2. Ancient to pre-Soviet Russian History

At the turn of XV - XVI centuries a Russian centralized state emerged.

Table of Contents

(no page numbers here, but to get an idea.)

The socio/cultural factor.......................................................60

Stages of political centralization of Russia.............……......72

Topic I. FORMATION OF THE MOSCOW STATE........75

(XIV century - first third of the XVI century). ...........……...78

1327 Ivan I Kalita (grandson of Alexander Nevsky) …………84

1378 the armies of Dmitry Ivanovich (grandson Ivan I) defeated the Horde army on the river Vozhe...............86

1462-1533, Ivan III, son of Vasily the dark (blinded)……….88

(1505 - 1533) Ivan III's son, Vasily III Ivanovich ......……….89

Creation of the socio-political system .......................……....90

1497 Ivan III created the new Code of Laws, a pan- Russian code of laws. ......93

The sociocultural factor.

A huge role in the process of Russian modernization was played by the socio-cultural factor. In our country the concepts of "family" or "family" and "yard" or "household" used to be identical, in other words, they represented a syncretic, undivided whole. It took time for much work to split the original syncretism. This process opens the way to a typology of the family, within which, in particular, the paternal type, built on the "monarchical model", stands out. This type of family, or rather, its cultural model serves as the socio-cultural basis for the formation of authoritarian statehood in Russia (just as the fraternal family represents the cultural basis of sobornaya statehood). Therefore, the cultural model of the authoritarian family is extremely important for the analysis of the specifics of Russian statehood.

The composite paternal family is a small absolutist state. The Bolshak, usually the father or grandfather of the household, the most experienced and senior man, exercised in his family, up to a certain extent like the tsar in the 17th century state, patriarchal rule and traditional domination based on faith in the legality and sanctity of paternal authority. He administered the labor of family members, distributed work, directed and supervised it, settled intrafamily disputes, punished the guilty, monitored morality, made purchases, made deals, paid taxes, was the head of the family cult and was responsible to the village and landlord... and administration for the behavior of family members.

It would be more accurate to say that it was not the boshak who imitated the tsar, but the tsar who exercised his functions in the state like the boshak in the family. This should be understood both historically and logically: historically, the family set the sociocultural pattern for the state, not vice versa. Analysis of the forms of the archaic family is important for the reason that the emergence of the state was based on the real content of the established culture as a possible basis for the integration of large society. The image of the paternal family acts in Russian culture as a project of integrity realized in the form of the state and society.

Hence the question: how could Russia form a large society and state if, logically and historically, the starting point was a local world with its hostile culture to everything that lies beyond its borders and which does not know the indispensable for large society and statehood domination of abstract thinking? This is a certain historical riddle of Russian history. It was formulated by N.A.Berdyaev in the form of an initial contradiction. On the one hand, "Russia - the most stateless, the most anarchic country in the world. And the Russian people - the most apolitical people who never knew how to arrange their land. On the other hand, "Russia is the most governmental and the most bureaucratic country in the world."

The complexity of the problem lies not only in the fact that the Russian peasantry, first of all by its culture, was a bearer of values of pre-state local worlds, which were dominated by the rhythms of mythological emotional thinking, but also in the fact that the carriers of this culture constituted the vast majority of society. Suffice it to say that the nobility and clergy in the early twentieth century accounted for only 2% of the population. The reading public, that is, people who claimed to have mastered abstract thinking, amounted to only 3-4% of the population at the end of the nineteenth century.

Gradually the humanization of the law took place, which meant that society began to consider dangerous the arbitrariness of the patriarchal head of the family over its members, and that the value of the individual, the personality was growing. The Code of 1649 introduced the death penalty for parents for killing their own children. Under the influence of private legislative acts of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century, the power of the head of the family over the household gradually weakened. For example, if in the 16th century a father could sell his children into slavery, in the 17th century he could only put them into servitude until the lord died, and in the early 18th century he could only serve a lord or mortgage debts for not more than five years. Since 1845 the husband was criminally liable for beating his wife. In 1863 corporal punishment for women was abolished. Some progress was made in humanizing relations between spouses and between parents and children. Progress was made in cities and industrial provinces. It was expressed in the mitigation of violence against the weak in the family and in the establishment of a degree of social and legal control over the interests of women and children. Absolutism within the family was to a greater or lesser extent placed within the framework of the law. This process was reinforced by the increasing ability to draw information from the printed word, which reduced the general social significance for real behavior of the original family models. The legislative restriction of intra-family authoritarianism and cultural shifts could not help but affect authoritarianism on the scale of the larger society and the state. Obviously, the original archaic model of culture, which served as the historical matrix of the emergence of the state, was constantly adjusted, criticized.

The dynamics of urbanization (the process of increasing the role of cities in the development of society) is one of the forms of overcoming syncretism. The separation of the city from the village in Russia occurred sluggishly and inconsistently. Until the middle of the 17th century, the city and the village were socially, economically and culturally a single space. There was no clear legal, cultural, social, administrative and economic border between the city and the village, the differences in the economic, social and domestic life of citizens and villagers were insignificant, and the mass consciousness and mentality of all social groups was fairly uniform. The final separation of town and village occurred only in 1775 - 1785. Until the last third of the XIX century. we can talk more about the influence of the city on the village, rather than the village on the city.

