Tsar of Russia Ivan IV 'the Terrible'

Ivan IV ‘the Terrible’, Tsar of Russia (1530-84). Ivan ‘Grozny’ was the first Russian ruler to take the title tsar (from Caesar). Grozny means ‘terrible’ or ‘awesome’ and he deserved that title more. He became prince of Muscovy at the age of 3 on the death of his father and grew up under the guardianship of the boyars (nobles) who were not anxious to have a strong ruler. It was a time of intrigue and constant danger which moulded his ruthless and suspicious nature. It took him 30 years, but by a process first of tactical alliances and then by physical elimination he gradually won absolute personal power, cemented with the creation of the black-clad Oprichnina, a private army or secret police force whose members owed everything to Ivan and could be relied on to conduct a reign of terror against the boyars.

Ivan's military and foreign policy had two main goals: continuation of the struggle against the Mongol Golden Horde, whose yoke Russia had shaken off in 1480, but who remained a threat, and access to the Baltic Sea. In 1552 he captured the Tartar city of Kazan and in 1556 Astrakhan. The Crimean Tartars repaid the favour by burning Moscow in 1571. His campaigns in the west during the Livonian war (1558-83) were less successful and ended in defeat and renewed isolation from the West.

Ivan's armies were split into five corps, or polk (‘regiments’): the main body (bolʿshoy), left and right flanking (levy and pravy), the advance guard (peredovoi), which also provided scouts and forces for pursuit, and the rearguard (zasadny), each commanded by a high-ranking boyar who had an Ivan loyalist and more professional lieutenant general to advise him. For fighting on the steppe, the Russians devised the gulai-gorod or ‘running castle’—a wagon fort akin to the one made famous by the Hussites.

Ivan was particularly interested in artillery, possibly because it was the only system that outranged the powerful Tartar composite bows, and enjoyed watching firepower demonstrations in which earth bunkers were flattened to see what his gunners could do. Foreign observers were greatly impressed with Ivan's firepower. During his reign the body of the strelsty or musketeers was created and the artillery chancellery was extant by 1581.

Bibliography

• Berry, Lloyd, and Crummey, Robert, Rude and Barbarous Kingdom: Russia in the Accounts of 16th Century English Voyagers (Madison, Wisc. 1968).
• Yanov, Alexander, The Origins of Autocracy: Ivan the Terrible in Russian History (Berkeley, 1981)

— Christopher Bellamy

Opera in four acts by Bizet to a libretto by F. H. Leroy and H. Trianon, completed in 1865.

Ivan IV (1530-1584), known as Ivan the Terrible, was the first Russian sovereign to be crowned czar and to hold czar as his official title in addition to the traditional title of grand duke of Moscow.

The reign of Ivan IV was the culmination of Russian historical developments that began with the rise of Moscow in the early 14th century. The results of these developments were the growth of a unified centralized state governed by an autocracy and the formation of a dominant class of serving gentry, the pomeshchiki.

Very little is actually known about Ivan. None of his papers, notes, or correspondence has survived. It is not possible to establish a precise chronology or to give a trustworthy factual account of Ivan's personal life. There are whole successions of years without a single reference to Ivan himself. All that is possible under these circumstances is to make surmises that are more or less in accord with the evidence of the scanty material that has survived.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks to contemporary students of Russian history in understanding Ivan is the epithet accorded him - "the Terrible" or "the Dread." This epithet indicates sadistic and irrational traits in his character, and there is sufficient evidence to make Ivan's reign a study in abnormal psychology. It is said that as a boy he took delight in throwing young animals to their death from high rooftops. He also formed the habit of robbing and beating the people of his capital. There is also the terrible event in 1581, when Ivan, in a fit of anger, lashed out at his 27-year-old son, Ivan Ivanovich, and struck him dead with an iron-pointed staff.

It would, therefore, be foolish to argue that the personality of Ivan IV is irrelevant to an understanding of his reign. It has been shown, in fact, that there was a very real cause for the monstrous aspects of Ivan's personality. A contemporary study of Ivan's skeleton showed that he must have suffered horribly for many years from osteophytes, which virtually fused his spine.

Regency Period

Ivan was born on Aug. 25, 1530, in Moscow. His father was Basil III and his mother Helen Glinsky, a Russian of Lithuanian origin. Ivan was only 3 years old when his father died in 1533. His mother became regent, and the throne rapidly degenerated into a center of wild violence, intrigue, and denunciation as rival boyar families disputed the Glinksy regency. At times they brought their feuds into the Kremlin itself.

Evidence indicates that Ivan was a sensitive, intelligent boy with a remarkably quick and intuitive mind. He became quite aware of all the intrigues around him and of the precariousness of his own position. He was neglected and at times treated with scorn. Apparently, he was even short of food and clothes. This environment, therefore, nourished a hatred for the boyars that revealed itself in Ivan's later policies toward them.

Early Rule

In 1538 Glinsky died suddenly, and years of strife and misrule ensued. In 1547, however, Ivan decided, much to the astonishment of those around him, to be crowned, not as grand prince, but as czar (God's anointed). In the same year Ivan married Anastasia Romanov. The marriage seems to have been a happy one, and when Anastasia died in 1560, deep grief overcame Ivan. Although he married four more times, he was never able to recapture the happiness he had enjoyed with Anastasia.

In 1547 Ivan also appointed the Selected Council, largely dominated by men of modest social standing. He allowed himself to be both directed and restrained by this Council, even agreeing to do nothing without its approval. The period following the Council's creation is generally considered the constructive period of Ivan's reign.

