Ivan III

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IVAN III

(1440–1505), grand prince of Moscow (1462–1505), sovereign of "all Russia" (from 1479).

Ivan Vasilyeich was the eldest son and successor to Basil II, co-regent in the last years of his blind father. Ivan's youth coincided with the dynastic war, in which he took part at age twelve, leading the campaign against Dmitry Shemyaka (1452). Thereafter, Ivan became a steady champion of autocratic rule.

Under Ivan III's reign, the uniting of separate Russian principalities into a centralized state made great and rapid progress. Some of these principalities lost their independence peacefully (Yaroslavl, 1463–1468; Rostov, 1474); others tried to resist and were subjugated by military force (Great Novgorod, 1471–1478; Tver, 1485; Vyatka, 1489).

The incorporation of Great Novgorod into the emerging Muscovite state took especially dramatic form. When Novgorodian boyars questioned the sovereignty of the grand prince over their city-state, Ivan III led his troops to Great Novgorod. In the battle on the Shelon River, July 14, 1471, the Novgorodian army was completely defeated. Four boyars who had been captured (including Dmitry Boretsky, one of the leaders of anti-Muscovite party in Novgorod) were executed by the grand prince's order. In the peace treaty of August 11, 1471, the city acknowledged the lordship of the grand prince and gave up the right of independent foreign relations. Six years later, Ivan III found a pretext to start a new campaign against Novgorod; this time the city-state surrendered without a struggle. In January 1478, Great Novgorod lost its autonomy completely: The veche (people's assembly) and the office of posadnik (the head of the city government) were abolished, and the assembly's bell, the symbol of Novgorod's sovereignty, was taken away to Moscow. In the 1480s, having confiscated the domain of the archbishop of Great Novgorod and the estates of local boyars, Ivan III began to distribute these lands among his military men on condition of loyal service. Thus the pomestie system was established, which became the basis of the social and military organization in Muscovy.

Soon after the conquest of Great Novgorod, Ivan III assumed the title of the sovereign of all Russia (gosudar vseya Rusi ). Not only did the title reflect the achievements of the grand prince in uniting the Russian lands, but it also implied claims to the rest of the territories with eastern Slavic population, which at that time lived under the rule of Lithuanian princes. So conflict with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania became imminent.

In the 1480s, some princes from the Upper Oka region (Vorotynskies, Odoyevskies, and others) left Lithuanian service for Moscow, and Ivan III accepted them and their patrimonies (towns Vorotynsk, Peremyshl, Odoev, and so forth). During the war of 1492 to 1494, the Muscovite army occupied an important town of Vyazma (in the Smolensk region). The peace treaty signed on February 5, 1494, legalized all the acquisitions of IvanIII. Peace, though ensured by the marriage of Ivan's daughter, Elena, to the grand duke of Lithuania, Alexander, turned out to be a short-term armistice: In 1500 another Russian-Lithuanian war began.

First, the princes of Novgorod Seversk and Starodub went over to the grand prince of Moscow. Then Ivan III sent his troops to defend his new vassals. In the battle at Vedrosha River (July 14, 1500), which decided the outcome of the war, Muscovite commanders defeated the Lithuanian army and captured its leader, hetman Konstantin Ostrozhsky. During the summer campaign of 1500 Muscovite forces occupied Bryansk, Toropets, Putivl, and other towns. According to the armistice of 1503, the border with Lithuania moved far in the southwestern direction.

Ivan III was the first Russian ruler to gain full independence from the Golden Horde. From about 1472 he paid no tribute to the khan. Twice, in 1472 and 1480, khan Ahmad invaded Russia, trying to restore his sovereignty over the Russian land and its ruler, but both times he failed. The withdrawal of Ahmad from the banks of Ugra River in November 1480 symbolized the overthrow of the yoke.

The unified Russian state played an increasingly visible role on the international scene: Ivan III established relations with Crimea (1474), Venice (1474), Hungary (1482), the German empire (1489), Denmark (1493), and the Ottoman empire (1496). To meet the needs of his expanded state, Ivan III began to recruit engineers and military specialists from the West. The towers and walls of the Kremlin were built in the 1480s and 1490s by Italian architects and remain one of the most visible material signs of Ivan III's reign.

The contours of the Russian foreign policy, shaped in Ivan's reign, remained stable for generations to come. In the west, Ivan III left to his heir the incessant struggle with the Polish and Lithuanian rulers over the territories of the eastern Slavs. In the east and south, a more differentiated policy was pursued toward the khanates that had succeeded the Golden Horde. This policy included attempts to subjugate the khanate of Kazan in the middle Volga and efforts aimed at neutralizing Crimea.

In his last years Ivan III faced a serious dynastic crisis after the unexpected death in 1490 of his heir, also Ivan (the "Young"), the son of the first Ivan's III wife, Maria of Tver (d. 1467). In 1472 Ivan III married Sophia Paleologue, a Byzantine princess brought up in Rome. This marriage also produced children, including Basil (Vasily). Ivan the Young, married to Yelena, the daughter of Moldavian prince, left a son, Dmitry. So, after 1490, Ivan III was to choose between his grandson (Dmitry) and son (Basil). At first, he favored the grandson: In February 1498, Dmitry was crowned as grand prince and heir to his grandfather. But later Dmitry and his mother Yelena fell into disgrace and were taken into custody; Basil was proclaimed the heir (1502). The reasons for these actions remain unclear. In July 1503, Ivan III experienced a stroke and real power passed into the hands of Basil III.

Contemporaries and later historians agree in depicting Ivan III as a master politician: prudent, cautious, efficient, and very consistent in his policy of constructing a unified and autocratic Russian state.

See also: golden horde; muscovy; novgorod the great