Ivan the Terrible Ivan IV,

Ivan the Terrible

Ivan IV, remembered for his cruelty and the excessive punishments, is awarded the epithet, "Groznyi," meaning "Terrible," and according to popular legend, he was born during a thunderstorm, or "groza," which translated in Russian means "terror."

For the last five centuries, many in Western Europe have referred to Russia as the Evil Empire and the Enemy of Christendom, and regard it as a backward, ignorant and barbarous kingdom. Although some sources suggest that these negative views date back into the thirteenth century, most evidence is found from the late fifteenth century onward, beginning with Ivan III, whom most thought was Terrible until they met his grandson, Ivan IV. Sometime around 1558, the city of Revel wrote a missive to Grand Master Furstenberg of the Livonian Order, referring to Russia as a barbaric empire, and Furstenberg's succesor, Grand Master Gotthard Kettler referred to Russia as Christianity's archenemy. In 1560, the Polish King Sigismund Augustus wrote to Queen Elizabeth of England calling Ivan IV the Terrible "a most barbarous and cruel enemy."

Vasili III Ivanovitch (1505-1533), divorced his wife because she had born him no children and married Helena Glinski, and after his death she took the regency for her three-year-old son Ivan IV Vasiliyevitch. When Helena died, young Ivan was all but ignored, and at times left destitute. Seeing brutality everywhere around him, he took it as an accepted mode of behavior, adopted the most cruel sports, and grew into a moody and suspicious youth. For example, in 1544, at the age of thirteen, he threw to his dogs Andrei Shuiski, leader of a boyar faction, and seized command of the state.

Three years later he had himself crowned tzar by the metropolitan of Moscow and ordered a selection of noble virgins to be sent to him and from them he chose and married Anastasia Romanovna, whose family name would soon designate a dynasty.

In fact, Tsarism began with Ivan IV, and despite his cruelty and madness, he was also a talented ruler.

On January 16, 1547 in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, Grand Prince Ivan Vassilyevich IV, was led to his throne by Metropolitan Makary, who placed on the young prince the symbols of the title of tsar, which included the Cross of the Life-Giving Tree and the robes and headgear of Monomakh. Following the initiation into the Holy Secrets, Ivan IV was anointed with unction, a ritual that Orthodox Christians believed prepared anointees for tsardom, and an elaborate feast was held for Russian church-men and titled persons. He took immediate aggressive action against the Tartars of Kazan, who persistently raided Muscovy for loot and slaves for the markets of Persia and Turkey.

Ivan IV was the first to be crowned tsar, although beginning with his grandfather Ivan III, Moscow's rulers had adopted the title 'autocrat,' and sometimes called themselves tsar. The word 'tsar' actually came from the Latin Caesar, which had been taken from the name of Julius Caesar, and transformed into a title meaning Emperor.

By assuming the title tsar, Ivan IV demonstrated Russia's independence from the Golden Horde. In 1237, Northeastern Russia had been attacked by Mongol hordes and forced to unite with their Empire, and the ritual of crowning the Russian grand princes took place under the Horde where the khan would hand the grand prince a sword before the eyes of the court. After liberation in 1480, attitudes to title and attribute of power changed, and Ivan III, held inauguration for the grand princedom according to ancient Constantinople traditions, thus he declared his grandson Dmitry Grand Prince in a special ceremony using tsar's regalia as symbols of power. The title tsar allowed Russia's ruler to put himself on equal footing with Europe's only emperor, the Holy Roman Emperor, and made himself unassailable by other Russian princes. Moreover, all the teachings of the Byzantine church fathers on reverence of the tsar were now transferred to Russia's ruler.

When Ivan's mother died in 1538, battles for the regency became the norm, with palace coups, murders, imprisonment and exiles, and it is in this atmosphere that the young prince learned the pleasure of inflicting pain, beginning at the age of twelve by throwing animals off high roofs, an entertainment that soon involved doing the same with people. But rather than scolding, he received praise from the boyars who noted, "Oh how brave and courageous this tsar will be!" During the Great Fire of 1547, mobs killed one of Ivan's uncles and demanded that the rest of the family be handed over, however the Tsar succeeded in persuading them to disperse. It is believed that a priest called Sylvester accused Ivan of "frenzied temperament," and declared that the fire was God's punishment for his sins. It is reported that Ivan repented publicly in Red Square and promised to rule in the interests of the people, yet Ivan's interpretations of what constituted the "interests of the people" varied dramatically depending on where he saw evil, for medieval man, "the means, whether it be good government, murder and execution or devout prayer, were always justified by the end - the defeat of evil."