Russian culture is characterized by deep inner contradictions. The original historical and sociological characteristic of Russian culture is that it reflects the border position of Russia between two continents and civilizational types - Europe and Asia, the West and the East. Long debates on this problem have generated different answers. Western-minded thinkers preferred to see in Russia a steady trend towards joining the West and overcoming the "Eastern backwardness", while Slavophile thinkers, on the contrary, defended Russia's distinctiveness, a fundamental difference from the West and the East, seeing in it a communal-orthodox origin. Later, a Eurasian line in the understanding of Russian culture was revealed, which asserted its spatial, historical and spiritual merger with the Asian area.

These ideological debates reflected the irreducibility of Russian culture to one of the variants or to a combination and synthesis of both.

It is the intermediate position between the West and the East, the interaction with and opposition to both of these origins has led to a deep contradiction of Russian culture, its bifurcation and internal rifts. Bearing in itself the features of similarity with the cultures of the West and cultures of the East, Russian culture at the same time differs from them. In the words of N.A.Berdyaev, Russia combines the West and the East as two streams of world history, and this connection turns it not in some integral version, but into an arena of collision and interaction "two streams of world history - East and West. This initial contradiction (antinomy) unfolded in the "polarization of the Russian soul", in the cultural split between the ruling class and the masses, in the changes in domestic policy from attempts at reform to conservatism, and in foreign policy from close alliance with Western countries to confrontation with them all.

Concretizing the initial contradiction of Russian history, Berdyaev singles out five periods in it, which at the same time form different entities, "five different Russia": the Kiev, the Tatar period, Moscow, Petrine, Imperial. Soviet and then post-Soviet Russia also becomes a special entity. These Russias, replacing each other, at the same time overlapped, not forming an organic unity and continuity. On the contrary, society went through radical, in many ways catastrophic, changes of socio-cultural type. Each transition from one period to another was accompanied not only by a far-reaching "restructuring" of the preceding political and social structures, but also by an inversion (this term was introduced by A.S. Achiezer and means a steep value and semantic turn in culture from one pole to another), meaning an abrupt break and vigorous measures to deny and destroy the rejected past.

A.S. Akhiezer assesses Russian society as torn between two extremes, two poles between which there is a pendulum-like dynamic throughout Russian history. One pole is the veche ideal, which contains the beginnings of concord. The second pole is authoritarianism. The drama of Russian history plays out between the poles of synodality and authoritarianism in a cyclical cycle. This socio-cultural dynamics has led to a deep split in Russian society, which has led to deep socio-cultural contradictions of Russian modernization.

But it is not only about diachronic gaps in Russian history. The weakness of the integrating spiritual principle led to constant internal fragmentation of this society. It is not only a matter of contradictions between working people and propertied strata, the people and the intelligentsia, society and the state. In Russian culture, there are many other contradictions that create the diversity of national and spiritual life: individualism - collectivism, humility - rebellion, the natural spontaneity - monastic asceticism, softness - cruelty, selflessness - selfishness, elitist - popular, high - commonplace, etc.

There are persistent features of a fundamental gap between natural-paganism and high religiosity; between the cult of materialism and adherence to lofty spiritual ideals; between all-inclusive statehood and anarchic voluntarism, the spirit of freedom and obedience, etc.

Existing in the culture tendencies to form some "core" and the formation of "mediative", i.e. mediating orientations and structures that would try on extremes have not been fully developed, which doomed the spiritual life of society to fierce opposition of different currents, leading to sharp disruptions and transitions from one state to the opposite.

An important factor contributing to the discontinuity, the internal non-systemic nature of Russian culture was the spread of this culture across a vast expanse of Eurasia. This weakened the system-forming principles of Russian culture and the lack of formation of its "vertical", ie, a stable hierarchy of values and orientations.

Under the influence of natural-climatic, geopolitical, confessional factors in Russia has developed a specific social organization. Its main elements are: 1) the primary economic and social cell - corporation (community, artel, partnership, collective farm, cooperative, concern, etc. 2) the state is not a superstructure over civil society, as in Western countries, but a backbone, sometimes even a demiurge (creator) of civil society; 3) statehood has a sacral character or is ineffective ("sedition"); 4) statehood is based on a corporation of service nobility (nobility, nomenklatura, etc.).

This social organization was extremely stable and, changing its form, not the essence, was recreated after each turmoil in Russian history, ensuring the viability of Russian society, the internal unity of its historical existence.

Unlike most European countries, in Russia the acuteness of social confrontation has long been relieved by migrations to the outskirts, where elements opposed to the center have traditionally clustered. At the same time, the economic separation of regions, low level of commodity-money relations, sparse population and constant external danger demanded a rapid mobilization of economic and human resources of society and centralization of power and administration. Therefore, the state actively intervened in the process of formation and legislative regulation of the estates in order to ensure the rational functioning of the entire system.

The main functions of any state are the organization and maintenance of administration, the army, and the police. The main source of funding is taxes. In Russia there was a peculiar type of organization of society, which allowed to solve these problems without the expenditure of money. There were created a special servant system in which each stratum of society (estates) had the right to exist only insofar as had a certain range of duties (service or burdens). The core of this system was conditional land tenure - the provision of land with working peasants to servants - landlords on the condition that they performed military or civil service (analogous to the "industrial estates" - postession manufactories, created under Peter I).

An important feature of the Russian state was its active role in the development of the economy, infrastructure, culture and other aspects of society. This was a consequence of a combination in Russia of innovation and mobilization models of development, with the leading role of the latter. This type of development is determined by several factors: 1) natural and climatic conditions that minimize the surplus product in Russia compared to European countries, as well as requiring significantly higher costs for the construction and maintenance of housing, social, industrial and transport infrastructure.

