Overview
Before the introduction of autocratic rule to Russia, it was a tribute-paying Mongol Khanate known as the Golden Horde. Through a process of land gathering throughout the huge realm, and the centralization brought by the fist tsar, Ivan III, Russians were able to build an imperial identity and structure. The tsars or tsarinas that followed him were all very different in motive and discipline. Ivan the Terrible (IV) used violence and terror to suppress treason, while Catherine the Great sought to decrease suffering for her subjects as much as possible. Both the westernization processes of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great connected Russia to the European and Asian worlds and gave it its unique identity.