"Keep my name honest and formidable!"
Ivan III
Ivan Vasilievich was the second son of Grand Duke Vasily II and his wife Maria Yaroslavna. He was born in Moscow on January 22, 1440 in a turbulent historical period. In the country, flaring up, then fading, there was a strife between the descendants of the Grand Duke of Vladimir Dmitry Donskoy. Initially (from 1425 to 1434), Prince Zvenigorodsky and Galitsky Yuri Dmitrievich fought for the Moscow throne, who claimed his rights on the basis of his paternal will, and his nephew Vasily II, who inherited the Moscow throne from his father Vasily I. After the death of Yuri Dmitrievich in 1434, the Moscow throne was occupied by the elder son Vasily Kosoy, however, the younger brothers did not recognize his reign and with the words: "If it was not pleasing to God that our father should reign, then we ourselves do not want you" forced to cede the throne to Vasily II.
The figure of Ivan the Great at the Millennium of Russia monument in Veliky Novgorod. At his feet (from left to right) the defeated Lithuanian, Tatar and Baltic German
In those years, there was also restlessness on the eastern borders of Russia - numerous khans of the disintegrated Golden Horde regularly made devastating raids on the Russian lands. Ulu-Muhammad, who headed the Big Horde, but in 1436 was driven out by a more successful competitor, especially "distinguished himself". After spending some time, the khan at the end of 1437 captured the city of Belev, intending to wait out the winter here. An army led by Dmitry Shemyaka, the second son of the late Yuri Dmitrievich, advanced against him. The outnumbered Russians showed carelessness and were defeated in December 1437. The emboldened Ulu-Muhammad moved to the Volga and soon occupied Kazan, subsequently founding the Kazan Khanate. In the next ten years, he and his sons raided the Russian lands three times. The last campaign in 1445 turned out to be especially successful - in the battle of Suzdal, the Grand Duke Vasily II himself was captured. A few days later, Moscow burned down - even part of the fortress walls collapsed from the fire. The Tatars, fortunately, did not dare to attack the defenseless city.
In October of the same year, Ulu-Muhammad, having appointed a huge ransom, released Vasily Vasilyevich. The Tatar ambassadors accompanied the Grand Duke home, who were supposed to oversee the collection of the ransom in various Russian cities and villages. By the way, until the required amount was collected, the Tatars had the right to manage settlements. Of course, such an agreement with the enemy dealt a terrible blow to the prestige of Vasily II, which Dmitry Shemyaka took advantage of. In February 1446 Vasily Vasilyevich with his sons Ivan and Yuri went to the Trinity Monastery on a pilgrimage. In his absence, Prince Dmitry entered Moscow with his army and arrested the wife and mother of Vasily II, as well as all the boyars who remained loyal to the Grand Duke. Vasily Vasilyevich himself was taken into custody at Trinity. The conspirators in a hurry forgot about his children, and the Moscow governor Ivan Ryapolovsky secretly took the princes Yuri and Ivan to Murom. And in mid-February, their father, by order of Dmitry Shemyaka, was blinded (which is why he later received the nickname "Dark") and sent to prison in the city of Uglich.
Holding power proved to be much more difficult than capturing it. The old Moscow nobility, rightly afraid of being pushed aside by the people of Dmitry Shemyaka who came from Galich, began to gradually leave Moscow. The reason for this was the actions of the newly made Grand Duke, who gave the order to deliver Yuri and Ivan Vasilyevich to him, guaranteeing them not only complete immunity, but also release from their father's imprisonment. But instead, Dmitry Shemyaka sent the children to the same Uglich into custody. By the fall of 1446, a power vacuum arose, and in mid-September - seven months after the reign in the city of Moscow - the Grand Duke had to keep his promise and release his blind rival, leaving the city of Vologda as a fiefdom. This was the beginning of its end - soon all the enemies of Dmitry gathered in the northern city. The Abbot of the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery freed Vasily II from kissing Shemyake on the cross, and a year later after being blinded, Vasily the Dark solemnly returned to Moscow. His opponent fled to his domain and continued the fight, but in 1450 he was defeated in the battle and lost Galich. After wandering with his people in the northern regions of Russia, Dmitry Shemyaka settled in Novgorod, where he was poisoned in July 1453.
