confiscated the domain of the archbishop of Great Novgorod and the estates of local boyars, Ivan III began to distribute these lands among his military men on condition of loyal service. Thus the po-mestie system was established, which became the basis of the social and military organization in Muscovy.
Soon after the conquest of Great Novgorod, Ivan III assumed the title of the sovereign of all Russia (gosudar vseya Rusi). Not only did the title reflect the achievements of the grand prince in uniting the Russian lands, but it also implied claims to the rest of the territories with eastern Slavic population, which at that time lived under the rule of Lithuanian princes. So conflict with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania became imminent.
In the 1480s, some princes from the Upper Oka region (Vorotynskies, Odoyevskies, and others) left Lithuanian service for Moscow, and Ivan III accepted them and their patrimonies (towns Vorotynsk, Peremyshl, Odoev, and so forth). During the war of 1492 to 1494, the Muscovite army occupied an important town of Vyazma (in the Smolensk region). The peace treaty signed on February 5, 1494, legalized all the acquisitions of Ivan III. Peace, though ensured by the marriage of Ivan’s daughter, Elena, to the grand duke of Lithuania, Alexander, turned out to be a short-term armistice: In 1500 another Russian-Lithuanian war began.
First, the princes of Novgorod Seversk and Star-odub went over to the grand prince of Moscow. Then Ivan III sent his troops to defend his new vassals. In the battle at Vedrosha River (July 14, 1500), which decided the outcome of the war, Muscovite commanders defeated the Lithuanian army and captured its leader, hetman Konstantin Ostrozhsky. During the summer campaign of 1500 Muscovite forces occupied Bryansk, Toropets, Putivl, and other towns. According to the armistice of 1503, the border with Lithuania moved far in the southwestern direction.
Ivan III was the first Russian ruler to gain full independence from the Golden Horde. From about 1472 he paid no tribute to the khan. Twice, in 1472 and 1480, khan Ahmad invaded Russia, trying to restore his sovereignty over the Russian land and its ruler, but both times he failed. The withdrawal of Ahmad from the banks of Ugra River in November 1480 symbolized the overthrow of the yoke.
The unified Russian state played an increasingly visible role on the international scene: Ivan III established relations with Crimea (1474), Venice (1474), Hungary (1482), the German empire (1489), Denmark (1493), and the Ottoman empire (1496). To meet the needs of his expanded state, Ivan III began to recruit engineers and military specialists from the West. The towers and walls of the Kremlin were built in the 1480s and 1490s by Italian architects and remain one of the most visible material signs of Ivan III’s reign.
The contours of the Russian foreign policy, shaped in Ivan’s reign, remained stable for generations to come. In the west, Ivan III left to his heir the incessant struggle with the Polish and Lithuanian rulers over the territories of the eastern Slavs. In the east and south, a more differentiated policy was pursued toward the khanates that had succeeded the Golden Horde. This policy included attempts to subjugate the khanate of Kazan in the middle Volga and efforts aimed at neutralizing Crimea.
In his last years Ivan III faced a serious dynastic crisis after the unexpected death in 1490 of his heir, also Ivan (the “Young”), the son of the first Ivan’s III wife, Maria of Tver (d. 1467). In 1472 Ivan III married Sophia Paleologue, a Byzantine princess brought up in Rome. This marriage also produced children, including Basil (Vasily). Ivan the Young, married to Yelena, the daughter of Moldavian prince, left a son, Dmitry. So, after 1490, Ivan III was to choose between his grandson (Dmitry) and son (Basil). At first, he favored the grandson: In February 1498, Dmitry was crowned as grand prince and heir to his grandfather. But later Dmitry and his mother Yelena fell into disgrace and were taken into custody; Basil was proclaimed the heir (1502). The reasons for these actions remain unclear. In July 1503, Ivan III experienced a stroke and real power passed into the hands of Basil III.
