I | INTRODUCTION |
Ivan IV
Vasilyevich or Ivan the
Terrible (1530-1584), grand prince of Muscovy (1533-1584) and the first
formally proclaimed tsar of Russia (1547-1584). One of Russia’s most brutal and
notorious rulers, Ivan oversaw the vast expansion of his country and then
brought it to near ruin. He was the penultimate ruler of the house of Ryurik,
Russia’s first dynasty.
Ivan was the first child of Grand Prince Vasily
III of Muscovy (the official name of the Russian state at that time) and his
second wife, Elena Glinskaya. Vasily died in 1533, leaving Ivan fatherless and
nominally grand prince. Although Elena became regent, her power was continually
challenged by the boyars (nobles). She died suddenly in 1538, apparently
from poisoning, leaving eight-year-old Ivan an orphan. Until Ivan was 17, when
he was officially crowned, feuding boyars fought each other for control of
Muscovy. During his youth, Ivan is reported to have exhibited numerous acts of
extraordinary sadism, an inclination toward cruelty that was displayed later in
his reign.
II | EARLY REIGN |
In 1547 the head of the Russian Orthodox
Church arranged an elaborate coronation for Ivan that added the title tsar
(from the Roman imperial title caesar) to the traditional title of
grand prince. Ivan was the first Russian prince to take that title, which was
intended to convey the exalted image of the ruler as the representative of God.
The idea that a Russian monarch derived the right to rule directly from God was
developed in the early 1500s by the Russian Orthodox abbot Joseph of
Volokolamsk, who advocated the divine right of kings. Shortly after he was
crowned, Ivan married Anastasia Romanovna, the first of his seven wives.
From 1547 to 1560 Ivan is believed to have
governed with the aid of a talented group of advisers dubbed the Chosen Council.
It is unknown who wielded more power, Ivan or the council. During those years a
number of reforms were instituted to bring stability to Muscovy after the chaos
of Ivan’s minority (the years before he was crowned). The Sudebnik, the
country’s law code, was expanded in 1550 and widely used. An infantry corps,
known as the streltsy, was created. Armed with long guns, the streltsy
bolstered the strength of the Muscovite army. Muscovy forcibly annexed Kazan’, a
Tatar (a people of Turkic origin) khanate (a state ruled by a khan) on the
Middle Volga in 1552, and Astrakhan’, a Tatar khanate on the Lower Volga, in
1556. These annexations removed all military threat to Muscovy’s eastern flank
and cut the Turkic world in two. They also removed a major barrier to Muscovy’s
eastward expansion to the Ural Mountains and into Siberia, begun by Cossack
raiders under Yermak in 1581.
In the 1550s the corrupt system of provincial
administration underwent major reform. Since the 1300s, governors had been sent
from Moscow (the seat of the Muscovy government) to govern the provinces. Not
accountable to the territories they were assigned, these governors wrung money
and food from the populace while often providing little in the way of good
government in return. Reform began in the 1490s when local officials were
appointed to oversee the rebuilding of Muscovy's fortresses and then given other
assignments. In the 1530s local police officials were appointed to try to stamp
out crime, which was rampant during the disorder of Ivan’s minority years. Then
in 1552, Moscow, needing revenue to invade Kazan’, embarked on a plan to sell
what was left of provincial administration to the locals. This was so successful
that the sale of provincial civil administration was completed in 1556 to raise
funds for the Astrakhan’ campaign. The tsar’s treasury benefited, but the
Russian people benefited also, as locally elected officials replaced the
exploitative governors sent from Moscow. These officials were still responsible
to the central government, to which they had to submit semiannual reports.
Ivan also expanded a program to increase
government ownership and control of land, while bolstering his army and
weakening the nobles’ power. In this program, begun by his grandfather Ivan III
in the 1480s, the government confiscated privately held land in annexed
principalities or set aside state property and turned it over to cavalrymen who
pledged continual service to the tsar. (In some cases, land was also seized in
Muscovy from princes deemed treasonous.) In 1556 Ivan exerted control over the
boyars and princes who still held private lands in Muscovy by requiring them and
their personal slave soldiers to serve in the cavalry as well. By forcing them
into the “service class,” Ivan took away the Russian nobility’s independence.
The country’s vast lower class, the peasants, also saw their lot worsened during
Ivan’s reign. Much of the land turned over to the military servicemen had been
state land worked by free peasants. With the introduction of a landholder,
burdened himself by military obligations to the tsar, the peasants met with more
restrictions and demands. The system gradually turned many peasants into serfs,
bound to the land they tilled. In 1581 Ivan even issued an edict forbidding some
peasants on service lands from moving.
