Russia

In Russia the period 1200–1500 was transformative. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the loose federation of principalities, known as Kievan Rus’, was experiencing severe political strains. As princes of the ruling Riurikid dynasty vied for dominance and control over the central capital of Kiev, the bonds among their individual principalities were weakening. Those bonds were severed in the aftermath of the Mongol invasion (1237–40), which resulted in the subjugation of the Rus’ principalities to the Mongols’ Kipchak Khanate, commonly known as the Golden Horde. For the next century the Rus’ principalities functioned as separate polities, each ruled by its own Riurikid prince, who was confirmed in office by his suzerain, the Mongol khan. During the fourteenth century those principalities that had formed the southwestern and western portions of Kievan Rus’ and comprise modern Ukraine and Belarus’ were absorbed into Poland and Lithuania. The northern Russian principalities, from Novgorod in the west to Vladimir-Suzdal’ and Riazan’ in the east, gradually from the fourteenth century through the early sixteenth century fell under the domination of the princes of Moscow. As the Golden Horde itself declined under combined political, military, and economic pressures stemming from the disintegration of the Mongol Empire and ultimately fragmented during the fifteenth century into several Tatar khanates, another new realm, Muscovy, also formed. The northern Russian principalities that comprised that realm will be the regions considered in the following discussion.