One can only guess what feelings were overwhelmed by Prince Ivan Vasilyevich in childhood. At least three times he had to be overcome by mortal fear - a fire in Moscow and the capture of his father by the Tatars, the flight from the Trinity Monastery to Murom, the Uglitsk imprisonment after being extradited to Dmitry Shemyaka - all this had to be endured by a five or six-year-old boy! His blind father, having regained the throne, ceased to stand on ceremony not only with obvious opponents, but also with any potential rivals. For example, in July 1456 it is not known why he sent his brother-in-law Vasily Serpukhovsky to the Uglich dungeon. The reign of the blind man ended with public mass executions at all - an event unheard of before in Russia! Having learned about the decision of the servicemen to release Vasily Serpukhovsky from captivity, Vasily II commanded "all imati, and beat with a whip, and cut the legs, and cut off the hands, and cut off the heads of others." Vasily the Dark died at the end of March 1462 from dryness (bone tuberculosis) that tormented him, passing the great reign over to his eldest son Ivan, and also endowing each of the other four sons with large estates.
By that time, twenty-two-year-old Ivan Vasilievich already possessed considerable political experience - from 1456 he had the status of a grand duke, thus being a co-regent of his father. In January 1452, the twelve-year-old heir to the throne formally led the Moscow army against Dmitry Shemyaka, and in the summer of the same year he married the even younger daughter of Prince Boris of Tversky, Maria. Their only son was born in February 1458 and was also named Ivan. And the next year, Ivan Vasilyevich stood at the head of the Russian troops, who repulsed the Tatars' attempt under the leadership of Khan Seid-Akhmet to cross to the northern banks of the Oka and invade the Moscow lands. It is worth noting that in the future Ivan Vasilyevich took part in campaigns only in case of extreme need, preferring to send one of the boyars or brothers instead of himself. At the same time, he prepared military actions very carefully, clearly explaining to each voivode what exactly he should take.
Very little is known about the actions of Ivan III to strengthen power in the early years. The general nature of his internal policy was reduced to the revision of the noble and boyar land tenure - if someone could not provide evidence of their rights to a particular village or village, the land was transferred to the Grand Duke. This had quite tangible results - the number of servicemen who directly depended on the Grand Duke increased. And this, in turn, led to an increase in the power of his personal army. The consequences showed themselves quickly - already at the very beginning of the reign, Ivan III switched to offensive tactics. He operated mainly in the northeastern and eastern directions. Having pacified Vyatka, a longtime ally of Dmitry Shemyaka, the Grand Duke organized several campaigns against adjacent Finno-Ugric tribes: Perm, Cheremis, Ugra. In 1468, Russian troops made a successful campaign against the lands of the Kazan Khanate, and in 1469, having laid siege to Kazan, forced Khan Ibrahim to accept all the conditions of peace - in particular, to return the captives who had fallen to the Tatars over the past forty years.
In April 1467 Ivan Vasilievich was widowed. His wife, apparently, was poisoned - the body after death was terribly swollen. Now the Grand Duke had to find a new wife. In 1469, thanks to the mediation of the merchant Gianbattista della Volpe, who lived in Moscow, ambassadors arrived from Italy with a marriage proposal. Ivan III was offered to marry the niece of the last emperor of Byzantium, Constantine XI. The idea of intermarrying with such a famous family appeared to Ivan Vasilyevich tempting, and he agreed. In November 1472 Zoya Palaeologus arrived in Moscow and was married to the Grand Duke. In Russia she was nicknamed Sophia Fominishna, later she gave birth to the Grand Duke six daughters (of whom three died in infancy) and five sons.
