The army of the Great Horde and the army of Muscovy faced each other across the River Ugra for some two weeks with arrows being shot and some arquebuses being fired. On 11 November Ahmed retreated and peace was restored. The contemporary chronicles present an unflattering account of the two armies being afraid to fight. Archbishop Vassian Rylo wrote a sharply worded letter to Ivan accusing him of vacillation and lack of will. Yet, the encounter on the Ugra was similar to other such encounters between Tatar and Muscovite forces, when neither side could gain a military advantage. The churchmen, who were not military leaders, however, saw things differently at the time. Nevertheless, a subsequent Church account of the 'stand on the Ugra', a work of the 1550s, described it as one of the most significant events in world history.[53] And the author of the Kazanskaia istoriia ('History of Kazan'') added numerous fictional details that made the 'overthrow of the Tatar yoke' in 1480 an irresistible invention for historians to adopt. All this was part of the creation by Rus' churchmen of an 'ideological package' of anti-Tatar writings, which placed a hostile spin on chronicle and other Church historical accounts of Muscovy's relations with the steppe peoples.[54] Rather than represent any kind of 'overthrow of Tatar yoke' the event on the Ugra changed relations between Muscovy and the Great Horde little if at all. It did, however, mark the last time the Great Horde attacked Muscovy, although not the last time it attacked Muscovy's ally, the Crimean khanate.
During the reign of Ivan III, Muscovy and the Crimean khanate had friendly relations. The Crimean khan Mengli Girey considered himself a 'brother' of the grand prince, and Mengli Girey's wife, Nur Sultan, considered herself his 'sister'. Ivan III was thus able to preclude any alliance of the grand duke of Lithuania with the Crimean khan. Under Vasilii III, in contrast, relations with the Crimean khanate deteriorated. Muhammed Girey, the son of Mengli Girey, followed an aggressive foreign policy towards Muscovy, which resulted in Kazan' 's forming a long-term alliance with the Crimean khanate, and ultimately in the devastating attack on Moscow in 1521. One effect ofthe attack was that Muscovy had to pay an additional yearly tribute to the Crimean khan. In this respect, Vasilii III's steppe policy was not as successful as that of his father.
Muscovy in 1533
The Church's attempts to seek out and have the state authorities punish heretics can be seen as part of a larger movement on the part of both secular and ecclesiastical authorities to standardise practices and beliefs within the Muscovite realm. A significant part of this larger movement was the creation by the Church of an anti-Tatar ideology, which served to put a different framework on relations of Muscovy with the steppe khanates than the one the secular leaders had operated within. The huge incorporation of new territories required the extension of administrative procedures and laws to these areas. The transfer of Novgorodian landholders to areas closer to Moscow and their replacement with middle servitors who were given pomest'e for their support was part of this process. At first, Ivan III was reluctant to pursue heretics with as much zeal as Archbishop Gennadii wanted. Towards the end of his life, however, Ivan agreed to the heretics' being executed. Under his successor, Vasilii III, the expansion of the state administrative apparatus began to impinge on the freedom the Church had experienced until then in terms of land acquisitions. It was under Vasilii that the first stipulations concerning the need for churches and monasteries to register their land acquisitions with state agents began to appear. The grand prince and his agents had been able to confiscate particular ecclesiastical lands under the grand prince's role as keeper of the external Church. But the inculcation into law of the right of the state agents to do so led to a strong reaction on the part of Church leaders, which was to be played out later, in the second half of the sixteenth century.
In 1533, Muscovy was on the verge of becoming the dominant power in the western steppe region. This circumstance resulted from the success of the grand prince and the ruling elite in incorporating new resource areas, in creating an enlarged and greatly modified (in terms of composition) ruling class, in the ability of Muscovy to adapt and borrow what it needed from neighbouring cultures, in the creation of a readily mobilisable military force and in the reshaping of the Muscovite principality into a dynastic state.
Ivan IV (1533-1584)
SERGEI BQGATYREY
One of the longest reigns in Russian history, the rule of Ivan IV was a period of ambitious political, military and cultural projects. The ruling family sought to utilise all the material and human resources of the realm to strengthen its political power and to integrate territories with diverse cultural and economic traditions into a single state. These aims did not always complement each other. As a result of integration the Muscovite state became increasingly complex, both socially and politically. This, in turn, put the dynasty under pressure from various forces operating in the centre, in the provinces and on the international arena. As the leader of the dynasty, Ivan responded decisively to the challenges of integration, though his reaction was often erratic and inconsistent.
Safeguarding the royal family
Ivan Vasil'evich, the future Ivan IV 'the Terrible' ( Groznyi), was born into the family of Grand Prince Vasilii III of Moscow, the head of the ruling branch of the Riurikid dynasty, on 25 August 1530. Ivan's mother was Elena Glinskaia, the niece of Prince Mikhail L'vovich Glinskii, who came to serve Vasilii III from Lithuania in 1508. Ivan IV nominally became grand prince at the age of three after the death of his father in December 1533. Soon Elena noticeably increased her political activities and freed herself from the tutelage of her relatives and the regents appointed by Vasilii III. Courtiers began to refer to Elena as sovereign (gosudarynia) alongside the nominal ruler, Ivan.[55]
Our knowledge of the early years of Ivan's life comes largely from later sources, which were politically biased. Some observations on the formative period of his life, however, can be made from a reconstruction of the physical and cultural environment in which the boy grew up. Under Elena Glinskaia, court rituals took place either in the state rooms set aside for official ceremonies or in her private apartments, where she lived with Ivan.[56]Built by a Milanese architect, these apartments had a distinctly Renaissance appearance.[57] The spatial arrangement of the Kremlin palace, however, was based not on inter-connecting rooms (enfilades), as it was in Western Renaissance palaces, but on a typical Muscovite combination of confined clusters of three rooms.[58] Another local peculiarity was that the architectural ensemble of the Kremlin palace included several churches. The immediate proximity ofthe court churches, as well as the cultural traditions of the family, undoubtedly contributed to the formation of Ivan's Orthodox identity At the same time, Ivan spent his formative years in a rather cosmopolitan atmosphere. His physical environment was a mixture of Muscovite and Western architecture. He also became familiar with Eastern customs and perhaps even learned some elementary Tatar during receptions of Tatar dignitaries.[59]
53
D. P. Golokhvastov and Archimandrite Leonid, 'Blagoveshchenskii ierei Sil'vestr i ego poslaniia',
55
A. L. Iurganov, 'Politicheskaiabor'bav30-e gg. XVI veka',
57
The present design of the palace is a result of seventeenth-century renovations. See S. S. Pod"iapol'skii, G. S. Evdokimov, E. I. Ruzaeva, A. V Iaganov and D. E. Iakovlev, 'Novye dannye o Kremlevskom dvortse rubezhaXV-XVI vv.', in A. L. Batalov et al. (eds.),
58
Ivan later reproduced a similar spatial arrangement in his residence in Kolomna in 1577. See I. E. Zabelin,