Russia: Political History and Notable Figures

862 - 1598 - House of Rurik (All Facts)

1325 - 1340 - Ivan (All Facts)

• Ruler of Russia

  • He was Prince of Moscow

  • He was born with the last name of Danilovitch

  • He was nicknamed “Moneybags” (“Kalita” in Russian)

• Under his reign,

  • The grand ducal palace called the Kremlin was constructed

• He helped suppress the suicidal revolt against the Tartars of his predecessor Alexander of Tver

• He served as the Tartars’ trusted tax collector throughout Kievan Rus territory, adding his own percentage

  • Most people benefited, even if the price of relative peace was the namesake’s threats as well as penal taxation

  • Under his reign, the Rus tribes were still a series of separate kingdoms paying taxes to the Tartars

• He manipulated

  • Russia’s absentee Mongol masters

  • His countrymen’s wealth

• He set a precedent of local self-government

1340 - 1353 - Simeon of Moscow (All Facts)

• Ruler of Russia

• He continued his father and predecessor’s policies to increase the power and prestige of the state

1359 - 1389 - Dmitri Donskoy (All Facts)

• Ruler of Russia

  • He was Grand Duke

• He and his forces defeated Mamai and his Mongolian forces in the Battle of Kulikovo

• He was succeeded by his son

1400s -1500s - Stroganov Family (All Facts)

• Powerful Russian Family / House which

  • was comprised of immensely rich merchants and businessmen who made a vast fortune from the fur trade and salt trade

  • ran the north-eastern corner of (European) Russia virtually as a private kingdom, anything but nominally independent of the Tsardom

    • As this kingdom became larger, they needed more Cossack troops to fight off the (Mongol) Tartars

  • hired Yermak Timofeyevich and his 1,500 Cossack mercenaries to help Russia conquer Sibir (modern-day Siberia)

1389 - 1425 - Vasily (All Facts)

• Ruler of Russia

  • He was Grand Prince of Moscow and Vladimir

  • He succeeded his father

  • Upon assumption to the throne, Tuqtamish of the Golden Horde recaptured Moscow and renewed the Tartar yoke, despite his father’s victory against the Mongols

1425 - 1462 - Vasily II (All Facts)

• Ruler of Russia

  • He was Grand Prince of Moscow

  • He successfully fought over the throne with Dmitri Shemyaka during the Muscovite War of Succession

1445 - 1447 - Dmitri Shemyaka (All Facts)

• Grand Prince of Moscow

  • He unsuccessfully maintained the throne with Vasily II during the Muscovite War of Succession

1462 - 1505 - Ivan III (All Facts)

• Ruler of Russia

  • He was the Grand Prince of Moscow and all Russia

  • He asserted his rights as titular prince of Novgorod (one of the oldest of Russian towns with wide authority over northern Russia)

  • He was nicknamed “the Great”

  • He adopted the title of tsar, the first tsar of Russia

• He issued the first “Sudebnik”

• He

  • forced Novgorod to renounce its relations with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

    • After an attempted revolt, he removed 8,000 of the leading families to his own domain and replaced them with merchants from Moscow (Muscovy)

    • He thus subjected Novgorod to Muscovite (Moscow) rule

  • declared Russia (Muscovy) totally independent from the Golden Horde

    • Up to that point, the Golden Horde occupied Russia for 200 years

    • He defended Russia from Tartar attacks and ended the Tatar threat to Moscow, having annexed Tver

    • He consistently refused to continue paying the tribute protection money demanded from him and his people by Khan Akhmat and the Mongols and Ahmed Khan and the Golden Horde, the descendants of Genghis Khan

    • He outmaneuvered Ahmed Khan by

      • negotiating a mutual defense treaty with the Crimean Khan

      • fighting hard against him

    • Muscovite rulers thereafter continued to buy off or repel Tartar invaders, but no longer accepted the patent from the khans

