Ivan IV's reign marked the definite end of the appanage period. He called himself tsar and autocrat, was crowned as such and had the Eastern patriarch approve of his decision. He is the quintessential Russian tyrant and is one of the most interesting figures in all of Russian history

Vasilii III died when Ivan was only 3, in 1533, leaving the rule of the country to his young son and his wife, Elena, of the powerful Glinsky family. Elena was to serve as the regent, but she proved to be a poor one, relying heavily on her family and her lover to help her make decisions. Her death, in 1538, was thought to have been from poison, and her regency was replaced by one led by the boyar duma (noble council), headed by her family and the Belskys, another of the great noble families. Eventually the Glinskys proved dominant and controlled the state for their own benefit, giving little attention to Ivan IV.

The young ruler was, by all accounts, intelligent and precocious, reading everything he could find, and his tutors regularly reported that he enjoyed learning. However, he was abused by his guardians, deprived of his companions, and regularly insulted, and this abuse began to manifest itself in the torture of animals and other signs of both bitterness and cruelty. The first sign of this came in 1543, when Ivan turned on Andrei Shuisky, who had been the leader of the boyar duma, and had him arrested and then killed (one rumour had him fed to the royal dogs while the young tsar watched).

Ivan formally came into his inheritance in 1547, at the age of 16. He was crowned as tsar (not as grand prince; a crucial differentiation) and married Anastasia Romanova, a member of one of the more popular boyar families. Like so many of the decisions in his early life, this one was undertaken with great seriousness and contemplation; despite this, the marriage is said to have been a happy one, although the year 1547 was not. A great fire and then riot broke out in Moscow; one of Ivan's uncles was killed and Ivan's own life was threatened.

This had tremendous psychological impact on the young tsar, who took it to be punishment for his sins and made public penance in Red Square, promising to rule in the interests of his people.

The First Years of Ivan IV

The first part of Ivan's reign has, rather simplistically, been called the good part of his reign. He worked with a talented and dedicated group of advisors, and received support from his wife, all of which contributed to his relative stability. In 1549 he called together a zemskii sobor, or land council, which was similar to the estates general found in France and in other European countries. At the time of the calling of the zemskii sobor, Ivan appeared to have planned a series of reforms, including a new law code. That code, the Sudebnik of 1550, was introduced simultaneously with local governmental reforms, which allowed for greater freedoms on the local level in terms of dealing with crime and corruption, and was tremendously successful.

In 1551, one of the greatest of the church councils took place. Known as the Council of a Hundred Chapters, this council placed the church in its place in relation to the state, limited the church's power to acquire land without the permission of the tsar, and incorporated a number of regional saints into the official calendar, all acts designed to tighten the control of the church over the expanse of the Russian state. (See lecture 11).

Ivan also introduced the idea of compulsory military service for the gentry, a system which had existed without formalisation for centuries. The distinction between those who served through heredity (votchina) versus those awarded lands for service (pomestie), were basically removed by this time. Instead, it became virtually impossible to hold land without owing service to the tsar. Ivan also added the first permanent regiments, known as the strelt'sy or musketeers, to the army

It was during this time that Ivan decided to attack the khanate of Kazan, and while it took a period of nearly 7 years, eventually the Russians were successful, eventually seizing Astrakhan as well. As a result of his actions, only the Crimean state remained of the former Golden Horde.

The Mongols were not the only enemies, however. A second war, against the Livonian Order, started in 1558 and lasted for 5 years, bringing great success for the Russian army and eventually forcing the Livonians to become vassals to the Polish king. In addition, the Russians had developed a friendship with the English based on Richard Chancellor's arrival in Moscow in 1553; an agreement signed in 1555 gave the English a commercial advantage in Russia and eventually led to a correspondence between Elizabeth I and Ivan, the first of its kind between a Russian monarch and an English ruler. This was a relationship that Ivan greatly valued, and he went so far as to offer Elizabeth sanctuary if she ever required it in his country (an offer which she politely but firmly declined).

The Later Years

Unfortunately, it is not for the good that Ivan is known; rather, the period which followed the death of Anastasia and his own near-death experience left him a bitter, paranoid man who believed that the world was against him and he needed to strike back.

