Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/46

20 At the end of the thirteenth century the principality of Moscow was founded by Daniel Aleksandrovič. (ob. 1303). His son Jurii, who was married to the khan's sister, became grand prince. Jurii's successors outsoared the other princes, and Moscow was able to centralise the Russian petty realms. Ivan Kalita (1328–1341) "gathered together the Russian territories," and Moscow became the metropolitanate; Dmitrii Donskoi (1363–1389) established primogeniture, and his son Vasilii (1389–1425) reigned as first hereditary prince. After the death of Vasilii there occurred the final struggle between the advocates of primogeniture and those of seniority, and from 1450 the rule was established that the succession should be willed to the eldest son. Moscow became a hereditary monarchy, absorbed the princedoms, threw off the Tatar yoke in 1480 and at length, in 1523, united Russian territories into a powerful realm. Muscovy was better able to resist the newly established Mongolian khanates of Kazan and Crimea than she had been able in earlier days to withstand the great Golden Horde.

At the opening of the fifteenth century the primitively patriarchal regime, which as the dynasties had grown had taken the form of petty principalities, finally gave place to a centralised state consciously based upon public law. This development secured political expression in the legal fiction that Grand Prince Ivan III, on his marriage in 1472 with the daughter of the last Palæologus, had received from Constantinople the headship of the Byzantine empire. Muscovy now adopted the two-headed Byzantine eagle as its escutcheon, but not until the following century, in the year 1547, did John IV, the Terrible, assuming the title of tsar, have himself crowned as successor of the Cæsars.

In such brief outline may be recorded the historic fact that in three centuries the realm of Kiev had been replaced by the realm of Muscovy. Russian historians and historical philosophers have propounded the most manifold theories to explain the centralisation of Russia by Moscow.

The centralisation of Muscovy is made more comprehensible by reference to the parallel development of all European states. What has to be explained is how, and by the application of what energies, Moscow was able to carry out the work of centralisation.

In the first place it remains problematical how the mutual