In 1550 Ivan called the first of two zemskii sobors (consultative assemblies) to meet during his reign. Although knowledge of the assemblies is fragmentary (some historians even deny that there was an assembly in 1550), they appear not to have been elected but appointed by Ivan himself and to have served in a purely advisory capacity. Approval was given, however, to several of Ivan's projected reforms. In 1552 a reform in local government was instituted. In those areas where the local population could guarantee a fixed amount of state dues to the treasury, officials elected from and by the local inhabitants were given the right to collect taxes in lieu of the old governors, who were abolished in such areas.

The Law Code of 1550 was another important reform of the early part of Ivan's reign. It was concerned primarily with discouraging the use of customary law in the courts, and it introduced the principle of statutory law.

Ivan, a devout churchman, called a church council in 1551. Among other matters, the council considered liturgical questions and passed reforms which tightened and perfected the organization of the Church. Ivan was also concerned with standardizing and organizing the responsibilities and duties of the service class. In 1556 he issued a decree which provided new regulations concerning the length, nature, and form of service which a member of the nobility was expected to render.

Foreign Policy

Among Ivan's military accomplishments was the destruction of the Tatar khanates of Kazan in 1552 and Astrakhan in 1556. Thus, of the three Tatar states in the region of Russia, only the Crimean Tatars remained unconquered by Muscovy. With the addition of Kazan and Astrakhan, Muscovy now extended to the Urals in the east and to the Caspian Sea in the south. Russia also began its expansion to the east beyond the Urals at this time and before Ivan's death had established itself in Siberia. Ivan's ambition to restore to Muscovy the western territories which had been annexed by Lithuania in the 16th century, however, was unrealized.

Another of Ivan's ambitions, contact with the West, was achieved. In 1553 an English sea captain, Richard Chancellor, landed on the Russian shore near the mouth of the Northern Dvina River and made his way to Moscow. Upon his return to England, Chancellor became one of the founders of the Muscovy Company, to which Ivan gave special trade privileges. Although traders of other nations, Dutch and French, began to appear, the English dominated the Russian trade with centers in many Russian towns.

Later Years

Despite governmental improvements at home and successes abroad, the constructive or early period of Ivan's rule was not to endure. He broke with his Selected Council, turned against many of his former advisers, and introduced a reign of terror against the boyars. The major turning point came in 1560, when Anastasia died quite suddenly. Convinced that his advisers, backed by the boyars, had caused her death, Ivan condemned them and turned against the nobility. In 1564 he abandoned Moscow. What his intentions were is not clear, although he threatened to abdicate and denounced the boyars for their greed and treachery. Confused and frightened, the people of Moscow begged the Czar to return and rule over them. His eventual agreement to return was dependent upon two basic conditions: the creation of a territorial and political subdivision - the oprichnina - to be managed entirely at the discretion of the Czar; and Ivan's right to punish traitors and wrongdoers, executing them when necessary and confiscating their possessions.

The area encompassed by the oprichnina was a large one, constituting about one-half of the existing Muscovite state. It also included most of the wealthy towns, trading routes, and cultivated areas and was, therefore, a stronghold of wealthy old boyar families. Ivan's establishment of his rule over the area necessarily involved, then, displacement (and destruction) of the major boyar families in Russia. This task fell to his special bodyguards, a select group known as the oprichniki.

In 1584 Ivan's health began to fail. As portents of death came to obsess him, he called on witches and soothsayers to aid him, but to no avail. The end came on March 18, 1584. In a final testament he willed his kingdom to Feodor, his oldest surviving son. Although the transition from Ivan to Feodor was relatively easy and quiet, Muscovy itself was, according to most observers, on the verge of anarchy.

Further Reading

There are several biographies of Ivan in English. The best is probably K. Waliszewski, Ivan the Terrible (trans. 1904). Robert Wipper justifies Ivan's actions in Ivan Grozny (trans., 3d ed. 1947). Other biographies include Stephen Graham, Ivan the Terrible: Life of Ivan IV of Russia (1933), and A. M. Kurbsky, Prince A. M. Kurbsky's History of Ivan IV, edited and translated by J. L. I. Fennell (1965). For a vivid self-portrait of Ivan as well as a justification of his actions see The Correspondence between Prince A. M. Kurbsky and Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, 1564-79, edited and translated by J. L. I. Fennell (1955). A contemporary account of Ivan's Russia is Giles Fletcher, Of the Rus Commonwealth, edited by Albert J. Schmidt (1966). British trade with Russia can be studied in T. S. Willan, The Early History of the Russia Company, 1553-1603 (1956).

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Ivan IV, icon, late 16th century; in the National Museum, Copenhagen. (credit: Courtesy of the Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen)

(born Aug. 25, 1530, Kolomenskoye, near Moscow — died March 18, 1584, Moscow) Grand prince of Moscow (1533 – 84) and first tsar of Russia (1547 – 84). Crowned tsar in 1547 after a long regency (1533 – 46), he embarked on wide-ranging reforms, including a centralized administration, church councils that systematized the church's affairs, and the first national assembly (1549). He also instituted reforms to limit the powers of the boyars. After conquering Kazan (1552) and Astrakhan (1556), he engaged in an unsuccessful war to control Livonia, fighting against Sweden and Poland (1558 – 83). After the defeat and the suspected treason of several Russian boyars, Ivan formed an oprichnina, a territory separate from the rest of the state and under his personal control. With a large bodyguard, he withdrew into his own entourage and left Russia's management to others. At the same time, he instituted a reign of terror, executing thousands of boyars and ravaging the city of Novgorod. During the 1570s he married five wives in nine years, and, in a fit of rage, he murdered his son Ivan, his only viable heir, in 1581.

For more information on Ivan IV, visit Britannica.com.

