Oprichnina

Tsar Ivan IV's personal domain between 1565 and 1572, and by extension the domestic policy of that period.

The term oprichnina (from oprich, "separate") denoted a part of something, usually specific landholdings of a prince or a prince's widow. Ivan IV (the Terrible, or Grozny) established his Oprichnina after he unexpectedly left Moscow in December 1564. He settled at Alexandrovskaya sloboda, a hunting lodge northeast of Moscow, which became the Oprichnina's capital. Ivan IV accused his old court of treason and demanded the right to punish his enemies. He divided the territory of his realm, his court, and the administration into two: the Oprichnina under the tsar's personal control; and the Zemshchina (from zemlya, "land"), officially under the rule of those boyars who stayed in Moscow.

The servitors were divided between the Zemshchina and the Oprichnina courts on the basis of personal loyalty to the tsar, but the courts were largely drawn from the same elite clans. The Oprichnina court was headed by Alexei and Fyodor Basmanov-Pleshcheev, Prince Afanasy Vyazemsky, and the Caucasian Prince Mikhail Cherkassky, brother-in-law of Ivan IV. They were succeeded in around 1570 by the high-ranking cavalrymen Malyuta Skuratov-Belsky and Vasily Gryaznoy. The Oprichnina army initially consisted of one thousand men; later its numbers increased five-to sixfold. Most of them came from the central part of the country, although there were also many non-Muscovites (Western mercenaries, Tatar and Caucasian servitors) in the Oprichnina. Both the leading Muscovite merchants (the Stroganovs) and the English Muscovy Company also sought admission to the Oprichnina.

To maintain the Oprichnina army, the tsar included in his domain prosperous peasant and urban communities in the north, household lands in various parts of the country (mostly in its central districts), mid-sized and small districts with numerous conditional landholdings, and some quarters of Moscow. The northern lands produced revenues and marketable commodities (furs, salt), the household lands provided the Oprichnina with various supplies, and the regions with conditional landholdings supplied servitors for the Oprichnina army. The territory of the Oprichnina was never stable, and eventually included sections of Novgorod. The authorities deported non-Oprichnina servitors from the Oprichnina lands and granted their estates to the oprichniki (members of the Oprichnina), but the extent of these forced resettlements remains unclear.

The Oprichnina affected various local communities in different ways. The Zemshchina territories bore the heavy financial burden of funding the organization and actions of the Oprichnina; some Zemshchina communities were pillaged and devastated. In early 1570, the tsar and his oprichniki sacked Novgorod, where they slaughtered from three thousand to fifteen thousand people. At the same time, the lower-ranking inhabitants of Moscow escaped Ivan's disgrace and forced resettlements. For taxpayers in the remote north, the establishment of the Oprichnina mostly meant a change of payee.

The tsar sought to maintain a close relationship with the clergy by expanding the tax privileges of important dioceses and monasteries and including some of them in the Oprichnina. In exchange, he demanded that the metropolitan not intervene in the Oprichnina and abolished the metropolitan's traditional right to intercede on behalf of the disgraced. The Oprichnina's victims included Metropolitan Philip Kolychev, who openly criticized the Oprichnina (deposed 1568, killed 1569) and Archbishop Pimen of Novgorod, the tsar's former close ally (deposed and exiled 1570).

The Oprichnina policy was a peculiar combination of bloody terror and acts of public reconciliation. The social background of its victims ranged from members of the royal family and prominent courtiers, including some leaders of the Oprichnina court, to rank-and-file servitors, townsmen, and clergy. Indictments and repressions, however, were often followed by amnesties. The mass exile of around 180 princes and cavalrymen to Kazan and the confiscation of their lands (1565) were counterbalanced when they were pardoned and their property partially restored. As a gesture of spiritual reconciliation with the executed, the tsar ordered memorial services in monasteries for more than three thousand victims. The Oprichnina involved the ritualization of executions and peculiar symbolism that alluded to the tsar and his oprichniki as punitive instruments of divine wrath. The oprichniki dressed in black, acted like a pseudomonastic order, and carried dog's heads and brooms to show they were the "dogs" of the tsar who would sweep treason from the land.

