A ruler who crushes the visible political threat and tolerates the subject people's narrative institution builds the identity that later expels it, and a conqueror whose own story no longer fits its life cannot replace the host's story. The Mongols' animism lost meaning once they ruled cities; in Russia they crushed the princes and spared the Orthodox Church as a harmless opiate, so an Orthodox identity formed before a national one, and under Mongol rule Russia became Russian.

Evidence 5 passages

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  going easy on the Orthodox Church, which they saw as the harmless opiate that kept the conquered people sedated. In Russia, therefore, an Orthodox Christian identity emerged even before a Russian national political identity.

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  It was under Mongol rule then that Russia became Russian

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  Their system did not provide enough resonant meaning once the Mongols were no longer pastoral nomads

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  But they didn't manage to replace the master narratives of the people they had conquered with a narrative of their own.

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  as the Mongol Empire weakened, local populations firmed up their own identities by closing ranks against the invasive other.

Where the agents stand

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