ABSTRACT
The new Russian state under the leadership of Moscow was established and ready to claim its right to become a power in Eastern Europe by the beginning of the sixteenth century. A Western trend in foreign policy would mean limited territorial expansion but considerable infiltration of Western ideas, methods of administration, commerce and material improvements. The considerable Tartar population of the Middle Volga, together with Finnish tribes, the Cheremiss, Chuvash and Mordvins, now became incorporated into what was gradually becoming an eastern Slav Empire. Ivan the Terrible’s reign saw the foundation of a strong Russian state in the Eastern Europe and his foreign policy, though unsuccessful in the main in the West, was successful in the East. In the internal affairs the popular councils were extending, representing the interests of the merchants of the towns, peasant communes and Cossack “stanitsas”.
