Vasili III of Russia
Vasili III Ivanovich was the Grand Prince of
Moscow from 1505 to 1533. He was the son of
Ivan III Vasiliyevich and Sophia Paleologue and was christened with the name Gavriil .
Encyclopedia
Vasili III Ivanovich was the Grand Prince of
Moscow from 1505 to 1533. He was the son of
Ivan III Vasiliyevich and Sophia Paleologue and was christened with the name Gavriil .
Foreign affairs
Vasili III continued the policies of his father Ivan III and spent most of his reign consolidating Ivan's gains. Vasili annexed the last surviving autonomous provinces:
Pskov in 1510, appanage of
Volokolamsk in 1513, principalities of
Ryazan in 1521 and Novgorod-Seversky in 1522.
Vasili also took advantage of the difficult position of
Sigismund of Poland to capture
Smolensk, the great eastern fortress of
Lithuania , chiefly through the aid of the rebel Lithuanian, Prince
Mikhail Hlinski, who provided him with artillery and engineers. The loss of Smolensk was the first serious injury inflicted by Muscovy on Lithuania and only the exigencies of Sigismund compelled him to acquiesce in its surrender .
Equally successful were Vasili's actions against the
Crimean Khanate. Although in 1519 he was obliged to buy off the khan of the Crimea, Moxammad Giray, under the very walls of Moscow, towards the end of his reign he established Russian influence on the
Volga. In 1531-32 he placed the pretender Cangali khan on the throne of
Kazan.
Domestic affairs
In his internal policy, Vasili III enjoyed the support of the Church in his struggle with the
feudal opposition. In 1521,
metropolitan Varlaam was banished for refusing to participate in Vasili's fight against an appanage prince Vasili Ivanovich Shemyachich. Rurikid princes Vasili
Shuisky and Ivan
Vorotynsky were also sent into exile. The
diplomat and statesman, Ivan Bersen-Beklemishev, was executed in 1525 for criticizing Vasili's policies.
Maximus the Greek , Vassian Patrikeyev and others were sentenced for the same reason in 1525 and 1531. During the reign of Vasili III, the gentry's landownership increased; authorities were actively trying to limit immunities and privileges of boyars and
nobility.
Vasili's greatest problem was the lack of heir. In 1526, despite much opposition from the clergy, he divorced his barren wife, Solomonida Saburova, and married Princess Elena Glinskaya, the daughter of a Serbian princess and niece of his friend Mikhail Hlinski. To the great joy of Vasili and the populace, the new tsaritsa gave birth to a son, who succeeded him as
Ivan IV. According to a story, Solomonida Saburova also bore a son in the convent where she had been confined, just several months after the controversial divorce.
References
