The

The Welcome to a history of Europe.

Ivan III of Russia, Novgorod and the Russo-Lithuanian Wars 1500 to 1503.

Today, power in Russia is so centralised in Moscow that it can be difficult to imagine otherwise.

Yet in the Middle Ages, Moscow was just one of several centres of power.

In fact, its first appearance in historical documents is as late as 1147,

more than a century and a half after the conversion of Prince Vladimir the Great to the Orthodox religion,

which marked the beginning of the unification of the lands of the Rus.

From the 1200s, the princes of Moscow gained in strength, but by the mid-1400s,

Muscovy was still one of several independent Rus' principalities, which had the potential for expansion.

The Grand Prince of Tver, to the west of Muscovy was nominally a vassal of the Muscovite Grand Prince, yet he enjoyed a good degree of independence.

Novgorod, further to the west of Tver, was a prosperous Merchant Republic

that controlled vast lands to the north and northeast, all the way to the west of Tver was a prosperous merchant republic that controlled vast lands to the north and northeast all the way to the white sea and the coast of the arctic ocean.

Riazin to the south-east of Moscow on the other side of the Occo River still retained its sovereignty,

and four other smaller principalities, Yaroslav, Rostov, Vyatka and Paskov

managed to maintain some independence from their larger neighbours.

The Muscovite Grand Princes claimed political and military leadership

in North East Russia, using as propaganda the Battle of Kulikova of 1389,

when their predecessor, Dmitri Donskoy successfully repelled a major Tatar invasion, as described in a previous podcast.

The revolt against the Tartars did not directly challenge the sorenity of the Golden Horde,

yet it helped implant the image that someday Russia would

be free of the Tartar yoke. As Robert O'Krummni puts in his book the formation of Muscovy

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