Moscow Rus. From Principality to Empire in the 15th—17th Centuries

In the fate of Russia in the second half of the 15th—17th centuries, land and sky, high and low, the drawing of a learned clerk, accurately depicting the lines of rivers, lakes, and forests in recently explored lands, and the life of a holy monk, the first to settle there, are mixed in equal proportions. Looking at the map, it is not difficult to see that as late as the mid-15th century, Moscow Rus was a small, poor, sparsely populated country. But by the beginning of the 16th century, it had grown into a great power, and on the threshold of the 16th and 17th centuries, it turned into a giant state. It was the geographical environment of the native 'European' Rus that contributed to the extremely rapid colonization of the Russian North, the Urals, and Siberia in the 16th—17th centuries. But it is not only about geography. The structure of the Moscow kingdom was built on the stone of faith, infused with Orthodoxy in all directions. The fact that it was filled for a long time with the self-awareness of the New Israel, the Third Rome, the Fief of the Immaculate, gave it a mobilizing purpose and meaning of existence.