Alexander fled to Lithuania, but his brothers, Constantine and Vasily, tried to restore the principality. Although Tver suffered from civil war during Vasily's reign (1346–67), it was strong enough by 1368, under Michael II, son of Alexander, to join Lithuania and challenge Moscow's dominant position. Dmitry Donskoy decisively defeated Michael in 1375 and forced Tver to acknowledge Moscow's suzerainty. Michael and his son Ivan, however, maintained Tver's independence, and under the rule of Boris Aleksandrovich (1425–61) the principality flourished culturally and economically, while maintaining cordial relations with Moscow. Nevertheless, in 1485 Ivan III of Moscow annexed the Principality of Tver, whose last prince, Michael III Borisovich (1461–85), unsuccessfully allied himself with King Casimir IV of Poland and was forced to flee.
Vasily III
▪ grand prince of Moscow
in full Vasily Ivanovich
born 1479
died Dec. 3, 1533, Moscow
grand prince of Moscow from 1505 to 1533. Succeeding his father, Ivan III (ruled Moscow 1462–1505), Vasily completed his father's policy of consolidating the numerous independent Russian principalities into a united Muscovite state by annexing Pskov (1510), Ryazan (1517), and Starodub and Novgorod-Seversk (now Novgorod-Seversky) by 1523. He also strengthened his growing state by capturing Smolensk from Lithuania in 1514. His forces were defeated by the Lithuanians at Orsha (1514), however, and Muscovy also suffered devastating raids by Tatars of both the Crimea and Kazan. Nevertheless, Vasily was loyally supported by the metropolitan Daniel, who intrigued in his favour and sanctioned his canonically unjustifiable divorce from his barren first wife (1525). Vasily overcame the opposition of those boyars who objected to his autocratic tendencies and transmitted an enlarged, powerful, centralized state to his son Ivan IV the Terrible.
▪ tsar of Russia
Introduction
Russian in full Ivan Vasilyevich, byname Ivan the Terrible, Russian Ivan Grozny
born August 25, 1530, Kolomenskoye, near Moscow [Russia]
died March 18, 1584, Moscow
grand prince of Moscow (1533–84) and the first to be proclaimed tsar of Russia (from 1547). His reign saw the completion of the construction of a centrally administered Russian state and the creation of an empire that included non-Slav states. Ivan engaged in prolonged and largely unsuccessful wars against Sweden and Poland, and, in seeking to impose military discipline and a centralized administration, he instituted a reign of terror against the hereditary nobility.
Early life
Ivan was the son of Grand Prince Vasily III of Moscow and his second wife, Yelena Glinskaya. He was to become the penultimate representative of the Rurik dynasty. On Dec. 4, 1533, immediately after his father's death, the three-year-old Ivan was proclaimed grand prince of Moscow. His mother ruled in Ivan's name until her death (allegedly by poison) in 1538. The deaths of both of Ivan's parents served to reanimate the struggles of various factions of nobles for control of the person of the young prince and for power. The years 1538–47 were thus a period of murderous strife among the clans of the warrior caste commonly termed “boyars.” (boyar) Their continual struggles for the reins of government to the detriment of the realm made a profound impression on Ivan and imbued him with a lifelong dislike of the boyars.
Early reforms
On Jan. 16, 1547, Ivan was crowned “tsar and grand prince of all Russia.” The title tsar was derived from the Latin title “caesar” and was translated by Ivan's contemporaries as “emperor.” In February 1547 Ivan married Anastasiya Romanovna, a great-aunt of the future first tsar of the Romanov dynasty.
Since 1542 Ivan had been greatly influenced by the views of the metropolitan of Moscow, Makari, who encouraged the young tsar in his desire to establish a Christian state based on the principles of justice. Ivan's government soon embarked on a wide program of reforms and of the reorganization of both central and local administration. Church councils summoned in 1547 and 1549 strengthened and systematized the church's affairs, affirming its Orthodoxy and canonizing a large number of Russian saints. In 1549 the first zemski sobor (zemsky sobor) was summoned to meet in an advisory capacity—this was a national assembly composed of boyars, clergy, and some elected representatives of the new service gentry. In 1550 a new, more detailed legal code was drawn up that replaced one dating from 1497. Russia's central administration was also reorganized into departments, each responsible for a specific function of the state. The conditions of military service were improved, the armed forces were reorganized, and the system of command altered so that commanders were appointed on merit rather than simply by virtue of their noble birth. The government also introduced extensive self-government, with district administrators elected by the local gentry.
