589 years ago, the Mari and Merya defeated the Muscovites on Kusi river

The battle took place on September 28, 1434. The Mari and Meryan volunteer corps of Vetluga and Galich-Mer lands, led by the brothers Dmitriy Shemyaka and Vasiliy Kosoy, defeated the troops of the Moscow prince Vasiliy II the Dark, led by voevoda Yuriy Patrikeevich.

As always, the Muscovites extremely underestimated the enemy’s forces and initially simply ridiculed the very possibility of the battle, believing that Merya and Mari would flee from the battlefield, and that it would be possible to reach Galich in 3 days.

Unfortunately, all of the parties were ruled by the same Moscow family, who simply wanted to rule Moscow and the surrounding principalities, each in their own way, and not be satisfied only with their inheritance. Until they managed to finally gain a foothold in Moscow, in no way inferior to their relatives – until then, the lands of Merya and Mari were actually independent, albeit with princes like the present Lukashenko. Dmitriy Shemyaka, the prince of Galich, even came up with the idea of minting “the Sovereign of all the Russian Lands” on his coins, probably becoming the first one under the rule of the Khan of the Golden Horde to write such a thing. On the Meryan lands…

As soon as the prince Vasiliy II the Dark, who settled in Moscow, was able to become stronger, he immediately did away with his relatives and with the independence of the Merya of Galich and the Mari of the Vetlya-Shangon Kugyzstvo, and then he began to create that structure controlled by the Kremlin authorities, which we now know as the Russian Orthodox Church.