During the reign of Ivan III Muscovy conducted diplomatic relations with a wide range of polities. The grand prince exchanged diplomats with heads of state who were as diverse as the Muslim shahs in the Caucasus and the pope at the Vatican; whose realms were as geographically widespread as Denmark in northwestern Europe, Moldova in southeastern Europe, and Shirvan in the Caucasus; and whose power was as varied as that of the rulers of city-states of Italy and the Holy Roman and Ottoman emperors. Some of the diplomats representing Muscovy were Italians and Greeks, who were employed by the grand prince for their familiarity with other societies, political systems, and languages. Others were his own court servitors, usually below the duma ranks, and staff personnel. Their activities were overseen by the administrative staff that kept records of their instructions, messages received from abroad, and agreements concluded with foreign rulers.
Muscovy’s most intense relations, however, were conducted with its immediate neighbors, Lithuania, Livonia, and Sweden, and also the Tatar khanates that replaced the Golden Horde. The centralized administrative apparatus and the pomest‘e-based army, which evolved during the reigns of Ivan III and Vasily III, were the instruments the grand princes used to implement their foreign policies. Those policies, which included economic as well as political and military components, were generated by the decline of the Russian principalities’ mighty neighbors and the creation of conditions that allowed Muscovite expansion to take place. Although Muscovy maintained bilateral relations with each of them, the policies guiding those relations were shaped by sets of overlapping alliances and rivalries and by the overriding goal to forge and stabilize a new balance of power that would pivot on its own increasingly influential position in the region.
Muscovy s relations with its European neighbors Relations with Lithuania
For two hundred years before the middle of the fifteenth century, the northern Rus' principalities had been contained and dominated by their more powerful neighbors. Surrounded by the Golden Horde to the east and south, Lithuania to the southwest and west, and Livonia and Sweden to the west and northwest, they had little opportunity to expand and few options in defining their foreign policies.
By the middle of the fifteenth century, however, circumstances beyond their borders were radically changing. Most importantly, as discussed in chapter 7, The Golden Horde fragmented. In its place appeared a series of smaller, often competing Tatar khanates. On Muscovy’s eastern border appeared the Khanate of Kazan', which was established on the mid-Volga river; to the south the Crimean Khanate coalesced in the steppe and on the Crimean peninsula. The remnants ofthe Golden Horde, identified as the Great Horde, retained control over the lower Volga and the neighboring steppe. By the early sixteenth century, the Khanate of Astrakhan' replaced the Great Horde in that region. There also the nomadic Nogai Horde occupied lands stretching from the Sea of Azov in the west across the Volga to the Sea of Aral in the east.
Changing regional circumstances coupled with Muscovy’s internal development altered its relations with its European neighbors to the west. Among them Lithuania was the largest and most powerful. Although its influence over the northern Rus' principalities had reached its peak during the reign of Vitovt, Lithuania retained vital interests in Russian affairs after his death in 1430.
Lithuania’s own borders extended eastward to encompass the lands that had made up the western and central portions of Kievan Rus'. In the north its frontier edged the lands of Pskov and Novgorod; in the northeast it hugged tributaries of the upper Volga and Oka Rivers and reached points that were only 120 miles from Moscow itself. Lithuania was thus master of the strategically and commercially important region that contained the watershed dividing the Volga, Dnieper, and West Dvina River basins. It contained the key passages that connected these river systems and thereby controlled transportation along the routes they defined. Possession of this region gave Lithuania dominance over the western route linking the northern Russian principalities and the south as well as over routes connecting Moscow with central Europe.
Lithuania also maintained direct ties with Novgorod and Tver'. In 1441 or 1442, Lithuania and Novgorod reached an agreement on their common border, on reciprocal rights for their merchants to travel and trade in one another’s lands, and on sharing revenue collected in certain border towns, notably Velikie Luki. Lithuania consequently viewed with alarm the conclusion in 1456 of the Treaty of lazhelbitsy, by which Muscovy asserted its authority over Novgorod and curtailed Novgorodian liberties.
Its concern extended more broadly to Muscovy’s westward expansion, which Lithuania regarded as a threat to its own adjacent north-northeastern frontier and its control over the valuable territorial assets those lands contained. The region was subdivided among numerous princes, who ruled relatively small ancestral domains. Politically, they recognized the suzerainty of the Lithuanian grand prince, but they were Orthodox Christians and thus maintained an affiliation with northeastern Rus' and the metropolitan residing in Moscow. But in the late 1450s, after Moscow had rejected the agreement to unify the Orthodox and Catholic Churches reached by the Council of Florence, discussed in chapter 8, The Lithuanian grand prince Casimir supported the appointment of aUniate metropolitan. Implicitly challenging the legitimacy of Metropolitan Iona in Moscow, he claimed ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Kiev and all Rus' and sought the allegiance of the Orthodox princes of the western Rus' lands.
Lithuania responded to Muscovite expansion in other ways as well. It offered refuge to Riurikid princes and their retainers who, having lost their independence, could not or preferred not to serve the Muscovite grand prince. Thus, at the conclusion of Vasily II’s wars of succession, the son of Dmitry Shemiaka, Vasily II’s cousin and bitter enemy, was welcomed in Lithuania, as was Prince Ivan of Mozhaisk. Lithuania also tried to stem Muscovite expansion by bolstering the Novgorodian opposition to Muscovite domination. But, during the critical years of the 1470s, it provided little meaningful assistance to the pro-Lithuanian camp, and was unable to prevent Ivan III from annexing Novgorod in 1478.
Casimir was, nevertheless, outraged when Muscovy engulfed Novgorod. He not only refused to recognize that latest stage in Muscovy’s progressive expansion, but pledged to assist Ahmad of the Great Horde in a joint campaign against Muscovy in 1480, which will be discussed below. Nevertheless, while Ahmad was waiting for Casimir’s forces at the Ugra River, the Lithuanians were distracted by Ivan’s ally Mengli-Girey, the khan of the Crimean Khanate, who attacked their lands in the south. At virtually the same time a group of Orthodox Lithuanian princes, led by Prince Fedor Ivanovich Bel'skii, revolted against Casimir. As a result, Casimir failed to honor his pledge to Ahmad and, rather than exploding into a decisive battle, the confrontation between the armies of the Great Horde and Muscovy at the Ugra fizzled into mutual retreat.
