Talk:Grand Principality of Moscow

Nonsense: city emerges in 14th c., but principality in 13th?

Totally nonsensical. Compare intro at History of Moscow. Arminden (talk) 20:02, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Requested move 27 February 2025

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:41, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

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Principality of Moscow → Grand Principality of Moscow – The scope of the article covers 1263 to 1547. However, for most of this period, Moscow was a grand principality, not a mere principality. It is also important to note that there is only limited information about the principality in the 13th century. From 1331, the prince of Moscow was also the grand prince of Vladimir (hence also called the grand prince of Moscow) with only one brief interruption. In 1389, the final merging of the Vladimir grand principality and Moscow took place i.e. it became the Moscow grand principality. The grand prince of Moscow was the suzerain of the Russian princes and Moscow became the center of the Russian state, hence the Tsardom of Russia succeeded the Grand Principality of Moscow.

I do not think WP:CONCISE applies because the terms are not interchangeable (i.e. a grand prince is not a mere prince). Either way, there is about equal usage of "prince of Moscow" and "grand prince of Moscow" in recent decades, according to Ngram (if capitalized, then a slight advantage for grand prince). For the reasons stated above, it seems to be more common to find entries for "Grand Principality of Moscow" rather than "Principality of Moscow" in other encyclopedias, e.g. Britannica, Great Soviet Encyclopedia (including the English-language version), Great Russian Encyclopedia etc. I also do not think it would make much sense to split this into two separate articles, therefore I think it makes more sense to use the name that covers the larger chunk of history. The current title is a bit odd for a state that became the largest state in Europe. Mellk (talk) 06:59, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Agreed, it makes way more sense. 76.8.237.112 (talk) 20:21, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Why has the status of gaining sovereignty and its date been removed?

Why has the status of gaining sovereignty and its date been removed?

This is a corruption and falsification of history. It is a major and very important factor that Moscow didn't gain its sovereignty until 1471.

That's like trying to rewrite history in the future to say that the lands of Siberia or Chechnya today are their own separate nations to Russia.

Will Russian propagandists stop trying to change the facts to make Russia into an older and independent nation dating back to the Kyivan Rus. Please stop the Lies!!! 4.33.218.3 (talk) 12:43, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

If you are referring to the "status" being removed from the infobox, then see MOS:IBP. The infobox is supposed to summarize key facts. The cited sources refer to this as an oversimplification. See for example Crummey and Galeotti, who both say that the "yoke" was ended much earlier. You refer to "Russian propagandists" yet bring up one of the classic myths in Russian historiography when it's convenient for the narrative you are seemingly trying to promote here. Mellk (talk) 16:58, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

Dates

Creating this topic since there has been some past confusion on when the principality was established and when it became a grand principality.

The 1263 date refers to when Daniel was given Moscow as an appanage (on the death of his father). Although this date comes from a later source, Daniel's reign is usually considered to begin in 1263 (see the cited sources). Until 1271, Moscow was ruled by the governors of his uncle. Daniel himself is not mentioned until 1282.

In terms of when it became a grand principality, it is true that Moscow is sometimes referred to as a grand principality from 1328/1331 (when Ivan I received the grand principality) but the grand principality of Vladimir was not yet recognized as an inalienable possession of the house of Moscow. Fennell says that after Dmitry Donskoy recovered the grand principality in 1363, it was recognized by the other princes as a possession of Moscow by the 1370s. In his will, Dmitry bestowed upon the grand principality to his son and this was recognized by the khan (Dmitry tried to apply the principle of the votchina to the grand principality). As a result, the votchina of Moscow was merged with the grand principality into a single unit. So at the very latest, we can say that Moscow was merged with the grand principality in 1389. Although the grand prince of Moscow would still receive the yarlyk from the khan, the principle of primogeniture was applied at this stage.

It is also worth mentioning that some of the other princes styled themselves as grand princes in the 14th and 15th centuries but the sources I've read do not typically refer to them as equals to the grand prince of Moscow. Mellk (talk) 17:18, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

Latest changes

There are various issues with this edit. For example:

• The 1478 end date was removed even though there is a footnote with sources cited explaining that this year (or the late 15th century more broadly) is sometimes taken as the point when it was transformed into a Russian state;
• The 1389 event was replaced with Union with the Principality of Vladimir, even though at this point there was no "union" anymore, there was a complete merger of Moscow and Vladimir, and even before this, I doubt there are sufficient RS that refer to this as some kind of personal union;
• The title knyaz was indeed used (before the ruler was known as veliky knyaz) although I do not think the etymology is relevant here although we can probably leave this in a footnote;
• The votchina is a patrimony while the term for the appanage principality is udel.

Mellk (talk) 21:21, 2 July 2026 (UTC)