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Moscow History
Kalita-Donskoy period
Prince Daniel's son, Ivan Danilovich, nicknamed Kalita (Moneybag) by his contemporaries for his tendency to hoarding, went down in history as the "gatherer of the Russian lands", and applied himself to the task of winning the title of Grand Prince. No sooner had he obtained this title, than he used all his new-won powers to make Moscow stronger, for he continued to consider the lands of Moscow and of Vladimir the center of his possessions. Subsequently Grand Prince Ivan Danilovich won a victory which was quite remarkable for the Middle ages: he prevailed on Metropolitan Pyotr to move his see from Tver to Moscow, which in effect confirmed the dominance of the Moscow Grand Prince over all the liege princes.
As a commemoration of all his victories, a number of stone churches, including the Metropolitan's Cathedral of the Dormition (1326) and the Grand Prince's Archangel Cathedral (1333), were built in the Kremlin. And in 1339-1340, new walls of oak were erected round the Kremlin on the orders of Ivan Kalita. This was a highly sophisticated fortification structure, which only stood for 15 years for another fire broke out in 1365, a particularly dry year, and razed the Kremlin to the ground. On ascending the throne, Grand Prince Dimitry Donskoy, Ivan Kalita's grandson, dedicated to build a new fortress of white stone.
Thus Moscow was surrounded by a ring of new stone walls more than 60 meters outside the old ones, for it was necessary to ensure the protection of the posad (settlement), which had grown them, the 14-th-century walls were 2 to 3 meters thick. The rate of construction work was amazing: the fortress was built within the space of one year. What mattered even more, however, was the fact that this was the first time ever that a stone fortress was built on the Vladimir Suzdal lands. Formerly, only the inhabitants of Pskov and Novgorod-the-Great had erected stone fortification. Both the process of construction and the material were quite new to the Muscovites. Stone quarries were opened near the village of Myachkovo 30 km from Moscow, downstream on the Moskva River and it was thanks to this stone that Moscow began to be called a white-stone city.
To Dmitry Donskoy the Kremlin was not a formidable fortress. It was also a manifestation of the growing might of Moscow, which was now capable of reuniting the isolated forces of separate principalities into a single whole. The power of Moscow became a guarantee of the possibility itself of resisting the Horde and of liberating the entire Russian land from its yoke.
An army of an unprecedented size - 150 000 Russian warriors - was gathered at Kolomna and placed under the command of the Grand Prince of Moscow. In just one day a total of 200 000 men under arms were lost by both sides in the Battle of Kulikovo Field - a tremendous battle fought in the valley of Don, the Nepryadva and the Krasivaya Mecha. It took the Russians seven days to bury all those who had fallen, and these days are still commemorated by the people. Every autumn, on Dmitri'' Saturday a celebration in memory of the fallen heroes of the Battle of Kulikovo is observed. In Moscow various places still exist which recall the rout of Khan Mami, places which are dear to the heart of every Muscovite. Solyanka Street was the road along which the Moscow detachments marched to Kulikovo Field and along which they returned after they had won the battle. The Church of All Saints on Kulishki chronicles noted the emergence of stone church buildings in the slobodi. A number of stone churches were built in the posad. One of them, the Church of Conception of St.Anne "at the Corner", is still to be seen today on the bank of the Moskva River at the southeast side of the Rossiya Hotel. Alevisio Novi (new), the builder of the Archangel Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin, built ten churches in the posad in addition to those which he built for the Grand Prince.
Cities in the land of Muscovy were different yet they had certain features in common. The city centers often resembled each other and many were based on the layout that had been developed in the Moscow Kremlin. Some of the features which dated tot he 14th and 15th centuries were subsequently used in 18th century and, even 19th-century town planning.
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