Regionalism
One of the reasons why the various principalities pulled away from Kiev was the triumph of the votchyna (private property, appanage) concept, formally recognized at a conference of princes held in Liubech in 1097.
In order to put an end to the internecine feuding, the princes at this meeting recognized each other’s hereditary rights to the lands they currently held. The issue of Kiev, a prize deemed too great for any one princely line to lay claim to, was left unresolved. While some of the senior princes continued to fight for it, others, especially those of junior rank, lost interest in the struggle and in the city itself because they realized that their chances of acquiring the old capital were minimal at best. Instead, they concentrated on expanding and enriching their own hereditary lands, encouraging thereby the growth of a regionalism and particularism that would become the hallmark of the late Kievan period.These tendencies were reinforced by the boyars’ growing involvement in landownership: as a result of their interest in local affairs, their willingness to participate in the princely struggles for distant Kiev or, for that matter, in any all-Rus’ cause, diminished. It even became difficult for the Rus’ principalities to agree on a common enemy. Novgorod considered the Teutonic Knights to be its greatest threat; for Polotsk it was the Lithuanians; for Rostov and Suzdal, the Volga Bulgars; for Galicia-Volhynia, the Poles and Hungarians; and for Kiev, it was the nomadic Polovtsians. When they were not fighting their enemies, the Rus’ princes interacted with them. In fact, some of the princes established closer links with their non-Rus’ neighbors than they did with other, more distant regions of Rus.’
For example, in the north, the ancient city of Novgorod was drawn into the commercial network that a league of north-German cities, later called the Hansa, organized along the Baltic shores. While Kiev’s trade declined, Novgorod’s boomed and its orientation became increasingly north European.
Like many other trading cities, Novgorod developed a republican-like form of government in which the merchant elite, not the prince or boyars, predominated. Another case of regional differentiation evolved in the northeast. In that vast, sparsely populated “land beyond the forest,” the heartland of the Great Russians, principalities such as Rostov, Suzdal, Vladimir, and Moscow were founded by junior members of the Riurikid dynasty. Perhaps because these northeastern princes established themselves in these originally Finnic areas before many of the East Slavic colonists arrived, they were in an advantageous position to dictate exacting terms of overlordship to the newcomers. The epitome of the growing absolutist tendency of the northeastern princes was Andrei Bogoliubsky of Suzdal. Dissatisfied with the growing opposition from the local elite in Suzdal, he moved to Vladimir because it had no well-entrenched aristocracy that could thwart him. And, in 1169, he destroyed Kiev so that it would not rival his new capital. This single-minded pursuit of absolute power was inherited by Bogoliubsky’s descendants, the rulers of Moscow (originally a minor outpost, Moscow was first mentioned in the chronicles only in 1147), and it helps to explain their future political success.