Russia under the Old regime

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Suzdal in 1169 to move to Kiev, which he had conquered, to assume the title of Great Prince; he preferred to turn Kiev over to a younger brother and himself stay in his domain deep in the forest.

In the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the main territory of what had been the Kievan state - the basin of the Dnieper and its tributaries - fell under the control of Lithuanians. Moving into the vacuum created by the disintegration of the Kievan state, they encountered little resistance and soon made themselves masters of western and south-western Russia. The Lithuanian Great Prince did not interfere with the internal life of the conquered principalities, allowing local institutions and traditions to function. The petty princes became his vassals, paying him tribute and serving him in time of war, but in other respects they were not molested. The Great Prince had less landed property than the princes and their retainers combined. This unfavourable distribution of wealth compelled him to pay close attention to the wishes of the Council (Rada), composed of his major vassals. If in Novgorod the prince resembled an elected chief executive, the Great Prince of Lithuanian Rus' was not unlike a constitutional king.

In 1386 Lithuania and Poland entered into a dynastic union, after which the territories of Lithuania and Lithuanian Rus' gradually merged. A certain degree of administrative centralization followed and the old Lithuanian institutions disappeared; still, the government of the bi-national monarchy was anything but centralized. The upper classes in the eastern provinces profited from the steady decline of the Polish monarchy to extract for themselves all manner of liberties and privileges, such as title to their landed estates, easing of terms of state service, access to administrative offices, and participation in the elections of the kings of Poland. The Lithuanian nobility, partly Catholic, partly Orthodox, became a genuine aristocracy. Lithuania-Poland might well have absorbed most of the Russian population and obviated the necessity of creating a distinct Russian state were it not for the religious issue. In the early sixteenth century, Poland hovered on the brink of Protestantism. Its defection from Rome was ultimately prevented by a prodigious effort of the Catholic Church and its Jesuit arm. The danger averted, Rome determined not only to extirpate in the Lithuanian-Polish monarchy the remnants of Protestant influence, but also to pressure the Orthodox population living there to acknowledge its authority. The effort brought partial success in 1596 when a segment of the Orthodox hierarchy on Lithuanian territory formed the Uniate Church, Orthodox in ritual but subject to Rome's control. However, the majority of the Orthodox inhabitants refused to follow suit, and began to look east for support. The religious division, exacerbated by the Counter Reformation, caused a great deal of bitterness between Poles and