The kingdom was left in ruins to Ivan's childless remaining son, Feodor, but soon came under the leadership of Boris Godunov, the brother of Ivan's last rape and one suspected murder. Perrie and Pavlov single themselves out from the historical mass in their examination of Ivan IV by separating the man from the ruler; outside of a Stalinist examination of the ruler, they found a tyrant whose sadist cruelty was separate from his ability to centralize power and build the first Russian autocracy from which hundreds of years of greatness would follow. Yet, they clearly understand that it would be foolish to separate the pathological personality of Ivan from his reign; it does, in fact, serve to solidify many of his actions and the monstrous attempts at his thirsty control for absolute power. They recognize his epitaph - groznyi - as the source of the ruler whose leadership was awe-inspiring and fearsome, if frequently confounding and frightening.

Additionally, they succeed in separating the modern interpretation of Russia from the popular imagination of sixteenth-century Europe. It was unlike its Northern and southern neighbors, both greater in its imperialism and poverty. Nevertheless, while London was built of wood, the Kremlin glistened over the Russians upon whom the rest of Europe viewed with barbarian contempt. In the book's early sections, particularly throughout the Introduction, Perrie and Pavlov frame the tsar's development as one in the midst of riches at once marveled and ignored on the international spectrum. Understanding the leader as a symbol of the state - both great but without due deference - many of his actions, particularly his political extension and pursuit for cruel, ravaging omnipotence solidify in sound comprehension.

Despite geographic and regional differences, the feelings of Northern Europe and the early Renaissance were reciprocated in Ivan's Russia. Under Ivan IV, this "Russian Renaissance" was born of the...

Popular proclivity for witchcraft, heresies, exotic medicine, astrology, and alchemy were as rampant in Moscow as Europe at large, and revealed a greater breakdown of old forms and relations in a world full of mysterious forces and dangers. This mood was starkly opposed to that of the traditional medieval Russian prince. Previous rulers like Dmitrii were viewed as victorious, just, and all-powerful as a result of their Christian reverence.
The role he embodied reflected that expected of him, and in the changing tide of Russian society as throughout all of Europe, Ivan was hurled into a new sense of leadership where the image of the subservient ruler, simplistic in his closeness to God, was no longer entirely applicable. Ivan too stressed his role as a Christian ruler, but his image was not superimposed upon tat of the princely saint, but instead of a powerful ruler so versed in educational erudition that his reign and crown were wielded to the same power as that of his greatest enemy, the king of Poland and Lithuania.

His challenges were greater than those of his predecessors, and he approached them with a centralized control he saw as divinely bestowed and secularly enforced with a power both right and necessary.

Ivan Groznyi filled history texts and the hearts of all Russians with fear and terror. In his early years, he was a formidable ruler, but as mental instability gave way to political uncertainty, his great power and hunger for control threw Russia into the danger for which the tsar is so famous. Pavlov and Perrie present a tri-fold representation of Ivan as more than just a 'crazed tyrant' but as a leader obsessed with his unlimited rule, infuriated by his power struggles, and powerfully - if obliquely - devout to a stately religion. In territorial expansion, mythology, and the symbols of his great monarchy, he achieved a system of autocratic rule so total yet previously not witnessed in Russia.