Ivan II of Moscow
Grand Prince of Moscow (1326-1359)
Ivan II Ivanovich the Fair (Russian: Иван II Иванович Красный, romanized: Ivan II Ivanovich Krasnyy; 30 March 1326 – 13 November 1359) was Prince of Moscow and Grand Prince of Vladimir from 1353 to 1359. Until that date, he had ruled the towns of Ruza and Zvenigorod. He was the second son of Ivan Kalita, and succeeded his brother Simeon the Proud, who died of the Black Death.
Reign
Upon succeeding his brother and because of increased civil strife among the Golden Horde, Ivan briefly toyed with the idea of abandoning traditional Moscow allegiance to the Mongols and allying himself with Lithuania, a growing power in the west. This policy was quickly abandoned and Ivan asserted his allegiance to the Golden Horde.
Contemporaries described Ivan as a pacific, apathetic ruler, who didn't flinch even when Algirdas of Lithuania captured his father-in-law's capital, Bryansk. He also allowed Oleg of Riazan to burn villages on his territory. However, Orthodox churchmen aided in consolidating the power of the Prince of Moscow. He received much aid from the capable Metropolitan Alexius. Like his brother, Ivan II was not as successful as his father or grandfather with regard to territorial expansion.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ivan II of Moscow” is grand Prince of Moscow (1326-1359). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Ivan, Moscow and Grand, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q210162. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1326, 1359 and 1353.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ivan II of Moscow” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.