The tsar abolished the Oprichnina in 1572 after its troops proved ineffective during a raid of Tatars on Moscow. Together with the Livonian War, famines, and epidemics, the Oprichnina led to the country's economic decline. During the Oprich-nina, Ivan IV thought to strengthen his personal security by taking to extremes such Muscovite political traditions as disgraces, persecution of suspects, and forced resettlements. The Oprichnina revealed the vulnerability of the social and legal mechanisms for personal protection when confronted by authorities exceeding the political system's normal level of violence. Transgressions and sudden changes in policy contributed to the image of the tsar as an autocratic ruler accountable only to God. The court system, however, survived the turmoil of the Oprichnina. Despite the division of the realm and purges, members of established clans maintained their positions in the court hierarchy and participated in running the polity throughout the period of the Oprichnina.

Some historians believe that the main force behind the Oprichnina was Ivan IV's personality, including a possible mental disorder. Such interpretations prevailed in the Romantic historical writings of Nikolai Karamzin (early nineteenth century) and in the works of Vasily Klyuchevsky, foremost Russian historian of the early twentieth century. The American historians Richard Hellie and Robert Crummey offered psychoanalytical explanations for the Oprichnina, surmising that Ivan IV suffered from paranoia. Priscilla Hunt and Andrei Yurganov saw the Oprichnina as an actualization of the cultural myth of the divine nature of the tsar's power and eschatological expectations in Muscovy. According to other historians, the Oprichnina was a conscious struggle among certain social groups. In his classic nineteenth-century Hegelian history of Russia, Sergei Solovyov interpreted the Oprichnina as a political conflict between the tsar acting in the name of the state and the boyars, who guarded their hereditary privileges. In the late nineteenth century, Sergei Platonov took those views further by arguing that the Oprich-nina promoted service people of lower origin and eliminated the hereditary landowning of the aristocracy. In the mid-twentieth century, Platonov's conception was questioned by Stepan Veselovsky and Vladimir Kobrin, who reexamined the genealogical background of the Oprichnina court and the redistribution of land during the Oprichnina. According to Alexander Zimin, the Oprichnina was aimed at the main separatist forces in Muscovy: the church, the appanage princes, and Novgorod. Ruslan Skrynnikov accepted a modified multi-phase version of Platonov's views.

Bibliography

Hellie, Richard. (1987). "What Happened? How Did He Get Away with It? Ivan Groznyi's Paranoia and the Problem of Institutional Restraints." Russian History 14(1 - 4):199 - 224.

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

Platonov, Sergei 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.

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

Zimin, A. A. (2001). Oprichnina, 2nd ed. Moscow: Territorriya.

—SERGEI BOGATYREV

i> Oprichnina is the name given by historians to Tsar Ivan IV's division of the Russian state during the years from 1565 to 1572 and to the domestic policies of those years. When the tsar divided the government and administration of the country into two parts, the part reserved for his direct rule became known as oprichnina, from the word oprich', meaning 'apart from' or 'besides'. Ivan instituted the oprichnina in February 1565, in the wake of reverses in the Livonian War and particularly of the defection of Prince Andrei M. Kurbsky to Lithuania. In early 1565 he divided the country, administration, and army into two parts, his "own," the oprichnina, and the remainder, the zemshchina ('the land'). In substance this meant that he split all institutions in two: there was now an oprichnina and zemshchina army, offices, and Duma. Regions of Russia's territory were under one or the other: the north, Novgorod, and a patchwork of districts in central Russia were under the oprichnina, the rest of the country, under the zemshchina. Boyar and gentry estates in oprichnina territory were confiscated and new, presumably less valuable, lands handed out in place, especially in the newly conquered Volga area. Many important boyars were executed. The following few years saw continued executions, including the murder of Metropolitan Filipp in 1569. The climax came in 1570 with the execution of several thousand Novgorod gentry, clergy, and townspeople. By 1572 the policy came to an end.

