In the late-15th and early-16th century the Russian state started shaping up growing out of the old Moscow princedom whose capital was here in Moscow. Back in those days Russia was ruled by Dmitry Donskoy’s grandson – Grand Prince Ivan Vasilyevich, or Ivan III, also known as Ivan the Great.
“The Grand Duke Ivan, who grew up amid feuds and distemper, matured early on and was a man of business. Endowed with quick wit and a will of iron, Ivan completed the unification of the Russian lands under Moscow’s hand… “There was a time when his princedom was surrounded on all sides by other Russian lands each ruled by its own dukes. Ivan III subjugated them all, either by force or diplomatic skill. By the end of his reign his only neighbors were the Swedes, Germans, Lithuanians and Tatars. This fact alone was bound to change the policy of the now united Russian state… “Once surrounded by other Russian sovereigns like him, even though with lesser military and economic clout, Ivan was now the sovereign of all Russians and as such, he was supposed to think hard how best to defend his united nation against foreign enemies. In a word, what originally was an apanage policy had since become a national policy…” Fully aware of his new status, Ivan III could no longer afford to share his power with anyone, even his own relatives. Moreover, he never missed an opportunity to take away his brothers’ lands and rights. He now demanded unconditional obedience, as any legitimate sovereign should expect from his subjects. Becoming the sovereign ruler of all Russians, Ivan III shook off what had remained of his dependence from the Tatar khans… In the second half of the 15th century the Golden Horde was quickly falling apart bled white by internal strife. Right next to it, the Crimean Horde ruled by the Girei Khans was quickly gaining strength on the Black Sea coast… Another Horde had just been established in Kazan on the Volga and Ivan III was effectively playing the three Hordes against one another. Little by little, he wooed the Khan into his orbit and became good friends with the Crimean Khan Mengli Girei, a mutual affection fueled by their shared hate of the Golden Horde. By then Ivan III had stopped paying dues to the Golden Horde and was no longer bringing lavish gifts to the Khan. Once, according to eyewitness accounts, just as he was receiving the Khan’s envoys in Moscow, Ivan tossed down and trampled underfoot the symbol of the Khan’s power – a golden plate with an inscription the envoys had handed him… Despite Ivan’s arrogance, the Golden Horde still hoped to restore its onetime dominion over Russia. Sergei Platonov wrote: “In his standoff with Russia, the militarily feeble Khan Akhmat tried to enlist the support of the Lithuanians, but since they made no solid commitments, the Khan made do with just occasional invasions of Russian territory.” In 1472 he moved all the way to the Oka River but not daring to go any further, the Tatars ransacked the local settlements and fell back. In 1480 he repeated his raid. Moving west of the upper reached of the Oka River, Khan Akhmat headed to the Ugra River that separated Russia from Lithuania. Getting no help from the Lithuanians, the Tatars were confronted by a strong Russian host… If the Tatar cavalry were ordered to ford the Ugra, Khan Akhmat’s army would take just a few short days to reach Moscow… It was thirty years since enemy troops had last stood outside the city walls… A whole generation of Russian had already grown which had never seen an armed Tatar force trampling the Russian land. The sudden danger forced the Russians to once again burn down their suburbs and salvage their hard-earned property. Scared by what might happen if the Tatars entered the city, some of Ivan’s courtiers advised him to give oneself up to the mercy of the Khan… Ignoring the traitors, Ivan III decided to confront the enemy even though Russia had seriously been weakened by years of internecine strife between Ivan and his two brothers who had appealed for help to the Polish King Sigizmund IV threatening this country with more years of feudal strife. To make things worse, the Teutonic knights in Livonia started raiding Russian lands in the west. There was a whole coalition taking shape against Russia with Khan Akhmat, King Kazimir and the Livonian Germans all poised for an attack and hoping for help from Ivan’s enemies inside Russia. Fully aware of the dangers of simultaneously fighting all his enemies, Ivan III used the faculties of his strategic genius to deal with the situation. The Russian historian Konstantin Bazilevich provides the following account of what happened next: “Getting word of Khan Akhmat’s march on Moscow Grand Duke Ivan sent out his son Ivan and a huge army led by his very best commanders to check the enemy’s advance. Meanwhile, he made one last desperate attempt to make peace with his brothers Boris and Andrei who were about to strike an alliance with King Kazimir. Making certain concessions, Ivan finally managed to win his brothers over to his side to form a united front against Khan Akhmat. The tables were now turned against the Tatars. Ivan III now led a united Russian force and did not have to worry about his rear. Simultaneously, Khan Akhmat now had his very own lands threatened by his sworn enemy – the Crimean Khan Mengli Girei who, true to his allied duty to Moscow, attacked the lands ruled by King Kazimir IV thus depriving Khan Akhmat of the help he so desperately needed at the moment… The Russian commanders expertly deployed their troops effectively cutting off all the available crossings across the Ugra River… In October Khan Akhmat made several unsuccessful attempts to cross the river. After quashing all enemy attempts to ford the river, the famous standoff on the Ugra began. Neither Ivan III nor Khan Akhmat dared to engage each other. Ivan III ordered to get the capital ready for a siege and sent his wife Sofia out of harm’s way, to the north… The Tatars never came up to city walls though… Chroniclers describe the standoff on the Ugra as being far from peaceful with the enemies firing arrows and cannonballs across the river…
