before long to the West. A council of Russian bishops in 1443 condemned the Church union, deposed Isidore, and elected Archbishop Jonas metropolitan. The administrative dependence of the Russian Church on the Byzantine came to an end. Furthermore, many Russians remained suspicious of the Greeks even after they repudiated the very short-lived Union of Florence. Then in 1453 Constantinople fell to the Turks, who proceeded to acquire complete control of the Balkan peninsula and of what used to be the Byzantine Empire. As we know, it was with Byzantium and the Balkan Slavs that ancient Russia had its most important religious and cultural ties, in the appanage period as well as in the days of Kiev. The success of the Turks contributed greatly to a weakening of these ties and, therefore, to a more complete isolation of Russia. As we shall see, it also strengthened Muscovite xenophobia and self-importance and various teachings based on these attitudes. It should be noted that this boost to Muscovite parochialism occurred at the very time when the northeastern Russian princedom was being transformed into a major state that was bound to play an important role in international relations and was in need of Western knowledge.
The long reign of Ivan III, which extended from 1462 to 1505, has generally been considered, together with the following reign of Basil III, as the termination of the appanage period and the beginning of a new age in Russian history, that of Muscovite Russia. These two reigns provide a fitting climax to the story of the rise of Moscow. Ivan Ill's predecessors had already increased the territory of their principality from less than 600 square miles at the time of Ivan Kalita to 15,000 toward the end of Basil II's reign. But it remained for Ivan III to absorb such old rivals as Novgorod and Tver and to establish virtually a single rule in what used to be appanage Russia. Also, it was Ivan III who, as the conclusion to the developments
described earlier in this chapter, successfully asserted full Russian independence from the Mongols. And it was in his reign that the position and authority of the grand prince of Moscow, continuing their long-term rise, acquired attributes of majesty and formality unknown in the appanage period. Ivan III, also called Ivan the Great, suited his important role well: while sources differ concerning certain traits of his character, the general impression remains of a mighty figure combining practical abilities of an appanage prince with unusual statesmanship and vision. Although only twenty-two years old at the time of Basil II's death, the new grand prince was fully prepared to succeed him, having already acted for several years as his blind father's chief assistant and even co-ruler.
Under Ivan III 'the gathering of Russia' proceeded apace. The following catalogue of events might give some indication of the nature and diversity of the process. In 1463 - or about a decade later according to Cherepnin - Ivan III purchased the patrimony of the appanage princes of Iaroslavl, and in 1474 the remaining half of the town of Rostov. In 1472 he inherited an appanage, the town of Dmitrov, from his childless brother Iurii; and in the same year he conquered the distant northeastern land of Perm, inhabited by a Finnic-speaking people and formerly under the vague suzerainty of Novgorod. In 1481 the Muscovite grand prince obtained another appanage after the death of another brother, Andrew the Little. In 1485 he forced Prince Michael of Vereia to bequeath to him Michael's principality, bypassing Michael's son, who had chosen to serve Lithuania. In 1489 he annexed Viatka, a northern veche-ruled state founded by emigrants from Novgorod. And in 1493 Ivan III seized the town of Uglich from his brother, Andrew the Big, and imprisoned Andrew for failing to carry out his instructions to march with an army to the Oka river, against the Mongols. Around 1500 the Muscovite grand prince inherited, from Prince Ivan of Riazan, half of his principality and was appointed warden of the other half bequeathed to Ivan of Riazan's young son.
