Vladimir’s History: Rise and Fall on the Golden Ring

For a long time, Vladimir was no different from other fortified towns, and until the middle of the 12th century it attracted little attention from chroniclers. The city began to rise under Andrei Bogolyubsky, the son of Yuri Dolgoruky. He moved the capital here from Suzdal and, after the death of his father, who ruled in Kyiv (1157), renounced his right to succeed him and the title of Grand Prince of Kyiv, remaining in Vladimir, where he proclaimed himself Grand Prince.

In just seven years, from 1158 to 1165, monumental building projects were completed in Vladimir: earthen ramparts topped with oak walls stretched for miles; the golden-domed Dormition Cathedral rose skyward; the Golden Gate, the city’s ceremonial entrance, was built; and Bogolyubovo, the grand prince’s suburban residence, was constructed.

To strengthen his city’s position, Andrei even tried to establish a church independent of Kyiv, but failed. After setbacks in diplomacy, he asserted the new political center’s supremacy by force of arms: after his victorious campaign against Kyiv in 1169, he did not settle there, as any other prince would have done, but made a conspicuous return to Vladimir on the Klyazma River.

The work begun by Andrei was carried on by his brother Vsevolod, who was nicknamed “Big Nest” because of his large family. Under his descendants, however, the powerful Vladimir principality broke up into several smaller territories, a development that greatly shaped the subsequent history of all Rus.

In 1238, the city fell to the Mongol-Tatar conquerors, who put it to fire and sword. Vladimir was reduced to ashes, but it continued to resist for a long time and did everything it could to rise again. It remained the administrative center of northeastern Rus until 1328. More than that: in 1299, what Andrei Bogolyubsky had striven for in vain came to pass—the city became, albeit briefly, the residence of the metropolitan, head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Vladimir’s heyday, however, was over. The task of “gathering the Russian lands” now lay ahead for the new capital, Moscow, while the former capital took its modest place among the ordinary towns of the Moscow state. From the 14th century to the beginning of the 17th, Vladimir’s history was an unending succession of Tatar raids, looting, and fires. The city emptied out; according to a census in 1626, it had only 610 inhabitants.

During the 18th century, Vladimir changed status three times: in 1719 it became a provincial center, in 1778 the seat of a governorship, and in 1796 the center of the newly established Vladimir Governorate, with its own coat of arms. A dignified lion, crowned and holding a silver cross in its right forepaw, stood prominently against the red field of the shield. At that time, the city began to be developed according to a uniform plan. Vladimir remained a small town, inhabited by lower-ranking officials, clergy, military personnel, peasants, and craftsmen. The main street was part of the Vladimirka, the notorious route along which convicts began their journey into exile. The city itself was also a place of exile: Alexander Herzen was under compulsory residence there from 1838 to 1840, and Nikolai Fedoseev, one of Russia’s earliest advocates of Marxism, lived there from 1892 to 1893.