Therefore, the Russian economy developed on the basis of; 1) reduced consumption and redistributive (distributive) system, i.e. on the basis of non-equivalent "vertical" product exchange in the form of withdrawal and concentration of the authorities part of the surplus product in order to ensure its subsequent natural redistribution to solve national problems (with an increasing but subordinate role of market relations); 2) the constant need to concentrate all resources for defense against a permanent military threat. This threat was not only military, because it was not intra-civilizational, but inter-civilizational: opposing aggression of the Catholic and Protestant West and the Muslim world; 3) since it was not only about preservation of territorial integrity, but the Orthodox ethnic identity, the spiritual foundations of Russian civilization, faith in autocracy allowed him to restrain to a certain extent almost painless. Therefore, the state, as a rule, was not so much an overseer as a protector of the economic security of the country, the observance of national interests.

Another huge contradiction manifested itself in the last two centuries of the existence of the Russian Empire: between the state unity and society's need for development, that is, modernization, which could not take place without activation of all estates and groups and without transformation of their inherent values and orientations.

Historically, it was the autocracy that acted as the bearer of a universal principle that united a diverse conglomerate of social and cultural structures. The long experience of advancing eastward and westward had taught the Russian government, beginning with Ivan the Terrible, not to rely on force alone, but to reach compromise with local political structures. Authoritarian rule allowed a flexible regime of political regulation and limited cultural and religious autonomy of the included territories.

So, modern literature characterizes Russian civilization as: 1) a multinational super-ethnos, formed on an initially polyethnic basis as a result of the integration of small and large nations around the trunk of the Great Russian people; 2) a multi-religious community, the components of which retain their inherent characteristics; 3) a community in the formation and development of which the state has always played a significant, often determining role; 4) the geopolitical position of the Russian state predetermined the formation of the Russian civilization as a synthesis of cultures of the East and the West.

Taking into account the four signs of Russian civilization, we can talk about several "historical sub-civilizations" that existed "within a single civilization phenomenon": Old Russian, Moscow Rus', imperial and Soviet. Other variations are also possible. Thus, Russian civilization has at least a thousand years of history.

Stages of political centralization of Russia.

Creation of conditions for the unification of the Russian lands.

Test Questions . (I said that I would include some scholastic material.)

1. How did V.O. Kluchevsky characterize the period of Russian history of the mid XV - early XVII centuries?

a) "Russia of the Dnieper, city, and trade."

b) "Upper Volga Rus, feudal-princely, free landed property";

c) "Rus Velikaya, Moscow, tsarist-boyarist, military-land-tenant";

d) "the All-Russian, imperial-noble period of serfdom, farming and factory-farming".

2. What is the content of the term modernization in relation to the historical process?

a) it is a constant improvement of technology, production of more perfect tools and materials, achievement of man's domination over nature;

b) it is a complex process of transition from traditional agrarian society to modern, industrial society, covering all aspects of social life: economic, social, legal, political, cultural;

c) it is the transition from lower socio-economic formations to higher ones;

d) it is the improvement of society's political system, the transition from an authoritarian to a democratic model.

3. Proponents of the theory of Eurasianism prove that Russia:

a) a multinational country, developing on an upward trajectory and having neither dead ends nor regression in its path;

b) a despotic power incapable of developing along the democratic path;

c) forced to constantly confront threats from the west and east, which determines the identity of its history;

d) does not represent an independent civilization, but constantly oscillates between Europe and Asia.

4. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Russia's geopolitical position is characterized by:

a) increased security after the end of the Cold War;

b) increase of its role and authority in Europe and Asia;

c) loss of favorable factors that had ensured its independence and autonomy from the West throughout its history;

d) the reduction of part of its territory and loss of its role as a great world power.

Abstract:  The creation of the socio-political system of the Russian state

5. Currently, there are the following main theories that study and explain the historical process:

(a) religious-historical, world-historical, local-historical;

b) historical-materialist, liberal, modernization;

c) formational and civilizational;

d) ethnogenesis and eurasianism.

Topic I. FORMATION OF THE MOSCOW STATE

Russian statehood goes back to the ninth century, when as a result of the unification of a number of East Slavic tribal unions, Kievan Rus - one of the largest states of early medieval Europe - emerged. It existed as a single political unit for two and a half centuries and was a connecting link between European and Eastern countries. The borders of Kievan Rus were formed mainly by the end of X century and remained stable in the following time. They corresponded to the territory of the East Slavic ethnos settlement. The state included several non-Slavic (Finnic-speaking) peoples who lived in the Volga-Oka interfluves and near the coast of the Gulf of Finland.

As the strongest power in Eastern Europe, Rus could resist such a dangerous enemy as the Khazar Khaganate (Turkic state in the interfluve of the Lower Don and Volga) and the raids of nomadic tribes who lived in the area of the Northern Black Sea (Pechenegs and Polovtsians). An important direction of Russian foreign policy was relations with Byzantium. Russia maintained extensive relations with the countries of Central and Western Europe. In particular, Russian princes entered into dynastic marriages with the rulers of Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, France and others. Within the framework of the Old Russian state there was a formation of early feudal relations, which are characterized by a combination of tribal and feudal features of development, there were outlined the political traditions, formed ancient Russian people, there were formed cultural and historical ties with neighboring countries. Mature feudalism is characterized by: domination of subsistence economy, allotment of direct producer with land and means of production, personal dependence of peasants on feudal lords, low level of technological development.