Bibliography

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

Skrynnikov, Ruslan G. Ivan the Terrible. Trans. by Hugh F. Graham. Gulf Breeze, Fla., 1981.

—PAUL BUSHKOVITCH

The Oprichnina (Russian: Опричнина) is the period of Russian history between Tsar Ivan the Terrible's 1565 initiation, and his 1572 disbanding, of a domestic policy of political police, mass repressions, public executions, and confiscation of land from Russian aristocrats.

The term Oprichnina, which Ivan coined for this policy, derives from the Russian word "опричь" (oprich), meaning apart from, except of. The six thousand political police enforcing the policy were called oprichniks (Russian plural: oprichiniki), and the term Oprichnina was further applied to the territory in which, during that period, the Czar ruled directly and his oprichniks operated.

Contents 1 Creation 2 Organization 3 Disbandment 4 Legacy 5 References 6 Further reading

Creation

In 1558, Tsar Ivan IV started the Livonian war after the Livonian Confederation refused to pay tribute to Russia. A broad coalition, which included Poland, Lithuania and Sweden, were drawn into the war against Russia. The war became drawn-out and expensive. Raids by Crimean Tatars, Polish and Lithuanian invasions, famines, blocade and escalating costs of war ravage Russia.

In 1564, Prince Andrei Kurbsky, who had defected to the Lithuanians, led the Lithuanian army against Russia, devastating the Russian region of Velikiye Luki.

Tsar Ivan began to suspect that other aristocrats were also ready to betray him.^[1] On the third of December, 1564, Tsar Ivan left Moscow, carrying all of its religious and historical relics with him in his entourage, for the neighboring suburb of Alexandrov. The church, unable to do anything but gawk astonished, begged the tsar to return to Moscow. In 1565, the officials of the church met with Ivan and consented to his creation of the Oprichnina in exchange for his return to Moscow.

That same year, Ivan formed the Oprichnina, which gave him a section of territory (mainly the Northeast). There were few large landowners; the area was dominated by service nobility and state peasantry. In the territory of the Oprichnina he could be free from the interference of the powerful feudal aristocracy and rule as a completely unlimited autocrat.

This whole system of the Oprichnina has been viewed by some historians as a tool against the powerful hereditary nobility of Russia (boyars) who opposed the trend toward centralization.

Organization

The Oprichnina contained much of Russia's best land, including parts of Moscow and many of the large central cities, sometimes individual streets. In total area, the Oprichnina covered almost one-third of all Russia. The rest of the country was referred to as the zemshchina (земщина); these areas were ruled by powerful boyars.

The Oprichnina was treated very similarly to the church at the time, enjoying the same freedom from taxes and organized around monastic principles (with the tsar himself as abbot).^[2] The main difference between the two was that, instead of being a religious body, the oprichnina was exclusively Ivan's means of carrying out his will.^[3]

The Oprichnina was administered by the oprichniks, who used extreme violence against any opposition to Ivan's rule. This included both nobles and peasants, with many of the oprichniks being members of the elite. The oprichniki were described as "trusties of Ivan who wore black cowls and carried brooms and dogs' heads at their saddle-bows".^[4]

During the era of the Oprichnina, oprichniks killed thousands and devastated the area. In 1570, for example, Ivan's concern at the strategic value of Novgorod in the war with the Teutonic Order and Sweden led him to order the sacking of the city. The oprichniks plundered it in response and by some accounts killed as many as 30,000 of its inhabitants.^[5]

The Russian historian Ruslan Skrynnikov estimated the number of victims to have been between two and three thousand, based on the reports by Malyuta Skuratov, and maintains that after the famine and epidemics of 1560s the population of Novgorod could not exceed 10,000-20,000.^[6] Vladimir Kobrin, however, argues that this significantly underestimates the number of victims. The Novgorod chronicle, obviously not an unbiased source, claims between 500 to 1500 murdered daily. Kobrin thinks the total number of dead was around 10 to 15 thousand^[7]

The Oprichniks would be dressed in black and rode black horses. The saddle pommels were emblazoned with a dog's head and a broom, signifying the hounding and sweeping of treason from the realm.

