When Ivan III succeeded his father, Vasily II, in 1462 a new era in the history of the grand principality of Moscow began. By the end of Vasily’s troubled reign the hegemony of Moscow over the other Great Russian principalities and republics had been confirmed. But Tver, Ryazan, Rostov and Yaroslavl were still independent; the republics of Novgorod and Pskov and the town of Vyatka owed no allegiance to the grand prince of Moscow; and the Russian lands in the south west along the Dnieper and the upper reaches of the Oka were under Lithuanian control. Furthermore, the majority of the Great Russian people were still, in name at least, tributaries of the khan of the Golden Horde.

The early years of Ivan’s reign were years of preparation for the major tasks that lay ahead. Before Ivan could set about the conquest of the Ukrainian lands from Lithuania, the eastern and southern frontiers had to be secured; before the remaining independent Great Russian states could be securely annexed to Moscow and the lands of Muscovy extended to the Baltic and the White Sea, Novgorod and her northern empire had to be subdued; and before Russia could emerge as an international power with her pride and dignity restored, the degrading so-called ‘Tatar yoke’ had to be thrown off.

There is little information of hostile activity on the western or southern boundaries during the sixties of the fifteenth century, and Ivan was able to concentrate his attention on the powerful and aggressive Tatars of Kazan. As a result of a series of campaigns against Kazan (1467-9), which apart from the great summer expedition of 1469 were little more than full-scale reconnaissances, not only was valuable experience in invading Kazan territory gained, but also a period of calm ensued and Moscow’s eastern frontiers were not violated during the nine years following the armistice concluded in the autumn of 1469. With his eastern frontier thus temporarily secured, Ivan was able during the following decade to devote his energies to the problem of Novgorod.