Perhaps it was this promise that led Ivan to begin making changes in 1549, although these changes cannot be called reforms, for the word 'reform' did not enter the Russian language until the end of the eighteenth century, and for Ivan and his contemporaries, things were subject to change only if they were defined as ungodly or did not correspond to ideas of justice and truth.

In 1550, Ivan IV summoned the first national assembly, Zemski Sobor, of all Russia, and confessed to it the errors of his youth, and promised a just and merciful government. A motion was passed by which all alodial lands deeded to the Church were to be restored, all gift made to the Church during Ivan's minority were canceled and monasteries could no longer acquire certain types of property without the tsar's consent. Moreover, he took the priest Sylvester as his spiritual director and made him and Alexis Adashef his chief ministers. Thus, supported by able aides, Ivan IV at the age of twenty-one was master of a realm that spanned from Smolensk to the Urals, and from the Arctic Ocean almost to the Caspian Sea.

Ivan's first concern was to strengthen the army, and to balance the forces provided by the unfriendly nobles with two organizations responsible directly to himself, Cossack cavalry and Strieltsi infantry armed with harquebuses (matchlock firearms invented in the fifteenth century). The Cossacks originated in that century as peasants whose position in South Russia, between Moslems and Muscovites, forced them to be prepared to fight at a moment's notice, but it also allowed them opportunities to rob the caravans that carried trade between north and south. Noted for their daring courage, the Cossack horsemen became the main support of Ivan IV at home and in war.

Ivan's foreign policy was simple: he wanted Russia to connect the Baltic Sea with the Caspian, however the Tatars still held Kazan, Astrakhan, and the Crimea. In 1552, he led 150,000 men against the gates of Kazan in a siege that lasted fifty days. When, after a month, the men lost heart, Ivan sent to Moscow for a miraculous cross, and this displayed to them reanimated the men. Then when a German engineer mined the walls, they collapsed and the Russians poured into the city, crying "God with us," while massacring all who could not be sold as slaves. According to legend, Ivan wept with pity for the defeated, saying, "they are not Christians, but they are men." When he repopulated the ruins with Christians, Russia acclaimed him as the first Slav to take a Tatar stronghold and celebrated the victory. It was this campaign that earned him the title "Grozny," which is generally translated as "terrible," however is really closer to meaning "awesome," thus reflecting his positive qualities as a great ruler, rather than an instigator of terror. Part of the victory celebrations included the building of several monuments, the most noted being the Intercession Cathedral on Red Square, now commonly called St. Basil's, after a holy man Basil the Blessed who predicted Ivan's evil deeds, which came later in his reign. Of note, St. Basil's is one of only a handful of world treasures that has come to symbolize certain cultures to the rest of the world, such as the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, and the Pyramids.

Having cleared his frontier to the east, Ivan now looked longingly toward the west, and dreamed of Russian commerce flowing west and north along great rivers into the Baltic. He envied the industrial and commercial expansion of Western Europe, and looked for any opening which by which the Russian economy might attach itself to that development. Although he had signed treaties giving the London and Muscovite Company special trading privileges in Russia, he did not consider these treaties as doors or windows into the West, but rather knotholes. When he tried to import German technicians, Charles V refused to let them go. The Southern Dvina flowed from the heart of Russia into the Baltic near Riga, but through hostile Livonia. The headwaters of the Dvina and the Volga were not far apart and could have been connected by canals, thus providing a water route that might atone for the disproportion of Russia's enormous landmass to her coasts and ports. The Baltic would unite with the Caspian and the Black Sea, and East and West would meet.

