How Did Muscovy Become Russia?

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has provoked an intense debate about the origins of Russia and Ukraine. While Russia lays claim to the legacy of the medieval state of Kievan Rus’, from which it gets its name, modern Russia was created by the principality of Muscovy in the 15th and 16th centuries. Moscow’s rise from frontier town to hegemon was by no means inevitable and owed much to historical contingency and the Machiavellian policies of Moscow’s princes.

On January 16, 1547, the 16-year-old Grand Prince Ivan IV of Moscow was crowned Tsar of All Russia at a ceremony in the Dormition Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin. Ivan, later known as Ivan Grozny or Ivan the Terrible, had been Grand Prince of Moscow since he was three years old. After attaining his majority, he became the first man to be crowned Tsar of Russia, a title derived from the Roman Caesar.

With his new title, Ivan claimed to be the sole ruler of the lands of Rus’—rendered as Russia in Latin sources—the medieval state that ruled over much of Belarus, Ukraine, and European Russia. Ivan’s claim was not uncontested, and in the 1570s, he fought the costly and ultimately unsuccessful Livonian War in the Baltic in an attempt to seize territories that were once part of the Rus’.

Ivan was more successful in his conquests of the Tatar Khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan, successor states of the Mongol Empire. In the 1580s, near the end of Ivan’s reign, the Cossack leader Yermak Timofeyevich crossed the Urals and conquered the Khanate of Sibir (western Siberia), which became part of Russia.

Before Ivan, the Russian principalities were wholly European, although many had experienced two centuries of Mongol rule. After Ivan, the Russians continued their eastward expansion to become a Eurasian power. While Ivan’s reign marked the transformation from Muscovy to Russia, Moscow’s rise was by no means inevitable.

Rus’ Before Moscow

According to the 12th-century Primary Chronicle, the medieval state of Rus’ was founded in 862 CE by the eastern Viking chieftain Rurik in the region of Novgorod in northern Russia. By the 880s, Rurik’s successor, Prince Oleg, conquered the city of Kyiv on the Dnipro River, which became the capital of Kievan Rus’.

Prince Oleg made two unsuccessful attempts to conquer Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, but after making peace, the Kievan state flourished by controlling the trade route between the Baltic Sea and Constantinople. Under Byzantine influence, Grand Prince Vladimir of Kyiv converted the Rus’ to Christianity in 988.

Vladimir’s son and successor, Grand Prince Yaroslav, nicknamed Yaroslav the Wise, pacified the realm after a civil war and took Kievan Rus’ to new political and cultural heights. Upon his death in 1054, Yaroslav divided his realm between his three sons, who could expect to inherit the Grand Principality of Kiev upon the death of their elder siblings.

Yaroslav’s lateral succession policy initially proved effective, but successive generations of Rurikid princes frequently fought against each other, and central authority in Kyiv declined. In 1169, Andrey Bogolyubsky, Prince of Vladimir (around 100 miles east of Moscow), sacked Kyiv, and the center of political power in Rus’ shifted from Kyiv to Vladimir. Kyiv’s decline continued after the Mongol conquest in the 1230s, while Novgorod in the north adopted an accommodative policy towards the Mongols, enabling them to become a wealthy merchant republic.

Moscow’s first mention in the chronicles dates from 1147. At that time, it was a minor frontier town in the Principality of Vladimir, then ruled by Prince Yury Dolgoruky (Andrey Bogolubsky’s father). Although a settlement on the site could have existed earlier, Prince Yury is regarded as the founder of Moscow and built a fort on the banks of the River Moskva on the site of the Moscow Kremlin.

Muscovy gradually increased in significance, and following Grand Prince Alexander Nevsky’s death in 1263, his youngest son Daniil (then two years old) was named Prince of Moscow. After establishing himself as an independent ruler in the early 1280s, Daniil strengthened his state by inheriting the powerful principality of Pereslavl-Zalessky to the north and defeating the principality of Ryazan in the southeast.

Daniil died in 1303, one year before his elder brother and rival, Andrey of Gorodets, who ruled as Grand Prince of Vladimir between 1293 and 1304. Andrey was succeeded by his cousin Prince Mikhail of Tver, whose appointment as Grand Prince was confirmed by Toqta Khan, ruler of the Golden Horde.

Under the terms of Yaroslav’s succession law, any Rurikid prince whose father died before becoming Grand Prince would be excluded from the line of succession. This meant that Daniil’s eldest son, Prince Yury of Moscow, could never hope to become Grand Prince of Vladimir. The ambitious Yury resented his exclusion and sought to challenge Mikhail’s authority as Grand Prince.

Battle for Hegemony

Although Moscow and Tver had been allies in the internecine wars of the late 13th century, Yury instigated a struggle for hegemony between the two states that would last several decades. While Mikhail was confirmed as Prince of Novgorod in 1307, Yury gained control of Nizhny Novgorod and strengthened his grip on Ryazan, effectively surrounding the Principality of Vladimir from all sides.

Mikhail’s eastern campaigns against the Muscovites were mostly unsuccessful, and by 1311, the Novgorodians rose up against Mikhail’s governors, leading to a protracted civil war during which the city passed between the Muscovites and Tverites on several occasions.

In the meantime, Toqta Khan had died in 1313 and was succeeded by his nephew Uzbeg Khan. The latter summoned Mikhail to his court at Sarai on the Lower Volga to renew his yarlyk, or patent of office. Mikhail enjoyed the support of the new Khan and persuaded the other to summon Yury to Sarai in 1315, hoping to take advantage of his absence to defeat the Muscovite armies.

