| A | B |
|---|
| Steppe | an open treeless grassland |
| Boyar | great landowning nobles in Russia |
| Czar | title of Russian King that means Caesar |
| Cyril and Methodius | Christian monks who adapted the Greek alphabet to form a Slavic written language |
| Vladimir I | Russian leader who converted to Christianity and required the Russian people to convert also |
| Yaroslav the Wise | great Russian leader who issued a written law code |
| Genghis Khan | Mongol leader who was first to unite all Mongol tribes |
| Golden Horde | term used for the Mongols who conquered Russia |
| Third Rome | with the fall of the Byzantine Empire Moscow claimed this title and that they would bring the spriritual light of orthodoxy to the world |
| Ivan the Great | strong Russian leader after Mongol occupation who limited power of boyars |
| Ivan the Terrible | Russian Czar who introduced new laws that tied peasants to the land and he exchanged land with nobles for military service |
| Time of Troubles | a period of disputes over succession peasant uprisings and foreign invasions from 1604 to 1613 |
| Michael Romanov | Czar chosen by the zemsky sobor after the Time of Troubles whose family would rule Russia until 1917 |
| Oprichniki | agents of terror who enforced the Ivan the Terrible’s will |
| Peter the Great | Czar of Russia who helped modernize and westernize Russia in the late 1600s creating the largest standing army in Europe |
| Catherine the Great | leader of Russia who ruled in the tradition of absolute monarchs in the mid 1700s by reorganizing the provincial government codifying laws and sponsoring education for boys and girls |
| Westernization | adoption of Western ideas technology and culture |
| warm water port | a port that would be free of ice all year long |
| partition | to divide up |
| Zemsky sobor | a Russian Parliament that consisted of an assembly of clergy nobles and townsmen |
| St. Petersburg | new capital city of Russia built as a window to the west by Peter the Great |