Ivan the Terrible (orig. Russ. title Ivan Grozny).Ballet in two acts with choreography by Grigorovich, music by Prokofiev (taken from Eisenstein's film of the same title, with excerpts from his 3rd Symphony and Alexander Nevsky, arr. by M. Chulaki), and design by Simon Virsaladze. Premiered by the Bolshoi Ballet, Moscow 20 Feb. 1975 with Vladimirov, Bessmertnova, and B. Akimov. It is essentially a portrait of the controversial personality of Ivan IV and, via a series of danced tableaux, shows how Ivan sinks into sadistic cruelty after the poisoning of his beloved wife Anastasia. It has been revived by Paris Opera, 1976.

(1530 - 1584), "The Terrible" (Grozny), grand prince of Moscow and tsar of all Russia.

The long reign of Ivan IV saw the transformation of Muscovy into a multiethnic empire through ambitious political, military, and cultural projects, which revolved around the controversial figure of the monarch.

Ivan Iv and the Rurikid Dynasty

Born to the ruling Moscow branch of the Rurikid dynasty, Ivan nominally became grand prince at the age of three after the death of his father, Grand Prince Vasily III. During the regency of Ivan's mother, Yelena Glinskaya, from 1533 to 1538, ruling circles strengthened Ivan's position as nominal ruler by eliminating Prince Andrei Ivanovich of Staritsa and Prince Yury Ivanovich of Dmitrov, representatives of the royal family's collateral branches. Ivan's status as dynastic leader was reinforced during his coronation as tsar on January 16, 1547. Drawing extensively on Byzantine and Muscovite coronation rituals and literary texts to reveal the divine sanction for Ivan's power, the ceremony posited continuity between his rule and the rule of the Byzantine emperors and Kievan princes. Ivan continued the aggressive policy of his ancestors toward the collateral branches of the dynasty by eliminating his cousin, Prince Vladimir Andreyevich of Staritsa (1569).

Ivan was married several times. His wives were from Muscovite elite clans (Anastasia Zakharina Romanova, Maria Nagaya) and from relatively obscure gentry families (Marfa Sobakina, Anna Koltovskaya, Anna Vasilchikova). He also tried to raise the status of the dynasty by establishing matrimonial ties with foreign ruling houses, but succeeded only in marrying the Caucasian Princess Maria (Kuchenei) (1561). Throughout his reign, Ivan sought to secure the succession of power for his sons, although he accidentally killed his elder son Ivan (1581). The tsar's other son, the reportedly mentally challenged Fyodor, eventually inherited the throne.

Ivan Iv and His Court

When Ivan was a minor, power was in the hands of influential courtiers. Under Yelena Glinskaya, Prince Mikhail Lvovich Glinsky competed for power with Yelena's favorite, Prince Ivan Fyodorovich Ovchina-Obolensky. Yelena's death (1538) was followed by fierce competition between the princely clans of Shuyskys, Belskys, Kubenskys, and Glinskys, and the boyar Vorontsov clan. After his coronation, Ivan attempted to stabilize the situation at court through improving the registry of elite military servitors, providing them with prestige landholdings around Moscow, and regulating service relations among the elite during campaigns. The authorities limited the right of some princely families to dispose of their lands in order to pursue the lands policy. Ivan granted top court ranks to a wide circle of elite servitors, which especially benefited the tsarina's relatives, the Zakharins-Yurevs. Ivan also favored officials of lower origin, Alexei Fyodorovich Adashev and Ivan Mikhaylovich Viskovaty, though some experts question their influence at court. Historians sometimes call the ruling circles of the 1550s "the chosen council," but this vague literary term is apparently irrelevant to governmental institutions.

Beginning in 1564, Ivan IV subjected his court to accusations of treason, executions, and disgraces by establishing the Oprichnina. Despite the subsequent abolition of the Oprichnina in 1572, Ivan continued to favor some of its former members. Among them were the elite Nagoy and Godunov families, including Ivan's relative and would-be tsar Boris Godunov. The established princely Shuysky and Mstislavsky clans and the Zakharin-Yurev boyar family retained their high positions at court throughout Ivan's reign.

Ivan's court also included Tatar servitors, including prominent members of the Chingissid dynasty, who received the title of tsar. Ivan granted the last survivor of those Tatar tsars, Simeon Bekbulatovich (Sain-Bulat), the title of grand prince of Moscow and official jurisdiction over a considerable part of the realm. Historians usually interpret the reign of Simeon (1575 - 1576) as a parody of the Muscovite political system. It may be that Ivan, in granting Simeon the new title, sought to deprive Simeon of the title of tsar and thereby eliminate a possible Chingissid succession to the throne.

Ivan Iv and His Realm

In the 1550s, Ivan IV and his advisors attempted to standardize judicial and administrative practices across the country by introducing a new law code (1550) and delegating routine administrative and financial tasks to the increasingly structured chancelleries. The keeping of law and order and control of the local population's mobility became the tasks of locally elected officials, in turn accountable to the central chancelleries. The remote northern territories enjoyed a greater autonomy in local affairs than the central parts of the country.

Albeit limited and inconsistent, these reforms allowed Ivan to maintain an approximately 70,000-man army and to pursue an aggressive foreign policy. With the capture of the Tatar states of Kazan (1552) and Astrakhan (1556), Ivan acquired vast territories populated with a multiethnic, predominantly Muslim population with distinctive cultural and economic traditions. The conquest of those lands, whose peoples remained rebellious throughout Ivan's reign, contributed to the tension between Muscovy and the powerful Muslim states of Crimea and Turkey, which jointly attacked Astrakhan in 1569. The Crimean khan devastated Moscow in 1571, but Ivan's commanders inflicted a defeat on him in 1572. Ivan failed to avoid simultaneous involvement in military conflicts on several fronts. Without settling the conflict in the south, he launched a war against his western neighbor, Livonia, in 1558. Historians traditionally interpret the Livonian War (1558 - 1583) in geopolitical terms, asserting that Ivan was looking for passage to the Baltic Sea to expand overseas trade. Revisionists explain the war's origins in terms of Ivan's short-range interest in getting tribute. The Livonian war only resulted in human and material losses for Muscovy. Ivan supported commercial relations between Muscovy and England, but attempts to conclude a political union with the queen of England were in vain. The war, famines, epidemics, and the Oprichnina caused a profound economic crisis in Muscovy, especially in the Novgorod region. By the end of Ivan's reign, peasants abandoned 70 to 98 percent of arable land throughout the country. Many of them fled to the periphery of the realm, including Siberia, whose colonization intensified in the early 1580s.

