BIOGRAPHY:

The reign of Ivan IV the Terrible included unprecedented territorial acquisitions, the construction of cities, and major reforms. But also brutal executions, devastation of the country, widespread repression, corruption of morals.

Ivan the Terrible is the first Tsar of All Rus’, known for his barbaric and incredibly harsh methods of rule. Despite this, his reign is considered significant for the state, which, thanks to the foreign and domestic policies of Grozny, became twice as large in its territory. The first Russian ruler was a powerful and very evil monarch, but managed to achieve a lot in the international political arena, maintaining a total one-man dictatorship in his state, full of executions, disgrace and terror for any disobedience to power.

Childhood and youth:

Ivan the Terrible (Ivan IV Vasilyevich) was born on August 25, 1530 in the village of Kolomenskoye near Moscow in the family of Grand Duke Vasily III Rurikovich and the Lithuanian princess Elena Glinskaya. He was the eldest son of his parents, so he became the first heir to the throne of his father, whom he was supposed to succeed upon reaching adulthood. But he had to become the nominal Tsar of All Rus’ at the age of 3, since Vasily III became seriously ill and died suddenly. After 5 years, the future king’s mother also died, as a result of which at the age of 8 he was left a complete orphan.

The childhood of the young monarch passed in an atmosphere of palace coups, a serious struggle for power, intrigue and violence, which formed a tough character in Ivan the Terrible. Then, considering the heir to the throne to be an incomprehensible child, the trustees did not pay any attention to him, mercilessly killed his friends and kept the future king in poverty, even depriving him of food and clothing. This instilled in him aggression and cruelty, which already in his youth manifested itself in the desire to torture animals, and in the future the entire Russian people.

At that time, the country was ruled by the princes Belsky and Shuisky, nobleman Mikhail Vorontsov and the maternal relatives of the future ruler Glinsky. Their reign was marked for all of Rus’ by the careless disposal of state property, which Ivan the Terrible understood very clearly.

In 1543, he first showed his temper to his guardians by ordering the death of Andrei Shuisky. Then the boyars began to fear the tsar, power over the country was completely concentrated in the hands of the Glinskys, who began to please the heir to the throne with all their might, cultivating animal instincts in him.

At the same time, the future tsar devoted a lot of time to self-education and read many books, which made him the most well-read ruler of those times. Then, being a powerless hostage of the temporary rulers, he hated the whole world, and his main idea was to gain complete and unlimited power over people, which he put above any moral laws.

Repression. Oprichnina. Terror:

In 1560 Sylvester was exiled to the Belozersky monastery, Adashev was sent into “honorable exile”. In 1563 Macarius dies. In 1564 Andrei Kurbsky fled to Lithuania. The elected council ceased to enjoy the tsar’s trust after the crisis of 1553, when, during the tsar’s serious illness, a party appeared at court that supported not the son of Ivan the Terrible, but his cousin Vladimir Staritsky, as heir to the throne.

In 1565, the Tsar announced the introduction of the oprichnina. The chosen army, outside the law of the country, helped the king concentrate all power in his hands. The clan aristocracy was destroyed. There was a redistribution of fortunes and possessions.

At the beginning of 1565, the tsar abdicated the throne and moved to Alexandrovskaya Sloboda. After a petition from Moscow, he agreed to rule, but on his own terms. Several waves of repression took place among the highest officials of the state. For attempting to stop the executions, Metropolitan Philip (Kolychev), who later became one of the most revered Russian saints, was exiled and then killed. In 1569, the Tsar’s cousin Vladimir Staritsky, his wife and eldest daughter were killed.

In 1570, after the destruction of Tver, Klin, Torzhok and other cities, the tsar made a campaign against Novgorod – “to eradicate treason.” According to various sources, from 3 to 10 thousand people were killed. The number of people who died from starvation after the destruction of supplies and farms cannot be counted. The city was completely plundered, including the Hagia Sophia and the archbishop’s courtyard. From that time on, Novgorod was never able to recover. In 1861, when the Monument to the Millennium of Rus’ was opened in the city, among dozens of figures of people who influenced the development of the country, there was no place for Ivan the Terrible.
According to legend, neighboring Pskov was saved from ruin by the intervention of the holy fool Ivan Salos, who handed the king a piece of raw meat with the words: “Hey, you eat a human body”…

Returning to Moscow, the tsar carried out mass executions. Among the dead was the actual “Prime Minister” – clerk Ivan Viskovaty, who was killed along with his family with particular cruelty.

