What if Alexsander Nevsky hadn't stopped the Crusades of Sweden, Lithuania and the Teutonic Knights against the Golden Horde, in Russia?

If you really want to understand Russia, you have to understand Alexander Nevsky, and the deal with the Devil he made some three quarters of a millennium ago. Nevsky's father, Yaroslav II, Grand Prince of Vladimir, was the first great Russian leader to render homage, and submit to the Mongolian Golden Horde, and its leader, the Great Khan Batu, grandson of Genghis Khan. However, Yaroslav apparently didn't submit quite enthusiastically enough, because he was personally poisoned by the wife of the Great Kahn on his next visit. This was a mistake that his son Alexander was determined never to make, himself, of course. Alexander always made it clear to the great Kahn that he was his personal slave and vassal. Indeed, Alexander Nevsky essentially reduced himself and the Russian people to the status of the Christian Janissaries who served the Ottoman Turks -- slaves abducted in childhood to serve the Ottoman Emperor as mercenaries. Their territory was Mongol territory, to be used as the Mongols saw fit. They sent tribute in men and material to the Great Khan, submitted to his taxes and censuses, and even tolerated the occasional violent pogrom against Russians with good humor. If you've ever seen Sergei Eisenstein's beautiful, classic 1938 film "Alexander Nevsky", stunningly orchestrated by classical music genius Sergei Prokofiev, you would have the impression that Nevsky was an independently minded Russian King, whose people were being violently threatened by the predations of the mad Christian monks and fanatical cross bearing Crusaders to the West, as they placidly plowed their fields in their atheistic, socialist paradise on earth. The film, made under Stalin's rule, of course doesn't mention the fact that the Russians under Nevsky were just as devoutly Christian as their neighbors to the West, and that Alexander Nevsky himself was made a Saint of the Russian Orthodox Church after his death. The fact is, the pantheistic Mongols couldn't have cared less what religion their subjects practised, they didn't give a damn about any afterlife, as long as they ran the show in the present life. The film doesn't mention the Mongols at all, of course. In reality, Sweden, Lithuania and the Teutonic Knights were actually trying to liberate the Russians from Mongol rule, and would have been perfectly happy to clasp the hand of Alexander Nevsky in friendship to join with him to do this. Theirs was, truly, a Crusade in Justice, sponsored by the Holy See and the Pope, at the Vatican in Rome. Nevsky's response -- "Go to Hell, we like being slaves!" Now, why did he do this you ask? Well, first of all, even if Alexander had joined with his traditional enemies to the West to rid himself of the Mongol Yoke, it's not by any means clear they would have been entirely successful. If the Golden Horde had been determined to do so, they certainly could have crushed the lot of them. There's also the point that the Mongols rendered Nevsky's southern and eastern borders secure, and provided structure and discipline to his rule. Without the Mongols, Russia might have been taken apart from all sides, rather like Poland was in the eighteenth century. The fact is, Nevsky had created the formula for the Russian State that not only persisted for the next two centuries of Mongol Rule, but, indeed, to the present day. Russians, all Russians, are slaves to their own state, and see this formula as the optimal one to ensure their own survival, and the survival of the Russian State.