internecine struggles and territorial splintering. Moscow, however, benefited from
biological accident: from 1328 to 1425 a sole surviving male took sovereign power
seamlessly with no collateral rivals. Division of the realm for collateral kin was
minimal, and boyar clans became ensconced in Moscow. At the death of Vasilii I in
1425, this lucky happenstance ended: he left a son (the only to survive him offive
sons) and four brothers. Vasilii I’s next youngest brother, Prince Iurii of Galich,
collaterally claimed succession over Grand Prince Vasilii’s 10-year-old son Vasilii.
But the Moscow boyar elite resisted, backed by the young heir’s powerful grand-
father Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas, and the boy took the throne. Tensions
between him and his uncles and cousins, and equally importantly between two
factions of elites, broke into a dynastic war in 1433 that waxed and waned until
Vasilii II’s victory around 1453. The dynastic war confirmed that the ruling line
would follow vertical succession, a linchpin of stability for successive generations of
Moscow boyars.
Like all dynasties, however, the Daniilovichi still faced the challenge of control-
ling their kinsmen. The Osman dynasty solved that problem with successively more
coercive practices: from the late fourteenth century they practiced impartible inher-
itance to keep Ottoman territory undivided; Mehmed II (1451–81) instituted
fratricide to eliminate rivals; a harem-based concubine and celibate sultanic marriage
system, and the use of forcibly converted Christian slaves (devshirmesystem) to staff
the court, limited and isolated political rivals. In Muscovy, policies were ostensibly
less ruthless. Grand princes settled brothers and cousins on appanages with limited
sovereign rights stipulated from the 1350s in treaties and wills that deployed a
patrimonial vocabulary of“elder”and“younger”brother and personal loyalty.
More coercive policies included restricting collateral kinsmen from marrying and
thereby producing heirs. Of Vasilii II’s six sons, one succeeded to the throne as Ivan
III, one died before marriage, two were not allowed to marry and two married quite
late. One of the latter two died without issue; the other faced another, more
coercive strategy of control—imprisonment. Prison was expedient since it observed
a Christian taboo on killing, particularly within the family; numerous dynastic
kinsmen died in prison accused of treason, but the ruler was not identified with
murder. Ivan III’s next youngest brother, Uglich appanage Prince Andrei, for
example, was imprisoned with his two sons in 1491 at a moment of political crisis.
All died of their imprisonment, father in 1493, eldest son in 1522, and the younger
son in 1540 having been released just before his death in a show of mercy. Similarly
cruel policies were visited on Ivan IV’s uncles: three of his father Vasilii III’s four
brothers were not allowed to marry, and when Vasilii III died in 1533 leaving
3-year-old Ivan as heir, the boyars reacted quickly. They arrested and imprisoned
Ivan IV’s eldest uncle, Iurii of Dmitrov. Soon after Iurii died in prison in 1536, his
younger brother Andrei of Staritsa was sent to prison (1537), where he died, leaving
behind only one young son, Vladimir. Ivan IV’s other uncles died without issue.
This left the mature Ivan IV with only one line of collateral kin—the Staritsa
princes—who were assassinated in the Oprichnina. When Ivan IV died, he had
only two male kin of any sort, his sons Fedor and Dmitrii, hardly a reassuring
prospect for the future.
148 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801