In 1571, the Crimean Khan Devlet Giray made an unexpected campaign against Rus’, easily reached Moscow, set fire to the outskirts, as a result of which the city burned to the ground. The king, having learned about the approach of the Tatars, fled from the capital.

Devlet Giray repeated the campaign against devastated Rus’ in 1572, but was defeated in the Battle of Molodi by the Zemstvo army.

Last years. Annexation of Siberia:

In 1572, the oprichnina was dissolved. The main reason was the low effectiveness of the oprichnina army and the growing influence of prominent oprichniki in the country.

In 1575, Ivan the Terrible again abdicated the throne. This time, Simeon Bekbulatovich, Kasimov Khan, Genghisid (descendant of Genghis Khan), was declared king. Simeon Bekbulatovich understood the nominal nature of his rule, and this allowed Ivan IV to cancel all donations to churches and monasteries. After returning to the throne, the king was no longer as generous as before.

In 1577, the Livonian War continued with renewed vigor, which by that time had already become a Russian-Polish war. King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Stefan Batory conducted a successful campaign, besieged Pskov, but the city heroically defended itself, and the Poles had to retreat. However, following a 10-year truce (1582), Russia actually returned to its borders that existed at the beginning of the Livonian War. According to the Truce of Plus (1583) with the Swedes, Russia lost Yam, Koporye, and Ivangorod.

In 1582, envoys from the Cossack ataman Ermak Timofeevich arrived in Moscow, reporting the defeat of the Siberian Khanate and its annexation to Russia. From that moment on, the colonization of Siberia by Russians began. Siberia will ensure the material well-being of the country for more than a hundred years to come. But by the end of his reign, Russia was devastated by the Livonian War, the unpunished raids of the Crimeans, and the consequences of the oprichnina.

Ivan the Terrible died in 1584. His heir was Fyodor Ioanovich, the last of Rurik’s line to the Russian throne.

Personal life:

Ivan the Terrible had 8 wives. But, strange as it may sound, most likely the king was a monogamous man. His first wife Anastasia Romanova (Zakharyina-Yuryeva) was a truly dear person to him. In any case, it was after her death (1560) that Ivan’s natural cruelty breaks out. They got married in 1547 (Ivan was 17, Anastasia 15 or 17 according to various sources). The couple had six children (three daughters, three sons. Four died in infancy). After Anastasia’s death, her relatives managed to maintain their influence, and as a result, it was the Romanovs who became the new reigning dynasty in 1613 after the Time of Troubles.

Ivan was sure that Anastasia was poisoned (which is partially confirmed by the study of the queen’s remains). It was in 1560 that the persecution of the Chosen Rada began; in letters to Kurbsky, the Tsar directly accused his associates: “Why did you separate me from my wife? If only my youth had not been taken away from me, otherwise there would have been no Crown sacrifice.”

The tsar’s new chosen one was Maria, the 16-year-old daughter of the Circassian prince Temryuk. They lived for 8 years, they had only one child – son Vasily – who died in infancy. There is little reliable information about Maria Temryukovna, but since the period of life with her coincided with the most cruel and unbridled years of the oprichnina, in folklore she retained a negative image of an evil and harmful woman.

The Tsar’s third wife is 18-year-old Marfa Sobakina. She died in 1571, two weeks after the wedding.

According to church laws, even a third marriage was considered an exceptional event. But Ivan, to whom no one could object for a long time, was believed that he “did not lie down” with his third wife because of her illness. And a fourth marriage was allowed – with Anna Kotlovskaya (1572). But the relationship with her did not work out either. Six months after the wedding, Anna was tonsured a nun. Why remains a mystery. Historians see in this the hand of the powerful guardsman Malyuta Skuratov.