This marriage, by the way, had distant consequences for Russia. The point was not at all in the royal origin of the girl, but in the establishment of strong ties with the northern Italian city-states, which at that time were the most culturally developed in Europe. It should be noted here that, having come to power in 1462, the young sovereign, among other things, was concerned about the radical reconstruction of the old Moscow fortress. This task was not an easy one, and it was not only the meagerness of the grand ducal treasury. Decades of cultural and economic decline preceding the reign of Ivan Vasilyevich led to the fact that the traditions of stone architecture were practically lost in Russia. This was clearly demonstrated by the history of the construction of the Assumption Cathedral - at the end of the construction, the walls of the new building bent and, unable to withstand their own weight, collapsed. Ivan III, using the connections of his wife Zoe Palaeologus, turned to the Italian masters. The first swallow was the resident of Bologna, Aristotle Fioravanti, known for his advanced technical solutions. He arrived in Moscow in the spring of 1475 and immediately got down to business. Already in August 1479, the Cathedral of the Dormition of the Theotokos in the Moscow Kremlin was completed and consecrated by Metropolitan Gerontius. Since then, Aristotle was no longer involved in the construction of Orthodox churches, preferring to involve Russian masters who studied with the Italian. But on the whole, Ivan Vasilyevich considered the experience gained to be successful, and after Aristotle Fiorovanti other foreigners appeared in Russia - Antonio Gilardi, Marco Ruffo, Pietro Antonio Solari, Aloisio da Carezano. Not only Italian builders came to Russia, but also cannonmen, doctors, masters of silver, gold and mining. The same Aristotle Fiorovanti was later used by the Grand Duke as a foundry and cannon man. He took part in many campaigns, prepared Russian artillery for battle, commanded shelling of besieged cities, built bridges and carried out many other engineering works.
In the 1470s, the main concern of Ivan III was the subordination of Novgorod. From time immemorial, the Novgorodians controlled the entire north of present-day European Russia up to and including the Ural Range, conducting extensive trade with Western countries, primarily with the Hanseatic League. Submitting by tradition to the Grand Duke of Vladimir, they had considerable autonomy, in particular, they carried out an independent foreign policy. In the XIV century, in connection with the strengthening of Lithuania, the Novgorodians took it as a habit to invite Lithuanian princes to reign in their cities (for example, in Korela and Koporye). And in connection with the weakening of the influence of Moscow, part of the Novgorod nobility even had the idea of "surrendering" to the Lithuanians - the order that existed there seemed to some individuals more attractive than those that developed historically in Moscow Rus. The mood, which had been ripening for a long time, splashed out at the end of 1470 - ambassadors were sent to the King of Poland Casimir with a request to take Novgorod under their protection.
Ivan Vasilyevich tried to extinguish the conflict by peaceful means, but this did not lead to good. And then in the summer of 1471 the Moscow army, divided into four detachments, went on a campaign. At the behest of the Grand Duke, the Pskovians also set out for the war. In Novgorod, meanwhile, vacillation and confusion reigned. King Casimir did not want to come to the rescue, and many of the city's inhabitants - mostly commoners - absolutely did not want to fight with Moscow. This was shown by the battle on the Sheloni River - in July, a small detachment of princes Fyodor Starodubsky and Danila Kholmsky easily defeated the Novgorod army, which outnumbered the Muscovites by eight (and according to some estimates, ten) times. In fact, the Novgorodians ran away immediately after the start of the battle. Soon after that, a delegation from Novgorod, headed by Archbishop Theophilos, came to Ivan Vasilievich. The ambassadors humbly asked for mercy, and Ivan III relented. According to the agreement concluded, the Novgorodians undertook to pay a huge indemnity, give Moscow Vologda and Volok, and completely sever ties with the Polish-Lithuanian state.
The consistency and precision of the Grand Duke's actions in the conquest of Novgorod is truly amazing. Ivan III did not allow any improvisation and his every step - almost mathematically calculated - limited the living space of the "democracy" of Novgorod, which turned into an oligarchic regime in the 15th century. In October 1475 Ivan Vasilievich went to Novgorod again. The purpose of this "march in peace" was formally to consider the numerous complaints addressed to the Grand Duke against the local authorities. Moving slowly through the Novgorod lands, Ivan III almost every day received ambassadors from the Novgorodians who presented rich gifts to the Grand Duke. At the end of November, Ivan Vasilyevich solemnly entered the city, and his army occupied the surrounding area. After a trial, the Grand Duke arrested two boyars and three mayors and sent them in chains to Moscow. He released the rest of the "wine" ones, taking from them one and a half thousand rubles each, which went to the plaintiffs and to the treasury. From the beginning of December to the end of January, with minor interruptions, Ivan III feasted while visiting the boyars of Novgorod. In just forty-four days, seventeen (!) Feasts were held, which turned into a sheer nightmare for the Novgorod nobility. However, it was still far from the complete subordination of the Novgorod lands - already in 1479 the Novgorodians again turned to King Casimir for support. In the autumn of the same year, Ivan Vasilyevich, at the head of a huge army, laid siege to the city. The rebels chose to surrender, but this time the winner was not so merciful. After the search, over a hundred "seditious" were executed, the entire Novgorod treasury was confiscated and Archbishop Theophilus was arrested.