One object of the reforms was to limit the powers of the hereditary aristocracy of princes and boyars (who held their estates on a hereditary basis) and promote the interests of the service gentry, who held their landed estates solely as compensation for service to the government and who were thus dependent on the tsar. Ivan apparently aimed at forming a class of landed gentry that would owe everything to the sovereign. All the reforms took place under the aegis of the so-called “Chosen Council,” an informal advisory body in which the leading figures were the tsar's favourites Aleksey Adashev and the priest Silvestr. The council's influence waned and then disappeared in the early 1560s, however, after the death of Ivan's first wife and of Makari, by which time Ivan's views and his entourage had changed. Ivan's first wife, Anastasiya, died in 1560, and only two male heirs by her, Ivan (b. 1554) and Fyodor (b. 1557), survived the rigors of medieval childhood.
Russia was at war for the greater part of Ivan's reign. Muscovite rulers had long feared incursions by the Tatars (Tatar), and in 1547–48 and 1549–50 unsuccessful campaigns were undertaken against the hostile khanate of Kazan, on the Volga River. In 1552, after lengthy preparations, the tsar set out for Kazan, and the Russian army then succeeded in taking the town by assault. In 1556 the khanate of Astrakhan, located at the mouth of the Volga, was annexed without a fight. From that moment onward, the Volga became a Russian river, and the trade route to the Caspian Sea was rendered safe.
The Livonian War
With both banks of the Volga now secured, Ivan prepared for a campaign to force an exit to the sea, a traditional concern of landlocked Russia. Ivan felt that trade with Europe depended on free access to the Baltic and decided to turn his attention westward. In 1558 he went to war in an attempt to establish Russian rule over Livonia (in present-day Latvia and Estonia). Russia was at first victorious and succeeded in destroying the Livonian knights, but their ally Lithuania became an integral part of Poland in 1569. The war dragged on; while the Swedes supported Poland against Russia, the Crimean Tatars attacked Astrakhan and even made an extensive incursion into Russia in 1571; they burned Moscow, leaving only the Kremlin standing. When Stephen Báthory of Transylvania became king of Poland in 1575, reorganized Polish armies under his leadership were able to carry the war onto Russian territory while the Swedes recaptured parts of Livonia. Ivan at last asked Pope Gregory XIII to intervene, and through the mediation of his nuncio, Antonio Possevino, an armistice with Poland was concluded on Jan. 15, 1582. Under its terms Russia lost all its gains in Livonia, and an armistice with Sweden in 1583 compelled Russia to give up towns on the Gulf of Finland. The 24-year-long Livonian War had proved fruitless for Russia, which was exhausted by the long struggle.
The oprichnina
Ivan's first executions apparently arose out of his disappointment over the course of the Livonian War and the suspected treason of several Russian boyars. The defection of one of Ivan's outstanding field commanders, Prince Andrey Kurbsky (Kurbsky, Andrey Mikhaylovich, Prince), to Poland in 1564 greatly startled the tsar, who announced later that year his intention of abdicating in view of the boyars' betrayal. The Muscovites, however, led by the clergy, implored him to continue to rule, and in 1565 he acceded to their request on condition that he should be allowed to deal with the traitors as he wished and that he should form an oprichnina—i.e., an aggregate of territory that would be administered separately from the rest of the state and put under his immediate control as crown land. A bodyguard of 1,000–6,000 men, known as the oprichniki, was raised; and specified towns and districts all over Russia were included in the oprichnina, their revenues being assigned to the maintenance of the tsar's new court and household, which consisted of a number of carefully selected boyars and service gentry. Ivan lived exclusively in this entourage and withdrew from the day-to-day management of Russia's administrative apparatus (now called the zemschina, or “the land”), which he left in the hands of leading boyars and bureaucrats. Ivan cut himself off from almost all communication with them, while the oprichniki trampled with impunity on everyone beyond Ivan's immediate circle.