The first big mistake of Ivan IV's reign was
the Livonian War (1558-1583). After the annexation of the Volga, Muscovy had two
expansionist alternatives: either to conquer and annex the Crimean khanate,
which was ceaselessly raiding Russia and Poland for slaves; or to reconquer
Slavic lands to the west which had been annexed by Livonia, Lithuania, and
Poland. Adopting a defensive posture toward Crimea (which Russia proved unable
to annex until 1783), the Russians plunged into an unsuccessful war against the
Livonians on the western front that ultimately contributed to widespread ruin in
Russia during Ivan’s reign.
Defeats in the Livonian War aggravated Ivan’s
unstable psychological condition. He had begun to show irrational suspicion of
those around him in 1553, when he fell ill and the boyars refused to take an
oath of allegiance to his infant son, Dmitry. Recalling the feuds of Ivan’s
minority years, they preferred an adult successor. Ivan viewed their refusal as
treason. When his wife Anastasia died in 1560, Ivan believed she had been
poisoned in a plot by the boyars and members of the Chosen Council, and had the
council members exiled. Setbacks in the Livonian War led to the defection of
some military commanders fearful of the tsar's wrath.
III | LATER REIGN |
In December 1564 Ivan left Moscow with some
of his court, supposedly to visit various monasteries. In reality, the paranoid
tsar had abandoned the capital, taking valuables and relatives with him. In
January 1565 he set down his terms for returning. His perceived enemies were to
be punished, and the state was to be split in two: the oprichnina, which
was to be Ivan’s personal domain and subject to his absolute control, and the
zemshchina, which would be ruled by a council of boyars. When Ivan
returned to the capital in February 1565, the hair on his head had fallen out
and his beard had turned white, signs of major psychological stress.
The oprichnina (1565-1572) was one of the
most bizarre episodes in all of Russian history. It is rivaled only by Joseph
Stalin's Great Purge of 1936-1938, with which it is often compared. There were
two main periods in the oprichnina, which mirrored the unfolding of Ivan's
paranoia. In the first period, from 1565 to 1566, a number of princes were
exiled to Kazan’, and all of their properties were confiscated and distributed
to Ivan’s special corps of cavalrymen, the oprichniki. In 1566 Ivan
allowed some of the princes to return to their devastated estates. When Ivan
convened the zemsky sobor (an assembly of boyars, clergy, and cavalrymen)
later that year to advise the government on whether the disastrous Livonian War
should be continued, a number of the delegates complained about the
oprichnina.
This set off the second and most lethal
stage of the oprichnina. Among those killed in the second period (1566-1571) was
the head of the church, Metropolitan Filipp Kolychëv, who had criticized the
oprichnina, and Prince Vladimir Staritsky, selected as the candidate to replace
Ivan had he died from his illness in 1553. In 1570 the oprichniki sacked
Novgorod and massacred many of its citizens because individuals there had links
to Ivan’s perceived enemies. All relatives and slaves of the victims were also
murdered. Ivan talked of abdicating or fleeing to England. The second stage of
the oprichnina wreaked so much havoc that the Crimean Tatars were able to sack
Moscow in 1571, and much of the land around Moscow was depopulated. In 1572 the
oprichniki were disbanded after their failure to defend Moscow.
That same year Ivan resumed rule over all of
Muscovy, much of which was in ruins. But in 1575 he farcically abdicated in
favor of a Christianized Tatar, Simeon Bekbulatovich, for a year. The tragedies
of Ivan's existence were not yet over. In 1582 his daughter-in-law Elena
appeared immodestly dressed and Ivan censured her. His son Ivan Ivanovich rose
to defend his wife, whereupon the tsar killed his son, his only possible
respectable heir. This left as heir Ivan’s feebleminded son Fyodor (reigned
1584-1598), the last Ryurikid ruler in a line that extended back seven
centuries. Another son, Dmitry, was considered illegitimate because his mother
was Ivan's seventh wife (the church only permitted three marriages, and
recognized none of Ivan’s later wives). Dmitry either killed himself playing
with a knife or was murdered in 1591. Two years after killing Ivan Ivanovich,
Ivan died in Moscow while playing chess, probably the victim of a heart attack.
A Soviet forensic examination of his remains revealed that he had taken mercury
as medicine, but no signs of foul play were discovered.
IV | EVALUATION |
Ivan left Russia an empire, thanks to the
annexation of the non-Russian lands in the Volga region and areas east of the
Volga in the Urals and Siberia. Russia would become a world power with the
development of Siberia’s abundant natural resources. However, much of the old
heartland was in shambles. What remained of Russian society had changed
dramatically during Ivan’s rule. With the expansion of the service class, many
princes and other members of the elite had to answer to the tsar and no longer
rivaled him for power. A new stage in the history of the enserfment of the
peasantry also began under Ivan.
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