After 1480, Lithuania remained hostile toward Muscovy. Ivan III’s concern over the potential threat posed by his neighbor prompted him to adopt a policy to neutralize Lithuania’s allies inside Muscovy; according to Gustave Alef, it was this concern that was responsible for his decisions both to arrest and relocate Novgorodian boyars and to pressure Tver' into submitting to Muscovy.71 But when Muscovy incorporated Novgorod, it also undertook the defense of the extended western Russian frontier as well as the conduct of relations with its neighbor. Disputes revolving around several issues quickly materialized and tensions between the two countries mounted over the next two decades.
One issue concerned the respective rights of the two states in districts along the border. According to the treaty concluded between Lithuania and Novgorod in 1441/42, Lithuania had the right to a share of the tax revenues collected from Velikie Luki and other specified towns on the Novgorodian side of the border. But Novgorod’s new Muscovite governor, appointed by Ivan III, refused to allow King Casimir’s agents across the border to collect the fees due Lithuania.
Another factor contributing to border disputes was the decision of Orthodox princes to transfer their service and allegiance from the Lithuanian to the Muscovite grand prince. Prince Fedor Ivanovich Bel'skii was foremost among them. A descendant of the fourteenth-century Lithuanian grand prince Olgerd, he fled to Moscow in 1481, after his role in the conspiracy against Casimir was discovered. By the late 1480s, Bel'skii was staging raids across the Lithuanian border in cooperation with Ivan III’s brothers. Other princes, motivated by Lithuanian political pressures to join the Uniate Church or by a calculated gamble that Muscovy would ultimately incorporate their region, similarly pledged their allegiance to Muscovy. As they joined Ivan’s corps of servicemen, they placed their lands, which they continued to hold, under Ivan’s protection and participated in raids against their neighbors and relatives who remained loyal to Casimir. In this manner, Ivan III was able by the late 1480s to project his border across the Ugra and up the Oka Rivers and, ignoring earlier treaties concluded between Lithuania and Novgorod, to claim the borderlands for Muscovy.
Commercial disputes constituted a third source of strained relations. One ofthe routes that Russian merchants used to travel southward passed through the Lithuanian towns of Briansk, Novgorod-Seversk, and Putivl'. Other routes leading westward toward central Europe went through Toropets or Viaz'ma and Smolensk. But, according to diplomatic records from the late 1480s, some merchants had been seized while traveling to Caffa on the Crimean coast and, despite formal requests for their release from Ivan III’s envoys, were detained in Lithuania. Others complained that Lithuanian officials were demanding new and higher fees and duties from them and illegally confiscating their goods.
A fourth factor involved the Tatar khanates. Between i486 and 1491, a conflict between the Crimean Khanate and the Great Horde flared. As will be discussed below, Ivan III and Mengli-Girey of the Crimean Khanate formed an alliance directed against both the Great Horde and Lithuania. By agreeing to join Ivan III, Mengli-Girey had abandoned the traditional patron of his khanate. In response, Lithuania had fashioned a counteralliance with the Great Horde. Each of the Tatar khans urged his partner to assist him, if only by distracting the other’s ally and diverting his military forces from the steppe.
As tensions derived from all these factors mounted, Casimir died (1492). The Lithuanian portion of his realm passed to his son Aleksandr. Aleksandr continued and intensified his father’s conflict with Ivan III. He sent an army across the border to seize Mozhaisk. The army was commanded by Prince Semen Ivanovich of Staro-dub, whose father Prince Ivan of Mozhaisk had fled to Lithuania to escape from Vasily II in 1454. Ivan III, however, counterattacked; his armies seized Viaz'ma as well as other towns on the Lithuanian side of the border. But, while he pursued hostilities against Muscovy, Aleksandr also opened negotiations for peace and proposed marriage to Ivan’s daughter Elena. In 1494, the border war ended with a treaty and a betrothal.
According to the former, Aleksandr renounced Lithuania’s claims to Novgorod, Pskov, and Tver'. He ceded to Muscovy Viaz'ma and the districts along the upper Oka that his armies had captured during the war. Moscow correspondingly recognized Smolensk as a possession of Lithuania. The two then formed an alliance, and the next year celebrated the marriage of Aleksandr and Elena. The union was an acknowledgment of Muscovy’s growing regional power. A century earlier the marriage of Vitovt’s daughter to Vasily I had reflected the Lithuanian grand prince’s seniority; this match, by which Aleksandr became Ivan’s son-in-law, symbolized a reversal of that relationship. Within the family Ivan assumed the senior role even as his state challenged and displaced Lithuanian dominance on its western frontier.
Despite the peace settlement and alliance, by 1500 Muscovy, backed by the Crimean Khanate, and Lithuania, joined by the Great Horde, were once again locked in combat. Ivan’s stated reason for renewing hostilities against Lithuania was Aleksandr’s failure to honor the terms of their 1494 agreement, particularly his pledge to allow Elena to keep her Orthodox faith. According to reports brought to Ivan III, his daughter was being pressured to accept Catholicism.
Muscovy’s military objectives, however, were territorial. On the eve ofthe war more Lithuanian princes and towns declared their preference for Muscovy. The princes included two Semen Ivanoviches, one the prince of Starodub who had so recently led Aleksandr’s campaign and the other a brother of Prince Fedor Ivanovich Bel'skii who had hurriedly left Lithuania in 1481. Prince Vasily Ivanovich Shemiachich was another prominent figure in this group. He was the grandson of Dmitry Shemiaka, who had fought against Vasily II in the dynastic wars of the middle of the fifteenth century. At the conclusion of those wars his father, like Ivan of Mozhaisk, had fled to Lithuania, where he had received control over Novgorod-Seversk as well as other lands in the vicinity of Chernigov.
The transfer of these princes, particularly those who were descendants ofrefugees from Muscovy, may be considered as another reflection of the reversal in the relative roles of Lithuania and Muscovy.
Fifty years earlier, their ancestors had sought asylum in Lithuania to avoid becoming victims of Muscovite expansion and centralization. In 1500, the new generation linked their futures with the dynamic and increasingly powerful state of Muscovy. Their association with Ivan III also gave Muscovy lands well beyond its former border. During the war that began in 1500, Ivan III’s forces, aided by his new service princes, occupied and consolidated Muscovy’s control over their lands. While Muscovy was engaged against Lithuania, its ally the Crimean Khanate directed its forces against the Great Horde, which it destroyed in 1502.
In 1503, the combatants declared a truce. Its terms allowed Muscovy to retain the lands it had taken. They included towns near the border, such as Toropets, which was an intermediate point on the road linking Moscow to central Europe. They also included Starodub, Briansk, Novgorod-Seversk, and Chernigov, which were located deep within Lithuanian territory. Its acquisitions gave Muscovy control not only over the full length of the Ugra River, which had defined its former border, but also over the Desna River, one of the main tributaries of the Dnieper.
