What about wars that only include specific principalities or wars between them? There is only really redundancy mainly up to 11/12th centuries. Mellk (talk) 17:09, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

That is a good question, I was thinking about that myself. E.g. Battle of the Novgorodians with the Suzdalians (1169) is probably not really a "battle involving Kievan Rus'" as such, but a battle between two Rus' principalities. One could also technically argue that the Suzdalians represent a "predecessor" of the Tsardom of Russia, but that's a bit of a stretch as well (it was almost 100 years before the Grand Duchy of Moscow was founded). I don't know. Perhaps we also need some sort of in-between list here, like, Wars involving the Rus' principalities, just like Armies of the Rus' principalities? I'm not sure yet. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 17:16, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Also, there is a difference between Wars involving the Rus' principalities and just Wars involving Rus' principalities. The first suggests they were all simultaneously involved in each war, perhaps even on the same side, but that's obviously not the case. I suppose the latter is better. But I think for this scope to work, we need to agree on a list of states that can properly be described as "Rus' principalities", otherwise we might end up with a subjective/arbitrary list.

Template:East Slavic principalities This one would seem a good one to start with, but we also need the Mongol period (c. 1223 to 1550), including all the successor states of Suzdalia. What do you think? Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 17:30, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Is there such a pattern with other list articles ("list of wars involving X")? It seems to be mainly based on modern states. Mellk (talk) 17:44, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

@Mellk Yes, Category:Wars involving former countries. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 18:02, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Categories, yes, but lists? Mellk (talk) 18:05, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

This is not common yet, but there are some examples in Category:Lists of wars by country.

• List of wars involving the Ottoman Empire
• List of Roman external wars and battles
• List of Byzantine wars
• List of wars involving Yugoslavia
• List of wars involving the Mughal Empire (created fairly recently)

Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 18:09, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

I think we should create more of these lists of wars involving former countries. E.g. it's ridiculous to have a List of wars involving Germany that goes all the way back to 843 when "Germany" was only founded in 1871. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 18:14, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

I created Category:Lists of wars by former country and put the above lists plus the newly merged List of wars involving Kievan Rus' in it. I'm probably going to do more work along those lines. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 06:47, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

The above discussion is overthinking it. Kyivan Rus was a “loose federation.” The princes had agency in determining whether they participated in a war or not. Many conflicts took place between principalities within Kyivan Rus. A Kyivan Rus principality in a war constitutes a “war involving Kyivan Rus.”

The point of lists is to bring the broad category together under the umbrella conflict of Kyivan Rus, not to split them up and force readers to search. The details explaining quirks of list membership, if even necessary, can be in a brief note or in the linked article.

Kyivan Rus, broadly construed, certainly includes conflicts up to 1240. It probably includes the initial Mongol invasion battles regardless of what year they took place. In case of uncertainty or overlap, a battle can appear in two lists.

The only question I see is do we want to extend this to include post-1240 battles that are not clearly exclusively Russian, Ruthenian, or Lithuanian?  —Michael Z. 18:16, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree with everything you say here. For the post-1240 battles I am proposing Wars involving Rus' principalities, but that we should first establish a list of Rus' principalities to make sure wars are correctly identified as involving at least 1 Rus' principality. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 18:19, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

I think it may be more useful to allow for overlap between the list for Kyivan Rus and separate lists for Muscovy and Halych-Volyn. There is no in-between period called “Rus principalities,” and in fact that term appears to be related to Rus Land (ruska zemlia), and on the face of it represents multiple things collectively broader in scope.  —Michael Z. 18:27, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Good points, I'll have to think them through before I come up with a proper solution. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 18:50, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Solution to what problem? In your OP above you linked to the three list articles that already solve it, as far as I can see.  —Michael Z. 19:02, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

By the way, yes, we should certainly create such a unified list. This was previously discussed at Talk:List of wars involving Russia#How Kyiv history starts the list of Moscow wars. Ukrainians and Russians are two different nations and histories.  —Michael Z. 18:22, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for pointing it out! I'll have a look at the discussion, but I may call it a night. I've been working on Wikipedia all day. :) Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 18:51, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

• Published! List of wars involving Kievan Rus'. @Mellk @Michael Z. what do you think? I've taken time and care to integrate everything and add some more items, as well as references and some footnotes for proper context and balance. Please let me know if you see things that could be improved further. If you broadly agree with the contents (which could always be expanded later), I think we could create links to it into the lists of wars involving Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 16:57, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

  Okay, then I'm just gonna be WP:BOLD. I've decided to use Template:Excerpts for the lists of Ukraine and Russia, so that the contents will still be featured on each of the lists, but they are identical for both lists. For Belarus I've only used Template:Main. If anyone has questions or suggestions for improvements, they can always say so here, or at Talk:List of wars involving Kievan Rus'. Results:

  • List of wars involving Belarus#Principality of Polotsk
  • List of wars involving Russia#Kievan Rus'
  • List of wars involving Ukraine#Kyivan Rus' (800s–1240)

  Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 20:28, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

  Sure, I think it works with an excerpt. I do not see the point of further separate lists such as list of wars involving the Grand Duchy of Moscow though. Mellk (talk) 19:36, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks! The list of wars involving Muscovy has more to do with general efforts to Template:Diffuse items and subcats from Category:Wars involving Russia into more specific 'predecessor' state categories as has been discussed and largely agreed earlier by users such as you, Michael and others at the talk page.

