The Golden Horde was the northwestern division of the Mongol Empire — the khanate that ruled the western steppe from its capital at Sarai on the Volga and held the Rus' principalities in tribute from the 1240s. Its overlordship profoundly conditioned the rise of Muscovy and politics across the Rus' lands. Its last core, the Great Horde, was destroyed in 1502, but the Crimean, Kazan, and Astrakhan khanates carried the Jochid line on into the sixteenth century.
For more than two centuries, no prince ruled in the Russian lands without a paper patent granted by a Mongol court on the lower Volga. The princes of Moscow understood this better than their rivals. They did not break the Horde's power by fighting it. They made themselves its favored tax collectors, gathered its tribute from every other Russian city, and skimmed off enough wealth and authority to outgrow the very empire they served. By the time Moscow finally refused to pay, it had swallowed the role its masters once held.