Opinions vary about the next wife. Most likely, she was Anna Vasilchikova (1575-1576), who was forcibly tonsured a nun after a year of marriage. But before her, supposedly, the Tsar’s wife was Anna Dolgorukova. However, most likely Ivan did not formalize a relationship with her. As with Vasilisa Melentyeva, who allegedly replaced Vasilchikova. This confusion in the data is explained by the fact that Ivan did not always consider it necessary to formalize his relationship, and he could make any woman of his state his concubine. And the church could not approve all marriages after the third according to any canons.

The last wife of Ivan the Terrible was Maria Nagikh. No matter what her number was (if you don’t count the semi-legendary Dolgorukova and Melentyeva, then she is the sixth, if you cross out Sobakina, then the fifth), this marriage could not be approved by the church. Most likely, after Anna Kotlovskaya left for the monastery, Ivan did not marry any of his subsequent wives. That is, formally they cannot be considered either wives or queens. However, Ivan established the laws himself, including church ones.

Children of Ivan the Terrible:

In total, Ivan the Terrible had eight children recognized by him. Of these, five died in infancy. Moreover, Tsarevich Dmitry, his first son married to Anastasia Romanova, died during a trip on a pilgrimage. The boyars dropped the baby into the water.

Their second son, Ivan Ivanovich (1554-1581), was to become Ivan V. He was married three times. The first two wives were forcibly tonsured as nuns. Formally due to childlessness. The third wife, Elena Sheremetova, was in the process of giving birth when the worst tragedy occurred in the Tsar’s family. According to the story of the papal ambassador Antonio Possevino, who was very knowledgeable in Russian affairs, the tsar, seeing his daughter-in-law in what seemed to him to be an indecent form, began to beat her. Tsarevich Ivan tried to stop his father, but was hit on the head with a staff. From which he died a few days later. His wife lost a child and was tonsured a nun at the Novodevichy Convent.

Russian chronicles do not report anything about the cause of the prince’s death, limiting themselves to the laconic “died.”

Another son of Ivan, Fyodor (b. 1557), became the last Russian Tsar from the Rurik dynasty (1584-1598). He prayed a lot, delved little into the affairs of the state, completely entrusting the rule to the brother of his beloved wife, Boris Godunov. The years of his reign became very successful for Russia. Godunov’s competent domestic policy brought the country out of the crisis. The system of border towns became an effective barrier against the attacks of the Crimean Tatars. Among other achievements was the establishment of the patriarchate in Rus’ (1589).

The last son of Ivan IV, Dmitry, was born in 1582 from Maria Nagoya. This marriage was not recognized by the church and the prince formally could not lay claim to the royal throne.

Immediately after the death of Ivan the Terrible, Tsarina Maria Nagaya and her son were sent to Uglich under the supervision of the royal administrators.

In May 1591, the prince died. The circumstances of his death remain mysterious. The queen’s court assured that the boy had been killed. The angry crowd immediately tore to pieces the royal manager, his son and several other people on the spot. The riots were suppressed. To investigate the case, the de facto ruler of the state, Boris Godunov (the future tsar), sent a special commission to Uglich headed by Vasily Shuisky (the future tsar). The commission recognized that the prince ran into a knife as a result of an attack of “black infirmity” (epilepsy). Subsequently, Shuisky twice changed his conclusions about the case, and the impostors, who went down in history as False Dmitry, appeared several times during the Time of Troubles.

Cause of death of Ivan IV the Terrible:

Tsar Ivan ascended the throne at the age of three, was at the head of the state for 51 years, and died at 54, which is quite a serious age for the 16th century. The king drank a lot, had numerous sexual relationships with men and women, and suffered from mental disorders. Considering the level of medicine at that time, we can safely say that he had many illnesses. Despite the fact that in his youth Ivan was described as quite tall for those times (about 180 cm) and a strong man, in recent years foreign ambassadors noted his excessive obesity, weakness and sickly appearance, and three years before his death they assured that he would not last long. several months.