Contemporaries and later historians agree in depicting Ivan III as a master politician: prudent, cautious, efficient, and very consistent in his policy of constructing a unified and autocratic Russian state. See also: GOLDEN HORDE; MUSCOVY; NOVGOROD THE GREAT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alef, Gustave. (1986). The Origins of Muscovite Autocracy: The Age of Ivan III. Berlin: Osteuropa-Institut. Crummey, Robert O. (1987). The Formation of Muscovy, 1304-1613. London: Longman.
IVAN IV
Fennell, John L. (1961). Ivan the Great of Moscow. London: Macmillan. Kollmann, Nancy Shields. (1986). “Consensus Politics: The Dynastic Crisis of the 1490s Reconsidered.” Russian Review 45:235-267. Vernadsky, George. (1959). Russia at the Dawn of the Modern Age. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
IVAN IV
(1530-1584), “The Terrible” (Grozny), grand prince of Moscow and tsar of all Russia.
The long reign of Ivan IV saw the transformation of Muscovy into a multiethnic empire through ambitious political, military, and cultural projects, which revolved around the controversial figure of the monarch.
Born to the ruling Moscow branch of the Rurikid dynasty, Ivan nominally became grand prince at the age of three after the death of his father, Grand Prince Vasily III. During the regency of Ivan’s mother, Yelena Glinskaya, from 1533 to 1538, ruling circles strengthened Ivan’s position as nominal ruler by eliminating Prince Andrei Ivanovich of Staritsa and Prince Yury Ivanovich of Dmitrov, representatives of the royal family’s collateral branches. Ivan’s status as dynastic leader was reinforced during his coronation as tsar on January 16, 1547. Drawing extensively on Byzantine and Muscovite coronation rituals and literary texts to reveal the divine sanction for Ivan’s power, the ceremony posited continuity between his rule and the rule of the Byzantine emperors and Kievan princes. Ivan continued the aggressive policy of his ancestors toward the collateral branches of the dynasty by eliminating his cousin, Prince Vladimir An-dreyevich of Staritsa (1569).
Ivan was married several times. His wives were from Muscovite elite clans (Anastasia Zakharina Romanova, Maria Nagaya) and from relatively obscure gentry families (Marfa Sobakina, Anna Koltovskaya, Anna Vasilchikova). He also tried to raise the status of the dynasty by establishing matrimonial ties with foreign ruling houses, but succeeded only in marrying the Caucasian Princess Maria (Kuchenei) (1561). Throughout his reign, Ivan sought to secure the succession of power for
Ivan the Terrible stands before St. Basil’s Cathedral, erected to commemorate his victory over the Kazan khanate. THE
BETTMANN ARCHIVE. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.
his sons, although he accidentally killed his elder son Ivan (1581). The tsar’s other son, the reportedly mentally challenged Fyodor, eventually inherited the throne.
When Ivan was a minor, power was in the hands of influential courtiers. Under Yelena Glinskaya, Prince Mikhail Lvovich Glinsky competed for power with Yelena’s favorite, Prince Ivan Fyodorovich Ovchina-Obolensky. Yelena’s death (1538) was followed by fierce competition between the princely clans of Shuyskys, Belskys, Kubenskys, and Glin-skys, and the boyar Vorontsov clan. After his coronation, Ivan attempted to stabilize the situation at court through improving the registry of elite military servitors, providing them with prestige land- holdings around Moscow, and regulating service relations among the elite during campaigns. The authorities limited the right of some princely families to dispose of their lands in order to pursue the lands policy. Ivan granted top court ranks to a wide
IVAN IV
circle of elite servitors, which especially benefited the tsarina’s relatives, the Zakharins-Yurevs. Ivan also favored officials of lower origin, Alexei Fyo-dorovich Adashev and Ivan Mikhaylovich Visko-vaty, though some experts question their influence at court. Historians sometimes call the ruling circles of the 1550s “the chosen council,” but this vague literary term is apparently irrelevant to governmental institutions.
Beginning in 1564, Ivan IV subjected his court to accusations of treason, executions, and disgraces by establishing the Oprichnina. Despite the subsequent abolition of the Oprichnina in 1572, Ivan continued to favor some of its former members. Among them were the elite Nagoy and Godunov families, including Ivan’s relative and
