The Making of Imperial Russia 1453–1795
When the Tatars (or Mongols) spread westwards across the Russian steppes in the 13th century, they were able to exploit the divided the nine principalities of Rus, who failed to mount a united resistance. The Tatars subjugated Rus, dividing their conquests into regional ‘hordes’. The Tatars did not interfere directly in regional politics, but wielded their influence by giving, or denying, support to a particular prince. From 1313 they became adherents of Islam, but they were tolerant towards the Russian Church; they did not levy taxes on the Church, which became the richest landowner in Russia and a powerful political force. The vast majority of the population were heavily taxed, however, and conscripted into military service. The Rise of Muscovy
As the Tatar stranglehold gradually eased, the principality of Moscow began a rapid expansion towards the south, west and northeast. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 allowed Ivan III (1462–1505), Grand prince of Moscow, to style himself ‘tsar’, the natural successor to the emperors of Byzantium, and address the Holy Roman Emperor in correspondence as ‘brother’. Increasingly, his claims were justified. Although the Tatars were eliminated as a threat (the Crimean Khanate reached the gates of Moscow in 1519, during the reign of Vasili III, Ivan’s successor), they were increasingly marginalized, as were the unruly Boyar nobility, as both Ivan and Vassili ruthlessly centralized their rule. Ivan tripled the territory under his dominion, by conquest and marriage. He subjugated the Republic of Novgorod, advanced north to the White Sea, west to the Baltic (establishing the port of Ivangorod), and south into Lithuania. There was no respite under Vassili, who mopped up the remaining autonomous provinces such as Pskov, seized Smolensk from Lithuania, and finally subdued the Crimean Khanate in 1532. Ivan the Terrible and the Time of Troubles
The reign of Ivan IV ‘the Terrible’ (1547–84) was marked by great vicissitudes, often exacerbated by his own violent temperament. He brought about great expansion of the empire, with the subjugation of the khanates of Astrakhan, Kazan and Sibir. This took his rule south to the Caucasus and deep into Siberia. However, on his western borders he became embroiled in a long war against an alliance of Sweden, the Polish/Lithuanian Commonwealth and Livonian Knights, ultimately losing Polotsk and Livonia in the truces of 1582–83. His domestic rule was scarred by increasingly savage autocracy, subduing the boyar nobility through his Oprichniki militia/police, their reign of terror culminating in the massacre of Novgorod. Ivan killed his own heir in a fit of rage, which led, ultimately, to the ‘Time of Troubles’, marked by civil war, famines and further loss of territory until the emergence of the Romanovs.