This chapter describes the situation and conditions in Muscovy at the time of the ascension to the throne of Ivan III in 1462; how that situation and those conditions were affected by the reigns of Ivan III and Vasilii III. It sums up the differences that occurred in Muscovy by 1533. The domestic policies of both Ivan III and Vasilii III focused on reducing the power of their brothers and on maintaining good relations with the boyars and the Church. Ivan III and Vasilii III sought out and adapted foreign institutions and technical skills to their policy needs, and had far-ranging foreign policies. It was under Vasilii that the first stipulations concerning the need for churches and monasteries to register their land acquisitions with state agents began to appear. During the reign of Ivan III, Muscovy and the Crimean khanate had friendly relations. In 1533, Muscovy was on the verge of becoming the dominant power in the western steppe region.

Internal consolidation in the high medieval Scandinavian kingdoms meant that more energy and resources could be directed to foreign affairs, which led to expansion in directions that were determined by the geographical positions of the three kingdoms and other factors. Norway expanded towards the islands of the western sea, Sweden towards Finland and the eastern Baltic. The Danish kingdom found the chief outlets for its foreign energies in north Germany and along the Slavonic south coast of the Baltic. After 1300 inter-Nordic relations were, to a much higher degree than before, determined by internal political conditions in Sweden. In 1319, the first of the medieval Scandinavian unions was established. It was clearly an outcome of the inter-Nordic entanglement which had started in the mid-thirteenth century, not least on the initiative of the consolidated Norwegian monarchy under Håkon Håkonsson. The process had now gone too far to be stopped by the new-found cautiousness of Håkon V in his last years.