Meanwhile, internal dissension rocked the Golden Horde. In the mid-14th century, a series of ineffectual rulers gained control of the khanate and the turmoil weakened their ability to collect tribute from the Russian princes. During the reign of Grand Prince Dmitry (1359-1389), Mamay Khan launched a military expedition to collect unpaid taxes. Dmitry and his army defeated Mamay’s troops in 1380 at the Battle of Kulikovo, although Mamay’s successor sacked Moscow two years later.
Not until the reign of Ivan III Vasilyevich (1462-1505), or Ivan the Great, did Muscovy throw off all control by the Golden Horde and establish itself as the dominant power in northern Russia. In 1478 Muscovy annexed Novgorod, with its huge territories and lucrative fur trade. Two years later Muscovy stopped paying tribute to the Golden Horde, which ultimately disintegrated into a number of separate, weaker khanates. Tver’, Muscovy’s traditional regional rival, was finally absorbed in 1485. After the collapse of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, the Russian rulers began calling themselves tsars, a term Russians had previously used to describe the Byzantine emperor and the Tatar khan. However, the term tsar did not become the official title of the Russian ruler until the 16th century.
Muscovy’s increasing power and its position as the last surviving Orthodox state broadened its rulers’ horizons and ambitions. Internally, the power of the tsar grew at the expense of the boyars (Russian nobles). The great increase in the state’s territory encouraged the development of a small but effective Muscovite bureaucracy that was loyal to the tsars alone. The tsars confiscated privately held lands in the conquered principalities and gave these estates to cavalrymen who pledged continual military service in return. In the 16th century the streltsy, a regular infantry corps armed with firearms, was formed. The tsars now had an army of their own and were no longer dependent on the military forces raised by the boyars.
| F1 | Ivan the Terrible |
These practices continued during the reign of Ivan IV Vasilyevich, also known as Ivan the Terrible, who became grand prince of Muscovy in 1533. Ivan conquered and absorbed the Tatar khanates of Kazan’ and Astrakhan’ in the 1550s. During his reign Russia also began the conquest of Siberia, originally conducted by Yermak, a Cossack adventurer. Russia also established commercial contacts with England through the perilous White Sea trade route. Ivan IV imported foreign technical and professional experts, a practice continued by subsequent Russian monarchs. However, the tsar’s attempt to seize Livonia and establish Russian control over part of the Baltic coastline failed in the face of Polish and Swedish resistance, and also seriously overstrained Russian resources. Furthermore, Ivan IV became mentally unstable; his increasingly maniacal domestic policies resulted in the murder of part of the aristocratic elite and the devastation of a number of regions. During Ivan’s reign the Crimean Tatars began to make destructive raids into Russian territory in search of slaves, for whom there was an insatiable market in the Middle East. All of these factors worsened the acute economic crisis that Ivan IV bequeathed to his heirs upon his death in 1584.
Ivan’s son, Fyodor I, was sickly and feeble-minded, and his brother-in-law, Boris Godunov, dominated the court during Fyodor’s reign. Fyodor died without an heir in 1598, and the Assembly of the Land (zemsky sobor)—a council that represented the aristocracy, chief towns, and the church—met to choose his successor. The assembly settled on Boris Godunov.
| F2 | Time of Troubles |
Boris Godunov never firmly established his legitimate hold on power, partly because he was suspected of murdering Dmitry Ivanovich, Fyodor’s younger brother and last male blood relative. Furthermore, Boris was unpopular among the members of the aristocracy, who resented his power, and among the peasantry, who were heavily taxed and whose mobility he had severely restricted.
The institution of serfdom (a system in which an agricultural worker is bound to the land and the landowner) had gradually begun to take hold in Russia during the 16th century. For some time the impoverished conditions of the peasants had induced many to seek refuge in the vast steppes to the south. Independent communities of people who became known as Cossacks developed and grew near the major rivers of the steppes. Some of the Cossacks were farmers, but many were also warriors. Discontent increased as a result of a severe famine that began in 1601. In 1604 False Dmitry, a pretender claiming to be Ivan IV’s son and the rightful heir to the throne, invaded Russia with Polish troops. False Dmitry’s advance on Moscow received the overwhelming support of the peasants and Cossacks in the western provinces. Boris died unexpectedly in April 1605, and in June False Dmitry took Moscow. He was a conscientious and able ruler, but he displeased the boyars, who had hoped for a revival of their power. They revolted, murdered False Dmitry, and elevated the boyar Vasily Shuysky to the throne. This move was opposed by the Cossacks and rebellious peasants, who chafed under oppressive serf laws and feared the severity of boyar rule. They rose in southern Russia and joined another pretender, the second False Dmitry, who was already advancing on Moscow. At the same time, Zygmunt III, king of Poland, invaded from the west. After a long period of fighting and intrigue, Vasily was deposed in 1610, and the throne was left vacant. Some boyars advanced the candidacy of Władysław, the son of Zygmunt, and a Polish army entered Moscow. The entire country then fell into a state of anarchy. In 1612 an army raised by Kuzma Minin and led by Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Pozharsky drove out the Poles.
The Time of Troubles, as this turbulent period became known, was subsequently seen as proof of Russia’s need for a powerful monarchy whose legitimacy and authority were accepted by all the Russian people. In the absence of an autocratic tsar, Russia appeared doomed to anarchy and to dismemberment by powerful neighbors.
| G | Romanov Rule |
In 1613 the Assembly of the Land elected Michael Romanov tsar. Michael was the son of the patriarch of Moscow and a great-nephew of Ivan IV’s wife. The Romanov dynasty ruled Russia until 1917, when a revolution ended imperial rule in Russia.
| G1 | The Pattern of Romanov Policy |
During the three centuries of Romanov rule, the dominant thread was the state’s determination that Russia become and remain a great European power. Since Central and Western Europe were economically and culturally more advanced than Russia, this policy demanded great ingenuity from the rulers and even greater sacrifice and suffering from the population. The law code of 1649 effectively divided the society into ranks and occupational classes from which neither the individual nor his or her descendants could move. Previous laws prohibiting the movement of peasants from estates were extended to include movement from cities and towns. Thus, the law code froze not only social status but also residency. By the mid-18th century the state had succeeded in making Russia militarily and economically powerful, but at the cost of imposing a harsh form of serfdom and despotic rule.
In the early 19th century, French emperor Napoleon I invaded Russia and was defeated. Russia was then widely viewed, both at home and abroad, as continental Europe’s most powerful empire. Other European countries subsequently became more powerful, however, as their economies underwent the vast changes of the Industrial Revolution, which began in England and took a number of generations to spread across Europe. The Industrial Revolution did not reach Russia until the late 19th and early 20th centuries.