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In 1497 Ivan presided over a council of bishops and officials which issued a law book (Sudebnik), but this civil triumph was soon overshadowed by palace conspiracies. In a dramatic turn of events, the Grand Prince’s eldest surviving son, Prince Vasilii, was disgraced and disinherited. The following year Ivan invested his grandson Dmitrii, who was only a few years younger than the disinherited Vasilii, as his co-ruler and heir. Vasilii’s supporters tried to organize a coup d’état, but were discovered and executed. At issue was more than the question of which of the Grand Princes progeny should succeed him when he died; related developments suggest that policy was also at stake. The Trakhaniots fell out of favour and Sofia herself, who was implicated in the coup, fell under a cloud. So did Ivan’s personal secretary, Ivan Volk Kuritsyn, whose brother Fedor may have served the opposition as a surrogate and scapegoat for the Grand Prince himself.

Kuritsyn was a nickname, meaning ‘hen’, perhaps because the family’s heraldic sign was a cockerel. The Kuritsyns had aristocratic connections, and formed a veritable dynasty of top officials. Ivan Volk had led a 1492 embassy to the West, which had provided a mass of invaluable information on European affairs; he was associated with the Grand Prince’s centralizing policies, and had served as the senior civil official on the Novgorod campaign of 1495. Clearly he had a great many enemies. He was hated by those who had lost hereditary family privileges and property through the Grand Prince’s policies, by the losers in the succession crises of the 1490s, and by those who were disturbed by the importation of foreigners and foreign things.

In 1499 the disinherited Vasilii was suddenly back in favour, though not reinstated as co-ruler, but the Kremlin remained in the grip of intrigue. In 1500 Vasilii raised an armed rebellion against his father, but then came to some accommodation with him and submitted. In 1502 Ivan had Vasilii’s rival, Dmitrii, arrested and accused of impertinence. Disobedience and even disappointment received short shrift at the hands of an old and probably ailing ruler determined to keep control. But Ivan had to contend with fierce resentment on the part of the disinherited, and from conservatives who feared the modernization implied by the dawning age of absolutism. Ivan’s secretary, Ivan Volk Kuritsyn, became a lightning rod for all their hatred and resentment. Even the Grand Prince, by then well into his last illness, could not save him, and so, in 1504, Ivan Volk was burned alive in a cage as a Judaizer. ³⁵ The Grand Prince himself, whom his secretary had served so well, died a year later. Their work, however, was preserved. Ivan III had presided over a revolution of a kind, and every revolution has its victims.

Vasilii III succeeded as Grand Prince, and ruled for twenty-eight years. Despite his conflicts with his father, he continued Ivan’s policies, exhibiting the same principles of statecraft. How much these principles were due to the rulers themselves and how much to advisers such as Vasilii Dolmatov -diplomat, registrar, oath-giver and personal secretary to (and, according to Habsburg ambassador Sigismund von Herberstein, favourite of) the Grand Prince - is impossible to determine. But certainly caution prevailed. Whenever possible, objectives, were achieved incrementally rather than all at once, and by negotiation and conciliation rather than confrontation. Battle was offered only if the Muscovites had clear superiority. Both Ivan and Vasilii took care to reward their servitors and show their subjects a pious, kindly and pleasant face - yet were sudden and ruthless in punishing those who fell out of line. Together they tripled Muscovy’s territorial extent. ³⁶