  • annexed

    • Smolensk

    • Chernigov

  • pushed back the boundary with Lithuania

1505 - 1533 - Vasily III (All Facts)

• Ruler of Russia

  • He was the Grand Prince of Moscow and all Russia

  • He styled himself as “emperor”

• He energetically led Moscow and built the country into a powerful political force to be reckoned with in Europe as he confronted its neighbors of Poland and Lithuania to the West

  • He and his Muscovite forces, along with the help of Lithuanian rebels led by Mikhail Glinsky, defeated Sigismund and his Polish-Lithuanian forces in the Lithuanian-Muscovite War / Ten Years’ War

    • His forces gained control of Smolensk after two bloody but abortive previous attempts to take it

    • The armistice which ended the war was a triumph as well as diplomatic coup for the namesake

    • His defensive alliance with Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian created papal concern about the conflict and brought pressure from the Catholic Church on Sigismund of Polish-Lithuania to settle

  • He took Smolensk, then built it up

    • The city was strategically placed on the banks of the Dnieper River; the pivot of the namesake’s (and Muscovy’s) western defensive system

  • He annexed Pskov and Ryazan, with little difficulty and no military effort

    • He appointed a civil servant to run Pskov

    • He took Ryazan over when its grand prince entered into secret negotiations with the Crimean Tartars

  • He and Muscovy’s problems on his / its eastern and southern borders were eased by the failure of a Crimean Tartar invasion

• He deprived 300 leading families of their estates, deported them to the interior, and replaced them by an equal number of families from Moscow

• He died and was succeeded by his son

1533 - 1584 - Ivan IV (All Other Facts and Consolidation of Power)

• Founder of the Tsardom and First Tsar of Russia

  • He was initially the last Grand Prince of Moscow and all Russia, the title his predecessors bore

    • During this time his mother ruled as regent

    • She died upon his assumption to the throne, rumored to have been poisoned by the boyars (Russian aristocrats) or perhaps by a regency council

  • He was nicknamed “The Terrible”

    • He was also nicknamed “The Dread” or “Grozny;” for his military exploits, which were, in part, due to his major reforms of the army; but also because of the reign of terror he administered in his later rule

  • When he was 3, he assumed the throne, succeeding his father

  • When he was 13, he had his principal advisor torn apart by dogs when he was in a fit of temper

  • When he was 17, he created (inherited) the Tsardom and became the first Tsar (Czar)

    • He was crowned “first tsar (czar) of Russia” in Moscow at a ceremony in the Moscow Kremlin’s Assumption cathedral

    • He was the first Tsar (czar) to inherit all of Russia, and, in theory, enjoyed undisputed sway over the territories it controlled up to that point

  • He was a strong and successful ruler

• During his reign,

  • He had the Cathedral of St. Basil constructed

• During his reign,

  • He met with Richard Chancellor (of England)

  • He only trusted one man, St. Macarius, the Metropolitan of Moscow at the time

  • He granted Grigory Stoganov the right to use and cultivate the lands in the area of the Kama River and its tributaries

  • He married his first wife, one of the Romanovs, chosen out of 1,500 virgins sent to Moscow from all over Russia

1533 - 1584 - Ivan IV (Foreign Policy)

• During his reign,

  • He expanded Russia and extended Muscovy’s power and influence

    • capturing and conquering

      • the Kazan Khanate

        • He dealt a devastating blow to the decaying power of the Tartars (Mongol invaders from the East) in two well-conceived military campaigns, in which he was supported by excellent artillery

        • He and his forces defeated the Tartars in the Siege of Kazan during his Conquest of the Kazan Khanate

          • The Kazan Khanate soon tried but failed to successfully revolt against his rule

      • the Astrakhan Khanate

        • thus reaching the Caspian Sea

    • stretching the emerging Tsardom / empire of Russia all the way to the Volga River basin as far as the Caspian Sea,