One of the major conflicts of this period was with boyars, who resented the power that Ivan represented. Many of them were from old princely families who had benefitted from the appanage system and believed themselves superior; they had little power within the state but also limited inspiration and little reason to act.

In 1553, Ivan fell ill and believed that he was dying. He asked that the boyars swear an oath of loyalty to his infant son Dmitrii, and many initially hesitated, believing that the Romanovs had gained too much power; they instead favored instead Ivan's cousin Vladimir of Staritsa. Eventually the oath was sworn and Ivan recovered, but he never forgave the betrayal of many of his closest advisors, particularly the monk Sylvester and Aleksei Adashev, with whom he had worked closely and who were two of his closest friends.

Adding to Ivan's woes, in 1560, Anastasia died under mysterious circumstances. Ivan blamed his two former advisors and had them condemned in a court where they were not allowed to appear in their own defense. Sylvester was exiled to a distant monastery, while Adashev died in prison, and all of their relatives were killed without trials. As a result of this, a number of his boyars fled to Lithuania, most famous among them Aleksei Kurbsky, who had been involved in the assault on Kazan and who wrote a series of stinging letters accusing Ivan of a variety of abuses of power. These letters, which survive to the present day, clearly indicate that Ivan was beginning to lose his grip on reality and was becoming more paranoid and suspicious. This took form in 1564, when Ivan left Moscow and retired to the village of Aleksandrov, about 60 miles outside of the capital. He sent two letters to the city about a month later, explaining that he no longer want to be the tsar and denouncing both the boyars and the clergy. However, in the letter which was read to the masses, he announced that he had no particular hatred against the common people, and simply sought to protect himself and his family against the machinations of the boyars.

The boyars and the people, terrified of the anarchy they feared would follow, begged Ivan to return, and he agreed to do so under the condition of the formation of the oprichnina, a division of the Russian state. In addition, he insisted that the tsar be given the right to do as he saw fit in terms of punishing evil-doers. The area of the oprichnina eventually encompassed about 1/3 of the Muscovite state; the old traditional state, called the zemshchina, maintained its traditional order and even had a nominal ruler, a Tartar prince named Simeon. The new state, the oprichnina, took on a more sinister meaning with the formation of the oprichnina servitors, who dressed in black, rode black horses, and became political police of a sort. The servitors would later be recalled in the actions of the various forms of the secret police.

The creation of this new state led to a reign of terror, with all who opposed Ivan killed, including his own family members and those whose families had fled to Lithuania. Entire towns were destroyed, and the stability of the state was constantly threatened. Those cities which had retained a certain level of independence, such as Novgorod, were placed under the control of the tsar (and in Novgorod's case, its veche bell, the symbol of its freedom, was seized and melted down).

[Vasnetsov's Portrait of Ivan Groznii (Ivan the Terrible)]

Ivan's own mental stability appears to have deteriorated from the formation of the oprichnina. In the period after Anastasia's death, he remarried 6 times, although he never found anyone who could assist him as Anastasia did in terms of controlling his madness. His last two marriages were not recognized by the Orthodox Church, and the offspring of those unions were declared illegitimate.

Unfortunately for Ivan and his family, the worse was yet to come. In 1581, in a fit of rage over the outfit his pregnant daughter-in-law was wearing, Ivan struck his son, heir, and namesake, and killed him,. The tsarevich's wife miscarried the baby she was carrying, and Ivan IV appears to have descended into madness. (One of the most famous painting in Russian art, Ilya Repin's portrait of Ivan cradling his dying son, is linked below). Ivan died in 1584, and a Soviet autopsy conducted in the 1970s indicated the presence of poison in his system. His last three years were a period of chaos, as the leadership of Russia was very much in doubt. Ivan had only two sons who survived him: Fyodor, his feeble minded legitimate heir, and Dmitrii, his son with his seventh wife, Mariia, who was illegitimate in the eyes of the Church. Fyodor succeeded his father, and ruled until his death in 1598, at which point the Riurikovich dynasty ended.
[Repin's Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan]