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As the eighteenth-century historian Prince Mikhail Shcherbatov noted, Ivan Ill’s foreign policy interacted closely with his domestic centralizing policies. The Golden Horde’s assaults on Muscovy in 1472 and 1480 were the occasions of ‘agreements’ between Ivan and his brothers Boris and Andrei which spoke of brotherly support and their common blood but which in fact destroyed their younger brothers’ capacity for independent action. Ivan was equally firm with his own sons. He deprived them of their former right to dispose of their apanages as if they were their personal property rather than lands allotted for their maintenance during their father’s pleasure, which had been the original purpose of the apanage. And he forbade all the princes to coin their own money. ²⁶

Ivan’s policy of subjecting apanage princes to his authority led some of them to seek the support of Poland-Lithuania, and, as we have seen, Novgorod’s attempt to do so precipitated Ivan’s campaign against the city. On the other hand, his firm centralization measures of the 1480s and ‘90s, which subjected Novgorod and other principalities of the north-west to his direct rule, were a necessary prelude to a three-year struggle against both Alexander of Poland-Lithuania and the Knights of Livonia, beginning in 1500. ²⁷

Contrasting strategic motives were involved in these wars. Ideology, as well as interest, inspired Muscovite hostility to Poland-Lithuania. Perhaps because Lithuania had been pagan until comparatively recently, the Catholic Church in Poland adopted something of a crusading attitude towards it, but its concern to convert pagans was soon transmuted into a concern to convert Orthodox Christians, of which there were considerable numbers in Lithuania. This angered Moscow, as did Poland’s attempts to separate the Orthodox hierarchy of Lithuania from the Metropolitan of Moscow. It also alienated many of Lithuania’s noble class (boyars), many of whom defected to Moscow in the 1490s, helping Muscovy seize Viazma and occupy the strategic area westward to the Berezina, and opening the road into Ukraine.

The Russians were less vigorous and adept missionaries than the Latins. Nevertheless, they had acquired a missionizing legacy from Byzantium and were encouraged to pursue it by a delegation of Orthodox notables from Constantinople, who had arrived in Moscow just before their own city fell. They had suggested that ‘the great Patriarchal rank of this imperial city will be given over … to bright Russia, for in bestowing these gifts God wants the Russian lands to fulfil the glory of the Orthodox mission’. ²⁸

When war with Poland came, it took on the character of a crusade for both sides. This made it easier to justify cruelty, although terror had had respectable credentials in war since the time of the Romans. It could induce panic among the enemy, and its devastation could be used to empty an area of people and crops, rendering it incapable of sustaining enemy forces. To that extent terror was a defensive tactic.

Although Ivan’s motives in fighting the Knights of Livonia were in part religious, they were chiefly economic and strategic. With its expanding connections with the rest of Europe, Moscow recognized the advantages that would flow from having direct access to the Baltic and through the Baltic to the West. It was also beginning to realize that there was more profit to be made from trading with the West directly rather than through intermediaries like the Hansa. Such considerations figured in Ivan’s decision in 1492 to build a fort (which he called Ivan’s town, Ivangorod) opposite Narva, on the left bank of the river that flowed north from his loyal city of Pskov into the Baltic, and to close down the Hansa’s operation in Novgorod. Here was the genesis of both Russia’s search for ‘a window on the West’ and its struggle to come to terms with the nascent world economy.

War with the Knights continued intermittently from 1490 to 1510. It resumed after an interval in 1501 at the Knights’ initiative. They were able to field 2,000 German mercenaries — both cavalry and men-at-arms — in addition to their own numbers, and had a commitment from Alexander of Lithuania, brother of King Casimir of Poland, with whom they had signed an offensive alliance. Hostilities began with the Knights marching on Izborsk and winning a victory against such Muscovite troops as could be mustered. But then Alexander was diverted by the death of his brother, King Casimir, and the need to secure his crown. In the event, the Knights, under their Master, Walter von Plettenberg, had to fight on without him. Then a force of Russians arrived, and between them the two armies devastated the country.