Disbandment

In the 1560s the combination of the very poor harvests (the period called the little ice age), the plague, Polish-Lithuanian raids, Tatar attacks, and the sea-trading blockade carried out by the Swedes, Poles and the Hanseatic League devastated Russia.

The oprichnina did nothing to help reverse these effects, perhaps even helping to undermine Russia's stability. What had once been Russia's best and most fertile areas had been devastated and had fallen well below the rest of the country. In fact, the price of grain increased by a factor of ten. Many people living within the Oprichnina even fled to other regions.

Under these circumstances the existence of the two systems of authority (Oprichnina and Zemshchina) and the struggle against aristocracy added to the economic and political disorganization of the country.^[8]

The Oprichnina had been total failure and Ivan was forced to disband it in autumn of 1572. Saying the word Oprichnina was now punishable by death. Whether the Oprichnina had benefitted Russia at all was questioned by many; tax revenues had not increased as the tsar had hoped, and Russia quickly lost all of its gains in the war for Livonia.

Although the Oprichnina was successful in instilling a fearfully submissive view towards the Tsar in Russians across the kingdom, it ultimately posed as no tangible improvement if not a detriment to the economy and stability of Russia.^[4]

Legacy

The street in the town: people fleeing at the arrival of the Oprichniki (set to the opera The Oprichnik by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, 1911)

Ivan Lazhechnikov wrote the tragedy The Oprichniks (Russian: Опричники), on which Tchaikovsky based his opera The Oprichnik.

In turn, Tchaikovsky's opera inspired a 1911 painting by Apollinary Vasnetsov, depicting a city street and people fleeing in panic at the arrival of the Oprichniks.

Years after the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the oprichnina continued to affect Russia. Stalin, himself, based many of his own purging schemes on the 'terrible, blood thirsty' Oprichnina, and the position of tsar was forever after shrouded with a great sense of terrifying power.^[4]

Sergei Eisenstein depicted the oprichniki as healthy, loyal, clean-looking persons in the movie Ivan The Terrible, Part I and then proceeded to show them in a less flattering light in Ivan The Terrible, Part II. Part II of the film climaxes in a scene in color where the Oprichniki dance and sing around Ivan The Terrible.

References

1. ^ R.Skrynnikov, Ivan Grosny, M., Science, 1975, pp.93-96
2. ^ A. Dvorkin, Ivan the Terrible as a Religious Type (Erlangen, 1992), p. 105
3. ^ R. Skrynnikov, Ivan Groznyi (Moscow, 1980), pp. 233-43, pp. 172f., 168ff.
4. ^ ^{a b c} Philip Longworth, Russia: The Once and Future Empire (New York, 2005), pp. 98-105
5. ^ S. B. Veselovskii, Isledovaniia po istorii oprichniny (Moscow, 1963) pp. 133ff.
6. ^ 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)
7. ^ http://vivovoco.rsl.ru/VV/BOOKS/GROZNY/GROZNY_2.HTM
8. ^ R.Skrynnikov, Ivan Grosny, M., Science, 1975, p.158

Further reading

• Walter Leitsch. "Russo-Polish Confrontation" in Taras Hunczak, ed. "Russian Imperialism". Rutgers University Press. 1974, p.140
• Oleg Gordievsky and Christopher Andrew (1999). KGB: The Inside Story of its intelligence operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (Russian language edition, Moscow, Centerpoligraph, ISBN 5-227-00437-4, page 21)

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