Feudal fragmentation (i.e. the process of political isolation, the creation of independent state formations) was a natural period in the development of statehood, in which there was a dynamic economic, social and political formation of the Russian lands. The relations between them were regulated by agreements and customs, the principalities were not fenced off from each other economically, in addition, they had a common religion and culture. However, the fragmentation weakened the powers of the state and made it vulnerable to external threats. The Mongol-Tatars conquest of Russia started in 1236, and in 1240 it ended with the fall of Kiev. The establishment of a long dependence on the Golden Horde (the so called yoke) had a considerable influence on the type of Russian feudalism and on the rate of its development; it preserved the feudal fragmentation and caused the lag of Russia from the developed countries of Europe. However, the Mongol-Tatar conquest could not prevent the gradual formation of unifying tendencies, and at the turn of the XIII - XIV centuries the Russian lands began to be drawn into the process of unification at a new, higher level.

From the end of the 10th century up to the middle of the 12th century Russia was a relatively unified state, its constituent parts were volosts - territories ruled by relatives of the prince of Kiev - the supreme ruler. Gradually the independence of volosts was strengthened. They were assigned to certain branches of the expanded princely sort Rurikovich. In each volost was formed allotment land tenure of a princely branch. This process was outlined already in the second half of the XI century. Soon the state fragmentation began and by the middle of the XII century the number of actually independent principalities was formed: Kiev, Chernigov, Smolensk, Volyn, Galicia, Vladimir-Suzdal and others. Their formation occurred against the background of the rapid development of productive forces of society, the progress of agriculture, crafts, domestic and foreign trade. The social structure of Russian society became more complex, more clearly marked its stratification in the individual lands and towns: nobility, clergy, merchants, artisans, the lower classes of the city. Developed dependence of villagers from landowners. The nobility was arisen, which was based on the service in exchange for the land grants for the period of this service. Within the framework of the princedoms-states the Russian church was gaining strength.

(XIV century - first third of the XVI century)

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were the time of the formation of the Russian centralized state. Centralization is a natural and progressive stage in the development of society, corresponding to the stage of developed and late feudalism. Centralization process was based on a complex of preconditions which could be divided into economic, socio-political and foreign policy ones.

The beginning of the economic prerequisites for the unification of the Russian lands refers to the XIV century. In 20 - 30 years of the XIV century, the socio-economic upheaval caused by the Mongol-Tatar conquest, began to be gradually overcome. Domestic colonization was intensified, including in the lands deserted after the Batye invasion. Particularly energetic was the development of the center of North-Eastern Russia. At the end of the 14th century and especially in the 15th century the pace of economic development of this region accelerated. The rise of agriculture from the end of the XIV century was accompanied by the geographical division of labor between separate areas and the establishment of economic relations.

To the second half of XIV century belong the first signs of a new rise of towns and urban crafts in the North-Eastern Russia. The construction of fortifications and temples in the capitals of the principalities was renewed. Coinage began in Moscow, Tver, Rostov and a number of other principalities, trade relations between them strengthened. External trade through the northwestern and northern cities (Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk) with the Baltic, Northern and Western Europe increased significantly. Constant economic communication of Russian lands prepared the conditions for the formation of the internal market and the political unification of the country.

However, the specific motives behind the unification process in Russia are understood ambiguously; there is no doubt that unification went hand in hand with liberation from the Mongol-Tatar yoke. In modern science the notion of the importance of the formation, and evolution of the system of allegiance and service relations in the fragmented lands of the former Kievan power is widespread (B.N. Florya, A.L. Yurganov, etc.). Vassal-druzhinniye relations (when a feudal received from a prince a land allotment for military service, but remained relatively free) already in XIII century more and more step back from the princely-druzhinniye relations (when a personal dependence of a feudal increased), that is especially characteristic for North-East Russia, were to the end of XIII - XIV centuries the concept of a "druzhina" was replaced by the term "court". Where the princely court is connected with the formation of the feudal service system, including the army.

Economic growth accelerated the development of feudal relations, which were largely suspended by the Mongol-Tatar conquest. From the beginning of the 14th century private land ownership expanded at the expense of vacant, newly colonized "black" lands. Due to the increased value of land as a stable source of income, the struggle for it among the feudal lords increased. The dominant type of land ownership remained a hereditary fiefdom with the right to freely dispose of it. But from the middle of the 15th century estates - conditional land "holdings" - became more and more widespread. They appeared as a result of dukes and boyars giving away a part of their land to military and court servants on the condition that they performed a certain service (most often military). Vachinniki and landlords (landlords) were the two estates of the feudal class.

With the development of feudal relations, the forms of peasant exploitation changed. The peasantry was divided into two large groups: personally free communes ("chernosososchie") and private landowners. The "chernosososhny" peasants lived on the land, which was in feudal ownership of the state, and paid taxes to it. The peasants who lived on the lands of landlords and landowners paid feudal rent in favor of landowners. The dominant form of feudal rent remained the natural tribute with a small servitude and cash rent. Until the mid-15th century peasants had the right to change the lord freely provided they fulfilled all duties demanded during the year. However with the development of feudal relations the interest of feudal lords for limitation of peasants' transfer from one possession to another increased. Only a single centralized authority could ensure the enslavement of the peasants on the scale of all Russian lands, which created another strong precondition for the centralization of the state. Thus, the formation of a strong supreme power was based on a common interest in it of the whole class of feudal lords.

The process of political unification of the country was also facilitated by the presence of foreign policy prerequisites. The need to fight against external dangers (the Golden Horde, Lithuania, Poland) contributed to the consolidation of all forces around the center. Only a strong central government was able to unite the efforts of the nation and provide it with the conditions of free independent development.

