The power of the sovereign was absolute.  His will was the supreme law.  The lives, the fortunes of the clergy, the laity, the lords, the citizens were dependent upon his pleasure.  The Russians regarded their monarch as the executor of the divine will.  Their ordinary language was, God and the prince decree it.  The Russians generally defend this autocracy as the only true principle of government.  The philosophic Karamsin writes: 

“Ivan III. and Vassili knew how to establish permanently the nature of one government by constituting in autocracy the necessary attribute of empire, its sole constitution, and the only basis of safety, force and prosperity.  This limitless power of the prince is regarded as tyranny in the eye of strangers, because, in their inconsiderate judgment, they forget that tyranny is the abuse of autocracy, and that the same tyranny may exist in a republic when citizens or powerful magistrates oppress society.  Autocracy does not signify the absence of laws, since law is everywhere where there is any duty to be performed, and the first duty of princes, is it not to watch over the happiness of their people?”

To the traveler, in the age of Vassili, Russia appeared like a vast desert compared with the other countries of Europe.  The sparseness of the habitations, the extended plains, dense forests and roads, rough and desolate, attested that Russia was still in the cradle of its civilization.  But as one approached Moscow, the signs of animated life rapidly increased.  Convoys crowded the grand route, which traversed vast prairies waving with grain and embellished with all the works of industry.  In the midst of this plain rose the majestic domes and glittering towers of Moscow.  The convents, in massive piles, scattered around, resembled beautiful villages.  The palace of the Kremlin alone, was a city in itself.  Around this, as the nucleus, but spreading over a wide extent, were the streets of the metropolis, the palaces of the nobles, the mansions of the wealthy citizens and the shops of the artisans.  The city in that day was, indeed, one of “magnificent distances,” almost every dwelling being surrounded by a garden in luxurious cultivation.  In the year 1520, the houses, by count, which was ordered by the grand prince, amounted to forty-one thousand five hundred.

The metropolitan bishop, the grand dignitaries of the court, the princes and lords occupied splendid mansions of wood reared by Grecian and Italian architects in the environs of the Kremlin.  On wide and beautiful streets there were a large number of very magnificent churches also built of wood.  The bazaars or shops, filled with the rich merchandise of Europe and of Asia, were collected in one quarter of the city, and were surrounded by a high stone wall as a protection against the armies, domestic or foreign, which were ever sweeping over the land.