Russia: early history
Russia began as the Grand Duchy of Muscov but when the sixteen-year-old Ivan IV (the Terrible) was crowned in the Dormition Cathedral in Moscow, he was given the title of 'tsar' (Caesar). This was a sign that Moscow was the 'new Rome' and the tsars saw themselves as successors of the Roman Emperors.By the late seventeenth century the Tsardom of Russia was centred on Moscow and the Volga, reaching down to the Caspian. The region of the middle Volga, comprising the old Muslim khanates of Astrakhan and Kazan, had been conquered by Ivan in the middle of the sixteenth century. In honour of the defeat of Kazan, Ivan built the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin on Red Square in Moscow. Popularly known as St Basil’s Cathedral, the building consisted of nine high chapels crowned with cupolas and joined to one another by arched passageways.
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| St Basil's Cathedral, Moscow |
Expansion: east and west
After this Muscovy began its eastward expansion into Siberia in a quest for the fur of sables, foxes and ermines. In 1639 Russians reached the Pacific and from the 1640s they were exploring the Amur River. Religious dissidents, fugitive convicts and settlers founded settlements in Siberia, and towns and cities were established in the eighteenth century.Russia also expanded westwards. In September 1654 Peter the Great's father, Tsar Alexis captured Smolensk from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1686 Kiev ceased to be part of Poland and came under Russian control.
However, there were limits to the expansion. Russia was cut off from the Baltic by Sweden’s possession of Livonia (Latvia), Ingria (the area between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga) and Finland, and her one direct outlet to western Europe was the port of Archangel on the White Sea, which was icebound for six months of the year. In the south the Ottoman Empire and its Tartar vassal state in the Crimea, cut her off from the Black Sea.
