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Ivan The Terrible Research Paper

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Over the course of history there are many defining moments and people that have been recorded in history. The rise of a country is one of the most interesting things to me, such as the rise of Moscow, the expansion of Russia, and the rulers who ushered Russia into what it is.

The leader that started the Rise of Moscow, was Ivan III, he “who subdued most of the Great Russian lands by conquest or by the voluntary allegiance of princes, rewon parts of Ukraine from Poland–Lithuania, and repudiated the old subservience to the Mongol-derived Tatars.”(Fennell) During his rule, he reconquered Russian lands lost in the past, then stopped paying tribute to the Khan of the Golden Mongol Horde that Muscovite's once submitted to. To later legitimize his claim of Byzantine inheritance, he married the niece of the last Byzantine Emperor. Later, Ivan IV, or Ivan the Terrible, later named himself “Tsar”, which came from the word “caesar” as the Muscovite's saw themselves as the caesars …show more content…

Ivan the Terrible was one of them, “Ivan’s reign was successful in defeating the remnants of Mongol power, adding vast new territories to the realm, and laying the foundations for the huge, multiethnic Russian empire.” (Mckay, Hill, Buckler, Crowston, Wiesner-Hanks, Perry 469) The Mongol Horde was no longer a threat, allowing Russia to take more land. Ivan was known as “the Terrible” for acts including: Executing all suspected opposition, moving to make all commoners serve the tsar, and binding traders and artisans to their towns for taxation. Chaotic times followed his death, and when the nobles fought amongst each other, a rebellion of peasants and Cossacks (free groups or warrior bands) demanding fairer treatment, brought them together. By the end of the 1600's, the Romanov tsars were able to take land in Ukraine from Poland, and completely conquer

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