At the beginning of 1480, his brothers revolted against Ivan III: Andrei Bolshoi and Boris Volotsky. The formal reason was the arrest of Prince Ivan Obolensky, who dared to leave the Grand Duke to serve Boris Volotsky. In general, this corresponded to the ancient traditions, but it was them that Ivan Vasilyevich considered it necessary to break - they contradicted his plan to become "the sovereign of all Russia." Of course, this attitude towards sovereign rights aroused the indignation of the brothers. They also had one more grievance - the elder brother did not want to share the newly acquired lands. In February 1480, Boris Volotsky arrived in Uglich to see Andrei Vasilievich, after which they, together with an army of twenty thousand, moved to the border with Lithuania, intending to drive off to King Casimir. However, he was not going to fight Ivan III, allowing only the families of the rebellious Vasilyevichs to live in Vitebsk. Ivan Vasilievich, having urgently returned to Moscow from Novgorod, in an amicable way tried to come to an agreement with the brothers, giving them the floor to cede a number of volosts. However, the relatives did not want to put up.
Painting by N. S. Shustov "Ivan III overthrows the Tatar yoke, tearing apart the image of the khan and ordering to kill the ambassadors" (1862)
Back in 1472, Russian troops successfully repelled an attempt by the Tatars to force the Oka. It was from that moment in time that Ivan Vasilyevich stopped paying tribute to the Tatars. This state of affairs, of course, did not please the perennial tormentors of the Russian lands, and in the summer of 1480 Khan Akhmat - the head of the Great Horde - concluded an alliance with King Casimir in order to take and ruin Moscow. Russian armies from all the lands subject to Ivan Vasilyevich, except Pskov and Novgorod, took up a position on the northern bank of the Oka River, awaiting the enemy. And soon the Tver people came to the rescue. Akhmat, meanwhile, having reached the Don, hesitated - the situation in Lithuania worsened, and Casimir, fearing a conspiracy, decided not to leave his castle. Only in September, without waiting for an ally, Akhmat went westward towards the Lithuanian possessions and stopped near Vorotynsk. Ivan Vasilievich, having learned about this, gave his son the order to take up defenses on the Ugra, and in the meantime he returned to Moscow. By this time, his brothers Boris and Andrei, having robbed the land of Pskov, were finally convinced that they would not see support from King Casimir, and decided to make peace with the Grand Duke. To the credit of Ivan III, it is worth noting that he forgave the rebellious relatives, commanding them to move as quickly as possible to the war with the Tatars.
Ivan III himself, having sent his treasury and family to Beloozero, began to prepare Moscow for the siege. In early October, the Tatars reached the river, but after four days of fighting, they did not succeed in crossing the Ugra. The situation stabilized - the Tatars from time to time made attempts to overcome the natural line of defense of the Russians, but each time they received a decisive rebuff. Successful actions on the Ugra gave Ivan III hope for a victorious end to the war. In mid-October, the Grand Duke headed for the battlefield, stopping fifty kilometers north of the river, in Kremenets. Such a disposition gave him the opportunity to quickly lead the Russian forces located on a site of seventy kilometers, and in case of failure, a chance to avoid captivity, since Ivan Vasilyevich never forgot about the fate of his father. At the end of October, frost hit, and a few days later the ice bound the river. The Grand Duke ordered the troops to retreat to Kremenets, preparing to give the Tatars a decisive battle. But Khan Akhmat did not cross the Ugra. Having sent Ivan III a formidable letter demanding to pay tribute, the Tatars retreated - by that time they, having completely ruined the upper reaches of the Oka, were "barefoot and naked." So the last major attempt of the Horde to restore its power over Russia failed - in January 1481, Khan Akhmat was killed, and the Big Horde soon ceased to exist. Having victoriously completed the war with the Tatars, Ivan III signed new treaties with the brothers, giving Boris Volotsky several large villages, and Andrei Bolshoy the city of Mozhaisk. He was not going to yield to them anymore - in July 1481, another son of Vasily the Dark, Andrei Menshoi, died, and all his lands (Zaozerye, Kuben, Vologda) passed to the Grand Duke.