In 1963, Soviet scientists opened the grave of Ivan the Terrible in the Archangel Cathedral of the Kremlin. Research has proven that the king was not poisoned. The traces of mercury found in his remains are within normal limits and are most likely a consequence of the treatment. Most likely, according to scientists, the king suffered from syphilis.

Truth and lies about Ivan IV the Terrible:

1. During his lifetime, no one called the Tsar Terrible. This nickname belonged to his grandfather Ivan III. Opinions about Ivan the Terrible and his rule changed after the Time of Troubles. The Russians, who found themselves in a situation where Russia practically ceased to exist, created the legend of a “golden age” under the formidable Tsar Ivan. A similar situation occurred with the distant ancestors of Grozny – two Vladimirs – Vladimir Svyatoslavovich the Saint and Vladimir Monomakh, who entered the epics as Vladimir the Red Sun.

2. Ivan’s childhood was terrible. At the age of three he lost his father, at 8 – his mother, at 15, before his eyes, a crowd dealt with his mother’s relatives. Until he came of age, he was under the rule of the boyars, who did not always take him seriously. Since childhood, Ivan was cruel to both animals and people. At the first stage of his reign, Metropolitan Macarius and Ivan’s first wife Anastasia Romanova “softened morals.”

3. We know about the cruelties of the tsar during the Oprichnina from the memoirs of the oprichniki of Livonian and German origin. For obvious reasons, Russian chroniclers did not say much. And most of the documents were lost during numerous Moscow fires. The stories of the guardsmen were often used for propaganda against “wild Muscovy”; however, in general there is no reason not to trust them. Moreover, at the end of his life, Ivan carefully reported to God for his victims and ordered memorial services. By the names of everyone I remembered. With the note “and you know the rest yourself.” It is known how during the capture of Polotsk all Lutherans and Jews were exterminated with particular cruelty. The Novgorod pogrom has gone down in history as an example of ruthless terror.

4. Under Ivan the Terrible, Russia was a rather backward and closed state. Largely due to the reluctance of the West to share its technical achievements. A big breakthrough in this regard was the arrival of the English merchant Richard Chancellor to Arkhangelsk. His ship was part of an unsuccessful expedition to India across the Arctic Ocean. Chancellor was taken to Moscow. English merchants received unprecedented privileges for trade in Russia, and the tsar established relations with the English court.

5. Ivan was constantly afraid for his life. He was maniacally afraid of conspiracies. A cell was always ready for him in the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery. He built an alternative courtyard-fortress in Moscow opposite the Kremlin (on the site of the current Manege). An impregnable fortress in Alexandrovskaya Sloboda. During the period of choosing a new wife in 1567, Ivan wooed the English Queen Elizabeth I. And in 1583 – her relative Mary Hastings. The queen rejected the king, but such close ties allowed Ivan to ask the queen for refuge for himself and for his treasury in case of another imaginary (or not, who knows now) conspiracy against himself.

6. It is believed that Tsar Ivan was subject to the “sin of Sodom,” that is, he had homosexual relations. Boyar Fyodor Basmanov is called the Tsar’s lover. Andrei Kurbsky writes about this in letters to the Tsar, and guardsmen of foreign origin testify to this. There is, of course, no evidence of such a connection in Russian documents. It is believed that Fyodor, on the orders of the Tsar, personally executed his father, a prominent political figure Alexei Basmanov. Fedor was expelled by the Tsar. But his name is in the “Synodik of the Disgraced” by Ivan the Terrible, which lists the names of his victims.

7. Ivan the Terrible was one of the most educated people of his time, possessed literary talent, as evidenced by his letters to Prince Kurbsky. The king was in personal correspondence with the Queen of England and with representatives of other royal houses. He was well versed in church matters and knew the Scriptures.

8. In the film “Ivan Vasilyevich Changes His Profession” there is a character – Tsarina Marfa Vasilievna. This is Marfa Sobakina, the tsar’s third wife, who died two weeks after the wedding. This episode allows us to accurately date the film to 1571.