Ivan Iv and the Orthodox Church

Ivan IV cultivated a close relationship with the Orthodox Church through regular pilgrimages and generous donations to monasteries. The symbolism of court religious rituals, in which the tsar participated with the metropolitan, and the semiotics of Ivan's residence in the Kremlin stressed the divine character of the tsar's power and the prevailing harmony between the tsar and the church. In 1551, Ivan participated in a church council that attempted to systematize religious practices and the jurisdiction of church courts. Metropolitan Macarius, head of the church and a close advisor to the tsar, sponsored an ideology of militant Orthodoxy that presented the tsar as champion and protector of the true faith. Macarius also played a part in conducting domestic and foreign policy. Contrary to traditional views, the court priest Silvester apparently did not exert political influence on the tsar. Ivan demonstrated a flexible attitude toward the landownership of the church and its tax privileges. Ivan often played ecclesiastical leaders off each other and even deposed disloyal hierarchs.

Controversy Over Ivan's Personality and Historical Role

Ivan is credited with writing diplomatic letters to European monarchs, epistles to elite servitors and clerics, and a reply to a Protestant pastor. Dmitry Likhachev, J. L. I. Fennell, and other specialists describe Ivan as an erudite writer who developed a peculiar literary style through the use of different genres, specific syntax, irony, parody, and mockery of opponents. According to his writings, Ivan, traumatized by childhood memories of boyar arbitrariness, sought through terror to justify his autocratic rule and to prevent the boyars from regaining power. Edward Keenan argues that Ivan was illiterate, never wrote the works attributed to him, and was a puppet in the hands of influential boyar clans. The majority of experts do not share Keenan's view. All information on the influence of particular individuals and clans on Ivan comes from biased sources and should be treated with caution.

Nikolay Karamzin created an influential romantic image of an Ivan who first favored pious counselors but later became a tyrant. Many historians have explained Ivan's erratic policy in psychological terms (Nikolay Kostomarov, Vasily Klyuchevsky); some have assumed a mental disorder (Pavel Kovalevsky, D. M. Glagolev, Richard Hellie, Robert Crummey). The autopsy performed on Ivan's remains in 1963 suggests that Ivan might have suffered from a spinal disease, but it is unclear how the illness affected his behavior. The probability that Ivan was poisoned should be minimized. Other historians sought to rationalize Ivan's behavior, presuming that he acted as a protector of state interests in a struggle with boyar hereditary privileges (Sergei Solovyov, Sergei Platonov). According to Platonov, Ivan was a national democratic leader whose policy relied on the nonaristocratic gentry. This concept was revived in Stalinist historiography, which implicitly paralleled Ivan and Stalin by praising the tsar for strengthening the centralized Russian state through harsh measures (Robert Vipper, Sergei Bakhrushin, Ivan Smirnov). Stepan Veselovsky and Vladimir Kobrin subjected Platonov's concept to devastating criticism. Beginning in the 1960s, Soviet historians saw Ivan's policy as a struggle against various elements of feudal fragmentation (Alexander Zimin, Kobrin, Ruslan Skrynnikov). The political liberalization of the late 1980s evoked totalitarian interpretations of Ivan's rule (the later works of Kobrin and Skrynnikov). Boris Uspensky, Priscilla Hunt, and Andrei Yurganov explain Ivan's behavior in terms of the cultural myths of the tsar's power.

Bibliography

Bogatyrev, Sergei. (1995). "Grozny tsar ili groznoe vremya? Psikhologichesky obraz Ivana Groznogo v istoriografii." Russian History 22:285 - 308.

Fennell. J.L.I. ed., tr. (1955). The Correspondence between Prince Kurbsky and Tsar Ivan IV of Russia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Fennell, John. (1987). "Ivan IV As a Writer." Russian History 14:145 - 154.

Kalugin, V. V. (1998). Andrey Kurbsky i Ivan Grozny. Teoreticheskie vzglyady i literaturnaya tekhnika drevnerusskogo pisatelya. Moscow: Yazyki russkoy kultury.

Keenan, Edward L. (1971). The Kurbskii - Groznyi Apocrypha: The Seventeenth-Century Genesis of the "Correspondence" Attributed to Prince A. M. Kurbskii and Tsar Ivan IV, with an appendix by Daniel C. Waugh. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Kliuchevsky, V. O. (1912). A History of Russia, tr. C. J. Hogarth, vol. 2. London: J. M. Dent and Sons.

Hunt, Priscilla. (1993). "Ivan IV's Personal Mythology of Kingship." Slavic Review 52:769 - 809.

Perrie, Maureen. (2001). The Cult of Ivan the Terrible in Stalin's Russia. Basingstoke, NY: Palgrave.

Platonov, S. F. (1986). Ivan the Terrible, ed. and tr. Joseph L. Wieczynski, with "In Search of Ivan the Terrible" by Richard Hellie. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press.

Rowland, Daniel. (1995). "Ivan the Terrible As a Carolingian Renaissance Prince." In Kamen Kraeugln, Rhetoric of the Medieval Slavic World: Essays Presented to Edward Keenan on His Sixtieth Birthday by His Colleagues and Students. Harvard Ukrainian Studies, vol. 19, ed. Nancy Shields Kollmann; Donald Ostrowski; Andrei Pliguzov; and Daniel Rowland. Cambridge, MA: The Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University.

