of religious freedom, in 1609, but two
years later he was also forced to surrender
this kingdom to Matthias. The conflict be-
tween the Catholic Habsburgs and the
Protestants in Bohemia was the spark that
eventually set off the Thirty Years’ War.
Rudolf suffered from fits of depression
and insanity, and several times during his
reign he was unable to fulfill the duties of
his office. After one such bout in 1600 he
became a recluse in the city of Prague, the
capital of Bohemia, which he had made
the Habsburg seat of power. He was an
avid student of alchemy and the magical
arts, but also a generous patron to the
leading scientists of his time, including Jo-
hannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe. After
moving the Habsburg capital to Prague, in
order to evade the assaults of the Turks,
Rudolf invited architects and artists to his
court and made the Bohemian capital an
important cultural center.
SEEALSO: Bohemia; Brahe, Tycho; Thirty
Years’ War
Russia ..............................................
The Russian state traces its foundations
back to the realm of Kievan Rus, estab-
lished by Scandinavian Vikings in the
ninth centuryA.D. This state controlled
trade in honey, wax, timber, and slaves
along the rivers running through the plains
and forests of Russia and the Ukraine. Rus-
sian culture was heavily influenced by the
Byzantine Empire and the Eastern (Greek)
Orthodox Church after the Kievan ruler
Vladimir I forced the baptism of Kiev’s
nobles into the new religion in 988.
Kiev eventually weakened through
struggles among its ruling dynasty, and
power over the Slavic peoples of the
steppes and river valleys passed to more
northerly cities such as Novgorod,
Vladimir, and Suzdal. The process was
completed in the thirteenth century, when
a wave of “Tatar” (Mongol) horsemen
overran Kiev and the Russian princely
states. Novgorod survived the onslaught
and prospered through trade with the west
through the Baltic Sea and northern Eu-
rope. The Russian princes paid heavy trib-
utes to the Tatar realm, known as the
Golden Horde, and its rulers at the city of
Sarai, near the northern shores of the Cas-
pian Sea, until the late fifteenth century.
The Tatar princes allowed the princes and
the Russian Orthodox Church to remain
in authority over Russian economic and
cultural life. Russia was cut off from the
political and cultural influence of the west.
In the thirteenth century, Alexander
Nevsky, a prince of Novgorod, successfully
defended his domains against a hostile
force of Scandinavians and German Teu-
tonic Knights.
The principality of Moscow, founded
by a son of Alexander Nevsky, gained con-
siderable power when the Tatars recog-
nized the authority of its rulers over the
rest of Russia. When the patriarch (head)
of the Russian church made the city his
capital, Moscow gained further status and
influence. In 1380, the Tatars suffered a
crushing defeat at the Battle of Kulikovo,
after which their influence on the north-
ern princes and on Russia began to wane.
The Moscow prince Ivan III “the Great”
defied the Tatars by ending Russian trib-
ute, absorbed several rival principalities
into his state, and declared himself em-
peror of all the Russians. His successor
Ivan IV “the Terrible” took the title of
“tsar,” or emperor. He destroyed the last
remnants of the Golden Horde at Kazan
and Astrakhan, after which the Russian
Empire emerged as the largest and most
powerful state in eastern Europe. Ivan
codified the laws of Russia, expanded its
territory to the west, and ruthlessly subor-Russia