Abstract
This work offers a comprehensive reading on the older history of Eastern Europe, which is still lacking in current days in Czech historiography, except for the Kievan Rus' period. The book provides information on significant events, phenomena and trends in the history of states, which gradually arose in this area, but most of them no longer exist.
Primarily, but not exclusively, this work is a synthesis of political history, conceived in chronological order. It also deals issues of state-law development and legislation, church life, outlines the stratification of society or economic issues, and includes extensive excursions into the history of literature and material culture.
The work is based on the latest as well as older historiography and the original written sources. The use of such a big variety of sources opens up space for further discussion rather than promoting a single correct view.
The title of the publication From Rus' to the Tsardom of Moscow was chosen because it best expresses the intention of proceeding from period ideas of space and political or ethnic identities and not transferring current concepts into the past. The discussed history took place in a territory ruled by members of the Rurikov dynasty in the middle ages and early modern times - the countries that covered the South Western territories were going to be part of the Lithuanian or Polish state over time, therefore, they were no longer mentioned in the text.
This territory is traditionally referred to as Rus' or Russia however the using terminologie is historically accurated only for limited periods. The content is divided into three parts.
The first, called simply Rus', explains the history of the original Rus' state from the beginning of its genesis at the turn of the 9th and 10th century to the 12th century, when, as a result of the decentralization of political power, this state unit began to disappear from history. The second part The Lands of Rurikids between Lithuania and the Horde follows a number of new principalities which were formed on the territory of the original Rus' between the 13th to 14th century.
These were uniting and then re-dividing in a situation when they were under Mongol rule while but also they became the object of the dynamic expansion of the young Lithuanian state, which culminated in the early 15th century. In the third part, entitled On the Threshold of the Modern Age: The Moscow State, the attention shifts to the north of Eastern Europe, where the process of political integration of the Rurikov lands was completed at the turn of the 15th century these lands were emancipated from control by the Tatar khanates at the same time.
A large Moscow state was constituted in this area, which began to be introduced as a "new Russian land" and in this context postulated its territorial claims during the 16th century.