Diorama "Standing on the Eel"
In February 1481, Ivan III sent a twenty-thousand army to the aid of the Pskovites, who had fought with Livonia on their own for many years. In severe frosts, Russian soldiers, according to the chronicler, "captured and burned the German lands, avenged twenty or more for theirs." In September of the same year, Ivan Vasilyevich, on behalf of the Pskov and Novgorodians (such was the tradition), concluded a ten-year peace with Livonia, having achieved some peace in the Baltic states. And in the spring of 1483, the Russian army led by Fyodor Kurbsky and Ivan Saltyk Travin set off on a campaign to the east against the Voguli (they are also Mansi). Having reached the Irtysh in battles, the Russian troops embarked on ships and got on them to the Ob, and then sailed along the river to the very lower reaches. Having subdued the local Khanty there, by the onset of winter, the army managed to safely return home.
In October 1483, Ivan III became a grandfather - the eldest son of Ivan Ivanovich and his wife Elena - the daughter of the Moldovan ruler Stephen the Great - had a son, Dmitry. This was the beginning of a long-term family conflict that had the most serious consequences. The Grand Duke, who decided to reward his daughter-in-law, discovered that part of the family values had disappeared. It turned out that his wife Sophia Fominishna (aka Zoya Palaeologus) donated part of the treasury to his brother Andrei who lived in Italy, as well as to her niece, who is married to Prince Vasily Vereisky. Ivan Vasilievich ordered the intruders to "poimati". Vereisky and his wife managed to escape to Lithuania, but soon after that the Vereisko-Belozersk inheritance ceased to exist. A much more significant event was that Ivan III lost confidence in Sophia Fominishna for many years, bringing his daughter-in-law Elena closer to him.
In 1483, Ivan III actually added the city of Ryazan to his possessions - after the death of Vasily of Ryazan, his nephew concluded an agreement with the Grand Duke, according to which he completely renounced the rights of external relations. In the same year, Ivan Vasilyevich again took up the recalcitrant Novgorodians. A new batch of seditious people was taken to Moscow and tortured, after which they were sent to dungeons in various cities. The final point in the "pacification" of Novgorod was the resettlement of over a thousand of the most noble and wealthy Novgorodians in Russian cities, followed by about seven thousand black and living people. The allotments of the evicted were transferred to the landowners who arrived in the Novgorod land from the Grand Duchy of Vladimir. This process continued for more than one decade.
In the fall of 1485, Ivan Vasilyevich conquered Tver. The Tver land, surrounded by the possessions of Moscow from almost all sides, was doomed. Back in the spring, a treaty was imposed on the local prince Mikhail Borisovich, obliging him to abandon all contacts with Lithuania, the only state capable of guaranteeing independence for Tver. Very soon, Muscovites learned that the prince of Tverskoy did not comply with the terms of the agreement. But Ivan III was just waiting for this - in early September his troops besieged the city, Mikhail Borisovich fled to Lithuania, and the townspeople preferred to surrender at the mercy of the victor. Two years later, a new success awaited the Grand Duke. Having intervened in the struggle of the Kazan "tsars", in the spring of 1487 he sent a huge army to Kazan. In early July, Ali Khan, seeing the Russian army under the walls of the city, opened the gates. The victors, however, placed their protege named Mohammed-Emin on the Kazan throne. In addition, a Russian garrison settled in the city. Almost until the very death of Ivan III, the Kazan Khanate remained a vassal of Russia.
