Russia under the Old regime

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In 1300, the principality of Moscow covered approximately 20,000 square kilometres; it was then one of the minor appanages. During the next century and a half, most of its growth took place at the expense of its neighbours to the east and north-east. Of great value to it was the acquisition in 1392 of the principality of Nizhnii Novgorod, which the khan of the Golden Horde presented to it in return for assistance against one of his rivals. Possession of this strategic area at the confluence of the Oka and Volga gave Moscow an excellent base for further expansion. On his accession in 1462, Ivan m inherited 430,000 square kilometres, an area slightly larger than post-Versailles Germany. Much of this land had been acquired by purchase and foreclosure for debts. Ivan m made his last purchase in 1474, when he bought that part of the principality of Rostov which he still lacked. From then on, Moscow grew by conquest; freed from subjection to the Horde, it began to behave as the Horde had taught it befitted a sovereign power.

Ivan's most important acquisition was Novgorod, a city-state whose territory covered most of northern Russia. Rich and cultivated as it was, militarily it could not stand up to Moscow; its extreme northern location and the prevalence on its territory of bogs made for very poor agricultural returns. Recent calculations indicate that in the mid-fifteenth century 77-8 per cent of Novgorod's landowners did not earn enough from their estates to equip themselves for war.28 Moscow began to exert political pressure on Novgorod already at the end of the fourteenth century, when it acquired Beloozero, possession of which brought its holdings almost to the shores of lake Onega, and placed it in a position to cut Novgorod's territory in half.

Moscow's conquest of Novgorod began in 1471. That year a conflict broke out between the two principalities. Although Moscow handily defeated Novgorod's inferior forces, Ivan in chose not to interfere in the city-state's internal affairs, content, for the time being, to have it acknowledge its status as his votchina. Six years later this formal sovereignty was transformed into actual control. As the chronicles tell it, in March 1477 a delegation from Novgorod arrived in Moscow for an audience with the Great Prince. In the course of the talks, the Novgorodians, apparently inadvertently, addressed Ivan as gospodar (a variant of gosudar), instead of gospodin, as had been their custom. Ivan promptly seized on this formula and the following month dispatched his officials to Novgorod to inquire, 'What kind of gosudarstvo does it, his patrimony, want?' The panic-stricken Novgorodians replied that they had authorized no one to address the Great Prince as gospodar. In response, Ivan assembled his army and in November, when the marshes barring access to the city had hardened, appeared outside Novgorod's walls. Bowing to the inevitable, the Novgorodians tried to salvage what they could by