* Amusing examples ot this mentality can be found in communist histories which treat the absorption of any territory by the Russian state in the past thousand years as an act of 'unification' (prisoedinenie). An identical act by another country becomes 'seizure' (zakhvat). Thus, for example, the Russian imperial government (which the same communist government had declared illegitimate in 1917) 'united' Turkestan with Russia, whereas Victorian England 'seized' Egypt.
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In 1300, the principality of Moscow covered approximately 20,000 square kilometres; it was then one of the minor appanages. During the next century and a half, most of its growth took place at the expense of its neighbours to the east and north-east. Of great value to it was the acquisition in 1392 of the principality of Nizhnii Novgorod, which the khan of the Golden Horde presented to it in return for assistance against one of his rivals. Possession of this strategic area at the confluence of the Oka and Volga gave Moscow an excellent base for further expansion. On his accession in 1462, Ivan m inherited 430,000 square kilometres, an area slightly larger than post-Versailles Germany. Much of this land had been acquired by purchase and foreclosure for debts. Ivan m made his last purchase in 1474, when he bought that part of the principality of Rostov which he still lacked. From then on, Moscow grew by conquest; freed from subjection to the Horde, it began to behave as the Horde had taught it befitted a sovereign power.
Ivan's most important acquisition was Novgorod, a city-state whose territory covered most of northern Russia. Rich and cultivated as it was, militarily it could not stand up to Moscow; its extreme northern location and the prevalence on its territory of bogs made for very poor agricultural returns. Recent calculations indicate that in the mid-fifteenth century 77-8 per cent of Novgorod's landowners did not earn enough from their estates to equip themselves for war.28 Moscow began to exert political pressure on Novgorod already at the end of the fourteenth century, when it acquired Beloozero, possession of which brought its holdings almost to the shores of lake Onega, and placed it in a position to cut Novgorod's territory in half.
Moscow's conquest of Novgorod began in 1471. That year a conflict broke out between the two principalities. Although Moscow handily defeated Novgorod's inferior forces, Ivan in chose not to interfere in the city-state's internal affairs, content, for the time being, to have it acknowledge its status as his votchina. Six years later this formal sovereignty was transformed into actual control. As the chronicles tell it, in March 1477 a delegation from Novgorod arrived in Moscow for an audience with the Great Prince. In the course of the talks, the Novgorodians, apparently inadvertently, addressed Ivan as gospodar (a variant of gosudar), instead of gospodin, as had been their custom. Ivan promptly seized on this formula and the following month dispatched his officials to Novgorod to inquire, 'What kind of gosudarstvo does it, his patrimony, want?' The panic-stricken Novgorodians replied that they had authorized no one to address the Great Prince as gospodar. In response, Ivan assembled his army and in November, when the marshes barring access to the city had hardened, appeared outside Novgorod's walls. Bowing to the inevitable, the Novgorodians tried to salvage what they could by
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2. Eastern Europe on the Accession of Ivan III to the Moscow Throne (1462.)
asking for assurances that recognition of him as gospodin gosudai would not mean the end of their traditional liberties. They requested that the deputy whom the tsar would assign Novgorod should dispense justice jointly with a local official, that the amount of tribute due from Novgorod be fixed, that the citizens of Novgorod neither suffer deportations or confiscations, nor be required to serve the tsar outside the boundaries of their land. Ivan impatiently rejected these terms: 'You were told that we desire the same gosudarstvo in Novgorod as [we have] in the Low Country, on the Moskva [river]; and now you tell me how I should rule you? [Literally: 'You give me an urok (instruction) how our gosudarstvo is to be?'] What kind of a gosudarstvo will I have then?'29
In the end, Novgorod had to capitulate and surrender all its liberties. It agreed to abolish all institutions of self-rule, including the veche: the bell which had been sounded for centuries to assemble the people for deliberations was taken down and shipped to Moscow. In his insistence on the elimination of the veche, Ivan behaved exactly as the Mongols had done when they had conquered Russia two centuries earlier. The only concession the Novgorodians managed to extract from their new ruler was the promise that they would not be obliged to serve outside Novgorodian territory. A gracious gift, not a right, it was soon revoked.
In his new acquisition, Ivan proceeded to practise the kind of systematic elimination of potential opponents which Stalin's proconsul in Hungary five hundred years later called 'salami tactics'. Upon assuming office, the Muscovite viceroy ordered piecemeal deportations of families whose social status and anti-Muscovite reputation seemed to endanger Moscow's hold on the conquered city-state. In 1480, alleging that the Novgorodians were conspiring against him, Ivan had ordered his troops to occupy the city. Over seven thousand citizens, a major part of the patriciate, were now arrested. Some of the prisoners were executed; the remainder, accompanied by their families, were deported and resettled on territories near Moscow where they had neither roots nor influence. Their votchiny were confiscated in the Great Prince's name. In 1484, 1487, 1488 and 1489 this procedure was repeated. Such mass deportation, called vyvody, were subsequently carried out also in other conquered cities, for example in Pskov after it had been conquered in 1510 by Ivan's son, Basil in. In these instances, the patrimonial principle empowered the prince to shunt subjects from one part of the kingdom to another as he would slaves within the boundaries of his estate.