Russia under the Old regime

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2. Eastern Europe on the Accession of Ivan III to the Moscow Throne (1462.)

asking for assurances that recognition of him as gospodin gosudai would not mean the end of their traditional liberties. They requested that the deputy whom the tsar would assign Novgorod should dispense justice jointly with a local official, that the amount of tribute due from Novgorod be fixed, that the citizens of Novgorod neither suffer deportations or confiscations, nor be required to serve the tsar outside the boundaries of their land. Ivan impatiently rejected these terms: 'You were told that we desire the same gosudarstvo in Novgorod as [we have] in the Low Country, on the Moskva [river]; and now you tell me how I should rule you? [Literally: 'You give me an urok (instruction) how our gosudarstvo is to be?'] What kind of a gosudarstvo will I have then?'29

In the end, Novgorod had to capitulate and surrender all its liberties. It agreed to abolish all institutions of self-rule, including the veche: the bell which had been sounded for centuries to assemble the people for deliberations was taken down and shipped to Moscow. In his insistence on the elimination of the veche, Ivan behaved exactly as the Mongols had done when they had conquered Russia two centuries earlier. The only concession the Novgorodians managed to extract from their new ruler was the promise that they would not be obliged to serve outside Novgorodian territory. A gracious gift, not a right, it was soon revoked.

In his new acquisition, Ivan proceeded to practise the kind of systematic elimination of potential opponents which Stalin's proconsul in Hungary five hundred years later called 'salami tactics'. Upon assuming office, the Muscovite viceroy ordered piecemeal deportations of families whose social status and anti-Muscovite reputation seemed to endanger Moscow's hold on the conquered city-state. In 1480, alleging that the Novgorodians were conspiring against him, Ivan had ordered his troops to occupy the city. Over seven thousand citizens, a major part of the patriciate, were now arrested. Some of the prisoners were executed; the remainder, accompanied by their families, were deported and resettled on territories near Moscow where they had neither roots nor influence. Their votchiny were confiscated in the Great Prince's name. In 1484, 1487, 1488 and 1489 this procedure was repeated. Such mass deportation, called vyvody, were subsequently carried out also in other conquered cities, for example in Pskov after it had been conquered in 1510 by Ivan's son, Basil in. In these instances, the patrimonial principle empowered the prince to shunt subjects from one part of the kingdom to another as he would slaves within the boundaries of his estate.

Thus, one by one, Novgorod's liberties were whittled away and the families responsible for its greatness executed or scattered. In 1494, using as a pretext the murder of a Russian merchant in the Hanseatic city of Revel, Moscow shut down the Hansa's depot in Novgorod, arrested its members and confiscated their goods. This measure had a catastrophic effect not only on the prosperity of Novgorod but on that of the Hanseatic League as well.* So it went on, until 1570 when Ivan iv, in a spell of madness, had Novgorod razed to the ground; the massacre of its inhabitants went on for weeks on end. After this savage act, Novgorod was once and for all reduced to the status of a provincial town.

Graphic evidence of the absorption of Novgorod by Moscow is provided by the evolution of the city-state's seal. Originally, it showed a flight of steps, representing the veche tribune, and a long T-shaped pole, apparently symbolic of the city's sovereignty. In the hands of Muscovite designers, the steps gradually assumed the shape of the tsarist throne and the pole, shrunk and suitably embellished, turned into the tsarist sceptre

Ivan's successors kept on accumulating territories lying to the west and south-west of Muscovy, stopping only when they came up against the frontier of the formidable Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Between the accession of Ivan m in 1462 and the death of Basil in, his son, in 1533, the territory of Moscow multiplied more than sixfold (from 430,000 to 2,800,000 square kilometres). But the greatest conquests were still to come. In 1552, Ivan iv, assisted by German military engineers, captured Kazan and thereby eliminated the main barrier to Russian expansion eastward. From Ivan's accession (1533) to the end of the sixteenth century, the realm of Moscow doubled, increasing from 2-8 to 5-4 million square kilometres. In all the conquered territories massive land confiscations were carried out. During the first half of the seventeenth century, Russian fur trappers moved virtually unopposed across the whole length of Siberia, reaching in remarkably short time the borders of China and the shores of the Pacific. Government officials, following on their heels, claimed these territories on behalf of the tsar. In some fifty years Russia thus added another ten million square kilometres to its holdings.

Already by the middle of the seventeenth century the tsars of Russia ruled over the largest state in the world. Their possessions grew at a rate unparalleled in history. Suffice it to say that between the middle of the sixteenth century and the end of the seventeenth, Moscow acquired on the average 35,000 square kilometres - an area equivalent to modern Holland - every year for 150 consecutive years. In 1600, Muscovy was as large as the rest of Europe. Siberia, conquered in the first half of the seventeenth, was twice again Europe's size. The population of this immense realm was small even by standards of the time. In the most

* At a meeting of the Hanseatic League held in i6a8 it was said that all of its great European commercial establishments had been based on the trade with Novgorod: Ivan Andreevskii, O Dogovore Novagoroda s Nemetskimi gorodami i Gotlandom (St Petersburg 1855), p. 4.