The truce remained in effect until 1512, with only a brief interruption in 1507-08, when Prince Mikhail L'vovich Glinskii was staging his abortive revolt, noted in chapter 9, Against Sigismund. When hostilities resumed, the focus of the war was the new Muscovite-Lithuanian frontier, its main target, Smolensk. In 1514, Vasily III captured the city. Although the war dragged on until 1522, neither side made any additional major gains.
Muscovy’s expansion into Lithuanian territory improved its commercial position. The territories and towns it acquired as a result of the conflicts of 1492-94 and 1500-03 were precisely those that defined the western route between the Russian principalities and the Black Sea. Ivan III took possession of a major portion of that trade route. He then provided the security along it for his merchants, and collected the duties and fees that had previously gone to the Lithuanian treasury. Ivan III’s victories had similar effects on Moscow’s place in commerce with Europe. One of the major trade routes connecting Moscow and central Europe passed through Toropets and Velikie Luki on the way to Polotsk on the West Dvina and Vil'nius. Another went westward through Viaz' ma and Smolensk. As a result of their wars with Lithuania, Ivan III and Vasily III incorporated the towns of Toropets, Viaz'ma, and Smolensk, and the roadways they defined.
Muscovy’s victories over Lithuania also lent physical substantiation to the theories, discussed in chapter 8, Legitimizing the Muscovite princes as the heirs of the grand princes of Kiev. As Muscovy absorbed lands that centuries earlier had been components of Kievan Rus' and approached the former political and ecclesiastical capital itself, it became increasingly difficult to refute the notion that Moscow was Kiev’s successor, and that the Muscovite grand prince was the rightful secular ruler of the Orthodox community dwelling in all the lands of Rus' .
Relations with the Baltic countries
In addition to Lithuania, Muscovy energetically interacted with two other neighbors on its western frontier, Sweden and Livonia. Muscovy acquired a common border with Sweden when Ivan III annexed Novgorod. In contrast, Livonia was separated from Muscovite territory by the yet independent principality of Pskov. Nevertheless, Muscovy became actively engaged (frequently on behalf of Pskov) with Livonia, whose towns and territories were divided among the Livonian Order, the Hansa, and hierarchs of the Church. Muscovy’s foreign policy toward both Baltic lands intertwined commercial, territorial, and defensive objectives, and involved trade, diplomatic negotiations, and war.
Before its subordination to Moscow, Novgorod had directly conducted affairs with the various secular and ecclesiastical authorities in Livonia. After concluding peace in 1448, their relations had remained relatively calm. The most serious exceptions arose from friction between Pskov and the bishopric of Dorpat (Iur'ev). Truces and treaties, concluded in 1460, 1463, and 1474, however, subdued intermittent outbursts of hostilities, defined borders, and regulated the rights and privileges of itinerant merchants as well as fishermen who worked the lakes spanning the border.
After Ivan III absorbed Novgorod, responsibility for security along the northwestern Russian frontier and the conduct of relations with the polities across the border, although regularly referred to the governor of Novgorod, passed to the grand prince. But, like Lithuania, the Livonian Order and Sweden were disturbed by the appearance of
Muscovy in Novgorod’s place in the eastern Baltic and by the destabilization of the regional order Muscovy’s expansion represented.
Hostilities soon broke out. In early 1480, the knights of the Livonian Order crossed the border and attacked Pskov. The following year Muscovite forces sent by Ivan III carried the war into Livonian territory and used artillery to attack three fortified towns; their actions convinced the Order to send ambassadors to Novgorod for peace negotiations. The result was a group of treaties outlining terms of peace between Pskov and the Livonian Order, Pskov and Dor-pat, and Novgorod and the Order. After lengthy negotiations, new treaties were concluded in 1493.
In 1492, even as his governor in Novgorod was negotiating with the Livonian Order over a renewal of the 1481 treaties, Ivan III constructed a fortress, called Ivangorod, just opposite the Order’s town and commercial center of Narva at the mouth of the Narova River on the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland. Then, having secured in the 1493 treaties rights for his merchants to trade at Narva, Ivan III closed the Hanseatic commercial complex or dvor in Novgorod (1494) and initiated what became a twenty-year hiatus in Hansa trade at Novgorod.
Both the Hansa and the Livonian Order were gravely disturbed by Muscovy’s action, which they interpreted as a prelude to aggression. But it was with Sweden, not the Livonian authorities, that Muscovy engaged in actual warfare. Russo-Swedish concerns had revolved around their common border, which ran through Finland, and the northeastern coast ofthe GulfofFinland, which had commercial and strategic value. In 1495, having concluded an alliance with Denmark, which was already involved in its own dispute with Sweden, Ivan III launched a campaign into Finnish territory controlled by Sweden. His forces attacked, but did not capture, Vyborg, the Swedish outpost guarding the northern shore of the Gulf of Finland. The following year the Swedes seized and destroyed Ivangorod on the opposite shore. By the end of the year, however, Muscovite forces reoccupied the site and rebuilt the fort. The two belligerents concluded a six-year truce several months later.
Open warfare between Muscovy and Livonia did not break out until the beginning of the sixteenth century. But when the Muscovite-Lithuanian confrontation erupted, Livonia allied itself with Lithuania and joined the war. Although Aleksandr became distracted by the death of his brother, the Polish king, and his own election to the Polish throne, Livonian forces crossed their borders in 1501, and in separate campaigns ravaged districts around Ivan-gorod and Pskov. Muscovy retaliated and victoriously marched past Dorpat and northward to Narva. In 1503, while Ivan III was conducting negotiations with Lithuanian envoys in Moscow, his officials in Novgorod secured a six-year truce with the Livonian Order.
At the conclusion of its wars with both Sweden and Livonia, Muscovy’s northwestern borders were confirmed. These conflicts had greater impact on commercial patterns than they did on territorial boundaries. Before its annexation by Moscow, Novgorod had regularly hosted Hanseatic merchants as well as commercial agents representing the Livonian Order. Its own merchants, like those from Pskov, reciprocally traveled to Narva, Dorpat, Riga, and Revel' in Livonia. German merchants typically purchased fur and wax from the Russians, who received silver, metal products, woolen cloth, and salt in exchange. The sale ofalcoholic beverages, which had been among the traditional items purchased by the Russians, was forbidden by the treaty of 1474. The main avenues for Russian trade with northern Europe had extended from the towns of Livonia to Novgorod. Vyborg, on the Swedish side of the Gulf of Finland, provided an alternative gate to Novgorod for non-Hansa merchants of the Baltic Sea region.