Ivan Ill's most famous acquisitions, however, were Novgorod and Tver. Novgorod, which we discussed in an earlier chapter, collapsed because of both the Muscovite preponderance of strength and its own internal weaknesses. After the treaty of 1456 imposed by Basil II on Novgorod, the boyar party in the city - led by the Boretsky family which included Martha the celebrated widow of a posadnik - turned to Lithuania as its last hope. The common people of Novgorod, on the other hand, apparently had little liking 'either for Lithuania or for their own boyars. In the crucial campaign of 1471 Novgorodian troops made a poor showing, the archbishop's regiment refusing outright to fight against the grand prince of Moscow. After winning the decisive battle fought on the banks of the Shelon river, Ivan III had the Novgorodians at his mercy. They had to promise allegiance to the grand prince and his son, pay a large indemnity, and cede to Moscow some
of their lands. The new arrangement, which meant a thorough defeat and humiliation of Novgorod but left its system and position essentially intact, could not be expected to last. And indeed the authorities of Novgorod soon refused to recognize Ivan III as their sovereign and tried again to obtain help from Lithuania. In 1478 the angry grand prince undertook his second campaign against Novgorod; because Lithuanian help failed to materialize and the Novgorodians split among themselves, the city finally surrendered without a battle to the besieging Muscovite army. This time Ivan III executed some of his opponents as traitors, exiled others, and transferred a considerable number of Novgorodian boyar families to other parts of the country. He declared, as quoted in a chronicle: 'The veche bell in my patrimony, in Novgorod, shall not be, a posadnik there shall not be, and I will rule the entire state.' The veche, the offices of the posadnik and the tysiatskii, and in effect the entire Novgorodian system were accordingly abolished; even the veche bell was carted away. Further large-scale deportations took place in 1489, and Novgorod became an integral part of the Muscovite state.
Tver's turn came next; and the principality offered even less resistance than Novgorod. Another Tver prince named Michael also tried to obtain Lithuanian help against the expanding might of Moscow, signing an agreement in 1483 with Casimir IV of Lithuania and Poland. But when Ivan III marched on Tver, Michael repudiated the agreement and declared himself an obedient 'younger brother' of the Muscovite ruler. Yet in 1485 he tried to resume relations with Lithuania; his messages to Casimir IV were intercepted and his plans discovered by Moscow. Thereupon, Ivan III promptly besieged Tver. Michael's support among his own followers collapsed, and he escaped to Lithuania, while the town surrendered without battle to the Muscovite army. When Michael died in Lithuania he left no heir, and in this manner ended the greatest rival family to the princes of Moscow. In contrast to Novgorod, the incorporation of Tver, which was a northeastern principality, presented no special problems to Muscovite authorities. The sum of Ivan Ill's acquisitions, large and small, meant that very few Russian appanages remained to be gathered, and as a rule even these few, such as Pskov or the last half of Riazan, survived because of their co- operation with the grand princes of Moscow.
Ivan III's ambitions were not limited to the remaining Russian appanages. The grand prince of Moscow considered himself the rightful heir to all the former Kievan lands, which in his opinion constituted his lawful patrimony. Ivan III made his view of the matter quite clear in foreign relations, and at home he similarly emphasized his position as the sole ruler of the whole country. In 1493 he assumed the title of Sovereign -
the collapse of Kiev, had extended its dominion over vast western and southwestern Russian territories. The Princedom of Lithuania, called by some the Lithuanian-Russian Princedom, which we shall discuss in a later chapter, arose in large part as a successor to Kiev: on the outcome of the struggle between Moscow on one side and Lithuania and Poland on the other depended the final settlement of the Kievan estate.
After Ivan III acquired Novgorod and Tver, a number of appanage princes in the Upper Oka area, a border region between Lithuania and Moscow, switched their allegiance from their Lithuanian overlord to him. Lithuania failed to reverse their decision by force and had to accept the change in an agreement in 1494. But new defections of princes to Moscow, this time further south, led to war again in 1500. The Russians won the crucial battle on the banks of the Vedrosha river, capturing the Lithuanian commander, artillery, and supplies. By the peace treaty of 1503, the Lithuanians recognized as belonging to the grand prince of Moscow those territories that his armies had occupied. Ivan III thus obtained parts of the Smolensk and the Polotsk areas and much of Chernigov-Seversk, a huge land in southern and central European Russia based on the old principality of Chernigov. Another peace treaty in 1503 ended the war which Moscow had effectively waged to defend the principality of Pskov against the Livo-nian Order. All in all, Ivan Ill's successes in other Russian states and in foreign wars enormously increased his domain.
The grand prince's growing power and prestige led him logically to a final break with the Mongols. This definitive lifting of the Mongol yoke, however, represented something of an anticlimax compared to the catastrophe of the Mongol invasion or the epic battle of Kulikovo. Ivan III became grand prince without being confirmed by the khan and, following the practice of his father Basil II, he limited his allegiance to the Golden Horde to the sending of