Skrynnikov, Ruslan G. (1981). Ivan the Terrible, ed. and tr. Hugh F. Graham. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press.

—SERGEI BOGATYREV

Early Reign

Ivan succeeded his father Vasily III, who died in 1533, under the regency of his mother. When she died (1538), the regency alternated among several feuding boyar families (see boyars). Boyar rule ended only in 1546, when Ivan announced his intention of becoming czar. He was crowned in 1547. As czar, Ivan attempted to establish czarist autocracy at the expense of boyar power. In the early years of his reign, he reduced the arbitrary powers of the boyar provincial governors, transferring their functions to locally elected officials. The former boyars' council was replaced by a “chosen council” consisting of members who owed their status to the czar.

In 1566, Ivan summoned what was probably the first general council of the realm (Zemsky Sobor), composed of representatives of different social ranks, including merchants and lower nobility. After reorganizing the army, Ivan conquered Kazan (1552) and Astrakhan (1556), thereby inaugurating Russia's eastward expansion. The conquest of Siberia by the Cossack Yermak took place late in his reign (1581–83). Ivan also began trade with England via the White Sea in the mid-1550s. To improve his access to the Baltic Sea, he undertook (1558) a campaign against Livonia. In the resulting war with Poland and Sweden, he was at first successful but was later defeated by Stephen báthory, king of Poland and Lithuania. The peace treaties (1582, 1583) forced the czar to renounce his territorial gains and cede additional territory to Sweden.

Later Reign

In his later years, Ivan's character, always stern, grew tyrannical. Apart from the reverses of the war, the change has been attributed to humiliations at the hands of the boyars during his childhood; a serious illness (1553) and resistance at that time to his efforts to secure the succession of his infant son; the death of his wife, Anastasia Romanov (1560), whom historians credit with exercising a moderating influence; and the defection to Poland of his favorite, Prince Andrew Kurbsky (1564). Suspecting conspiracies everywhere, he acted ruthlessly to consolidate his power. In 1565 he set aside an extensive personal domain, the oprichnina, under his direct control. He established a special corps (oprichniki), responsible to him alone, to whom he granted part of this domain at will. With the help of this corps, he diminished the political influence of the boyars and forcibly confiscated their lands in a reign of terror. Many boyars were executed or exiled.

Ivan formally abolished the oprichnina in 1572, although in effect it continued until 1575. Fits of rage alternated with periods of repentance and prayer; in one of his rages he killed (1581) his son and heir, Ivan. Although the exact number of his wives is uncertain, Ivan probably married seven times, ridding himself of unwanted wives by forcing them to take the veil or arranging for their murder. Despite his cruelty, he was a man of intelligence and learning. Printing was introduced into Russia during his reign. Two sons, Feodor I and Dmitri, survived the czar, but after his death his favorite, Boris Godunov, gained power.

Bibliography

See biographies by C. Francis (1981), B. Bobrick (1987), T. Butson (1987), and H. Troyat (1988); study by M. Perrie (1987).

Ivan Iv, "the Terrible" (Russia) (1530–1584; ruled 1533–1584), grand prince of Muscovy and, from 1547, first tsar of Russia. The early achievements of Ivan IV Vasil'evich, known as "the Terrible," were clouded by failure in war and repression at home in his later years. The son of Grand Prince Vasilii III and Princess Elena Glinskaia, Ivan was only three when his father died. His mother led a regency with Prince Ivan Telepnev-Obolenskii, but on her death in 1538, a boyar regency took over and proved to be dominated by vicious factional struggles. At first the princes Shuiskii ousted Obolenskii and Metropolitan Daniil (1539), then the princes Bel'skii rose to power, only to be replaced by the Vorontsovs and then once again by the Glinskiis, the relatives of Ivan's mother. In 1547 Metropolitan Makarii crowned the young Ivan tsar. The new official title signified a claim to equality in rank with the Holy Roman emperor, the Ottoman sultans, and the Chingisid Tatar khans, as well as the Byzantine emperors of the past. Shortly afterwards, Ivan married Anastasiia Romanova, a woman of one of the major boyar clans. After a major riot in Moscow against the Glinskii clan led to their fall from favor, the Romanovs became the closest boyar clan to the throne.

The next decade was one of major accomplishments on all fronts. Historians dispute how much influence Ivan's inner circle of informal advisers wielded. It is certain that, along with the boyars, Aleksei Adashev, the tsar's chamberlain and head of the Petitions Office, and Ivan's chaplain Sil'vestr advised Ivan about policy. After several expeditions down the Volga, Ivan conquered the Tatar khanate of Kazan' in 1552 and the Astrakhan' khanate in 1556, giving Russia control of the whole length of the river and the steppe around it. In a few years the Russians had built a fort on the Terek River near present-day Grozny. These spectacular successes changed the balance of power in western Eurasia, as Russia was the first sedentary power to break into the steppe, cutting off its western extension from Central Asia. These conquests laid the foundation for Russian settlement of the Urals and, at the very end of Ivan's reign, the expedition of the Cossack Yermak Timofeyevich into Siberia (1581–1584), which began the Russian conquest and settlement of northern Asia.

Ivan's internal measures, often anachronistically called reforms, built up the Russian state apparatus on new foundations. In these years new state offices (prikazy)—no longer household offices—came into being, with an army office (razriad), one for landed estates, and others for bandits, petitions, and other functions. The Ambassadorial Office split off from the treasury in 1549. At the same time, the government continued the policy of ordering local gentry to elect elders to deal with crime and public order, and it replaced the older system of direct collection of taxes by local governors to support their work (kormlenie, or 'feeding') with the requirement for the village community to collect taxes. The older type of provincial government gave way to a more centralized state. In 1550 the government issued a new law code (Sudebnik), really a procedural manual for trials and investigation. In 1551 Ivan called a council of the church that resulted in a series of enactments called the Hundred Chapters, which tried to correct administrative, liturgical, and moral abuses by strengthening episcopal administration as well as the tsar's control.

