Alexander Nevsky
Alexander Nevsky beat the Swedes and the Teutonic Knights and submitted to the Mongols, and Russian tradition has been arguing about the third decision ever since. He was prince of Novgorod at nineteen when a Swedish force landed at the mouth of the Neva in 1240; he attacked it at once with a small retinue, drove it off, and took the name Nevsky from the river. Two years later the Teutonic Knights, crusading eastward with papal blessing against schismatic Christians, took Pskov and advanced on Novgorod. He met them on the frozen surface of Lake Peipus in April 1242, held the knights' charge with infantry and archers and closed on their flanks with cavalry. The Livonian chronicle records twenty brothers killed and six captured, which for an order of that size was a defeat; the Russian chronicles record far more, and the ice giving way beneath the armoured horsemen is a later addition that Eisenstein made permanent. What he did next is the harder part. Facing the Horde, whose armies had just destroyed every principality that resisted, he travelled to Sarai and then to Karakorum, accepted the yoke, took the patent for the grand princely title, and put down anti-Mongol risings in Novgorod himself - including one led by his own son - to prevent reprisal. The judgement that he saved Russian Orthodoxy and statehood by choosing the tribute-taking pagans over the converting Latins is the traditional one, and it was made a national cult by Peter, by Stalin and again since 2000. He was canonised in 1547. He was made a saint of the Russian church, and Peter the Great moved his relics to the new capital in 1724 to give it a patron. Stalin revived the cult in 1942 and created a military Order of Alexander Nevsky, which is one of the few Imperial decorations the Soviet state reissued. Eisenstein's 1938 film was withdrawn during the Nazi-Soviet pact and released again the week Germany invaded.
- Lived: 1221 CE – 1263 CE
- Nationality: Russian
- Roles: ruler, military
