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ment and was engulfed by civil war for the next
two decades. To the west, however, the Lithua-
nian state under Olgerd was beginning to
emerge as a major power. Ivan II was succeeded
by his nine-year old son Dmitrii, who would
later gain fame as
DMITRI DONSKOI
after leading
the Muscovite armies in the pivotal Battle of
KULIKOVO
, the first Russian victory over the
Mongols since the Mongol conquest.
Ivan IV
(1530-1584)
(Ivan Vasilievich)
czar
Better known in history as Ivan the Terrible,
Ivan was the first Russian ruler to be known as
“czar,” Russian for the word
Caesar.
Ivan was
three years old at the time of his father's death,
and his youth was dominated by the threats and
conspiracies of prominent boyar families jockey-
ing for power. He was crowned czar at the age of
17. The early years of his reign, influenced by
the good advice of the church and loyal boyars
and of his first wife, Anastasia Romanova, were
constructive and progressive. He called the first
ZEMSKII SOBOR
in 1549, and this body approved
reforms in the law and in local administration.
In 1551 a church council took place that regu-
lated and improved the church's position in the
state. In 1550 and 1556, reforms were made in
the army and in the military service owed by the
gentry. With improved forces, Ivan conquered
the most important of Moscow's traditional ene-
mies
KAZAN
,
ASTRAKHAN
, and the Livonian Order.
He had by 1560 established the authority of the
czar, greatly strengthened the state, and under-
taken commercial relations with England.
The second half of his reign was characterized
by his extreme behavior—uncontrollable rages,
suspicion of the whole boyar class, and a harsh
personal despotism. These were exacerbated by
the death of his wife, Anastasia, in 1560 and his
belief that she had been murdered. His with-
drawal from the boyars and the church, and his
insistence on personal control, found its most
extreme form in the creation of the
oprichnina
—
parts of the state that were separately governed
by officials (
oprichniki
) who acted as his personal
police and whose function was to kill those
whom he considered his enemies. The internal
disintegration of the state coincided with pres-
sure from its enemies in the Crimea and in the
northwest, where the
LIVONIAN
War was revived,
with Poland and Sweden joining forces against
Muscovy. In 1581 the czar killed his son Ivan in
a fit of rage; the event appeared to have finally
Ivan III
(1440-1505)
(Ivan Vasilevich)
ruler
Known as Ivan the Great for his leadership in
refusing to pay further tribute to the Mongol
khans of the
GOLDEN HORDE
, Ivan was the first
Russian ruler to adopt the title “czar.” The son of
Vasilii II, Ivan assumed the title of grand prince
upon Vasilii's death in 1462. Between 1470 and
1480, he greatly enlarged the Muscovite terri-
tory by annexing the Novogorod Republic, the
principality of Tver, and several other principali-
ties. In 1480 he formally broke with centuries of
subjugation to Mongol rule when he ceased pay-
ing tribute to the khan. Although minor conflicts
with the Mongol continued for at least another
century, the date is generally used to mark the
end of the Mongol era of Russian history. In
1493 he took the title of “sovereign of all Rus-
sia,” claiming for Moscow the inheritance to the
legacy of
KIEVAN RUS
and contesting the claims of
Poland and Lithuania to the same territory. In
1497 his government introduced Muscovy's first
legal code (Sudebnik), an important step in the
centralization of judicial power of the state. Fol-
lowing the death of his first wife, Maria, in 1467,
he married Zoe (Sofia) Paleologos, a niece of the
last Byzantine emperor, in 1472. The dynastic
link to the former Byzantine Empire allowed
Ivan to transfer to himself much of the imperial
prestige, including the emperor's emblem of the
two-headed eagle, and to make the claim that
Moscow was its direct successor, the Third
Rome.
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