Centralization of the Russian lands largely contributed to the ideological and cultural unity of Russian society. Common faith, language, historical memory about the past unity within the framework of the Old Russian state was a necessary condition and prerequisite for the formation of the new Russian state.

Thus, in XIV - XV centuries the conditions for the centralization of the Russian lands were gradually formed. A characteristic feature of this process was that political preconditions had a much greater impact on the formation of a unified state than economic ones. Overcoming of economic dissociation was slowed down by constant expansion of the state territory due to colonization of lands.

Russian historians of XVIII-XIX centuries (M.M. Scherbatov, N.M. Karamzin and especially S.M. Solovyov, K.D. Kavelin who belonged to the state school, etc.) had no doubt in the necessity and regularity of creating a powerful state. The main core of Russian history was the struggle between the monarchs - the builders of a strong state - and the forces that opposed them. According to S.M.Solovyov, such forces were the carriers of "patrimonial beginnings" - the boyars, and later - the Cossacks.

Only at the beginning of XX century historians began to raise such important questions: why was the Moscow state formed in the XV century and how it correlates with the formation of other centralized states in the same period? N.P. Pavlov-Silvansky believed that by XVI century in Russia, as well as in the West, "political feudalism" was replaced by class monarchy, and then by absolute monarchy.

Soviet historians tried to find primarily economic reasons for the formation of the Russian state, so the main focus of their research was the development of agriculture, crafts, trade, feudal land ownership.

This approach has come to be questioned by modern historians. To find signs of the formation of a unified market in Russia in the 15th century was impossible, not to mention the earlier period. That is why the reasons for the formation of the unified state were sought in foreign policy factors (the danger of attacks of the Golden Horde and other neighbors). However, the revealed weaknesses of these concepts of the formation of the Moscow state did not lead to their revision and to new explanations of the processes that took place in Russia in the XIV-XV centuries.

The restoration of the economy and the growth of feudal relations were most intense in Northeastern Russia. It became the center of the struggle for political unification of the Russian lands. The fate of centralization in North-Eastern Russia, as in the rest of Europe, was decided in the course of fierce internal wars.

By the beginning of XIV century the strongest among the Russian principalities was the Grand Duchy of Vladimir. Prince of Vladimir was at the head of the feudal hierarchy, and the throne of the Grand Duchy was the subject of fierce struggle between the rulers. The situation was complicated by the interference of the Golden Horde in this struggle, as it gave Russian princes a "yarlak to great reign". The main rivals in the struggle for this throne were the Moscow and Tver princes. Moscow and Tver were the two largest centers of northeastern Russia. Both cities were located on convenient waterways and formed as transit centers: Tver was between Novgorod, Volga and northeastern cities, while Moscow was between Kiev, Chernigov, Smolensk, Rostov and Vladimir. Princes received large revenues from trade duties and sought to expand their possessions at the expense of neighboring lands.

The first stage of centralization (the beginning of the XIV century - 1389) became a time of struggle of the Moscow and Tver principalities for a leadership in "gathering lands". This struggle was conducted in conditions of an active intervention of khans of Golden Horde. The first who took the title of great prince of all Russia was Mikhail Yaroslavich of Tver, who in the beginning of the XIV century tried to conquer both Novgorod - Velikiy and Nizhniy, Kostroma, Pereyaslavl.

1327 Ivan I Kalita (grandson of Alexander Nevsky)

The head of the Moscow principality, used in his fight for this title the anti-Horde rebellion in Tver in 1327. During the suppression of the rebellion, he became an accomplice of khan and was awarded with the permit for the great reign of Vladimir and the right to collect a tribute from all the Russian lands for the Golden Horde. This provided Ivan Kalita's treasury with additional funds and allowed him to expand the territory of the Moscow principality by buying a number of lands. The temporary cessation of the Horde raids contributed to further economic growth.

The purposeful and flexible policy of Ivan Kalita allowed him to enlist the support of the church. In 1325 the metropolitan moved to Moscow from Vladimir, and Moscow became the new church center of Russia. Under the authority of Ivan Kalita went the main part of the Grand Duchy of Vladimir, and its capital was moved from Vladimir to Moscow.

According to the historico-materialistic approach Moscow had successfully realized the advantages of its geographical location, social and political, and related to the location of the confessional center. Moscow princes, united with the metropolitans of all Russia, became the leaders of the emerging Russian Orthodox nation. Subjects of Moscow princes have become defenders of Sacred Russia.

From the point of view of the historical liberal theory Rise of Moscow has taken place not only because of the favorable geographical position. A number of other Russian cities and lands (Tver, Nizhny Novgorod, the Rusko-Lithuanian principality) were in no less favorable position. The purposeful policy of Moscow princes aimed at violent capture of neighboring territories came to the fore.

Ivan Kalita's son, Ivan II the Red, and later his grandson, Dmitri Ivanovich Donskoy, received the title of Vladimir's reign in the Horde. Expansion of the borders of the Moscow principality, which was in constant struggle with other princes (Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Tver), allowed to strengthen its internal situation. This made it possible to achieve the first military successes in the fight against the Horde, which was experiencing a twenty-year period of discord.

In 1378 the armies of Dmitry Ivanovich (grandson Ivan I) defeated the Horde army on the river Vozhe

From the end of the seventies the authority of the Moscow principality increased as it also became the center of the struggle against the Horde, which consolidated its superiority over Tver. Prince Dmitry as a result of a military campaign to Tver managed to achieve capitulation of the Tver prince, his rejection of claims to the great reign of Vladimir, and recognition of the primacy of the Moscow prince.

