Category History & Events

Ivan III the Great was the grand prince of Moscow and the grand prince of all Russia. Russia gained independence from the Mongols during his reign, which put an end to 200 years of their rule. Ivan was the one who made Moscow the centre of Russia by expanding its borders.

Ivan III was born in Moscow in 1440. He was a successor of Moscow’s grand dukes and the son of Vasily II the Dark- a name he gained during the civil war when he was blinded by his cousin Dmitry Shemyaka during an attempt to capture power. But Vasily II declared Ivan co-ruler while he was only six years of age to assure his son’s succession. At twelve years of age, Ivan was married to Maria, the princess of the principality of Tver. The marriage led to the inclusion of Tver, which had been Moscow’s major rival since 1300, into the duchy. During the ten years before the death of his father, Ivan accompanied him and participated in all his dealings and crusades. When he took the throne at the age of 22, he was already an experienced prince, with strong character and capacity to deal with important issues.

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Ivan launched a war against the Novgorod princedom in 1470 and conquered it. He made it a part of his empire in 1478. By this he acquired all of northern Russia from Lapland (now Finland) to the Ural Mountains. He kept on increasing his domain by conquest, purchases of surrounding sovereign territories or by using his diplomatic talent to win allegiance from weaker princes.

As a result of two wars with Lithuania (1492 and 1500), he forced Alexander I, the ruler of that country and the king of Poland, to give up some of their towns. Ivan III thus came to be known as the ‘gatherer’ of Russian land as he succeeded in tripling the territory of his state.

During this period, Moscow was still a part of the Mongol Tatar Empire of the Golden Horde and was expected to pay tribute to the Tatar rulers. The Mongol Horde was already weakened by this time and Ivan formally refused to pay further tribute in 1480.

The Horde’s last khan tried to make Ivan comply, but the two armies just stood opposite each other on the Ugra River and no battle was ever fought. Instead, both sides retreated and the demand for tribute came to an end.

During this time, Moscow started to be called the Third Rome due to its new political position (Rome and Constantinople being first and second). In 1497, Ivan made the double-headed eagle, a Byzantine symbol, as Russia’s official emblem. Under Ivan III, a code of law known as Sudebnik was formulated in the year 1497.

It was the first time that the laws of Moscow were written down in one place. Ivan’s success in making Moscow the centre of Russian power earned him the title “the Great”. He died on 27 October 1505 and was succeeded by his son Vasili III.

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Moscow was established as one of the many small city-states in what is now Western Russia and Ukraine. In fact, Moscow was one of the last ones founded as it was initially established only in the twelfth century. This is late as the powerful cities of Novgorod and Kiev are more than 300 years older! Founded by Yuri Dolgorukiy, Moscow became important enough to have its own fortress, which is called the Kremlin. The city was situated near the Moskva River, and it was a vital stronghold. But by 1238, the city had been burned down by the Mongols who invaded the place. They either killed all of its inhabitants or carried them off into slavery. However, the Mongols let a native Russian rule the city after he was made to pay an immense amount of money for the honour of doing so!

The native ruler who restored Moscow to much of its previous glory was Alexander Nevsky. He helped to keep the city strong against the attacks of other European powers, while stopping its further destruction by the Mongols. After his death, his son Daniel gained power. He was aware that Moscow alone could not defeat the Mongols, so he convinced the Mongols that he sought to rule Russia on their behalf. As such he called his domain the Grand Duchy of Moscow.

This plan to work alongside the Mongols with the ultimate goal to defeat them continued. Ultimately, after almost 200 years, Ivan III the Great was able to put an end to the Mongol control over Russia and declared himself the ruler of all Russia.

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Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Moldova, and the Caucasus were ruled by a group of Mongols who settled in the region from the 1240s to 1502. They were known as the Golden Horde. The Golden Horde was established by Batu Khan, who was one of the grandsons of Genghis Khan, as a part of the Mongol Empire before its ultimate fall.

When Genghis Khan was about to die in 1227, he divided his Empire into four fiefdoms, each to be ruled by his four sons and their families. However, his first son Jochi died six months earlier, so the western – most of the four khanates, in Russia and Kazakhstan, came under Jochi’s eldest son, Batu. In 1240, Batu conquered the principalities of Kievan Rus, which is now northern Ukraine and western Russia. In the lands of the Golden Horde, all the senior princes of the Rus swore their allegiance to Batu.

Batu died in 1256, and the new Great Khan Mongke appointed his son Sartaq as the successor to lead the Golden Horde. Sartaq also died soon after and was replaced by Batu’s younger brother Berke. The Kievans took this chance to rebel as the Mongols were in the turmoil of succession issues. Timur (Tamerlane) fought the shaken Golden Horde in 1395 through 1396, when he demolished their army, looted their cities and appointed his own khan. The Golden Horde survived until 1480, but it was never the great power it had been after Timur’s invasion. In the same year, Ivan III drove the Golden Horde from Moscow and established the nation of Russia.

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As with most of the world’s federations, the major reason for the fall of Kievan Rus was political instability created by the rules of succession. All of the different principalities were governed by members of the Rurik dynasty, but it was a staircase succession. Staircase succession means that the members of the dynasty were given different territories to rule, where the principal one was Kyiv. Each territory was ruled by a prince (tsar), but in Kyiv, the Grand Prince led them all. When the Grand Prince died, the next legitimate heir, that is, the oldest Rurik dynasty heir, not necessarily a son, left his principality and moved to Kyiv to be the Grand Prince.

After Vladimir died in 1015, there were three years of confusion and during this period, two of his sons (Boris and Gleb) were killed at the instigation of another son, Sviatopolk. In 1018, Yaroslav the Wise, who was one of the surviving sons, attained the throne and kept it until 1054.

Under Yaroslav’s rule, Kievan Rus continued to expand, but it was accomplished mostly through a series of marriages to royal families in Europe. He continued to maintain the federation’s trading power through this. But when Yaroslav died in 1054, power passed to his son Izaiaslav, who got involved in a succession battle that lasted through several rulers until 1240, when Mongols attacked Kyiv.

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We learned that monasteries were set up, but the religion of Rus was not so simple. When they came to the region first, they brought with them some of their Scandinavian religion and mixed it into the local Slavonic culture to establish the first Rus religion. We do not know how much of the Viking and Slavic culture were included in it. Most information about this phase comes from the efforts of Vladimir I to form a unifying element to his upcoming Eastern Slavic state.

A short while after Vladimir took power in 980; he made six wooden idols of Slavonic gods at his estates in Kyiv. These included a statue of the Slavic god Perun, the god of thunder. This figure is generally associated both with the Scandinavian Thor and the northern Iranian gods, who had a head of silver and a moustache of gold. The other idols were of Khors, Dazbog, Stribog, Simargl, and Mokosh.

Earlier, Slavic rulers had an inclination to Christianity but it was not established as a religion back then. The Byzantine patriarch Photius first sent missionaries in 860 – but Christianity formally came as a state religion under the rule of Vladimir the Great, who ruled from 980 to 1015.

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