Instead, Yury took advantage of a long stay at Sarai to persuade the Khan that Mikhail had been withholding tribute due to him. The Khan abandoned the Horde’s policy of non-intervention in Russian succession practices and threw his weight behind the Muscovites. By the time he returned to Moscow in 1317, Yury had married the Khan’s sister and had a large Tartar army to support his military campaigns. Most importantly, Uzbeg Khan gave him the yarlyk, appointing him Grand Prince of Vladimir, forcing Mikhail to relinquish the title.

Mikhail returned to Tver, strengthened the city’s defenses, and decisively defeated Yury’s attempt to take the city in battle. His Tartar wife became a prisoner and died unexpectedly the following year. After learning of his sister’s death, the Khan summoned both Yury and Mikhail to Sarai for an investigation. Yury successfully persuaded the Khan that Mikhail had poisoned his wife, and Mikhail was executed on November 22, 1218.

After eliminating Mikhail, Yury assumed the duties of Grand Prince, but he continued to face opposition from Mikhail’s son, Dmitry of Tver. In 1222, Dmitry successfully deposed Yury after persuading the Khan that the Muscovites were withholding tribute, and in 1225, Yury was killed on his way to face trial in Sarai.

It was not until 1332 that Yury’s younger brother Ivan managed to regain the title of Grand Prince. Ivan was an effective military leader and maintained the Khan’s support by defeating his Russian rivals in battle and forcing them to make payments, which were forwarded to the Khan. Ivan’s efficiency as the khan’s tax collector earned him the nickname Ivan Kalita, or Ivan Moneybags. Weaker Russian principalities who complained about the rapaciousness of the Muscovites were told, “Moscow does not believe in tears,” a folk saying that became the title of a classic 1979 Soviet film.

Overthrowing the Khan

Ivan Kalita successfully persuaded the Khan to make the title of Grand Prince hereditary among the Muscovite princes, and upon his death in 1340, he was succeeded by his son Simeon. Moscow continued to be challenged by the Tverites, who allied with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which ruled over much of the former Kievan Rus’, including Kyiv itself.

In 1363, Prince Dmitry of Moscow, Ivan Kalita’s grandson, became Grand Prince of Vladimir at the age of 13. Grand Duke Algirdas of Lithuania sought to take advantage of the Muscovite prince’s youth and led three campaigns against Moscow, but the latter prevailed and concluded a favorable peace with the Lithuanians in 1375.

After fending off the Lithuanians, Dmitry turned his attention towards his Tartar overlords. The Golden Horde had collapsed into civil war, and Dmitry stopped making payments to Sarai. In 1378, Dmitry defeated a punitive invasion of Muscovy led by the Tartar general Mamai. Two years later, he took the offensive and led a coalition of Russian princes to victory over Mamai at the Battle of Kulikovo on the banks of the Don River on September 8, earning himself the epithet Dmitry Donskoy.

Despite Dmitry Donskoy’s victory at Kulikovo, Moscow was unable to throw off the Mongol yoke for good. In 1382, Mamai’s rival, Toqtamysh, defeated the Muscovites and sacked the city, forcing Dmitry’s submission. Nevertheless, when Dmitry died in 1389, his son Vasily assumed the title of Grand Prince of Moscow—transferring the title from Vladimir—without consulting the khan.

In 1392, Grand Prince Vasily formed an alliance with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to strengthen himself against the Golden Horde. However, by the early 1400s, Vasily was at war with his father-in-law, Grand Duke Vytautas, in a struggle for control over the Rus. When the two sides made peace in 1408, the status quo was broadly maintained.

After Vasily I’s death in 1425, his son Vasily II was embroiled in a bitter struggle for succession with his cousin Dmitry Shemyaka. Although Vasily had been blinded by his rival in 1446, he was eventually restored to the throne in 1453. Vasily’s son Ivan III succeeded to the Muscovite throne following his father’s death in 1462. Ivan’s prestige was enhanced in 1472 when he married the Byzantine princess Sophia Palailogina, asserting Muscovy’s claim to the Byzantine inheritance after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.

During his 43-year reign, Ivan aggressively expanded Moscow’s territory in pursuit of what he called “the gathering of the Rus’ lands,” his attempt to bring all the principalities of Rus’ under Muscovite rule. In 1478, he brought the Novgorod Republic under his control, extending his domains to the Arctic, and in 1485, Moscow annexed its former rival Tver. A few years earlier, in 1480, he had definitively overthrown Tartar overlordship at the so-called Great Stand on the River Ugra. The Muscovite and Tartar armies observed each other from opposite banks of the river for a month until both sides withdrew due to lack of supplies.

As a result of his expansion of Muscovy and his assertion of independence from the Tartars, Ivan came to be known as Ivan the Great. Nevertheless, although Ivan had assumed the title Sovereign of All Rus’, he had only managed to conquer eastern Rus’, and Ukraine and Belarus remained in Lithuanian hands.

Russian tsars and emperors would spend the next three centuries fighting against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (formed in 1569) to expand into western Rus’. The Cossack warlord Bohdan Khmelnytsky rebelled against Polish rule in the 1650s and established a nominally independent state in Left-Bank Ukraine (east of the Dnipro), though he was effectively a vassal of his Russian ally Tsar Alexei I.

Following the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century, Russia acquired Belarus and most of western Ukraine, though the province of Galicia went to the Habsburg Empire. During the same period, Russia conquered Crimea and south-central Ukraine from the Ottoman Empire.

The collapse of the Russian Empire after the 1917 Revolution saw the emergence of an independent Ukraine, but Ukraine and Belarus were soon incorporated into the Soviet Union alongside Russia. Ukraine and Belarus regained independence in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

As part of his justification for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Vladimir Putin indicated that the gathering of the Rus’ lands is Russian state policy once again. As this article has shown, Rus’ has more often been divided than united, and modern Russia does not have sole claim to the legacy of the Kievan Rus’.