In 1557, Ivan sent an army to Livonia, which ravaged the country brutally, burning houses and crops, enslaving men and raping women until they died. When Livonia appealed for help, Stephen Bathory roused the Poles and led them to victory over the Russians at Polotsk, and Ivan yielded Livonia to Poland. However, long before this set back, his campaign had led to revolts on the home front. Merchants whom Ivan had thought to benefit decided that the war was too costly and disruptive. The nobles had opposed it as bound to untie the Baltic powers against a Russia still feudal in political and military organization. During and before the war, Ivan had suspected the boyars of conspiracies against his throne, and in a nearly fatal illness in 1553, he learned that a powerful group of nobles was planning, when he died, were planning to repudiate his son Dmitri and crown Prince Vladimir, who mother was disbursing large gifts to the army. Suspecting his closest advisors, Sylvester and Adashef, were flirting with treasonable boyars, he dismissed them in 1560 with violence.

Several of the boyars deserted to Poland and took up arms against Russian, including Ivan's friend and leading general, Prince Andrei Kurbski, who sent Ivan a letter from Poland that amounted to a declaration of war. It is said that when Ivan read the letter, he nailed a foot of the bearer to the floor with one blow of his royal staff. Furthermore, Ivan believed that they had poisoned Anastasia. It is these plots and desertions that highlight the most famous and peculiar event of Ivan's reign.

On December 13, 1564, Ivan IV left Moscow with his family, his icons, his treasury, and small force of soldiery, and went to his summer home at Alexandrovask. He sent Moscow two proclamations. One stated that the boyars, the bureaucracy, and the Church had conspired against him and the state, therefore "with great sorrow" he now resigned his throne and would live in retirement. The second, assured the people of Moscow that he loved them and that they might rest assured of his lasting good will. Actually, Ivan had favored the commoners and merchants against the aristocracy, thus they cried out against the nobility and clergy and demanded that the bishops and boyars go to the tsar and beg him to resume his throne. They did, and Ivan agreed to "take unto him his state anew," on conditions that he would later specify.

In February 1565, Ivan IV returned to Moscow and summoned the national assembly of clergy and boyars. He announced that he would execute the leaders of the opposition, and confiscate their property. He would assume full power without consulting the nobles or assembly, and he would banish all who disobeyed his edicts.

Fearing a revolt of the masses, the assembly yielded. Ivan announced that Russia would be divided into two parts: one, the Zemstchina or assemblage of provinces, would remain under the government of the boyars and their duma, but would be taxable in gross by the tsar and be subject to him for military and foreign affairs; the other part, the Oprichmina, or "separate estate," would be ruled by him and be composed of lands assigned by him to the separate class, chosen by him to police and administer this half-realm, to guard it from sedition, and to give him personal protection and special military service. By the end of his reign, the Oprichmina included nearly half of Russia, much of Moscow, and the most important trade routes. The revolution had elevated a new class to political power, and the promoted Russian commerce and industry. However, armed only with his personal soldiery and the unreliable support of the merchants and populace, legend claims that Ivan, then thirty-five, aged twenty years.

Ivan made Alexandrovsk his regular residence, and transformed it into a fortified citadel. It is believed that the strain of the revolt and the failure of the long war with Livaonia, may have "disordered" a never quite balanced mind. His guardsmen were clothed like monks in black cassocks and skull caps. He called himself their abbot, sang in their choir, attended Mass with them daily, and so fervently prostrated himself before the altar that his forehead was repeatedly bruised, all of which added to the awe that he inspired. Russia began to mingle reverence with the fear it felt for him, and even the armed oprichnik were so abject before him that they came to be called his court.

Ivan's revolution had its terror, for those who opposed it and were caught were executed without mercy. One report estimates the casualties of his wrath at more than three thousand. Others estimate the victims at more than ten thousand. According to reports, the victim would be executed "with his wife," or "with his wife and children," and in one instance, "with ten men who came to his help." Noble families were the first victims of Ivan's terror, and torture was often used to extract confessions, including methods such as ripping out fingernails and pulling limbs out of joint. Moreover, Ivan enjoyed toying with his victims. For example, he gave Ivan Fyodorov, a wealthy noble, his robes and scepter and then sat him on his throne. He then took off his hat and bowed, saying "just as it is in my power to put you on this throne, it is also in my power to remove you from it," after which he stabbed Fyodorov in the chest, and had his disemboweled body dragged through the Kremlin and thrown into the square. Ivan ordered Prince Vladimir and his wife to drink poison, while at the same time his mother and twelve nuns were killed at the Goritsky Monastery. So great and widespread was Ivan's wrath that the city appeared empty, prompting folk songs with lyrics such as "Wherever Ivan the Terrible went, there the cocks don't crow."