The subordination of Novgorod by Muscovy disrupted those trade patterns. As discussed, Ivan III initiated a series of land confiscations shortly after the annexation. Within fifteen years virtually all the major Novgorodian landowners had been dispossessed. In the process Ivan III also dismantled the mechanism by which large quantities ofproducts had been supplied to the Novgorodian market. Novgoro-dian boyars had collected rents from peasants on their estates in those commercially valuable goods. Northern estates had supplied squirrel pelts to the boyars, just as Novgorod’s northern possessions paid taxes in fur to the city treasury. When Ivan III placed those estates and provinces under his own jurisdiction, he demanded payment of rent and taxes in cash and in grain. When he subsequently redistributed some of the Novgorodian estates to pomeshchiki, they collected rents in cash, grain, and other items useful for their personal sustenance. Only the peasants themselves, seeking to convert their goods to the cash required for rents and taxes, continued to sell small quantities of commercial products, which found their way to the market at Novgorod.
In addition, when Ivan III confiscated the Novgorodian boyars’ estates and relocated their owners, he similarly removed Novgorod’s merchants. Initially, he arrested a few individuals who had supported the opposition to him. But within ten years he had conducted a massive expulsion of merchants from Novgorod. In 1487, fifty merchants were sent to Vladimir. The following year Ivan III forcibly resettled “many” Novgorodian traders in towns throughout northeastern Muscovy. They were replaced by merchants from Moscow and the other northeastern commercial centers. These were the merchants who traded with the Germans visiting the Muscovite town of Novgorod. They were also the merchants who, under the terms of the treaties concluded in 1481 and 1493, traveled to the towns of Livonia and other Hanseatic markets.
The agreements reached with officials of the Livonian Order notwithstanding, the Hansa and the grand prince’s officials in Novgorod engaged in a series of commercial disputes. Although the Hansa had refused to join the war against Pskov in 1480, it had issued trade regulations favorable to Livonia. Muscovite officials in Novgorod, on the other hand, imposed new fees and regulations on commercial transactions. The ban on importing alcoholic beverages to Novgorod remained in effect. In addition, the import of salt was forbidden.
Their disagreements reached a climax in 1494, when two Russian merchants were sentenced to death by a local court in Revel'. It was in retaliation for this offense that Ivan III closed Peterhof, the Hanseatic complex in Novgorod, arrested the forty-nine merchants who were in residence there, and confiscated their property. Scholars have offered diverse explanations for Ivan’s action. Some interpret it as part of a Muscovite scheme to destroy Novgorodian commerce; others consider it pressure on the Hansa to agree to terms that would be more favorable to Russian merchants. Some, regarding it as a component in larger international maneuvers, link it with Ivan’s alliance with Denmark against Sweden, which was frequently aided by the Hansa. Others view the incident as a rather ordinary interruption of trade between Novgorod and the Hansa.
During the twenty years that Peterhof was closed, merchants from Novgorod continued to trade with the Germans; but they did so by traveling to towns in Livonia. They also exchanged their wares near the mouth ofthe Neva River, at Vyborg and Narva, and in the Russian towns of Pskov and Ivangorod. By the time Vasily III allowed the Hanseatic dvor to reopen in 1514, merchants had rearranged their commercial patterns. Hansa merchants had lost their virtual monopoly on the role of intermediary in trade between Novgorod and northern Europe. Within just a few years of the reconstruction of Ivangorod, following its destruction by the Swedes in 1496, Russian merchants were trading with their Swedish counterparts there. The Dutch and Danes also traded directly with Russians at both Ivan-gorod and Narva. On the basis of a treaty concluded with Denmark in 1516, Danes joined the Hanseatic merchants in Novgorod; they were followed by the Swedes ten years later. Russian merchants sailed to Copenhagen with their commercial wares in 1517, but, reportedly disappointed with the goods offered in exchange, did not repeat the venture.
Increased use of land routes through Finland and Lithuania also redistributed the trade formerly confined to the Hansa and Novgorod. Russian and European merchants alike traveled eastward through Pskov, annexed by Muscovy in 1510, and Smolensk, conquered in I5i4,to Moscow and westward to market centers in Lithuania, Poland, and Germany. Von Herberstein reported that, although Swedes, Livonians, and Germans were regularly directed toward Novgorod to conduct their commercial transactions, Lithuanians and Poles went to Moscow, as did merchants who officially represented the Ottomans and other foreign courts. During the reign of Ivan III, Moscow had firmly established itself in Turco-Tatar commerce. By the reign of Vasily III it also became more directly involved in trade with eastern and central Europe. Moscow was becoming a commercial hub, where trade routes, merchants, and goods associated with the eastern trade with Kazan' and the southern trade with the Black Sea ports met, mingled, and mixed with participants in the western trade with Lithuania and Poland. Joining the two commercial sectors, Moscow was becoming the central marketplace within the Muscovite state as well as in a commercial network spanning an area from central Europe to western Siberia, from the White Sea to the Black.
Muscovite relations with the tatar khanates Political relations
Muscovy’s expansion to the west was conducted against the background of the disintegration of the Golden Horde and the formation of new, smaller, yet formidable Tatar khanates. The effects of the
Dispersal of Tatar might were profound. On the one hand, it enabled the princes of Moscow to pursue their policies of aggrandizing power and territory within the Russian lands without interference from their former suzerain. On the other hand, the disintegration of the Golden Horde produced instability on the steppe and in the new khanates. It thus created both opportunities and dangers for the Russian principalities.
Political disputes within the new khanates resulted in the expulsion of Tatar princes who lost their bids for power. Bands of Tatar warriors, led by displaced princes, roamed the steppe. Although two notable examples, Kasim and Iakub, who fled from their brother Khan Mahmutek of Kazan' in 1447, eventually placed themselves at Vasily II’s disposal and helped him win his dynastic war, they and others who were later similarly expelled from the Crimean Khanate posed potential hazards on the steppe and threats to the frontiers of established polities on its edge.
In addition to these renegade bands, the Great Horde itself challenged its neighbors. Although it had been left in control ofthe lands along the lower Volga, the Great Horde lacked the sources of revenue that the Golden Horde had enjoyed. The lower Volga had been one of the Golden Horde’s chief assets and commercial traffic along it, one of its main sources of revenue. Despite Timur’s destructive attacks on Sarai and Astrakhan' at the end of the fourteenth century and a decline in travel along the east-west routes passing through them, commercial and diplomatic traffic had continued along the lower Volga waterway for several decades. But by the second half of the century conditions had deteriorated there as well, and those who used the route exposed themselves to hardship and personal danger.
