Dmitry Donskoy

• 1. Introduction

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  Dmitry Ivanovich Donskoy was born in Moscow on the 12th of October 1350, and he died there on the 19th of May 1389 having changed the shape of Russian history forever. His surname, Donskoy, meaning "of the Don," comes from a single battle fought beside that river in 1380. It was the first time a Russian force had defeated the Mongols in open battle. He was nine years old when his father died and left him a principality. He would leave his own son a transformed one, more than doubled in size, and a precedent no Russian prince had ever dared to set. How did a boy orphaned at nine end up defying the most powerful empire on the steppe? And what did that defiance actually cost him?

• 2. A Throne at Nine

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  Ivan the Fair, Grand Prince of Moscow, died while his son was still a child. Dmitry's mother was Alexandra Vassilievna Velyaminova, daughter of the mayor of Moscow, and her husband's will placed governance of the principality in the hands of Metropolitan Aleksey, who served as regent during the boy's minority. The title Dmitry stood to inherit was not even Moscow's most coveted. The grand princehood of Vladimir was considered the supreme honor among the Russian princes, and in 1360 it was transferred by Khidr Khan of the Golden Horde to Dmitry Konstantinovich of Nizhny Novgorod. By 1363, that prince had been deposed, and Dmitry Ivanovich was crowned at Vladimir instead. He then turned rivalry into alliance: three years after his coronation, he made peace with Dmitry Konstantinovich and married his daughter Eudoxia. The man who had once held the Vladimir title became his father-in-law.

• 3. Stone Walls and War

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  The decision to build a stone Kremlin in Moscow was the defining strategic act of Dmitry's early reign. The fortress was completed in 1367, and it proved its worth almost immediately. Algirdas of Lithuania tested Moscow twice with sieges during the Lithuanian-Muscovite War, which ran from 1368 to 1372, and both times the city held. The conflict ended with the Treaty of Lyubutsk. By 1375, Dmitry had also resolved a contest with Mikhail II of Tver over control of Vladimir, doing so on his own terms. Other princes of the northeastern Rus principalities recognized his authority and agreed to send troops when the moment came to confront the Horde. The Kremlin was not only walls; it was a statement that Moscow had become something the region's rivals could not ignore.

• 4. The Battle of Kulikovo

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  The Golden Horde was already fracturing from civil war and dynastic rivalry when Mamai, a Mongol general who claimed the throne, decided to make an example of Dmitry. In 1378, Mamai sent an army; Dmitry's forces defeated it at the Battle of Vozha River. Two years later, Mamai led a large force personally toward Moscow. Before Dmitry marched out to meet him, he sought the blessing of Sergius of Radonezh, who granted it only after satisfying himself that Dmitry had exhausted all peaceful options. Sergius sent two warrior monks with the Russian army: Alexander Peresvet and his companion Rodion Oslyabya. The battle opened with single combat. Peresvet rode out as the Russian champion; a Horde warrior named Temir-murza rode out to face him. Both men killed each other on the first pass. Then the larger battle began, and Dmitry's forces defeated Mamai's army. In gratitude, Dmitry founded the Dormition monastery on the Dubenka River and built a church in honor of the Nativity of the Holy Theotokos over the graves of those who fell.

• 5. Tokhtamysh and the Aftermath

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  Victory at Kulikovo did not end Mongol power over Rus. The defeated Mamai was deposed by a rival general, Tokhtamysh, who reasserted Mongol authority with force. In 1382, Tokhtamysh overran Moscow as punishment for Dmitry's earlier resistance. Dmitry responded not with another battle but with submission. He pledged loyalty to Tokhtamysh and to the Golden Horde and was reinstated as their principal tax collector and Grand Duke of Vladimir. He continued to hold the Khan's patent to gather taxes across Russia. Yet within this apparent reversal lay something unprecedented. When Dmitry died in Moscow in 1389, he became the first Grand Duke to pass his titles directly to his son, Vasily I of Moscow, without requesting the Khan's approval. No prince had done that before. Whatever compromises Dmitry had made with Tokhtamysh, that final act of inheritance rewrote the terms of Mongol authority in Russia.

• 6. Family and Succession

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  Eudoxia of Nizhny Novgorod, daughter of Dmitry of Suzdal and Vasilisa of Rostov, bore Dmitry at least twelve children. The eldest to survive into adulthood was Vasily I, born on the 30th of September 1371, who inherited the grand princehood. A second son, Yury Dmitriyevich of Zvenigorod and Galich, born on the 26th of November 1374, later claimed the Moscow throne against his own nephew, Vasily II. The daughters married into the ruling families of Ryazan, Kholm, and elsewhere, extending Muscovite influence through kinship. One of the youngest children, Konstantin Dmitriyevich, born in May 1389, just days before his father died, became Prince of Pskov. The marriage of Anna Dmitriyevna to Yury Patrikiyevich is noted as having strengthened the role of Patrikiyevich as a boyar attached to Moscow, his grandfather being the Lithuanian prince Narimantas.

• 7. Saint and Symbol

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  Dmitry's religious veneration took centuries to formalize. He was canonized on the 6th of June 1988 at the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, the monastery founded by the same Sergius of Radonezh who had blessed him before Kulikovo. The canonization was conducted by the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church under Patriarch Pimen I of Moscow. His feast day falls on the 19th of May, the anniversary of his death. In traditional Russian historiography, he is regarded as a national hero and a central figure of the Russian Middle Ages. The title conferred on him at canonization is Right-Believing Prince, a designation the Orthodox Church reserves for secular rulers who governed with piety. The monastery he built on the Dubenka River to commemorate Kulikovo still stands as the most durable monument to the day two champions rode out to meet each other, and only one side rode away.