      • thus thereby opening the way for Russian expansion beyond the Ural Mountains and as far as the Pacific Ocean

      • thus pushing the borders of Russia eastwards, ambitiously looking towards Cathay and the Pacific Ocean

      • thus linking new trade routes which appealed to foreign merchants at the time

  • He and his Russian forces

    • defeated Selim II and his Ottoman forces in the First Russo-Ottoman War

      • They thus maintained their control over the Astrakhan Khanate region which they had previously conquered

    • were defeated by the Baltic states (including Poland, Lithuania, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Livonia) in the Livonian War

      • He was thus denied an outlet to the west by failing to seize the Baltic region

  • His 25 years of war brought Muscovy to the verge of anarchy

  • He established diplomatic and commercial relations with England, during which

    • He entered into curious negotiations for an English marriage, not shrinking from a union with Queen Elizabeth herself if it were possible

1533 - 1584 - Ivan IV (Domestic Policy)

• During his reign,

  • He declared an end to the rule of the Boyars, attempting a social revolution

    • He established a special council composed of personally selected advisors in order to the counter the power of the Boyars

    • He established the Oprichnina / Oprichniki, which was the first political police force which heavily persecuted Boyars, an organization which he established after a period of bloody fighting with the Boyars

      • He used the Oprichniki to conduct absurd denunciations, executions, and terror simply for the sake of terror which shattered Muscovite society at the time

      • He then had the Oprichniki destroy Novgorod savagely, to pre-empty moves by the feudal lords towards their independence

  • He established the Zemsky Sobor / Assembly of the Land (Russian Parliament)

    • He set up a two-chamber body, containing representatives of the gentry, merchants, and nobles; to act as a check on the power of the Boyars

    • He presided over the First Assembly, in which he gave a speech in which

      • he harked back to his youth when the Boyars

        • plotted against him

        • dealt harshly with the gentry and the peasants

      • warned the Boyars that they would be punished if they did not obey his orders without question

      • proposed setting up courts to hear complaints against the Boyars

    • He issued the second “Sudebnik”

  • He worked to develop a centralized and unified state in Muscovy

  • He ruled with a group of good advisors from the clergy and the boyars

  • He introduced a new code of law and reformed provincial government

1533 - 1584 - Ivan IV (Reign of Terror and Decline)

• During his reign, he oversaw a reign of terror, likely having been deranged for the last 25 years of his life, in which

  • He ordered the drowning of Jews in the Dvina River

  • He attended the public executions of almost all of his close advisors and ministers

  • He divided Muscovy (Russia) into two distinct realms in order to

    • eliminate all villains and traitors

    • reaffirm his power

    • reaffirm the servility of the peasants

• He died while preparing to play a game of chess and was succeeded by his son

  • Upon his death, special guards have surrounded the Kremlin Palace

  • He was a man in whom many saw him as a great leader but just as many saw him as a monster

• His son, Dmitri Ivanovitch, a nine-year old epileptic, was murdered, his throat cut by a gang of hired killers

  • It was assumed that his successor’s successor was responsible

  • His mother (his seventh and final wife) and his son, Dmitri Ivanovitch, were exiled to Uglitch where they may have served as a tool for disaffected boyars anxious to unseat his successor’s successor

1532 - 1585 - Yermak Timofeyevich (All Facts)

• Russian Cossack Leader

• He and his Cossack forces (hired by the Stroganov family of Russia) defeated Khan Kuchum and the Sibir Khanate and its Siberian Tartar forces and captured its capital of Kashlyk

1584 - 1598 - Feodor (All Facts)

• 2nd Tsar of Russia

  • He was nicknamed “The Blessed”

  • He was an amiable and pious imbecile

  • He succeeded his father

  • Boris Godunov ruled as regent during his reign, as the namesake was considered incompetent

• He ordered that fugitive serfs been subjected to ferocious punishments

• His death marked the end of the House of Rurik / Rurik Dynasty of Russian Rulers and the beginning of the Time of Troubles