  In related news, I've nominated Category:Wars involving the Soviet Union and Category:Soviet Russia in World War I for renaming, you might want to check out those CfRs. The talk page also suggested splitting "Soviet" wars out of the list.

  In other related news, I've proposed to rename Category:Russian city-states to Category:Rus' principalities to match the Wikidata-linked items in other languages and c:Category:Rus principalities. This article, Armies of the Rus' principalities, would fit in it well. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 21:15, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Edit: Because you, Michael and others essentially agreed already since January 2023, I've just carried out the Soviet Union split: List of wars involving the Soviet Union, excerpted in List of wars involving Russia#Soviet Union (1922–1991). I'm inclined to make a bold split/excerpt for Soviet Russia as well, but I'm gonna wait a bit for how the CfR goes. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 22:36, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

• But I appreciate your efforts. Mellk (talk) 19:38, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks so much! I'm glad we're able to find some common ground on these topics. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 21:16, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Template:Campaignbox Conflicts in Eastern Europe during Turco-Mongol rule

Meanwhile, I've also split off the List of wars involving the Grand Duchy of Moscow, and expanded and improved it. I've also created Category:Battles involving the Grand Duchy of Moscow (which already existed in the three East Slavic languages Wikipedias).

Currently I'm having most trouble with Template:Campaignbox Conflicts in Eastern Europe during Turco-Mongol rule (and its ru.wiki counterpart ru:Шаблон:Битвы эпохи монголо-татарского ига), which is a rather arbitrary collection of any battle fought by any Mongol or Tatar khan or commander against each other, or against any Rus' principality, or against Lithuania, even if some Rus' principalities (often including Muscovy) fought on their side. I've gone through all items on Wikidata, trying to give them an accurate description in English in order to make sense of it.

Obviously, it's not as simple as золотоордынских походов на Русь ...of the Golden Horde campaigns against Rus'. Unless both DeepL and Google Translate are mistranslating на Русь as against Rus' rather than in Rus'? en:wikt:Русь#Russian is accusative (or nominative) here, so that en:wikt:на#Russian probably means "onto/to(wards)/for/against Rus'", am I right? Either way, several enwiki titles of the connected list of battles have been:

• List of Tatar and Mongol raids against Russian states
• List of Tatar and Mongol raids against Rus'
• List of Tatar and Mongol raids against Rus
• List of Mongol and Tatar raids against Rus'
• List of conflicts in Eastern Europe under Mongol Rule
• List of conflicts in Eastern Europe during Turco-Mongol rule

So I assume that "against Rus'" is the intended meaning on ruwiki as well.

That doesn't really cover these battles accurately though. It's not like "Rus'" or "Russia" [sic] or even "the Rus' principalities" were always, all, on the same side in each of these battles, as a united front against the Tatars, or the Mongols, or the Horde:

• Duden's campaign (Q4172178): 1293 military campaign of Golden Horde and Rus' allies (Vladimir?, Novgorod Republic?, Gorodets, Smolensk, Rostov, Beloozero) against other Rus' principalities (Vladimir?, Novgorod Republic?, Muscovy, Tver, Mozhaysk, Pskov and others).

Heck, even the "Tatars" and "Mongols" themselves were frequently on different sides. Some examples of warlords/khans of the Golden Horde fighting against each other (sometimes with Rus' principalities as allies on either side) include:

• Sack of Kiev (1299) during the 1294–1300 war between Toqta and Nogai Khan
• Battle of the Kalka River (1381) Mamai's Faction versus Tokhtamysh's Faction

Some battles only include the Golden Horde and Lithuania; no Rus' principalities involved:

• Battle of Blue Waters (1362/3) between Golden Horde and Lithuania
• ru:Осада Киева (1399) Siege of Kiev (1399) between Golden Horde and Lithuania
• Sack of Kiev (1416) between Golden Horde and Lithuania

The Muscovite War of Succession in particular is closely connected to the first so-called Russo-Kazan war: Russo-Kazan Wars#Wars of Vasily II. Vasily II is captured and essentially turned into a pawn of Kazan, which supports his claim to the Muscovite throne in return for suzerainty over Muscovy. It's not as black-and-white, us-versus-them, Rus'-versus-Tatar/Mongols. I think we'll have to split this template up into multiple templates (enwiki already has its own Template:Campaignbox Mongol invasion of Rus' for the 1223–1241 invasion, ruwiki doesn't), or just abolish it altogether. It's a misleading framework for a complex set of battles that is arguably not even a proper "set". Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 15:51, 28 April 2023 (UTC)