The experience of the merchant Afanasii Nikitin is illustrative. Nikitin was unusual for at least two reasons. He left an account of his travels.2 And his travels took him beyond the markets typically frequented by Rus' merchants, all the way to India. But the beginning of his journey in 1466 or 1468 was relatively normal. He descended the Volga River from his native Tver' to Nizhnii Novgorod, where he
English translations of his account are available in Zenkovsky’s anthology Medieval Russia’s Epics, Chronicles, and Tales, pp. 333—353, and in India in the Fifteenth Century, trans. by Count Wielhorsky, Works Issued by the Hakluyt Society, vol. 22 (reprint edn., New York: Burt Franklin, n. d.), pp. 3—32.
Planned to meet a Muscovite ambassador and accompany his party down the Volga. When he missed that convoy, Nikitin and nine other Russian merchants as well as some Muslim merchants joined the ambassador from the Caucasian principality of Shirvan, who was returning from his mission to Moscow. Together they sailed down the Volga. Near Astrakhan', however, their group was attacked and plundered. Rather than return home without anything to show for his pains, Nikitin continued his journey to Derbent and Baku. From there he went on, from one market to the next, until he found himself in India.
Almost a decade later, in 1475-76, Ambrogio Contarini, a Venetian diplomat returning from Persia, encountered comparable difficulties. His property was confiscated at Astrakhan'. In order to retrieve it he had to pay an exorbitant ransom, which he borrowed from the Muscovite ambassador and some Tatar merchants with whom he was traveling. He then accompanied his creditors northward up the Volga River and to Muscovy. He described “the country between [Astrakhan'] and Muscovy. . . [as] a continual desert.” The journey was difficult; there were no way stations, no means of obtaining provisions, and even fresh water was not readily available. He did, however, observe some camels and horses; evidently abandoned or lost by a previous and presumably ill-fated caravan, they too were testimony to the dangers of this route.72
The deterioration of the lower Volga deprived the Great Horde of transit fees and customs duties. Without access to these revenues, Ahmad Khan resorted to preying upon the caravans laden with goods that crossed the steppe and to exacting booty, ransom, and bribes from the government officials and merchants traveling in them. In addition, the Great Horde raided its sedentary neighbors, including Muscovy. From the late 1440s, i. e., after Ulu-Muhammed left the area and moved his Horde eastward toward the mid-Volga area, the Great Horde repeatedly harassed the Russian frontier along the Oka River. In 1460 the Great Horde staged an attack on Riazan'. In 1465, another major attack was prevented only by the Crimean Tatars, who attacked the Great Horde while it was assembling its forces on the Don River. In 1472, however, Ahmad Khan, urged on by Lithuania, was more successful. His army managed to reach and burn the town of Aleksin, located south of Serpukhov, and to cross the Oka River before its advance was halted by the Russians.
From the middle of the fifteenth century, another factor also indirectly affected security for frontier Russian communities. That factor was the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Over the next several decades the Turks conquered most of the Black Sea coast. As they did so, they fostered an exchange of goods between the regions north and south of the sea. Istanbul (Constantinople), whose population grew from fewer than 50,000 in the middle of the fifteenth century to 300,000 a century later, benefited from this trade. It was dependent especially upon the provision of grain, meat, and salt from the lands north of the Black Sea. To satisfy the appetites of the Istanbul populace, the Crimean Tatars placed more of their lands under cultivation. But to operate them they required agricultural laborers. They correspondingly intensified their raids on the borders of their sedentary neighbors to take the necessary captives, who would be employed as slaves in these enterprises. Muscovy, Poland, Lithuania, and Circassia on the northeast coast of the Black Sea were all targets of the Tatar raids.
Thus, despite the fragmentation of the Golden Horde, the Tatars remained a potent, if dispersed force in the middle of the fifteenth century. When Vasily II and his uncle Iurii entered into their dispute over succession to the grand princely throne, they had both regarded the khan of the Golden Horde, Ulu-Muhammed, as the appropriate authority to arbitrate and issue the patent for the position of senior prince among the Russians. At that stage, in 1431, Vasily II had been established as grand prince of Vladimir by Ulu-Muhammed.
Even after Ulu-Muhammed had been obliged to leave the steppe, and was leading his Horde in the migration that ended with the foundation of the Khanate of Kazan', his authority was formidable. After Vasily II was captured by his forces in 1445, he was restored to his throne once again by the grace ofUlu-Muhammed, who, as discussed in the preceding chapter, released him in exchange for the pledge of a substantial ransom payment. Two years later Ulu-Muhammed’s sons Kasim and Iakub were also instrumental in securing Vasily’s throne. These episodes reveal that Tatar authority and military strength continued to have decisive effects on Russian affairs during the middle of the fifteenth century. They also indicate that, despite the breakdown of the Golden Horde, Russian princes continued to recognize the seniority of Tatar khans; they both expected and depended upon Tatar involvement in their affairs.
The mid-century, however, marked a turning point in relations between Muscovy and the Tatars. In chapter 8 It was noted that Vasily II enhanced his military strength by enlisting Kasim and his followers into his armed forces. He granted Kasim some territory on the Oka River c. 1452, and assigned him revenues collected from neighboring Riazan'; in the early sixteenth century the grand prince and his brothers contributed to the Kasimov khan’s income as well. The territory came to be known as the Khanate of Kasimov. This action was also one of the first indicators of the shift in relative power between Muscovy and its Tatar neighbors; rather than being suzerains of Vasily II, Kasim and all subsequent khans of Kasimov were servitors of the Muscovite grand prince.
