Ivan III (the Great)

Ivan III Vasilyevich (1440-1505), the Grand Duke of Moscow, went down in history as the Gatherer of the Russian lands [�sobiratel semel�], the ruler who finally overthrew the yoke of the Horde. The Grand Duke of Moscow Ivan III took the title of "Grand Duke of All Russia" (1462), and in relations with other countries and peoples he titled himself "Tsar".

Ivan Kalita, together with St. Peter, became the first to undertake the providential task of establishing Moscow as the Third Rome. The name of the collector of the Russian land, according to the historian Nikolai Karamzin, Ivan Danilovich Kalita was given by Muscovites. And this happened after the death of the Grand Duke: "... the Muscovites praised his goodness and, saying goodbye to him in a coffin irrigated with the tears of the people, unanimously gave him the name of Collector of the Russian land and Sovereign Father."

Despite various assessments of the activities of Ivan Kalita, most historians call him also the collector of the Russian land, under him the Moscow principality began to rise above the rest. In solving state affairs, he acted as a politically sophisticated defender of the Russian principalities. According to the historian Sergei Solovyov, he " delivered the Russian land from the thieves" - the patronage that he obtained from the Horde provided Moscow with a fairly rapid rise.

In the fourteenth century, the grand princes of Muscovy began "gathering" Russian lands to increase the population and wealth under their rule. The most successful "gatherer" was Ivan III (the Great; r. 1462-1505), who conquered Novgorod in 1478 and Tver' in 1485. Pskov, which remained independent, was conquered in 1510 by Ivan's son, Vasilii III (1505-33). By the beginning of the sixteenth century, Muscovy had united virtually all ethnically Russian lands. Muscovy gained full sovereignty over the ethnically Russian lands in 1480 when Mongol overlordship ended officially, and by the beginning of the sixteenth century virtually all those lands were united. Through inheritance, Ivan obtained part of the province of Ryazan', and the princes of Rostov and Yaroslavl' voluntarily subordinated themselves to him. The northwestern city of Pskov remained independent in this period, but Ivan's son, Vasiliy III (r. 1505-33), later conquered it.

By completing the work of his predecessors in destroying the independence of the townships and the appanaged princes, Ivan III, or, as he is called by some historians, Ivan the Great, created the empire of Moscow. The form of government of this empire and all the outward surroundings of power were greatly influenced by the marriage of Ivan to Sophia, daughter of Thomas Paleologus, and niece of the last emperor of Byzantium, who brought to Moscow the customs and traditions of the Byzantine Empire.

The marriage of the sovereign of Moscow with the Greek princess was an event of great importance in Russian history. Properly speaking, an alliance with the Byzantine emperors was not a novelty, and such marriages, excepting the first of them - that of St. Vladimir - had no important consequences and changed nothing essential in Russian life. But the marriage of Ivan with Sophia was concluded under peculiar circumstances. In the first place, his bride did not come from Greece, but from Italy, and her marriage opened the way to intercourse between Muscovite Russia and the west. In the second place, the empire of Byzantium had ceased to exist, and the customs, political conceptions, the manners and ceremonies of court life, deprived of their original soil, sought a fresh field and found it in a country of a like faith - Russia.

As long as Byzantium had existed, although Russia adopted her entire ecclesiastical system, yet in political respects she had always remained purely Russian, and the Greeks had no inclination to transform Russia into a Byzantium ; now, however, that Byzantium no longer existed, the idea arose that Greece ought to re-incarnate herself in Russia and that the Russian monarchy ought to be a continuation by right of succession of Byzantium, in the same degree as the Russian Church was by order of succession bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of the Greek church. It happened opportunely that eastern Russia had freed herself from the subjugation of the Tatars precisely at the tune when Byzantium was enslaved by the Turks, and there arose the hope that the youthful Russian monarchy, strengthened ard consolidated, would become the chief mover in the liberation of Greece.

Ivan III was the first Muscovite ruler to use the titles of tsar and "Ruler of all Rus'." Gradually, the Muscovite ruler emerged as a powerful, autocratic ruler, a tsar. By assuming that title, the Muscovite prince underscored that he was a major ruler or emperor on a par with the emperor of the Byzantine Empire or the Mongol khan. Indeed, after Ivan III's marriage to Sophia Paleologue, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, the Muscovite court adopted Byzantine terms, rituals, titles, and emblems such as the double-headed eagle.

Ivan competed with his powerful northwestern rival Lithuania for control over some of the semi-independent former principalities of Kievan Rus' in the upper Dnepr and Donets river basins. Through the defections of some princes, border skirmishes, and a long, inconclusive war with Lithuania that ended only in 1503, Ivan III was able to push westward, and Muscovy tripled in size under his rule. Internal consolidation accompanied outward expansion of the state. By the fifteenth century, the rulers of Muscovy considered the entire Russian territory their collective property. Various semi-independent princes still claimed specific territories, but Ivan III forced the lesser princes to acknowledge the grand prince of Muscovy and his descendants as unquestioned rulers with control over military, judicial, and foreign affairs.

K. Marx gave an excellent description of the formation of the Russian state. He wrote: �At the beginning of his reign, Ivan III was still a Tatar tributary; his authority was still contested by the appanage princes; Novgorod, which was at the head of the Russian republics, dominated the north of Russia, the Polish-Lithuanian state sought to conquer Muscovy, and finally the Livonian knights had not yet laid down their arms. Towards the end of his reign, we see Ivan III sitting on a completely independent throne, hand in hand with the daughter of the last Byzantine emperor; we see Kazan at his feet, we see how the remnants of the Golden Horde crowd around his courtyard; Novgorod and other Russian republics are submissive; Lithuania has decreased within its borders and its king is an obedient tool in the hands of Ivan; Livonian knights are defeated. Astonished Europe."