17a: Muscovy becomes Russia

In this lecture, the Rus culture rises from its wreckage first in Vladimir-Suzdal and then in an unimportant insignificant trading post on the Moscow river. The trading post and its small wooden fort, or kremlin, was so insignificant that  Alexander Nevsky bequeathed it to his youngest son. Somehow managed to create the Grand Principate of Moscow. The last Grand Prince of Moscow was also the first Tsar of Russia, Ivan the Fourth, better known as Ivan the Terrible.

In segment 17b: Gathering the Lands, we trace the unique relationship between the Grand Princes of Moscow, starting with Ivan I (better known as "Moneybags") and the Mongol Golden Horde. The Grand Princes' tactics were not particularly moral, but they worked. By hook or by crook, or both, the Muscovites gathered the lands which eventually formed the Russian heartland.  We will also see how, under Ivan the Great, the Muscovite state began to conceive of itself as the "Third Rome" and the heir to the legacy of the Byzantine Empire.

Segment 17c: Ivan the Terrible introduces us to Russia's first Tsar and one of history's most fascinating psychopaths, Ivan the Terrible. Despite his miserable and tormented childhood, there were  positive accomplishments early in his reign, including Russia's first zemsky sobor, or Council of the People. Early on, Ivan won two victorious wars over the Kazan and Astrakhan khanates, making Russia a multinational empire with tolerance toward Muslims. But then he descended into madness. The most outstanding product of his madness was the creation of a police state called the oprichnina, ruled by his bloodthirsty henchmen, called the oprichniks. His attempts to win Russia a window on the Baltic Sea were a bloody and costly failure.

Finally, in segment 17d: Time of Troubles, Russia wallows in Ivan the Terrible's highly mixed legacy: the "Time of Troubles." Exhausted psychically and physically from Ivan's internal and external projects, the Russian people survives three false Dmitris, two foreign invasions (at the same time, no less), and the famous Boris Godunov. One might think of the "Time of Troubles" as a national gut-check not unlike the Roman Empire's "Crisis of the Third Century AD." Just when all appears to be lost, the peasants and nobility rise to the Russian Orthodox Church's call and drive the invaders out.  The sense of unity involved is best described by the term "Holy Russia." Unfortunately it did not survive for long.