Muscovy also took advantage of the fluid political conditions among the Tatars to revive the practice, begun almost a century before by Dmitry Donskoi and his son Vasily I when they subjugated the tribes of Vychegda Perm', to extend its authority over tribes dwelling in the northeast. That practice required a more aggressive posture toward the Khanate of Kazan'. When the Khanate of Kazan' formed on the mid-Volga, it claimed tribute from tribes on the Kama River and beyond. It also controlled access to the best routes across the Ural Mountains to western Siberia. Between 1458 and 1462, Muscovy initiated several military campaigns into the regions of the Viatka and upper Kama Rivers. Kazan' retaliated by raiding outposts in the vicinity of Ustiug, but was defeated. In 1463, Bishop Iona of Perm' began missionary work among the tribes that dwelled along the upper Kama River in the region identified as Perm' Velikaia, and by 1465 Russian forces were raiding the Iugra tribes of northwestern Siberia and demanding that they too pay tribute to the Muscovite grand prince. Muscovy’s policy toward Kazan' was not aimed at defending itself against an intractably hostile neighbor or, as George Vernadsky described the Khanate of Kazan', a “perennial danger,” but at subduing tributaries and gaining access to trade routes controlled by Kazan'.73
As the Muscovite-Kazan' contest for dominance over the northeast took shape, Mahmutek, the khan of Kazan', died (1467). He was succeeded by his son Ibrahim. But at least some clan elders in Kazan' preferred Kasim, then khan of Kasimov, over his nephew. Signaling this preference, Mahmutek’s widow traveled to Muscovy, where in accordance with Muslim tradition she wed Kasim, her late husband’s brother. Ivan III lent military support to Kasim’s candidacy, but his efforts to remove Ibrahim and establish Kasim in his place failed. Ivan III and Ibrahim, nevertheless, concluded a peace treaty, which provided a framework for relatively peaceful relations between their two states for the next twenty years. Kasim, having lost his bid for the throne of Kazan', died soon afterward.
Although Vasily II and Ivan III, sensitive to the opportunities afforded by the changing external conditions, undertook these initiatives, they were preoccupied, at least through the third quarter of the century, with achieving and consolidating power within Muscovy and over the remainder of the northern Russian principalities. As those goals were achieved, however, and as Muscovy’s diplomatic apparatus and military power developed, Ivan III gradually defined and pursued more ambitious foreign policy objectives.
The centerpiece of Ivan III’s foreign policy was an alliance with Mengli-Girey, khan of the Crimean Khanate. The Crimean Khanate, which had formed in the 1420s and 1430s, was led in the middle of the century by Hadji-Girey, a descendant of Tokhtamysh, and was protected by Lithuania. Hadji-Girey, recognizing the advantages of keeping the steppe secure for grazing as well as for commercial traffic, was hostile toward the Great Horde, which he perceived to be a disruptive force in the region. It was in this context that he attacked Ahmad’s forces on the Don River in 1465.
In 1466, Hadji-Girey died. His sons, Nur-daulet, Aidar (Khaidar), and Mengli-Girey, became entangled in a succession struggle. After the Ottoman Turks captured the Crimean port of Caffa in 1475, however, they helped Mengli-Girey acquire the position of khan in
Press, 1961), pp. 13, 19. A. A. Zimin, in a variation of the theme on Kazan’s hostility, explained Muscovy’s policies toward Kazan', especially after 1487, as an effort to prevent the formation of a direct, anti-Muscovite alliance between the Crimean and Kazan' Khanates: Rossiia na rubezhe XV—XVl stoletii [Russia at the turn of the XV-XVI centuries] (Moscow: Mysl', 1982), p. 70, and Rossiia naporoge novogo vremeni [Russia on the threshold of a new era] (Moscow: Mysl', 1972), p. 68.
Return for his recognition of their suzerainty. By 1478, Mengli-Girey had chased his brothers from his khanate.
During this turbulent period in the Crimean Khanate’s domestic politics, Mengli-Girey sought assistance from Ivan III. By 1475, he was requesting that Ivan send Kasim’s son, Dan'iar, who was then the khan of Kasimov, and another Tatar in Ivan’s service to assist in the defense of the Crimean Khanate should it be attacked by Ahmad. Ivan responded that such aid would be forthcoming only if the khan would provide reciprocal help to Muscovy in a confrontation with Lithuania. Before any agreement could be reached, Mengli-Girey was temporarily displaced by Nur-daulet and his ally, Ahmad.
After Mengli-Girey recovered his throne, he resumed his requests for Muscovite aid. In 1480, he sought not only the pledge of Dan'iar’s forces, but also cooperation in removing Nur-daulet from Kiev, where the Lithuanian king had granted him refuge and where he remained, poised on his brother’s frontier and prepared to continue his challenge. In response to Mengli-Girey’s urging, Ivan III thus brought another renegade Tatar prince to Muscovy and into his service. When later that year Ivan sent word that both Nur-daulet and Aidar had arrived in Muscovy, Mengli-Girey agreed to the alliance.
The alliance brought multiple benefits to Muscovy. It redirected Crimean Tatar slave raids from the Russian to the Polish-Lithuanian frontiers. It also gave Muscovy an ally against the Great Horde. Those factors, coupled with the removal of renegade Tatar bands from the steppe and their recruitment into the grand prince’s own military service, improved security along Muscovy’s southern border.
In response to the Muscovite-Crimean agreement, the Great Horde and Lithuania formed their own alliance. A confrontation between the opposing axes developed almost immediately. In October 1480, Ahmad Khan led his warriors to the Ugra River, a tributary of the Oka. Ivan III sent an army to the opposite bank. The two forces faced each other across the river. Ahmad awaited both his Lithuanian allies and the onset of cold weather, which would freeze the river and enable his forces to cross into Muscovite territory. But the Lithuanians never arrived. They were diverted by Mengli-Girey, whose Tatars staged raids on the Polish-Lithuanian border, and by a conspiracy against King Casimir.
Furthermore, according to some accounts, Nur-daulet took advantage of the delay to sail down the Volga with a Russian war party and attacked Ahmad’s unprotected base camp. Whether in response to that action or for other reasons, Ahmad soon afterwards abandoned his position. The Russian forces similarly withdrew. No battle took place. The next year Ahmad was killed in an encounter with the Nogai Horde. Despite the military insignificance of the “stand on the Ugra,” over the next century Russian bookmen embellished the story of the confrontation; as a consequence the non-battle has commonly, although erroneously, been identified as the event that ended Tatar domination over the Russian lands.
The so-called Battle of the Ugra neither broke the Tatar yoke nor destroyed the close relations Muscovy maintained with its Tatar neighbors. By the time the Russians and the Tatars of the Great Horde faced each other across the Ugra in 1480, the Golden Horde had been decaying for almost a century. Its power over the northern Russian principalities had eroded just as the Horde itself had fragmented. Muscovy and the several Tatar khanates that had formed by 1480 were all heirs of the Golden Horde. The “stand on the Ugra” did not end Mongol domination over the Russian lands, which had already dissipated, nor did it define the relationships among the polities that replaced the Golden Horde. The confrontation was, rather, one manifestation of the rivalries that had been developing among them as the Golden Horde declined and as they competed to fill the political vacuum it left.
