Principality of Moscow
The principality of Moscow was one of the oldest principalities of the north-east of Russia. When the chronicles first mentioned the existence of Moscow (1147) it was only a little fortress-village belonging to the Princes of Vladimir. At this period the Tartar Khan was the sovereign of all Russia. He it was whom the Russians named Tsar, and the title of High Prince with the privileges thereto appertaining was transmitted to one or other of the Russian princes according to his will. The Tartars meddled little in the inner life of the Russian people : they were chiefly concerned in obtaining the highest possible financial benefit. Ivan Kalita, like his successors, found a way to satisfy the Tartar greed. The nickname kalita means purse or bag, and tells us what was the quality of the "first to knit the soil of Russia together." The Russian princes, entrusted by the Tartars with the levying of the dan, used to send ambassadors to the " Golden Horde," or resorted thither themselves with rich presents, in order to gain the friendship of the Khan and his army - a friendship which enabled them to subjugate their rivals, the other Russian princes.
But to conquer in the political struggle Moscow had first to triumph as an economic organism. This latter victory was made easier by the geographical position of Moscow, on the important commercial highway connecting the commercial region of Smolensk with that of the Volga, which crossed another highway leading from wealthy Novgorod to Nizhni-Novgorod. When, after the seizure of Constantinople by the French and Italians and the reinforcement of the nomads about the mouths of the Dnieper, the famous route "from the Variags to the Greeks" had to be abandoned, another trade route was chosen - the Don - and one of the principal points of this new highway was Moscow.
Later, in the tenth century, the principality of Moscow entered into commercial relations with the ports of the White Sea and the Arctic Ocean, and by such means quickly induced a lively current of trade between England and Russia. Presently Moscow became the clearing-house and center of all the trade routes of Russia ; but even by the end of the fourteenth century the city numbered some tens of thousands of inhabitants, and in that respect was not inferior to the greatest cities of Europe.
In the center of the country, and therefore little disturbed by the attacks of foreign neighbours, the principality profited economically by its geographical position, and gave asylum to a compact mass of agriculturists whose produce soon exceeded that of the region of Kiev. Moreover, the colonizing policy of the Muscovite princes contributed to the development of the agricultural yield of the State ; they employed certain of their resources in ransoming Russian prisoners of war from the Tartars, and peopling their domains therewith.
The economic strength of the Muscovite principality and its friendship with the Khan resulted in an influx of boyars. Many vassals of the Princes of Tver, Nizhni-Novgorod, and others abandoned their suzerains and entered the service of the Prince of Moscow. Lesser princes followed their example, transforming themselves from independent seigneurs into Muscovite servitors, while others were subjected by force.
Only in the beginning of the fourteenth century did Moscow become a separate principality, under its first prince, Daniel Alexandrovitch, who inherited Moscow from his father, the illustrious Alexander Nevsky. Under Daniel and his successor Yury the principality of Moscow rapidly expanded, absorbing the cities ot Kolomna, Mojaisk, and Pereiaslavl-Zalessky, and it became the Grand or High Principality under the second successor of Daniel, Ivan Kalita (1328). Ivan Kalita (1328-1341) "gathered together the Russian territories," and Moscow became the metropolitanate. From that time onward Moscow continued to strike at her feudal neighbors, gradually absorbing the divided soil of Russia, and centralizing the political power.
Thanks to these facts Moscow was already, in the first half of the fifteenth century, the most powerful of the feudal States of Russia, or, to speak more exactly, the most powerful of her feudal associations, for the principalities of that period, as we have seen, were not States in the modern sense of the word, but unions of feudal domains of varying dimensions. In the middle of the fifteenth century only two great principalities were still independent of that of Moscow-those of Tver and Riazan : but these too were soon absorbed.
The success of the Princes of Moscow was partly due to the Church, for the interests of the most important of the feudal ecclesiastics, the metropolitans of Vladimir, coincided with the interests of the grand-duchy of Moscow. The metropolitan was always in rivalry with the Archbishop of Tver, just as the Prince of Moscow was always contending against the Prince of Tver. The principality of Tver, situated in a corner of the principality of Moscow, hampered commercial exchange between Moscow and Novgorod. The archbishopric of Tver, cutting into the religious domains of the metropolitan, gave asylum to all sorts of " heretical" ideas, and above all to the movement of ecclesiastical reform directed against simony, that is, against the sale of religious appointments, which was so highly profitable to the metropolitan.
Dmitrii Donskoi (1363-1389) established primogeniture, and his son Vasilii (1389-1425) reigned as first hereditary prince. After the death of Vasilii there occurred the final struggle between the advocates of primogeniture and those of seniority, and from 1450 the rule was established that the succession should be willed to the eldest son. Moscow became a hereditary monarchy, absorbed the princedoms, threw off the Tatar yoke in 1480 and at length, in 1523 united Russian territories into a powerful realm.
At the end of the fifteenth century the struggle between the Prince of Moscow and the other princes, a sanguinary conflict marked by more than one crime, ended in the victory of Moscow and the unification of the greater portion of North-Eastern Russia. But this was not as yet the victory of the absolute monarchy. Certainly the quantitative changes in the life of the Muscovite principality and the expansion of the latter were accompanied by qualitative changes. But the principle of the State remained the same, and the Prince of Moscow remained not so much the sovereign and political chief as the owner of a vast domain. The admixture, typical of feudalism, of private and public law, still obtained in the Grand Duchy of Moscow. After his triumph over the other principalities the High Prince continued to own his city of Moscow as he owned, say, his table service. Both were his private property, which he dealt with not as a monarch but as a good landowner.
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