For the first time in the context of Russian ethno genesis, the author makes an attempt to consider the most important event for the political consolidation of the unified Russian state –elimination of the independence of the Novgorod boyar republic and later of Pskov by military means, which were accompanied by large-scale cross-resettlements of almost the entire political and propertied elite of Novgorod and some feudal lords of the central regions of Moscow Rus. The author concludes that the volitional political decisions natural for the central government had a contradictory effect on the process of ethnic consolidation of medieval Russians, since the central government under the rule of Ivan III after some hesitation took sides of the Conservatives of the Russian Orthodox Church that led to the split and the Old Believers’ movement.