Ah, that type of comic book history. The problem is, assumed “corruption and cruelty” could only be mostly local. Mongols came, instituted all fashions of levi

Ah, that type of comic book history. The problem is, assumed “corruption and cruelty” could only be mostly local. Mongols came, instituted all fashions of levies, grant themselves the authority to accept local rulers, and went back. They didn't help to defend their vassals from foreign armies, but they chose their side in inter-principality campaigns, ensuring that the winner is under their control. Funnily enough, this critical view matches the view of nationalistic thinkers of old who firmly placed the stereotype of “200 years of Mongol yoke” and widespread desolation into the education curriculum. There are doubts that is was that bad, especially for the elites that served Mongols well (and therefore made their regions actual parts of Mongol empire, which is an unthinkable perspective to nationalists describing them as “independent” and spiritually “unconquered”) However, in the era of the tsars it was used to explain how Russia is a “real” European country with unfortunate fate, and why its tsars are equal peers to European kings, and now it is used to explain how it totally isn't. The catch-all stereotype of despotic Oriental rule is quite clear here.