ts in society claimed faithful adherence and obedience to the Church and various monasteries had acquired large tracts of land over the centuries. Both the gentry and the Church represented rivals to any prince of Muscovy; Ivan would eventually come into violent conflict with both.
By the time of Vasily's death in 1533, Muscovy was expanding its territories both east and west and had come to be equated with greater Russia, both geographically and politically. It occupied most of the central European plain, from the Carpathian mountains in the west to the Urals in the East. The vast majority of this area, however, was unoccupied and most of it's 10 to 12 million inhabitants lived on aristocratic or monastic estates or in small villages. The largest towns and cities were Moscow, Novgorod, Pskov, and Smolensk, possessing populations which neared 50,000. Less than 10 percent of the population, however, lived in such metropolitan areas. Under Vasily, Muscovy/Russia had been opened to foreign artisans and architects from the west. Thus, the Kremlin in Moscow took on the appearance of most western capitals, with Italian Renaissance architecture. These modern buildings represented the attempts by Vasily, and later Ivan, to elevate Russia to the status of a major European power in an age when the western European powers were reaching out to all points of the globe through exploration and colonization.
Just under the monarchy were the boyars. The boyars served as advisors to the grand prince, operating through the Duma, which was a legislative and administrative council. While the 150 families who made up the boyar class were the highest of the Russian nobility, their subservience to the grand prince had come about over the course of centuries; in earlier times they had been ruling families in their own right and few forgot this. Consequently, pride often encouraged them to embark on paths contradictory to the wishes of the g...