Encyclopedia
Ivan IV Vasilyevich was the Grand Duke of
Muscovy from 1533 to 1547 and was the first ruler of
Russia to assume the title of
tsar. 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 . He is commonly referred to in English as
Ivan the Terrible.
Early reign
Ivan 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 doubtlessly contributed to his hatred of the boyars and to his mental instability. He was known to throw cats and dogs out of the
Kremlin windows, among other cruel acts.
Ivan was crowned tsar 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 , created a standing army , established the
Zemsky Sobor, the council of the nobles , 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. During his reign the first
printing press was introduced to Russia .
In 1547 Hans Schlitte, the agent of tsar 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 tsar Ivan on the river Narva in 1550 and delivered the goods still 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. He also annexed the
Kazan and
Astrakhan Khanates to the east, thus transforming 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.
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. 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 mass 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 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 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 latter 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 tsar 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 but winning it no territory. Ivan's best friend and closest advisor, Prince Andrei Kurbsky, defected to the Poles, deeply hurting 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.
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. Yet the official death toll named 1,500 of
Novgorod big people and only mentioned about the same number of
smaller people.
In 1581, Ivan beat his pregnant daughter-in-law for wearing immodest clothing, causing a miscarriage. His son, also named Ivan, upon learning of this, engaged in a heated argument with his father which resulted in the son's 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 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 . Three days earlier, Ivan had allegedly attempted to rape Irina, Godunov's sister and Fyodor's wife. Her cries attracted Godunov and Belsky to the noise, whereupon Ivan let Irina go, but Belski 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". His epistles are the masterpieces of old 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.
The shameless bully and the great polemicist are seen together in a flash when he taunts runaway Kurbsky by 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"..
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 ,
formidable,
threatening, or
awesome. Perhaps a translation closer to the intended sense would be
Ivan the Fearsome. The Russian people gave Ivan this nickname after he seized Kazan.
See also
Notes
References
- Troyat, H. Ivan the Terrible, Weidenfeld & Nicolson history, 2001. ISBN 1-84212-419-6
- Bobrick, B. Ivan the Terrible, Canongate Books Ltd, 1990. ISBN 0-86241-288-9
- Payne, R. and Romanoff, N. Ivan the Terrible, Cooper Square Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8154-1229-0
- De Madariaga, Isabel. Ivan the Terrible. First Tsar of Russia, 2005. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-09757-3
- Ivan IV, World Book Inc, 2000. World Book Encyclopedia
External links