Andrei Yurganov, Candidate of History and Assistant Professor at the Russian State Humanitarian University, writes in the January 1997 issue of Russian Life, that on one particular day Ivan's executions reached massive scale. A wooden stand was built and fires started, over which rested a cauldron of boiling water. Three hundred men, who had already been tortured, were brought to the execution site. Ivan showed clemency and forgave more than third of the condemned, then executed the rest, beginning with statesman and diplomat, Ivan Viskovaty, who was "torn limb from limb." Yurganov notes that on that day, "fathers, mothers and children were executed indiscriminately."

Ivan's terror climaxed in Novgorod in January 1570. He had recently given the archbishop a large sum of money and believed this ensured the church's loyalty, however supposedly a document was found, pledging cooperation with Poland in an attempt to overthrow the tsar. More than five hundred monks and priests were arrested, and those clerics who could not pay fifty rubles' ransom were flogged to death, while the archbishop was unfrocked and jailed. According to the Third Chronicle of Norvgorod, a massacre ensued for five weeks, and often 500 persons were slain in one day. In fact, official records number the dead at 2,770. Ivan did not limit his wrath to executions. Because many merchants were thought to have been involved in the conspiracy, soldiers were ordered to burn all the shops in the city, as well as the homes of the merchants, along with the farmhouses. He then returned to Moscow and celebrated with a royal ball. Ivan felt his actions were completely justified, and even had the monks pray for the souls of his victims.

Ivan abolished the oprichnina around 1572, probably due to the continuing Tatar threat, for they had reached Moscow in 1571 because there were no defensive barriers, thus they reached the capital without resistance, leaving undefended settlements in ruins. A fire spread from Kitaigorod, the merchant's quarter, to the Kremlin, and according to reports, so many were killed that there was no one left to bury the dead.

Ivan fled north to Bellozero near Vologda, and when Davlet Geray attacked again in 1572, Ivan succeeded in uniting the forces of the oprichnina and zemschina under the command of Prince Mikhail Vorotynsky, and defeated Geray. The division of Russia into the oprichnina and zemshchina had proved disastrous to defensive capabilities. Moreover, the oprinchnina ravaged the majority of the land under its control, forcing peasant to flee the country, which in turn strengthened the role of serfdom in Russia.

In 1581, to prevent estates from being deserted, Ivan called for "preservation years," in which he forbade peasants from leaving their masters on "Yuryev den," - the one day of the year when they were allowed to do so, thus leading Russia into centuries of serfdom. In fact, by 1648, most Russian peasants were in fact, if not in law, serfs bound to the soil.

The Livonian war ended in 1583 in utter defeat for Russia and loss of lands to the Poles and Swedes. The failure of all his projects, both internal and foreign, led Ivan in his 1579 will to admit his mistakes and warn his sons to be merciful rulers. The previous year, he had ceased executions and repented, praying for God's forgiveness.

His repentance was accompanied by great physical suffering, for he developed large saline deposits on his backbone, which caused excruciating pain with the slightest movement. Years of heavy drinking and debauchery finally unhinged his nerves.

By 1580, Ivan seemed to have triumphed over his enemies. He had survived several wives and was married to a sixth. He had four children, the first died in infancy, the third, Feodor, was a half-wit, and the fourth, Dmitri, was subject to epileptic fits. In November 1580, upon seeing the wife of his second son, Ivan, in what he considered immodest attire, struck her, causing her to miscarry. When son Ivan reproached his father, the enraged tzar struck him on the head with the imperial staff, resulting in the son's death. According to legend, Ivan IV went insane with remorse, crying with grief day and night, and offering his resignation every morning, however even the boyars now preferred him to his sons. He died on March 18, 1584 while playing chess with Boris Godunov.