Grand Principality of Vladimir-Suzdal

The Grand Principality of Vladimir-Suzdal, known as the Principality of Suzdal before 1157, was a major Russian state in the northeast of Kievan Rus whose capital Prince Yury Dolgoruky moved from Rostov to Suzdal in 1125, before his son Andrey relocated it further to the city of Vladimir in 1157. Under Grand Prince Vsevolod III the principality extended its borders west, east against the Volga Bulgars, and north into the sphere of Novgorod, reaching its greatest prominence in the late twelfth century, but the Mongol invasions of 1237 and 1238 shattered its unity, and by the end of the thirteenth century it had broken apart into more than a dozen smaller appanages. Moscow gradually eclipsed its rival princes within this fragmented system, and in 1389 Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoy bequeathed the grand principality's throne to his heir alongside Moscow's own, permanently uniting the two and ending Vladimir-Suzdal as a separate political entity.