In addition to the unification of the Russian lands, the Grand Duke also pursued an energetic foreign policy. His greatest achievement was the establishment of strong ties with the German emperors Frederick II and his son Maximilian. Contacts with European countries helped Ivan Vasilyevich to develop the state emblem of Russia and the court ceremonial that had been in effect for several centuries. And in 1480, Ivan III managed to conclude a strategically extremely beneficial alliance with the Crimean Khan Mengli-Girey. Crimea fettered the forces of both the Polish-Lithuanian state and the Great Horde. The raids of the Crimeans, often coordinated with Moscow, ensured the tranquility of the southern and a number of western borders of the Russian state.
By the beginning of 1490, all the lands that had ever been part of the Grand Duchy of Vladimir submitted to Ivan Vasilyevich. In addition, he managed to liquidate almost all the princely estates - evidence of the past fragmentation of the country. The “brethren” that remained by that time did not even think about rivalry with the Grand Duke. Nevertheless, in September 1491, Ivan III, having invited his brother Andrew the Bolshoi to visit him, ordered him to "poimati". Among the list of old grievances of the Grand Duke, there was one new one. In the spring of 1491, for the first time in history, Russian troops undertook an offensive campaign against the Tatars in the steppe. Ivan III sent a huge army to the aid of his ally Mengli-Girey, who was fighting the Great Horde, but Andrei Vasilyevich did not give people and did not help. By the way, it was not necessary to fight then - one demonstration of force was enough. The reprisal against his brother was cruel - prince Andrei, imprisoned in iron, died in November 1493, and his Uglitsky inheritance passed to the Grand Duke.
In 1490, Ivan Vasilyevich announced a new foreign policy goal - under his rule to unite all the primordially Russian territories, becoming not in words but in deeds "the sovereign of all Russia." From now on, the Grand Duke did not recognize the seizures of Russian lands, once carried out by Poland and Lithuania, as legal, which was reported to the Polish ambassadors. This was tantamount to declaring war on the Polish-Lithuanian state, which at that time controlled not only the current Belarusian and Ukrainian, but also the Verkhovsk and Bryansk lands, which are now part of Russia. In fairness, it should be noted that this war has already been going on since 1487. Initially, it was in the nature of small border battles, and the initiative belonged to the subjects of Ivan Vasilyevich. The Grand Duke denied any involvement in such actions, but the residents of the disputed lands were made clear that peace would come only when they decided to join Rusia. Another factor that allowed Ivan III to interfere in the internal affairs of the Lithuanian state was the more frequent episodes of the implantation of the Catholic faith and the infringement of the rights of the Orthodox.
In June 1492, the Polish king Casimir died and at the congress of the nobility his eldest son Jan Albrecht was elected as the new sovereign. Alexander became the Grand Duke of Lithuania at the same congress, who, in order to stop the border war, proposed to Ivan Vasilyevich Fominsk, Vyazma, Berezuisk, Przemysl, Vorotynsk, Odoev, Kozelsk and Belev, and also wooed the daughter of the Grand Duke Elena. Ivan III agreed to the marriage, which, after long negotiations, was concluded in February 1495. However, all this only temporarily delayed the war. The reason for the outbreak of hostilities was the news that came in April 1500 that the Grand Duke Alexander, in violation of the terms of the "marriage contract", was trying to impose the Catholic faith on his wife, as well as on the Russian princes who had lands in the east of the country.
Ivan III's response was swift and terrible - already in May three armies moved in the directions Dorogobuzh-Smolensk, Bely, Novgorod-Seversky-Bryansk. The priority was the southern direction, and it was here that the greatest results were achieved - Trubchevsk, Mtsensk, Gomel, Starodub, Putivl, Chernigov came under the rule of Moscow. In July 1500, on the Vedroshi River, the Russian army defeated the main forces of the Lithuanians, taking prisoner their commander, Prince Konstantin Ostrozhsky. The results of the war could have been even more impressive if Livonia had not taken the side of Lithuania. At the end of August 1501, the Livonian army, led by Master Walter von Plettenberg, defeated the Russians on the Seritsa River, and then besieged Izborsk. The Russian army repaid the debt already in November - the famous commander Daniil Shchenya, having invaded the lands of Livonia, defeated the German army near Helmed. Taking considerable trophies in the Dorpat and Riga archbishoprics, the Russian forces returned safely to Ivangorod. The next meeting with the Germans took place a year later. In September 1502, they laid siege to Pskov, but thanks to the timely approach of the main army, the Pskovites managed to defeat the Livonians and capture the enemy's train. In general, the need to keep a significant army in the Baltics limited the possibilities in the Lithuanian direction, and the siege of Smolensk undertaken at the end of 1502 did not bring any results. Nevertheless, the armistice, concluded in the spring of 1503, consolidated the gains of the first months of the war.
