Russia. A History

By the time the princes of Moscow had gained seniority in northern Rus, the south-western principalities were wholly detached. Like their northern neighbours, they too had recognized the suzerainty of the Golden Horde after the Mongol invasion. But by the middle of the fourteenth century, Galicia and Volhynia had been absorbed into the realms of Poland and Lithuania. During the following decades Lithuania added Kiev, Chernigov, and Smolensk to its domain as well. The lands of Rus lost their territorial integrity.

Simultaneously, the unity of the metropolitanate was also being threatened. Despite the broadening political gulf between the northern and south-western principalities, they had all continued to form a single ecclesiastical community. After Metropolitan Maxim moved from Kiev to the north-east in 1299, however, the unity of the see was repeatedly challenged. First, the prince of Galicia secured the establishment of a short-lived metropolitanate (c.1303–8); later, the rulers of Poland and Lithuania urged the creation of separate metropolitanates for the Orthodox inhabitants of the lands they had incorporated. Church patriarchs established a series of sees (c

.1315–1340s), but under pressure from the metropolitans in north-eastern Rus, disbanded each of them.

Thus, a century after the Mongols destroyed Kiev, the institutions that had given cohesion both to Kievan Rus and to the post-invasion principalities were crumbling. The state had fragmented, and the unity of the Church was in jeopardy. Furthermore, the dynasty’s complex rules of seniority and succession had been supplanted by the authority of the khans, who had begun to confer the throne of Vladimir not on the dynasty’s legitimate heirs—the senior, eligible princes—but on the princes most likely to fulfil their demands: the Daniilovichi of Moscow.

The Foundations of Muscovy

Daniilovich rule was not automatically accepted by the rest of the dynasty. Although the legitimate heir, Alexander of Tver, had been soundly defeated, opponents of Daniilovich dominance surfaced repeatedly through the fourteenth century. Their pressure compelled the Muscovite princes to adopt policies aimed at retaining Mongol favour, neutralizing the dynastic opposition, and developing domestic sources of legitimacy. As a result of such efforts to stay in power, they also strengthened their own territorial, economic, and military base. The Daniilovichi thus transformed the distribution of power in the lands of northern Rus and laid the foundations for a new state—Muscovy.

The adversaries of the Daniilovichi were also Riurikids. Their domains, known as apanages (udely), had been carved out of older, larger principalities in accordance with a custom, dating from the Kievan Rus era, of subdividing the lands ruled by a dynastic branch to accommodate all its members and also to share the responsibilities for administration and defence. The practice was particularly pronounced among the Rostov clan, whose lands were carved into numerous apanages, including Iaroslavl, Beloozero, and Ustiug. The apanage princes of Rostov joined the various coalitions against the Daniilovichi and in support of the legitimate princes from the house of Tver.

Their protests, however, made virtually no impression on the Mongol khans, who maintained the Moscow princes—Ivan Daniilovich, then his sons Semen (ruled 1341–53) and Ivan II (ruled 1353–9)—in power. Only once did an anti-Daniilovich coalition achieve success: when Ivan II died and the Golden Horde itself entered a period of internal conflict, a coalition secured the confirmation of the prince of Suzdal as grand prince. Within three years, however, the Moscow line in the person of Dmitrii Ivanovich (later known as Dmitrii Donskoi) had recovered the Vladimir throne.

Although the Mongol khans paid little attention to them, the Daniilovichi themselves did respond to their dynastic opponents. One strategy they adopted to neutralize them was to form marital alliances. Ivan I arranged marriages for his daughters with the sons of two of his most vocal opponents, the princes of Beloozero and Iaroslavl; his niece became the wife of Prince Konstantin Mikhailovich of Tver, a champion of the anti-Daniilovich group. Ivan’s son Semen married the daughter of the late Alexander of Tver despite the Church’s disapproval of this, his third marriage. In 1366 Prince Dmitrii followed the pattern by marrying the daughter of his former rival, the prince of Suzdal. These marriages, all concluded with dynastic branches whose members had been reluctant to recognize the predominance of Moscow, created bonds of kinship and alliance. Although they could not transform the Daniilovichi into the senior dynastic line, they did have the effect of elevating the Daniilovichi’s informal status with their in-laws and, thereby, helped to mute, if not completely neutralize, their opposition.