In 1553 Ivan fell ill and seemed on the point of death, and he tried to guarantee the succession for his infant son. Some boyars supported him, but others feared a regency that would only empower the Romanovs. A third group favored Ivan's cousin, Vladimir of Staritsa, an incapable but certainly legitimate possibility. Fortunately Ivan recovered, but the episode poisoned relations between the tsar and his cousin, as well as with many of the boyars. The poison began to work a decade later.

In 1558 Ivan, confident in his power after the victories over the Tatars, decided to invade and attempt to conquer Livonia, founded in the thirteenth century by a German crusading order on the territory of present-day Estonia and Latvia. The Reformation had destroyed the rationale and unity of the order, and Poland and Russia both craved its lands and trading cities. For Russia, they were the main artery of commerce with Europe. Ivan's army was quickly successful, but the entrance of Poland into the war provided a new enemy. At first victorious over the Poles, Ivan's army bogged down in a long stalemate that lasted until the 1570s, when Poland and Sweden expelled the Russians and divided Livonia between themselves. The failed war was a major burden on the Russian treasury and ruinous for the peasantry, who paid the taxes to support it.

The war also caused discontent among the elite, and in 1564 Prince Andrei Mikhailovich Kurbskii defected to Poland-Lithuania, inaugurating a famous exchange of polemics with Ivan and also contributing to the establishment of the oprichnina. The executions and exactions of the following years struck the boyar elite as well as the gentry and townspeople in Novgorod. In 1575 Ivan suddenly placed a converted Tatar prince, Semen Bekbulatovich, on the throne for a few months, but the strange episode had no consequences. A return to near normalcy failed to improve Russia's position in the war, and a truce with Poland in 1582 brought Ivan no gains for his enormous effort. The one accomplishment was the beginning of the conquest of Siberia under Yermak, but this was sponsored by the Stroganov merchants rather than the government. At the end of Ivan's reign the clans began to return to court and to power, a process completed after Ivan's death.

Ivan's reign was a vivid time, full of light and dark, a reign that saw massive and permanent expansion alongside defeat in war, the foundations of the Russian state apparatus, and enormous political and organizational chaos. The agrarian crisis caused by the Livonian War contributed to the beginnings of serfdom, while trade with England and Holland began and thousands of peasants moved to new and better lands in the south and east. The problems at the core of Ivan IV's reign and his legacy are highly complex, and many aspects remain highly controversial.

Bibliography

Camphausen, Hans-Walter. Die Bojarenduma unter Ivan IV: Studien zur altmoskauer Herrschaftsordnung. Frankfurt am Main, 1985.

Platonov, S. F. Ivan the Terrible. Translated by Joseph L. Wieczynski. Gulf Breeze, Fla., 1974.

Skrynnikov, R. G. Ivan the Terrible. Translated by Hugh F. Graham. Gulf Breeze, Fla. 1982.

Soloviev, Sergei M. History of Russia. Vol. 10, The Reign of Ivan the Terrible: Kazan, Astrakhan, Livonia, the Oprichnina and the Polotsk Campaign. Translated by Anthony L. H. Rhinelander. Gulf Breeze, Fla., 1995.

Zimin, A. A. Oprichnina. 2nd ed. Moscow, 2001.

—PAUL BUSHKOVITCH

A Russian czar of the sixteenth century. Ivan struggled constantly with the nobles of Russia and became famous for his brutality toward his enemies.

"Ivan the Terrible" redirects here. For other uses, see Ivan the Terrible (disambiguation).

Tsar Ivan the Terrible, by Viktor Vasnetsov

Ivan IV Vasilyevich (Russian: Иван IV Васильевич) (August 25, 1530, Moscow – March 18, 1584, Moscow) was the Grand Duke of Muscovy from 1533 to 1547 and was the first ruler of Russia to assume the title of tsar (or czar). His long reign saw the conquest of Tartary and Siberia and subsequent transformation of Russia into a multiethnic and multiconfessional state. This tsar retains his place in the Russian tradition simply as Ivan Grozny (Russian: Ива́н Гро́зный  listen?), which is traditionally translated into English as Ivan the Terrible.

Early reign

Ivan (or Ioann, as his name is rendered in Church Slavonic) was a long-awaited son of Vasili III. Upon his father's death, he formally came to the throne at the age of three, but his minority was dominated by regents. Initially his mother Elena Glinskaya acted as regent, but she died when Ivan was only eight. She was replaced as regent by boyars from the Shuisky family until Ivan assumed power in 1544. According to his own letters, Ivan customarily felt neglected and offended by the mighty boyars from the Shuisky and Belsky families. These traumatic experiences may have contributed to his hatred of the boyars and to his mental instability.

Ivory throne of Ivan the Terrible.

Ivan was crowned king with Monomakh's Cap at the Cathedral of the Dormition at age sixteen on January 16 1547. Despite calamities triggered by the Great Fire of 1547, the early part of his reign was one of peaceful reforms and modernization. Ivan revised the law code (known as the sudebnik), created a standing army (the streltsy), established the first Russian parliament of the feudal estates (the Zemsky Sobor), the council of the nobles (known as the Chosen Council), and confirmed the position of the Church with the Council of the Hundred Chapters, which unified the rituals and ecclesiastical regulations of the entire country. He introduced the local self-management in rural regions, mainly in the Northeast of Russia, populated by the state peasantry. During his reign the first printing press was introduced to Russia (although the first Russian printers Ivan Fedorov and Pyotr Mstislavets had to flee from Moscow to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania).