“The Russians hit many with arrows and harquebuses, and the enemy’s arrows were falling between our lines harming no one. And we beat them back from the riverbank and they advanced on us and fought us but we were not vanquished, so they waited for the river to freeze over…” Meanwhile, in Moscow, people were gripped by fear… They knew all too well what fate would befall them in case of defeat and abandoning all hope, were praying hard to Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and His Holy Mother… And then the medieval author outlines his vision of how it all ended: “Then came the miraculous intervention by the Holy Mother of God: as our troops were falling back from the riverbank, the Tatars, terrified by the thought that the Russians were clearing up the place for a fight, beat a hasty retreat…” It was in November 1480… Soon after, Khan Akhmat was killed by one of his own satraps and his sons perished fighting the Crimeans… Khan Akhmat’s retreat from the Ugra was the beginning of the end of the Golden Horde and signified the end of the more than two century-long Tatar enslavement. Few people believed that, soaked in blood and covered with ashes, Russia would ever be able to rise again... But rise it did, as if by magic, together with the previously obscure town of Moscow… Despite the demise of the Golden Horde, the Tatars continued raiding the fringes of the new Russian state torching houses and property, taking away people and cattle. The Russians took another three centuries to end this plunder once and for all… Destroying the Golden Horde, Ivan III launched a military offensive against the Lithuanians and even laid claims to the historically Russian regions, which had long been grabbed by the Lithuanian Dukes. Calling himself the Ruler of All Russia, Ivan III had in mind northern, southern and western parts of the country. Ivan III was equally aggressive towards the Livonian Order making expert use of the potential carefully stocked up by his predecessors and which he himself had built up in his united Russian state… That later factor is exactly what actually earned Ivan the title of Great. The process of the unification of the Russian lands had begun already under Prince Dmitry Donskoi and was completed by Ivan III, that’s why we have every reason to call Ivan the Great the founder of the Moscow State. Konstanting Bazilevich continues: “The emergence of a centralized Russian state strengthened Moscow’s economic role attracting scores of craftsmen from Novgorod, Pskov and other cities that joined in under Ivan III. There were many architects going out of Moscow and into the provinces to restore dilapidated buildings and build fortifications. Icons from across the nation were being sent out to the capital for restoration, Moscow was where people were coming in from around Russia looking for silversmiths and other craftsmen. Little by little, Moscow was becoming a center providing the rest of the country with high quality goods.” The unification of the Russian lands was also a boon to trade. The roads were much safer now and Russia now had a single currency too. Foreign trade was also on the rise. “Furs, above all sables, were a top export item, along with silver foxes, squirrels, martens, wolves, ermines, lynxes and polar foxes…” Konstantin Bazilevich writes. In exchange for all this, Western merchants were bringing in silver slabs, fabric, silk and gold-knitted items. There was a great deal of trade going on that even wars could not stop. The Muscovites said: “War or no war, merchants are always welcome here…” By the early 16th century Muscovy had established close commercial ties with the Orient, strongly boosted by the Ivan III friendship with the Crimean Khan Mengli Girei and which was seriously undercutting Turkish trade on the Black Sea. By the onset of the 16th century Moscow was already Russia’s commercial hub boasting a ramified trading network both in and outside this country, its central location putting it ahead even of such major border trading posts as Novgorod and Pskov.
Under Ivan III reign Russia was busily building up ties with the West, a priority that was much advanced by Ivan’s marriage to Zoe Paleologus, the niece of the last Emperor of Constantinople. Zoe Paleologus had resided in Italy under the cares of the Pope of Rome ever since the Turk’s stormed her capital in the 15th century. She was brought up in the spirit of the Florentine Union and the Pope hoped that by marrying Zoe to the Moscow Grand Duke he would be able to bring Russia into the Catholic fold. In 1472 Zoe Paleologus arrived in Moscow and the two tied the knot… However, as the Russian historian Sergei Platonov puts it, “the hopes the Pontiff pinned on that marriage were all dashed, his envoy who escorted the Princess to Moscow had no success and instead of advancing the Catholic cause, Zoe Paleologus converted to Orthodoxy changing her name to Sofia, so the marriage was of little, if any, consequence to Europe and the Catholic cause. Well, it had some for the Moscow court though… First, it helped revitalize the political and trade ties with the West, particularly with Italy. Sofia had brought with her a number of Greek and Italian craftsmen who were much appreciated by the Grand Duke who commissioned them to build fortifications, churches, palaces, cast cannons and mint coins. Sometimes the foreign specialists were also entrusted all sorts of diplomatic missions running occasional diplomatic errands to Italy. Under Grand Duke Ivan the Italians did much in the way of reconstructing and sprucing up the Moscow Kremlin.
Secondly, Sofia Paleologus was widely believed to have had a hand in changing her husband’s ways. He was more aloof and unreachable now, demanding more reverence from his subjects, more finicky and quick to punish the nobles who were careless enough to fall out of his favor… By marrying a Greek Princess, Ivan now seemed to be seeing himself as an heir to the once powerful Greek Emperors and he adopted the Byzantine symbol – the double-headed eagle – as if to underscore Russia’s status as the inheritor of the great Greek Empire of old… In a word, after his marriage to Sofia Paleologus Ivan III was getting increasingly ambitious of power, a new trait even the Grand Duchess herself occasionally suffered from feeling herself increasingly alienated by her husband…” But even if Sofia Paleologus had never existed, Ivan III, now fully
aware of his power, would still have established close ties with the West.
Simply because the Grand Duke of Moscow was now ruled over a powerful
nation bordering on several European nations…
Illustrations:
12/24/2004
|
Russia’s greatest
historian, Sergei Platonov wrote:
Let’s read
an excerpt from the” Tale of the Standoff on the Ugra”:
The
emergence in the late-15th and early-16th century of a large number of
books about Moscow and the Russian state in various parts of the world
reflected this country’s growing international clout. Foreign authors coming
here wanted to know more about Russian life, its riches and, above all
it’s military might. Moscow was now playing an ever-growing role in world
economics and politics…
There was
more pomp and circumstance governing Russian court life now too.