1585 - 1605 - Boris Godunov (All Facts)

• 3rd Tsar of Russia

  • He ruled as regent for his predecessor and brother-in-law (he had his sister married to his predecessor), ruling practically for 14 years

  • He was a powerful aristocratic Boyar of Tartar origin

  • He began his career in the Oprichnina (the secret police of his predecessor’s predecessor)

  • He secured his own coronation as Tsar

  • He assumed the throne amid universal rejoicing, as the death of his predecessor sent with it the death of the royal house of Russia

  • He was the favored candidate, but he insisted upon being “elected” by the Zemsky Sobor

  • He was illiterate, but, despite that, he directed all correspondence with heads of foreign states and looked like the man running Russia

  • His maintained six foreign doctors at his court, for fear of being poisoned, as land-owning nobles were never reconciled to his election as Tsar

• He was suspected of being behind the killing of the epileptic czarevitch Dimitri Invanovitch, son of his predecessor’s predecessor

  • Ivanovitch was found murdered, his throat cut by a gang of hired killers

  • He was the “logical successor” to his brother, which was the main motive behind the rumors that he engineered his murder

• During his regency,

  • He created the post of Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia and appointed Job, the prior Metropolitan of Moscow, to the position

• Under his regency,

  • the independence of the Russian Orthodox Church was formally ratified by an ecumenical synod (in Istanbul)

• During his reign,

  • His rule at home followed the pattern of his predecessor’s predecessor

    • He was hostile to the Boyars and more reliant on support from the lesser serving nobility

    • He pursued the aggressive foreign policy of his predecessor’ predecessor

• Under his reign,

  • Russia suffered from

    • a terrible famine

      • During this famine, he ordered for the distribution of grain to the most needy from the palace granaries

      • He also oversaw a vast building program in Moscow as a relief measure

    • epidemics

    • a revolt started by a pretender to the throne against him

• He died from a stroke or a self-administered poison

1605 - 1606 - (False) Dmitry (All Facts)

• 5th Tsar of Russia

  • He was a Russian who passed himself off as “Prince” of the namesake, the supposedly murdered son of Tsar Ivan IV, who had himself crowned czar with Polish support

  • He was considered “false” because he claimed to be the son of Tsar Ivan IV, who was already known to be dead

• His downfall was precipitated by the arrival of his fiancée from Poland with her entourage, which angered the Muscovites, who had backed the namesake in order to get rid of his predecessor’s predecessor rather than to install another Tsar (unless he was from their own ranks)

• He was killed and replaced in a revolt by the landowning boyars

  • He tried to escape those hunting him by jumping from a Kremlin window, but he broke his legs

  • His body was then burnt and his ashes were shot from a cannon

  • Afterwards, rumors spread of another pretender Tsar that was being groomed for Tsardom

1606 - 1607 - Ivan Bolotnikov (All Facts)

• Leader of his namesake uprising during the Time of Troubles

• He was a former serf who had been captured by the Tartars and sold as a slave to the Ottoman Turks

• His revolt was eventually suppressed and the nobles who initially supported his rebellion had him imprisoned

1582 - 1610 - (False) Dmitry II (All Facts)

• He was the second pretender to the Russian throne who claimed to be the murdered son of Tsar Ivan IV during the Time of Troubles

  • However, he was never actually crowned tsar

  • He was groomed for the Tsardom, however, following the death by burning of his earlier namesake counterpart

  • He attempted to usurp the throne, supported by the Polish (whom he called on for help) in their Siege of Moscow

  • He set up a Council in Tushino and was nicknamed “The Bandit of Tushino”

1606 - 1610 - Vasily IV (All Facts)

• 6th Tsar of Russia

  • He overthrew his predecessor to become czar

  • He was the last Russian ruler of the Rurikid Dynasty

• Under his reign,

  • a second “false Dimitri” attempted to usurp the throne, again supported by the Polish in their Siege of Moscow