In 1547 Hans Schlitte, the agent of Ivan, employed handicraftsmen in Germany for work in Russia. However all these handicraftsmen were arrested in Lübeck at the request of Poland and Livonia. The German merchant companies ignored the new port built by Ivan on the river Narva in 1550 and continued to deliver goods in the Baltic ports owned by Livonia. Russia remained isolated from sea trade.

Ivan formed new trading connections, opening up the White Sea and the port of Arkhangelsk to the Muscovy Company of English merchants. In 1552 he defeated the Kazan Khanate, whose armies had repeatedly devastated the Northeast of Russia,^[1] and annexed its territory. In 1556, he annexed the Astrakhan Khanate and destroyed the largest slave market on the river Volga. These conquests complicated the migration of the aggressive nomadic hordes from Asia to Europe through Volga and transformed Russia into a multinational and multiconfessional state. He had St. Basil's Cathedral constructed in Moscow to commemorate the seizure of Kazan. Legend has it that he was so impressed with the structure that he had the architects blinded, so that they could never design anything as beautiful again.

Ivan at the deathbed of his first wife, Anastasia Romanovna. Ivan married 7 times, sometimes divorcing a wife a week after the marriage.

Other less positive aspects of this period include the introduction of the first laws restricting the mobility of the peasants, which would eventually lead to serfdom. The dramatic change in Ivan's personality is traditionally linked to his near-fatal illness in 1553 and the death of his first wife, Anastasia Romanovna in 1560. Ivan suspected boyars of poisoning his wife and of plotting to replace him on the throne with his cousin, Vladimir of Staritsa. In addition, during that illness Ivan had asked the boyars to swear an oath of allegiance to his eldest son, an infant at the time. Many boyars refused, deeming the tsar's health too hopeless to survive. This angered Ivan and added to his distrust of the boyars. There followed brutal reprisals and murders of innocent people, including Metropolitan Philip and Prince Alexander Gorbatyi-Shuisky.

Also problematic was the 1565 formation of the Oprichnina. The Oprichnina was the section of Russia (mainly the Northeast) directly ruled by Ivan and policed by his personal servicemen, the Oprichniki. This whole system of Oprichnina has been viewed by some historians as a tool against the omnipotent hereditary nobility of Russia (boyars) who opposed the absolutist drive of the tsar, while others have interpreted it as a sign of the paranoia and mental deterioration of the tsar.

Later reign

The later half of Ivan's reign was far less successful. Although Khan Devlet I Giray of Crimea repeatedly devastated Moscow region and even set Moscow on fire in 1571, the Czar supported Yermak's conquest of Tatar Siberia, adopting a policy of empire-building, which led him to launch a victorious war of seaward expansion to the west, only to find himself fighting the Swedes, Lithuanians, Poles, and the Livonian Teutonic Knights.

For twenty-four years the Livonian War dragged on, damaging the Russian economy and military and failing to gain any territory for Russia. In the 1560s the combination of drought and famine, Polish-Lithuanian raids, Tatar invasions, and the sea-trading blockade carried out by the Swedes, Poles and the Hanseatic League devastated Russia. The price of grain increased by a factor of ten. Epidemics of the plague killed 10,000 in Novgorod. In 1570 the plague killed 600-1000 in Moscow daily.^[2] Ivan's closest advisor, Prince Andrei Kurbsky, defected to the Lithuanians, headed the Lithuanian troops and devastated the Russian region of Velikiye Luki. This treachery deeply hurt Ivan. As the Oprichnina continued, Ivan became mentally unstable and physically disabled. In one week, he could easily pass from the most depraved orgies to prayers and fasting in a remote northern monastery.

Ivan the Terrible killing his son by Ilya Repin

Because he gradually grew unbalanced and violent, the Oprichniks under Malyuta Skuratov soon got out of hand and became murderous thugs. They massacred nobles and peasants, and conscripted men to fight the war in Livonia. Depopulation and famine ensued. What had been by far the richest area of Russia became the poorest. In a dispute with the wealthy city of Novgorod, Ivan ordered the Oprichniks to murder inhabitants of this city, which was never to regain its former prosperity. Between thirty and forty thousand might have been killed during the infamous Massacre of Novgorod in 1570; many others were deported elsewhere.^[3] Yet the official death toll named 1,500 of Novgorod big people (nobility) and only mentioned about the same number of smaller people. Many modern researchers estimate number of victims between two and three thousand. (After the famine and epidemics of 1560s the population of Novgorod did not exceed 10,000-20,000.)^[4]

In 1581, Ivan beat his pregnant daughter-in-law for wearing immodest clothing, which may have caused a miscarriage. His son, also named Ivan, upon learning of this, engaged in a heated argument with his father, which resulted in Ivan striking his son in the head with his pointed staff, causing his son's (accidental) death. This event is depicted in the famous painting by Ilya Repin, Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan on Friday, November 16, 1581 better known as Ivan the Terrible killing his son.

Death and legacy

Ivan's murder of his son brought about the extinction of the Rurik Dynasty and the Time of Troubles.

Although it is thought by many that Ivan died while setting up a chess board, it is more likely that he died while playing chess with Bogdan Belsky on March 18 1584. When Ivan's tomb was opened during renovations in the 1960s, his remains were examined and discovered to contain very high amounts of mercury, indicating a high probability that he was poisoned. Modern suspicion falls on his advisors Belsky and Boris Godunov (who became tsar in 1598). Three days earlier, Ivan had allegedly attempted to rape Irina, Godunov's sister and Feodor's wife. Her cries attracted Godunov and Belsky to the noise, whereupon Ivan let Irina go, but Belsky and Godunov considered themselves marked for death. The tradition says that they either poisoned or strangled Ivan in fear for their own lives. The mercury found in Ivan's remains may also be related to treatment for syphilis, which it is speculated that Ivan had. Upon Ivan's death, the ravaged kingdom was left to his unfit and childless son Feodor.