The “stand on the Ugra” was followed by an expansion of the Muscovite—Crimean alliance to include the Kazan' Khanate. Both Ivan III and Mengli-Girey recognized the value of adding Kazan’s forces to their own in the effort to suppress the Great Horde and ensure stability on the steppe. But Khan Ibrahim as well as some of the influential clan leaders in Kazan' had close ties with the Great Horde. Ibrahim, however, died c. i486. Mengli-Girey married his widow. The marriage constituted a major diplomatic victory for the allies. In conjunction with it Mengli-Girey’s new father-in-law also transferred his clan’s allegiance from Ahmad to the Crimean khan.
Mengli-Girey then formulated a plan to place his new wife’s son, Muhammed Amin, on the Kazan' throne and enlisted the aid of Ivan III to implement it. As he had done twenty years earlier, the Muscovite grand prince in 1486-87 sent armed forces to intervene in a succession struggle in Kazan'. This time his efforts succeeded. The allies, using the military strength of Muscovy, placed Muhammed Amin, the Crimean khan’s stepson, on the throne of Kazan'.
Muscovy remained involved in Kazan' affairs. In the late 1490s, it intervened militarily when some factions within Kazan' objected to Muhammed Amin’s rule and overthrew him; as a result, Muhammed Amin’s brother Abdyl Letif temporarily assumed the Kazan' throne. Vasily III also sent troops to Kazan' in 1506, in response to the detention of a Muscovite ambassador and some merchants there. Normal relations were restored the next year. Muscovy also facilitated communication and cooperation between the two khanates. Diplomatic messages regarding issues ranging from information about mutual enemies to personal notes sent by Mengli-Girey’s wife to her sons were conveyed through Moscow.
In none of these activities were the Muscovite princes countering aggression against Russian territory initiated by the Kazan' territories. Nor were they attempting to assert direct Muscovite rule over Kazan'. On the contrary, Ivan III used his military might to uphold the dynastic interests of the Crimean khan in Kazan'. Through their actions, he and Vasily III guaranteed that one or the other of their ally’s stepsons, Muhammed Amin or Abdyl Letif, was khan of Kazan' until both died in 1517-18. During their reigns Kazan' was a third partner in the alliance, and Muscovy was set firmly in the center of the relations between the two khanates.
Commercial relations
At the height of its power, the Golden Horde had drawn its economic strength from commercial traffic along the segments of intercontinental trade routes it controlled. Even when east-west trade along the Great Silk Road deteriorated, the Horde had continued to dominate the exchange of goods between the northern Russian principalities and southern markets, which were linked with both the Mediterranean and the Islamic worlds. As long as the Golden Horde retained its ability to do so, it confined north-south commercial traffic to the Volga River route and concentrated all transactions at Sarai. From the Golden Horde capital goods then flowed eastward to Central Asia, southward to the Caucasus, or westward to Tana and Caffa, where they entered the regional Black Sea trade. In these transactions the northern goods exported from the Russian lands were prominently featured.
When the Golden Horde’s authority declined, it could no longer channel commerce to its own market center. As it fragmented, control over vital components of its commercial network were redistributed among the polities that replaced it. The Great Horde dominated the lower Volga route. But under its relatively weak authority that route became dangerous and fell into relative disuse. Several alternate routes opened for north-south traffic. One of them passed through Kaluga, Briansk, Novgorod-Seversk, and Putivl', all located within Lithuania, before crossing the steppe; another followed the Don River to Tana; a third cut more directly southward from Muscovy to the Crimean peninsula and the port of Caffa. All of the routes passed through lands controlled by the Crimean khan. It was thus the Crimean Khanate that gained control over access to the Italian commercial colonies of Tana and Caffa, and safe passage to them required the Crimean khan’s permission, cooperation, and protection. The Crimean Khanate attempted to secure the steppe routes and the roads to the ports of Caffa and Tana that were attracting the merchants who formerly frequented Sarai.
The Khanate of Kazan' acquired control of another element of the trade network, supplies. Positioned at the juncture of the Volga and Kama Rivers, it commanded the tribute, including luxury furs, from surrounding tribes and dominated the passes across the Ural Mountains leading to western Siberia. Siberian products were among the most valuable goods in demand at the southern markets. Kazan' itself also became a major commercial center, where goods from Siberia and the Caspian region were exchanged for Russian items as well as for European goods channeled through Muscovy.
Like the Tatar heirs to the Golden Horde, Muscovy too sought to capture a role for itself in this commercial network. Its alliance with the Crimean Khanate created a basis for establishing stability on the steppe, which was a necessary prerequisite for Russian participation in the Black Sea trade. Muscovy also tried to acquire control over additional sources of northern products, which it could export across the steppe. The purpose of its conflicts with Kazan' was to gain access to northeastern trade routes and assert dominion over tributaries who would supply northern luxury pelts.
It was Muscovy’s alliance with the Crimean Khanate, however, rather than aggressive action against Kazan' , that contributed most to the achievement of those goals. By placing Mengli-Girey’s stepson on the throne of Kazan', Muscovy drew the khanate into the alliance. Although Kazan' retained a virtual monopoly on the routes leading to western Siberia, a major portion of the goods it received from the east as well as from its southern trading partners were reexported to Moscow. The alliance thus served to carve out a role for Moscow in the regional trade network and to provide Ivan III with revenues derived from commerce that were essential for his expanding and centralizing state. In 1499, Ivan III nevertheless took advantage of the political discord within Kazan' to conduct a campaign against the Iugra tribes of northwestern Siberia and complete their subordination to Muscovy.
Following the steppe routes secured by the Crimean khan, diplomatic and commercial caravans, typically including groups of dozens ofmerchants, carried goods obtained from the Russian lands, Europe, and Kazan' from the towns of Muscovy to Tana on the Sea of Azov and Caffa on the Crimean coast of the Black Sea. There the Russian merchants met Muslim, Greek, Armenian, Jewish, and Italian merchants and exchanged their furs, hides, leather, and walrus tusks for silks and satins, spices and gems, dyes, incense, and Tatar horses. The grand prince sent similar items as well as hunting birds, silver objects, and fine European woolen cloth as gifts to the khan, his relatives, his advisers, and other notables of the khanate. To ensure the continued cooperation of the Crimean Khanate the merchants from Muscovy paid transit and other fees to Crimean Horde officials. Caravan leaders supplemented those fees with gifts to local Tatar chieftains. The Muscovite alliance with the Crimean Khanate, cemented by generous gifts and military cooperation, thus supported and protected the southern trade.