1610 - 1613 - Ladislaus IV (All Facts)

• 7th Tsar of Russia

  • He was installed by his father King Sigismund III after his father’s Polish-Lithuanian forces defeated his predecessor and his Russian and Swedish forces in the Siege of Smolensk and in battles during the Russo-Polish War

1611 - 1612 - Kuzma Minin (All Facts)

• Russian Merchant who

  • appealed for money and setup a militia to oust the Poles from their incursions into Russia during the Russo-Polish War

  • was responded to by the Russian people after his requests with great generosity

  • appointed Prince Dimitri Pojarsky as military leader of the revolt against the Poles during the Russo-Polish War

1611 - 1612 - Dmitry Pozharsky (All Facts)

• Russian Prince who

  • was a military hero from the Siege of Moscow during the Russo-Polish War

  • led a militia setup and funded by Kuzma Minin to force the invading Poles to capitulate during the Russo-Polish War, which encouraged the Russian people to organize against the Poles

  • eventually achieved his aim of kicking out the Poles during the Russo-Polish War with the support of the Cossacks

1613 - 1917 - House of Romanov (All Facts)

1613 - 1645 - Michael (All Facts)

• 8th Tsar of Russia

  • Founder and First Tsar of the House of Romanov

  • His assumption to the throne marked the end of the “Time of Troubles” in Russia’s history

    • His election solved the dynastic problem / succession crisis

  • He was “elected” Tsar, chosen by the Zemsky Sobor after much deliberation, at the age of 16

    • The election was not altogether a break with the past for Tsar Ivan IV’s first wife, Anastasia, had been a member of the Romanov family

  • His father was a nobleman who was the Patriarch of Moscow, and who acted as a regent for a short time during the namesake’s early rule

    • He received no training for the monarchy, having been brought up and raised in a monastery

  • He was crowned in the Kremlin, with all his autocratic prerogatives intact

  • He and his Romanov family ascended to the throne amid rejoicing, but they inherited

    • a then-deserted land as

      • half the villages of Russia were deserted of people

      • huge areas were vulnerable to wandering bandits

      • there was the ongoing virtual collapse of authority

    • the throne with an empty treasury

      • He asked another noble family for a loan in cash and kind - fish, salt, and grain, to meet the urgent demands of his military and civil officials

    • a Muscovy in which Poles and Swedes still occupied many of its parts following the First Russo-Polish War

• Under his reign,

  • a small group of Russians crossed Siberia and reached the Pacific Ocean, acquiring vast territories in northern Asia via their attraction to easy profits as trappers and traders

    • They moved eastwards and overwhelmed the indigenous Siberian populations

    • They established Russian rule by building strategically located forts

    • These Russian pioneers eventully reached the Amur River in Siberia

  • Russian forces were defeated by Gustavus Adolphus and his Swedish forces in the Ingrian War

  • Yeniseysk was founded and made capital of the region of the same name; it was at the heart of the gold-mining region and on the Yenisei River, which, at the time, was Russia’s eastern frontier

  • One-third of the Russian army was constituted on western lines, with troops being recruited locally and mercenaries being engaged in the European Protestant countries as hired officers

  • Russian forces were defeated by King Ladislaus IV and his Polish-Lithuanian forces in the Siege and War of Smolensk

  • Russian forces captured Azov

1645 - 1676 - Alexis / Alexei Mikhailovich (All Facts)

• 9th Tsar of Russia and 2nd Tsar of the House of Romanov

• He issued the Sobornoye Ulozheniye, essentially instituting serfdom into Russia

• He backed Nikon, the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia at the time

• Under his reign,

  • The Russian Orthodox Church Schism / Raskol occurred

  • Russians settled in Albazino in attempt to penetrate the forests of Manchuria, which were rich in fur-skinned animals