Ivan III Vasilievich. Engraving from "Cosmography" by A. Teve, 1575
At the end of his life, Ivan Vasilyevich got the opportunity to clearly see the fruits of his labors. Over the forty years of his reign, Russia from a half-divided state turned into a powerful state that instilled fear in its neighbors. The Grand Duke managed to destroy almost all the lands on the lands of the former Great Vladimir principality, to achieve complete subordination of Tver, Ryazan, Novgorod, to significantly expand the borders of the Russian state - that is how it was called from now on! The status of Ivan III himself has radically changed. The great princes were called "sovereigns" in the middle of the 14th century, but Ivan Vasilyevich was the first to present the state as a system of power in which all subjects, including relatives and relatives, are only servants. The man-made treasure of Ivan III - the Moscow Kremlin - to this day is one of the main symbols of Russia, and among the miraculous achievements of the Grand Duke, one can single out the Code of Law, introduced by him in the fall of 1497 - a single legislative code that Russia was urgently required in connection with the unification of previously fragmented lands into a single state.
It should be noted that Ivan III was a cruel ruler. He plunged many into horror with one of his "fierce eyes" and, without hesitation, could send a person to death for completely innocent reasons today. By the way, there was only one force left in Russia, which Ivan Vasilyevich could not overcome. It was the Russian Orthodox Church, which has become a stronghold of the opposition. Having lost their estates and volosts, boyars and princes were partly forced, partly voluntarily tonsured as monks. The former nobility did not want to indulge in asceticism, as befits the monks, the asceticism of the former nobility and aspired to any expansion of the monastic lands, seizing them from the peasants by force or receiving from the landowners as a gift (on the eve of the 7000th (1491) year from the creation of the world, most of the boyars and nobles in anticipation of the second arrival Christ donated huge land holdings to the monasteries). It was the desire to subjugate the Church, as well as to curb the uncontrolled growth of church lands, that pushed Ivan Vasilyevich to establish ties with a group of free-thinkers, who were later named “Judaizers” (after their organizer, a certain “Jew Sharii”). In their teachings, Ivan III was attracted by the criticism of church acquisitions, which determine the purpose of the Church not in the accumulation of wealth, but in serving God. Even after the condemnation of the religious movement at the church congress in 1490, adherents of this trend remained surrounded by the Grand Duke. Disappointed in them later, Ivan III made a bet on the "non-possessors" - the followers of Nil Sorsky, who condemned the monks and church hierarchs mired in luxury. They were opposed by the "Josephites" - supporters of Joseph Volotsky, who stood up for a rich and strong Church.
There is an interesting story with the issue of succession to the throne that arose after the death of the eldest son of the Grand Duke Ivan Ivanovich in March 1490. In 1498, Ivan Vasilievich, still not trusting his wife, declared not his second son Vasily, but his grandson Dmitry, the heir to the throne. However, the support of the fifteen-year-old boy by the Boyar Duma did not please the Grand Duke, and exactly a year later - at the beginning of 1499 - Ivan III, fearing of losing the reins of government, freed his son Vasily from captivity. And in the spring of 1502, he subjected his grandson and his mother to disgrace, transferring them from house arrest to a dungeon, where they died years later.
In the summer of 1503, Ivan Vasilyevich had a stroke, and since then he “walks with his feet and one can only”. By the middle of 1505, the Grand Duke became completely incapacitated, and on October 27 of the same year he died. The Russian throne went to his son Vasily III. He ruled arbitrarily and did not tolerate objections, however, not possessing the talents of his father, he managed to do very little - in 1510 he ended the independence of Pskov, and four years later he annexed Smolensk to his lands. However, under his rule, relations with the Kazan and Crimean khanates became strained.