These southern trade patterns developed during the third quarter of the fifteenth century while the Italians were operating their colonies at Tana and Caffa. They persisted after the Ottoman Turks seized control of the northern coast of the Black Sea in 1475 and the west coast in 1484, displaced the Italians and occupied their port cities, and subordinated the Crimean Khanate. For twenty years after the Ottomans established their authority at Caffa and Azov (Tana), Muscovite merchants traded at those ports. During that period the Crimean khan and his diplomats served as intermediaries in formal discussions between the Ottomans and Muscovites.
In 1492, however, following complaints from his merchants about conditions at the Ottoman market towns, Ivan III cut off trade by forbidding the Russian caravans to go south. The cordial relationship between Muscovy and the Crimean Khanate contributed to a resolution of the commercial crisis and also facilitated the establishment of direct diplomatic relations between Muscovy and the Ottoman Empire. Mengli-Girey, acting as mediator, advised Ivan to write to Sultan Bayazit and encouraged the Ottomans to make concessions in order to resume trade. The sultan appointed his son viceroy of Caffa and authorized Mengli-Girey to resolve the disputes. He also sent an envoy to Moscow. Although the completion of that journey was prevented by Lithuania, Ivan III nevertheless dispatched his own emissary to Caffa; he was sent on to the sultan’s court.
By 1496, the dispute had been resolved. Commerce at the Ottoman ports resumed, and Muscovite merchants received permission to travel deeper into Ottoman territory to Tokat, Bursa, and Istanbul. For his fruitful mediation, the Crimean khan, his relatives, and clan leaders received gifts or pominki from Ivan and once again collected transit fees from the traveling merchants. And, importantly, the direct Muscovite-Ottoman diplomatic exchanges, initiated during this crisis, continued.
The achievement of stability on the steppe contributed to a rearrangement of the region’s commercial patterns and an enhancement of Moscow’s role in them. By the end of Ivan Ill’s reign Moscow had become an important commercial center, whose merchants joined their own northern lands with Kazan' and the southern market centers of the Black Sea to form a single commercial network.
The foreign policy of vasily iii
During the reign of Ivan III Muscovite foreign and commercial policies were successful. They not only carved out a position for the newly unified state of Muscovy and defended it, but established it as a powerful expanding force in the region. The policies also increased the growing state’s sources of revenue. Customs, transit, and other transaction fees collected in the annexed market centers were transferred to Muscovite officials or the Muscovite treasury, while the reorganization of commercial patterns attracted customers for expensive luxury goods directly to Moscow.
The success of the policies during the reign of Ivan III, however, created new situations and new problems for his successor, Vasily III. By the time he assumed the throne, the Muscovite-Crimean alliance, the knot binding the separate threads of Ivan’s foreign policy, was beginning to unravel. The attractiveness of the alliance was diminishing for the Crimean Khanate. Although the Khanate of Astrakhan' quickly replaced the Great Horde as its chief rival in the steppe, the defeat of the Great Horde in 1502 eliminated the main motive for the Crimean Khanate’s adherence to the alliance. In addition, Muscovy’s victories over Lithuania were the Crimean Khanate’s losses; as frontier territories were transferred to Muscovy, they ceased to be acceptable targets for Tatar border raids and sources of booty. Furthermore, unlike his father, who had lavished gifts on Mengli-Girey and other Tatar notables, Vasily III was warned about trying to collect customs fees from the khan’s personal commercial agents and gained a reputation among the Crimean Tatars for his stinginess.
Changing conditions similarly altered Muscovy’s assessment ofthe alliance. As it developed direct diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire, Muscovy became less dependent upon the Crimean Khanate and its khan’s role as an intermediary. Vasily’s diminishing reliance upon the khan was most evident in commercial affairs. The sable and ermine pelts sold by Russian merchants quickly became prized at the Ottoman court, where they were used as symbols of high status and office in formal rituals. Their ceremonial use created a growing demand for them, and in 1515 the Ottoman governor at Caffa sent his own agent directly to Moscow to obtain luxury fur pelts as well as hunting birds and other items. This action initiated a shift in Muscovy’s trade pattern with the Turks.
Whereas Vasily III was less dependent upon the Crimean khan than his father had been, he nevertheless continued to require the cooperation of the Kazan' Khanate. It was at least partially through Kazan' that Muscovy acquired the goods it sold to the Ottomans as well as to its western customers. The importance of Kazan' for Muscovy’s commerce was stressed in 1506, when, as noted above, the khan arrested some Russian merchants; his action prompted Vasily to launch a military campaign against him. When the diplomat Sigis-mund von Herberstein later visited Muscovy, he observed that Kazan' had become so commercially dependent upon Muscovy that Vasily III was able to exercise strong political influence over the khanate. But the dependence was mutual. Von Herberstein also reported that when Vasily III tried to exercise his influence by cutting off trade with Kazan' in 1523, Muscovy “suffered as much inconvenience as the people of Kazan'; for it produced a scarcity and dearness in many articles,” which it had customarily imported from Persia and Armenia through Astrakhan' and Kazan'; among the items the Russians missed were the “finer kinds offish” that were caught in the vicinity of Kazan'.74
Thus, despite its diminishing advantages, Vasily III hesitated to abandon the alliance with Mengli-Girey and risk disrupting his relationship with Kazan' as well. Mengli-Girey basically honored his commitments to Muscovy. But the Crimean khan’s son and heir, Muhammed-Girey, was more responsive to Lithuanian ambassadors who visited the Horde and, distributing impressive gifts, tried to persuade the khan and his notables to restore the policy of friendship and alliance between the Crimean Khanate and Lithuania. It was under their influence that isolated and officially unauthorized Crimean Tatar raids against the Russian frontier were conducted in 1507, just after Sigismund succeeded his brother Aleksandr as grand prince of Lithuania and king of Poland. One month after Muscovite forces repulsed the Tatar band, Vasily III attacked Lithuania, breaking the truce of 1503. After 1512, when Muscovy and Lithuania renewed their war, which this time lasted until 1522, Muhammed-Girey became increasingly disappointed with Vasily III and doubtful about the wisdom of continuing the alliance with Muscovy.
In addition to the factors noted above, Muhammed-Girey was concerned about Vasily’s friendly overtures to his rival, the Khanate of Astrakhan'. Despite repeated requests, Vasily III refrained from assisting Muhammed-Girey in campaigns against the Astrakhan' Tatars. He also welcomed Tatars from Astrakhan' into Muscovy and honored them with positions at his court. One of those Tatars was Sheikh-Aliyar, a nephew of Ahmad of the Great Horde, who had come to Moscow from Astrakhan' in 1502. In 1512, Vasily III named Sheikh-Aliyar the khan of Kasimov.
World History