In 1380 there was a victorious battle of the Russian troops under the leadership of Prince Dmitry with an army of Mamai Khan at Kulikovo Pole, located near the confluence of the Nepryadva and the Don. For this victory Prince Dmitry was nicknamed Donskoy. The aim of Mamai's campaign was to restore Russia's dependence on the Horde to the extent typical of the middle of the 14th century, but for the strengthened Russia these demands were already unacceptable. Victory in the Battle of Kulikovo did not mean the end of the Golden Horde domination, but it had enormous political consequences.

The second stage of centralization (1389 - 1462) was a period of further struggle of Moscow for consolidation of its positions, strengthening the power of the Grand Duke of Moscow as a result of the 20-year feudal war.

In the first quarter of the XV century the struggle for power was no longer between the strongest Russian princes, but between representatives of one ruling house - the "nest" of Kalita. The reason for the conflict was the question of power inheritance. In spite of Dmitry Donskoy's bequest to his brother Yuri Galitsky (made at the time when his eldest son Vasily Dmitrievich had no direct heir), the throne passed to his later grandson, Vasily II, through the interference of the Horde. The death of Vasily Dmitrievich in 1425 opened a period of debilitating internecine strife. Yuri Galitsky and then his sons Vasily Kosoy and Dmitry Shemyaka, with the support of the cities of the Volga region and the Moscow suburbs, fought with Vasily II for the Moscow throne. The cruel blinding of Vasily II (who therefore received the nickname "the Dark") did not ensure victory for his opponents. Most of the feudal lords of North-Eastern Russia and the clan of Moscow landowners rallied around Vasily II, who ensured the Grand Duke's eventual victory in 1446.

The feudal war of 1425-1446 slowed down the economic development of a number of principalities. The warriors left behind strips of devastated lands, took captives and turned their countrymen into serfs. The war also weakened the defense capacity of the principalities. In 1438 Ulug-Muhammed Khan made a robbery raid on the Moscow principality. The Kazan Khanate, spun off from the Golden Horde, became a constant threat to Northeastern Russia.

The end of the feudal war made it possible to quickly restore the economy of the Russian lands and continue the centralization of the state. The borders of the Moscow principality expanded significantly. Most of the estates were abolished, the position of the Moscow prince in Novgorod (the prince had the right to intervene in court cases), Pskov and Vyatka came under the authority of Moscow.

1462-1533, Ivan III, son of Vasily the dark, (blinded one)

The third stage of centralization (1462-1533) was the completion of the political unification of the Russian lands around Moscow. Under the son of Vasily the Dark Ivan III (1462-1505) the Rostov and Yaroslavl principalities passed under the patronage of the Moscow prince on different terms, Novgorod and Tver were annexed. Ivan III began to be called the sovereign of All Russia. Creation of the Russian state made possible the final liberation from the Mongol-Tatar yoke. A few years after Ivan III discontinued the payment of tribute, in 1480, Khan Ahmed made an attempt at a military campaign to Russia. However, the campaign was fruitless: after the standing on the river Ugra (a tributary of the Ob) without a fight, the Horde troops left for the steppes. This event ended the liberation from the Mongol-Tatar yoke.

(1505 - 1533) Ivan III's son, Vasily III Ivanovich

Annexed were the last independent lands of Pskov, Smolensk and Ryazan.

Thus, at the turn of XV - XVI centuries a Russian centralized state emerged. It had a huge territory - included the center of Eastern Europe and its north. From the very beginning the state was formed as a multinational, it included numerous nationalities. Creation of the united state created favorable conditions for the development of economic life, allowed to free Russian lands from the yoke of the Mongols and Tatars, and strengthened the defense capability of the country.

Creation of the socio-political system

From the sixties of the fifteenth century, i.e. at the final stage of the creation of the unified state, its socio-political system began to gradually take shape.

The head of the state was the Grand Duke, the supreme owner of all lands. Since the end of the XV century, he began to call himself the autocrat. The Grand Duke had all the power of the legislature. The advisory functions under the prince were carried out by the Boyar Duma - the council, a permanent state body. At the head of the management of public affairs was the "Palace" - the body in which the Treasury was a major agency. Over time, the treasury became the main centralized financial management body.

Along with the post of treasurer (head of the treasury), other key positions of the state administration apparatus stood out: printer (keeper of the great ducal seal), butler (head of the princely palace economy). Auxiliary functions of management were entrusted to clerks - descendants of the lower strata of the feudal lords.

Local governance in the towns and volosts was carried out by deputies and volosts. They were in charge of collecting taxes and judging the local population. The local administration received remuneration directly from the population in the form of so-called "korma" (money, and products). Hence the name of viceroys and volosts - "kormlenschiki".

The formation of the Russian state was accompanied by significant changes in social relations. Formerly independent princes, in the past owners of their own lands, have become servant princes, who were in military service to the Grand Duke. The boyars of once independent princes left their courts and went into the service of the great prince of all Russia. Thus, was broken the former hierarchical structure of the ruling class, formed a new layer of children boyar (small and medium-sized servile landowners), who made up the court of the Grand Duke. Along with the old boyar aristocracy emerged new powerful families connected with the court of the Grand Duke. All of them (primarily children of the boyars), organized and united by territory, constituted the Russian army.

