Netflix led me to the film The Horde which tells the story about Saint Akexius, "In 1357, Alexius was summoned by Jani Beg, the Khan of the Golden Horde, to cure his mother from blindness. The metropolitan's success is held to have prevented a Tatar raid on Moscow". What do historians know about this story? Can anyone comment on the film's accuracy, and if Saint Alexius save Moscow from invasion?
The contemporary Russian chronicle notes Alexius visited Taydula "nazdravie", which might mean for just a blessing as well as, if taken literally, for her health ^1 ; the story of the wondrously cured blindness belongs to a biography of mitropolit Alexius written upon his death in 1378.
At that time Muscowy was at war with Lithuania and with Mamay's Horde.
Lithuania previously had it's own «mitropolit of Russia», Roman, acknowledged along with Alexius in Constantinople. This might have prompted Moscow to assert Alexius as a wonder-maker.
Mamay ruled over what would later become the Khanate of Crimea but, not being a Genghisid, he did not have a claim on the title of the Khan of the Golden Horde. Both Mamay and Moscow would be destroyed by Tokhtamysh in 1382. He was the new unquestionable khan of the GH.
Between Jani Beg and Tokhtamysh the GH was in a state of anarchy, every new Khan barely being able to hold power for a year, and it couldn't take part in Russian politics or levy tribute as it previously did.
I see you have linked radio liberty. They're good if you have a cold warrior mindset yourself perpetually wary of everything done by those russkie commies. But the director was very fond he was able to make a colorful movie about the dusk of the Golden Horde although he was only paid for a film on «the living of Saint Alexius».