IVAN III. (1440-1505), grand duke of Muscovy, son of Vasily (Basil) Vasilievich the Blind, grand duke of Moscow, and Maria Yaroslavovna, was born in 1440. He was co-regent with his father during the latter years of his life, and succeeded him in 1462. Ivan M.'s first enterprise was a war with the republic of Novgorod, which, alarmed at the growing dominance of Mus covy, had sought the protection of Casimir IV., king of Poland, an alliance regarded at Moscow as an act of apostasy from ortho doxy. Ivan took the field against Novgorod in 1470; during the summer of 1471, the Novgorodians sued for peace, which they obtained on engaging to abandon for ever the Polish alliance, ced ing a considerable portion of their northern colonies, and paying a war indemnity of 25,500 roubles. Ivan sought continually a pretext for destroying Novgorod altogether he found his oppor tunity in 1477. In that year the ambassadors of Novgorod addressed him in public audience as "Gosudar" (sovereign) in stead of "Gospodin" ("Sir") as heretofore. Ivan siezed upon this as a recognition of his sovereignty, and when the Novgorodians repudiated their ambassadors, he marched against them. Deserted by Casimir IV., and surrounded on every side by the Muscovite armies, which included a Tatar contingent, the republic recog nized Ivan as autocrat, and surrendered (January 14, 1478) all her prerogatives and possessions (the latter including the whole of northern Russia from Lapland to the Urals) into his hands. Subsequent revolts (1479-1488) were punished by the removal 'Ivan V., if we count from the first grand duke of that name, as most Russian historians do ; Ivan II., if, with the minority, we reckon from Ivan the Terrible as the first Russian tsar.
en masse of the richest and most ancient families of Novgorod to Moscow, Vyatka and other central Russian cities. Novgorod, as an independent state, ceased to exist. The rival republic of Pskov purchased the continuance of its political existence by assisting Ivan against its ancient enemy. The other principalities were virtually absorbed, by conquest, purchase or marriage con tract—Yaroslavl in 1463, Rostov in 1474, Tver in 1485.
Ivan's refusal to share his conquests with his brothers, and his interference in their inherited principalities, involved him in several wars, from which, though the princes were assisted by Lithuania, he emerged victorious. Ivan's last will decreeing that the domains of all his kinsfolk, after their deaths, should pass directly to the reigning grand duke instead of reverting to the princes' heirs, destroyed these semi-independent princedoms. Ivan determined to annex part of Lithuania, now governed by his son-in-law Alexander, who was compelled in 1499 to take up arms against his father-in-law. The Lithuanians were routed at Vedrosha (July 14, 1500), and in 1503 Alexander purchased peace by ceding to Ivan, Chernigov, Starodub, Novgorod-Syeversk and sixteen other towns.
In the reign of Ivan III. Muscovy rejected the Tatar yoke. In 1480 Ivan refused to pay the customary tribute to the grand Khan Ahmed. All through the autumn the Russian and Tatar
hosts confronted each other on opposite sides of the Ugra, till Nov. I1, when Ahmed retired into the steppe. In the following year the grand khan, while preparing a second expedition against Moscow, was suddenly attacked, routed and slain by Ivak, the khan of the Nogai Tatars, whereupon the Golden Horde suddenly fell to pieces. In 1487 Ivan reduced the khanate of Kazan (one of the offshoots of the Horde) to the condition of a vassal-state, though in his later years it broke away from his suzerainty. With the other Mohammedan powers, the khan of the Crimea and the sultan of Turkey, Ivan's relations were pacific and even amicable. The Crimean khan, Mengli Girai, helped him against Lithuania, and facilitated the opening of diplomatic intercourse between Moscow and Constantinople, where the first Russian embassy appeared in The character of the government of Muscovy under Ivan III. took on an autocratic form. This was due to the natural conse quence of the hegemony of Moscow over the other Russian lands, and to the simultaneous growth of new and exotic prin ciples falling upon a soil already prepared for them. After the fall of Constantinople, orthodox canonists were inclined to regard the Muscovite grand dukes as the successors of the Byzantine emperors. After the death of his first consort, Maria of Tver (1467), Ivan III. wedded the Catholic Zoe Paleologa (better known by her orthodox name of Sophia), daughter of Thomas, despot of the Morea, who claimed the throne of Constantinople as the nearest relative of the last Greek emperor. Through her influence the ceremonious etiquette of Constantinople with the imperial double-headed eagle was adopted by the court of Moscow.
The old patriarchal systems of government vanished. The boyars were no longer consulted on affairs of state. The sovereign became sacrosanct, while the boyars were reduced to the level of slaves absolutely dependent on the will of the sovereign. The boyars naturally resented so insulting a revolution, and strug gled against it, at first with some success. But Sophia prevailed in the end, and her son Vasily was ultimately crowned co-regent with his father (April 14, 1502). The first Russian "Law Book," or code, was compiled by the scribe Gusev in Ivan's reign. The grand duke invited many foreign masters and artificers to settle in Muscovy, the most noted of whom was the Italian Ridolfo di Fioravante, nicknamed Aristotle, who built the cathedrals of the Assumption (Uspenski) and of Saint Michael or the Holy Archangels in the Kremlin.
See P. Pierling, Mariage d'un tsar au Vatican, Ivan III. et Sophie Paleologue (Paris, 1891) ; E. I. Kashprovsky, The Struggle of Ivan III. with Sigismund I. (Rus.) (Nizhni, 1899) ; S. M. Solov'ev, History of Russia (Rus.), vol. v. (St. Petersburg, 1895).