The worst menace came however from the forest lands of the northeast which had formerly been the one safe spot on the boundaries. Various princes, deprived of their lands in Rus’, had gone up to the area around the headwaters of the Don and the Volga. There, amid the Finnic population, they had carved out domains for themselves, but they were not going to be hampered by the constitutional and democratic traditions that had prevailed at Kiev. In their new homes, they were able to create a thoroughly autocratic state and to destroy those rights and privileges which the old druzhinas had been able to maintain against the prince. They were not content with this alone. They also were able to keep from starting in their capitals of Vladimir, of Suzdal and later of Moscow, the various citizens’ councils which had acquired so much power in Novgorod. With increasing speed the culture of Moscow separated itself from that of Kiev. Connections between Kiev and Moscow were difficult, between Moscow and Constantinople almost impossible. On the other hand the Volga River easily became a route of commerce and of travel to the Caspian Sea and this brought Moscow far closer to Armenia and Georgia, then at their political height, than to Constantinople and the weakening Byzantine Empire. Architecture and art speedily felt the new influences. The types of churches that had been developed at Kiev and Novgorod under Byzantine influence gave way to new patterns borrowed from the east, with low relief for decorations and with simpler architectural forms. Kiev still remained the dominant factor in Rus’. It was a name to be conjured with, but it did not hold for these northern principalities the sympathetic appeal that it did for all the princes in the older part of the country. For a while they continued to yield to the spell of the older capital and they sought to play their role in the complicated game of politics. Yet only for a while.