At the end of the XV century in the most developed lands of the Russian state processes of redistribution of land holdings began. Along with the old patrimonial land tenure began to spread more and more conditional - the estates of military and administrative servants of the Grand Duke. Unlike the fiefdoms, the estates could not be inherited, which forced the landlord to perform many years of military service. It was these landlords directly subordinated to the head of state, conditional holders of land, that began to play a significant role in the country.

Due to the spread of the local form of land tenure, the question of land became particularly acute. Despite the expansion of the grand-ducal landholding at the expense of appanage lands, on the whole the stock of state and palace lands was very fragmentary, scattered and partially plundered in the years of feudal wars. The government solved the problem of expanding state lands through confiscations in the newly annexed territories. Thus, after the annexation of Novgorod, the lands of the local boyars were confiscated and servants of the Grand Duke from Northeastern Russia were placed on them. The Novgorod boyars were relocated to other lands, which weakened their economic power and old political ties. In the same way lands were confiscated from the Tver nobility.

The process of centralization has extended to the sphere of finance. Under Ivan III the treasury of the sovereign received all the duties which previously went to the appanage princes of the House of Moscow. The centralization of the state required the development of a single law for the whole country. Legal documents of the late XV - second half of the XVI centuries. - The so-called charter gramotas regulated land relations and legal disputes. But they reflected the local peculiarities of government in the former independent territories. The new conditions of the late 15th century, when the united state was formed, demanded the ordering and unification of judicial proceedings. It was for these purposes that the charters were formed.

Livonian War (1558 - 1583)

The conflict sparked after the Livonian Confederation refused to pay the tribute which Russia had imposed since the previous war in 1481. The Livonians actively obstructed the development of Russian trade in the Baltic Sea and concluded an offensive-defensive treaty with Poland and Lithuania.

Having realized that the war with the Baltic would be inevitable, Ivan the Terrible organized a crusade to Livonia. At first, Russia was winning, and both Livonia and Lithuania were completely defeated. However, the European countries joined their forces in the face of the threat from the Russian army. 

As a result of the war, a new state appeared on the political map in 1569 - Rzeczpospolita, which started the war against Russia with renewed energy. 

By the 1570s, all of Europe had been fighting against Russia - Poland, Denmark and Sweden. The events in the Baltics coincided with campaigns of the Crimean Tatars and the invasion of the Swedes against Russia. Moscow was forced to conclude an armistice with the Poles and the Swedes.

The conflict eventually led to the thorough devastation of northwestern Russia, the loss of Livonia, Belarus and the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland. The war drained the country's internal resources and triggered a protracted economic decline. Subsequently, the adversaries deprived Russia of access to the Baltic Sea for 150 years ahead.

1497 Ivan III created the new Code of Laws, a pan-Russian code of laws

The Code of Laws regulated the competence of different types of judges: the Grand Duke, the boyars and okolnichihi, and finally the governors and volosts. Control over the activities of local governments was introduced, although inconsistently. The Code of Law protected the life and property of the boyars, landlords and clergy. The famous Article 57 introduced a uniform for the whole state term in which the peasants were allowed to leave their lord - a week before and after the St. George's day in the fall (November, 26), after the end of field work. At the same time the peasants were obliged to pay a special fee for the use of the yard - "old-timers". This was the first step towards the attachment of all private peasants to the land.

However, despite all the actions of the Moscow government, the process of centralization of the state at the turn of the XV-XVI centuries was not yet complete. The remnants of feudal fragmentation remained. For example, the inheritance of the metropolitan still existed. Novgorod, which retained the right to mint its own coins, was not completely deprived of its economic isolation. The existence of its own unit of taxation and the right of Novgorod viceroys to conclude treaties with neighboring states indicate the remnants of Novgorod's political independence.

Nonetheless, the creation of a unified Russian state allowed it to pursue an active foreign policy already in the first decades of its existence. It successfully defended the integrity of Northwestern Russia. The construction of Ivangorod created a strategic and economic base in the Baltic. At the core of the foreign policy of the state was the idea of Kiev's heritage, that is, the return of ancient Russian lands, along with Kiev. It was for this purpose that the Russian state entered into alliances with the Kingdom of Hungary, Moldavia and the Kingdom of Denmark, directed against the principality of Lithuania and the Hanseatic princes.

The emerged Russian state, due to historical circumstances, was characterized by some peculiarities. First, it was a strict centralization and weakening of democratic traditions established in the period of Ancient Rus'. Long-term dependence of Russian princedoms on the Golden Horde contributed to this in no small measure. Second, the priority of the state and statehood in the mentality of the Russian people. The state, acquired during the struggle for independence, was seen as the main national treasure and achievement. Third, the corporatism of Russian society. Each person was associated with a particular corporate cell: the clan corporation of the nobility, the suburban community, the merchant hundred, the peasant or Cossack community. The state power dealt not with citizens, but with corporate structures of various kinds. Society was consolidated on the basis of vertical (community - power) rather than horizontal connections.

In the 15th century, the Old Russian ethnic tradition finally came to naught. In its place appeared three ethnic groups: Great Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians. The Moscow principality became Russia, and the former Kievan Rus was only an outskirt of Lithuania, which in turn was ruled by Poland.

By the beginning of the XVI century the Russian state had a single territory, a well-established system of government, a single legislation and the supreme power. However, the creation of a strong state revealed trends which differed from the European path of development. These include the desire for further centralization, the elimination of centers of independence and autonomy, the lack of strong social strata represented by land aristocracy and trade and crafts people in cities that could stop the excessive strengthening of the autocracy of Moscow sovereigns, their desire for universal control over society and its unification, which could not but have ambiguous consequences in the future. In the era of Ivan III the prerequisites were laid not only for the rapid expansion of the Russian state under Ivan the Terrible, but also for the birth of turmoil in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

The Russian state was multinational. The main nationality - the Great Russians occupied a vast territory in the center, non-Russian peoples inhabited mainly the outskirts.

