Muscovite Civil War

The Muscovite Civil War, or Great Feudal War, was a prolonged conflict that cast its shadow over the entire reign of Vasily II of Moscow (from 1425 to 1453). The two warring parties were Vasily II, the Grand Prince of Moscow, as one party, and his uncle, Yury Dmitrievich, the Prince of Zvenigorod, and the sons of Yuri Dmitrievich, Vasily Kosoy and Dmitry Shemyaka, as the other party. In the intermediate stage, the party of Yury conquered Moscow, but in the end, Vasily II regained his crown. It was the first civil war in the history of Muscovy, whose largely peaceful rise had been predicated on a lack of conflict within the ruling family.

The Mongol invasions of 1236-1241 left the Russian principalities dependent on the Golden Horde. In the 13th-15th centuries, the Khan of the Golden Horde appointed the Great Prince, who in the 14th century resided in Moscow. In the 13th century the medieval Rus' consisted of a set of relatively small and weak principalities, fighting and making alliances against each other. The larger states (like the Grand Duchy of Moscow and the Republic of Novgorod) progressively conquered or absorbed the smaller ones. One bigger principality, the Grand Duchy of Moscow, grew due to a series of clever policies and became the biggest one in central Rus'. In 1380 Dmitry Donskoy, the prince of Moscow, even managed to fight the troops of Golden Horde in the Battle of Kulikovo and to win. Whereas formally Moscow remained dependent on the Horde, and the Khan needed to approve position of the Prince, the Grand Duchy of Moscow had become a major regional power, and the Moscow princes aimed to conquer the remaining lands around Moscow and to append them to their Grand Duchy.

In 1389, Dmitry Donskoy died. He appointed his son Vasily Dmitrievich as successor, with the provision that if Vasily were to die as an infant, his brother, Yury Dmitrievich, would be the successor. Vasily died in 1425 and left a child, Vasily Vasilyevich, whom he appointed as the Grand Prince (known as Vasily II). This was against the existing rule, where the oldest living brother and not a son, should have received the crown. Yury thus became a pretender and moved from Zvenigorod, his main residence, to Galich, to be farther from Moscow.

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