Anti Selart (Tartu)
Medieval Livonia, the territory in Northeastern Europe corresponding approximately to the present-day republics of Estonia and Latvia, was conquered by crusaders during the thirteenth century. Towns were among the new institutions introduced in Livonia by the crusaders. Because most of the crusaders, new vassals, clergy, and so on, were of German origin, the towns were also German-like municipalities with Middle Low German-speaking merchant elites. Three "big" Livonian towns Riga (Latvian: Riga), Reval (Estonian: Tallinn), and Dorpat (Estonian: Tartu) became members of the Hanseatic League and played important roles in the Hanseatic trade with Russia. The majority of the urban population was, however, of local origin. The lower classes were called "Non-German" to contrast them with the "German" upper classes. Legislative discrimination against "Non-Germans" develeoped after the fourteenth century. The third group of the population in Livonian towns in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was Russians. Their percentage was rather small and there were two groups of Russians: people settled permanently in Livonian towns and having the rights of citizenship and property, and Russian merchants visiting Riga, Reval, Dorpat and other towns.
Riga and Reval had Russian Orthodox churches in the Middle Ages and Dorpat even had two Russian churches. The owners of the churches were Russian merchants from Novgorod, Pskov, and Polotsk, thus the churches actually played the role of merchant agencies (factoratus). It seems that in Reval the Russian church had no connections with few local Russians; in Riga and Dorpat the Russian churches were perhaps also some kind of center of the local Russian community. In Riga and Dorpat a part of the town around the Orthodox churches was named "Russian Square". However, at least in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when we have some records of it, it was only a toponym. In Riga the Russians had their property in all regions of the town, and in the "Russian Square" there were many German house-owners as well. The percentage of citizens of Russian origin in the Livonian towns can be estimated at about one to three percent. Among the Russians in Livonia were merchants, shopkeepers, handicraftsmen, laborers, and so on.
In fifteenth and sixteenth century sources we no longer find so many Russians permanently settling in the Livonian towns. I suggest that the reason for this was the development of the cartel functions of craft organizations after the fourteenth century. The life of urban citizens had strong ties with the Catholic Church, too. Thus the emancipation of the Russians meant assimilation, depending on their social status, into the upper "German" or lower "Non-German" classes. The Russians were not numerous enough to have independent significance as a social class or ethno-social group.