The analysis of socio-economic development will be guided by the historical-materialistic approach. The leading branch of the economy was agriculture, but a significant size in the XVI century reached the crafts. Successes in handicraft production, especially in metallurgy, woodworking and non-ferrous metals processing, contributed to the growth of productivity in agriculture. The first half of the XVI century was a time of fairly stable economic development of the state.

The basis of production relations in the Russian countryside was feudal land ownership. Land ownership had a class character, there were private, church-monastery, palace and chernosososhey land. By the type of feudal land ownership were distinguished both patrimonial and estate lands. The conditional nature of the landed property helped to form a wide class of landowners which was a social support of the centralized state. The total number of landlords in the first half of the 16th century increased rapidly. The manorial system guaranteed the reproduction and material provision of military personnel. Since the main condition for the possession of an estate was military service, the sons continued to serve the sovereign in order to preserve land property. The owners of estates formed the army of the state engaged in the expansion of its territory and the consolidation of previous conquests.

The main labor force in the households of landlords and estates in the early 16th century were serfs. But throughout the XVI century peasants who became dependent on the feudal lords, were increasingly involved in the cultivation of the bar's arable land. Development of feudalism resulted in peasants' growing dependence on the feudal lord on whose land they lived, limitation of their rights. As it was mentioned before, at the end of XV century the Code of Laws of Ivan III (1497) limited the right of peasants' transfer from one lord to another to two weeks per year, and throughout XVI century serfdom was becoming stronger. The attachment of peasants to the land ensured the power and income of the class of landowners. At the same time it was also a concern of the state for its social support - the landlords, because the tendency of "luring" peasants from the nobility by other nobles weakened this social support.

The process of state-political centralization in Russia was ahead of economic centralization. There was no economic unity of the country in the 16th century; its economic zoning and ways of creating an all-Russian market were just emerging. Under these conditions, state and political centralization developed along the path of "bureaucratization" of management. Power was concentrated by strengthening the clerical, boyar and military administration. This was a characteristic feature of the centralization process in Russia.

The initial form of political (state) centralization in Russia, developed in the middle of the 16th century, in the opinion of many historians was class-representative monarchy. In public administration it provided, except the will of the monarch, the existence of institutions of central and local government. In them in solving the issues of internal (sometimes foreign policy) participated elected from different estates.

The development of the state-political system in the 16th century followed the steady increase of the role of the state administration apparatus. The central and local bodies of state power, formed in the second half of the XV century, continued to exist and develop.

The supreme legislative body and the supreme governing body of the country was the Boyarsky Duma. It had no independent competence separate from the monarch. Along with the issues of national importance (projects of new laws, foreign policy issues) Duma considered the cases of land grants, official appointments, violations of the law. Typically, major issues were discussed with the monarch ("the verdict of the king with the boyars" or "the king ordered, and the boyars have sentenced"), sometimes in the absence of the sovereign.

Management of certain branches of state life became more complex, and it required the creation of appropriate bodies. The palace institutions (together with the treasury) were already in difficulty to cope with the management of individual territories, military matters or the problems of the court. Therefore an urgent task of centralization of power was the creation of a ramified system of sectorial state administration bodies.

At the beginning of the 16th century the system of appointments to positions (mestnichestvo), associated with the feudal hierarchy, was also very vulnerable. The name came from the custom to count "places" at the table and in the service. The place depended on the lineage ("fatherland") and the service career of the ancestors ("father's honor"). It was on the basis of these data that the appointment of a person to a particular position in military and administrative service took place. The imperfection of mestnichestvo as a system of service relations hindered the work of the state administration apparatus and required reorganization.

Another weak link in the system of state administration was the local government. The system of feeding, according to which governors and volosts received "feed" (that is, in-kind and monetary levies from the population under their control), did not provide a clear work of local authorities. The judicial and administrative functions were not carried out by them to the necessary extent. The system of sodhmens could ensure neither suppression of peasant unrest, nor defense against external enemies.

Thus, at the beginning of the 16th century the state faced the task of strengthening centralization. The governments of Vassily III and Ivan IV faced this problem.

(1505 - 1533) the years of the reign of Vasily III

The completion of the territorial unification of North-Eastern and North-Western Russia was accompanied by the first attempts to improve the state-political system. In the composition of the Palace began to be allocated, for example, bays - prototypes of sectorial state administration bodies. In the system of local government, some criminal cases were transferred to the elected officials of the local nobility. However, in the 30s of the 16th century the development of the state administration system made its first steps. After the death of Vasily III, his minor son Ivan IV (born in 1530) was officially proclaimed Grand Duke. During the life of his mother, Elena Glinskaya, the political struggle among the Moscow nobility was still contained. But her death in 1538 opened a period of fierce struggle of the nobility for representation in the Boyar Duma, for direct influence on the boy-sovereign. The struggle was especially fierce between the boyar factions of the Shuyskys and the Bielskys. Local disputes intensified and the lack of control over land grants increased. Boyar feuds delayed the process of reforming the state apparatus, but did not stop it completely.

See Part 3 for:

(1547 – 1584) Ivan IV (the Terrible) was proclaimed the first Russian tsar.

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