Epistles

D.S. Mirsky called Ivan "a pamphleteer of genius". The epistles attributed to him are the masterpieces of old Russian (perhaps all Russian) political journalism. They may be too full of texts from the Scriptures and the Fathers, and their Church Slavonic is not always correct. But they are full of cruel irony, expressed in pointedly forcible terms.

Ivan's repentance: he asks a father superior of the Pskovo-Pechorsky Monastery to let him take the tonsure at his monastery.

The shameless bully and the great polemicist are seen together in a flash when he taunts runaway Kurbsky with the question: "If you are so sure of your righteousness, why did you run away and not prefer martyrdom at my hands?" Such strokes were well calculated to drive his correspondent into a rage. "The part of the cruel tyrant elaborately upbraiding an escaped victim while he continues torturing those in his reach may be detestable, but Ivan plays it with truly Shakespearian breadth of imagination".^[5].

Besides his letters to Kurbsky he wrote other satirical invectives to men in his power. The best is his letter to the abbot of the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery, where he pours out all the poison of his grim irony on the unascetic life of the boyars, shorn monks, and those exiled by his order. His picture of their luxurious life in the citadel of ascetism is a masterpiece of trenchant sarcasm.

Sobriquet

The English word terrible is usually used to translate the Russian word grozny in Ivan's nickname, but the modern English usage of terrible, with a pejorative connotation of bad or evil, does not precisely represent the intended meaning. Grozny's meaning is closer to the original usage of terrible—inspiring fear or terror, dangerous (as in Old English in one's danger), formidable, threatening, or awesome. Perhaps a translation closer to the intended sense would be Ivan the Fearsome, or Ivan the Formidable.

Preceded by Vasili III	Grand Prince of Moscow 1533–1547	Succeeded by became Tsar
Preceded by None	Tsar of Russia 1547–1584	Succeeded by Feodor I

See also

• Ivan the Terrible in Russian folklore
• Ivan the Terrible - the film by Sergei Eisenstein.
• Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future - the film by Leonid Gaidai

Notes

1. ^ Russian chronicles record about forty attacks of Kazan Khans on the Russian territories (mainly the regions of Nizhniy Novgorod, Murom, Vyatka, Vladimir, Kostroma, and Galich) in the first half of the 16th century. In 1521, the combined forces of Khan Muhamed Giray and his Crimean allies attacked Russia and captured more than 150,000 slaves. The Full Collection of the Russian Annals, vol.13, SPb, 1904
2. ^ R.Skrynnikov, "Ivan Grosny", M., AST, 2001
3. ^ According to the Third Novgorod Chronicle, the massacre lasted for five weeks. Almost every day 500 or 600 people were killed or drowned. The First Pskov Chronicle estimates the number of victims at 60,000. These sources are not impartial, however.
4. ^ Having investigated the report of Maljuta Skuratov and commemoration lists (sinodiki), R. Skrynnikov considers, that the number of victims was 2,000-3,000. (Skrynnikov R. G., "Ivan Grosny", M., AST, 2001)
5. ^ D.S. Mirsky. A History of Russian Literature. Northwestern University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8101-1679-0. Page 21.

References

• Bobrick, Benson. Ivan the Terrible. Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 1990 (hardcover, ISBN 0-86241-288-9).
• Madariaga, Isabel de. Ivan the Terrible. First Tsar of Russia. New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2005 (hardcover, ISBN 0-300-09757-3); 2006 (paperback, ISBN 0-300-11973-9).
• Payne, Robert; Romanoff, Nikita. Ivan the Terrible. Lanham, MD: Cooper Square Press, 2002 (paperback, ISBN 0-8154-1229-0).
• Troyat, Henri. Ivan the Terrible. New York: Buccaneer Books, 1988 (hardcover, ISBN 0-88029-207-5); London: Phoenix Press, 2001 (paperback, ISBN 1-84212-419-6).
• Ivan IV, World Book Inc, 2000. World Book Encyclopedia.

Further reading

• Cherniavsky, Michael. "Ivan the Terrible as Renaissance Prince", Slavic Review, Vol. 27, No. 2. (Jun., 1968), pp. 195–211.
• Hunt, Priscilla. "Ivan IV's Personal Mythology of Kingship", Slavic Review, Vol. 52, No. 4. (Winter, 1993), pp. 769–809.
• Perrie, Maureen. The Image of Ivan the Terrible in Russian Folklore (Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture; 14). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987 (hardcover, ISBN 0-521-33075-0); 2002 (paperback, ISBN 0-521-89100-0).
• Perrie, Maureen. The Cult of Ivan the Terrible in Stalin's Russia (Studies in Russian and Eastern European History and Society) . New York: Palgrave, 2001 (hardcopy, ISBN 0-333-65684-9).
• Perrie, Maureen; Pavlov, Andrei. Ivan the Terrible (Profiles in Power). Harlow, UK: Longman, 2003 (paperback, ISBN 0-582-09948-X).
• Platt, Kevin M.F.; Brandenberger, David. "Terribly Romantic, Terribly Progressive, or Terribly Tragic: Rehabilitating Ivan IV under I.V. Stalin", Russian Review, Vol. 58, No. 4. (Oct., 1999), pp. 635–654.

External links

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Ivan IV

• "Mad Monarchs" - Ivan IV
• The ancestors tsar Ivan IV Vasilyevich the Terrible (in the Russian languages)

Persondata
NAME	Ivan IV Vasilyevich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Ivan the Terrible
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Czar of Russia
DATE OF BIRTH	August 25, 1530
PLACE OF BIRTH	Moscow, Russia
DATE OF DEATH	March 18, 1584
PLACE OF DEATH	Moscow, Russia

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