by Riazanovsky
Ivan the Terrible's attitude toward his advisers and the boyars as a whole changed over a period of years under the strong impact, it would seem, of certain events. In 1553 the tsar fell gravely ill and believed himself to be on his deathbed. He asked the boyars to swear allegiance to his infant son Dmitrii, but met opposition even from some of his closest associates, such as Sylvester, not to mention a considerable number of boyars: they apparently resented the merely boyar, not princely, family of Ivan the Terrible's wife, were afraid of more misfortunes for the Muscovite state during another reign of a minor, and favored Ivan the Terrible's cousin, Prince Vladimir of Staritsa, as tsar. Although the oath to Dmitrii was finally sworn, Ivan the Terrible never forgot this troubling experience. Shortly afterwards some boyars were caught planning to escape to Lithuania. New tensions resulted from the Livonian War. In fact it led to the break between the tsar and his advisers, Sylvester and Adashev, who disapproved of the proposed offensive in the Baltic area, preferring an assault against the Crimean Tartars.
In 1560 Ivan the Terrible's young and beloved wife Anastasia died suddenly. Convinced that Sylvester and Adashev had participated in a plot to poison her, the tsar had them condemned in extraordinary judicial proceedings, in the course of which they were not allowed to appear to state their case. The priest was apparently exiled to a distant monastery; the layman thrown into jail where he died. Before long Ivan the Terrible's wrath de-
scended upon everyone connected with the Chosen Council. Adashev's and Sylvester's relatives, associates, and friends perished without trial. Two princes lost their lives merely because they expressed disapproval of the tsar's behavior. At this turn of events, a number of boyars fled to Lithuania. The escapees included a famous commander and associate of the tsar, Prince Andrew Kurbsky, who spent the rest of his life organizing forces and coalitions against his former sovereign. Kurbsky is best known, however, for the remarkable letters which he exchanged with Ivan the Terrible in 1564-79 and which will demand our attention when we deal with the political thought of Muscovite Russia.
In late 1564 Ivan IV suddenly abandoned Moscow for the small town of Aleksandrov some sixty miles away. A month later two letters, addressed to the metropolitan, arrived from the tsar. In them Ivan IV expressed his desire to retire from the throne and denounced the boyars and the clergy. Yet, in the letter to be read to the masses, he emphasized that he had no complaints against the common people. In confusion and consternation, the boyars and the people of Moscow begged the tsar to return and rule over them. Ivan the Terrible did return in February 1565, after his two conditions had been accepted: the creation of a special institution and subdivision in the Muscovite state, known as the oprichnina - from the word oprich, that is, apart, beside - to be managed entirely at the tsar's own discretion; and an endorsement of the tsar's right to punish evil-doers and traitors as he would see fit, executing them when necessary and confiscating their possessions. After the tsar returned to Moscow, it became apparent to those who knew him that he had experienced another shattering psychological crisis, for his eyes were dim and his hair and beard almost gone.
The oprichnina acquired more than one meaning. It came to stand for a separate jurisdiction within Russia which consisted originally of some twenty towns with their countryside, several special sections scattered throughout the state, and a part of Moscow where Ivan the Terrible built a new palace. Eventually it extended to well over a third of the Muscovite realm. The tsar set up a separate state administration for the oprichnina, paralleling the one in existence which was retained for the rest of the country, now known as the zemshchina. Much later there was even established a new and nominal ruler, a baptized Tartar prince Simeon, to whom Ivan the Terrible pretended to render homage. Our knowledge of the structure and functioning of the oprichnina administration remains fairly limited. Platonov suggested that after the reform of 1564 the state had actually one set of institutions, but two sets of officials. In any case, new men under the direct control of Ivan the Terrible ran the oprichnina, whereas the zemshchina stayed within the purview of the boyar duma and old officialdom. In fact, many landlords in the territory of the oprichnina were transferred else-
where, while their lands were granted to the new servitors of the tsar. The term oprichnina also came to designate especially this new corps of servants to Ivan the Terrible - called oprichniki - who are described sometimes today as gendarmes or political police. The oprichniki, dressed in black and riding black horses, numbered at first one thousand and later as many as six thousand. Their purpose was to destroy those whom the tsar considered to be his enemies.
A reign of terror followed. Boyars and other people linked to Prince Kurbsky, who had escaped to Lithuania, fell first. The tsar's cousin; Prince Vladimir of Staritsa, perished in his turn, together with his relatives, friends, and associates. The circle of suspects and victims kept widening: not only more and more boyars, but also their families, relatives, friends, and even servants and peasants were swept away in the purge. The estates of the victims and the villages of their peasants were confiscated by the state, and often plundered or simply burned. Ivan the Terrible brooked no contradiction. Metropolitan Philip, who dared remonstrate with the tsar, was thrown into jail and killed there by the oprichniki. Entire towns, such as Torzhok, Klin, and, especially, in 1570, Novgorod, suffered utter devastation and ruin. It looked as if a civil war were raging in the Muscovite state, but a peculiar civil war, for the attackers met no resistance. It might be added that the wave of extermination engulfed some of the leading oprichniki themselves. In 1572 Ivan the Terrible declared the oprichnina abolished, although division of the state into two parts lasted at least until 1575.
Following the death of his first wife, Ivan the Terrible appeared to have lost his emotional balance. His six subsequent wives never exercised the same beneficial influence on him as had Anastasia. The tsar was increasingly given to feelings of persecution and outbreaks of wild rage. He saw traitors everywhere. After the oprichnina began its work, Ivan the Terrible's life became part of a nightmare which he had brought into being. With Maliuta Skuratov and other oprichniki the sovereign personally participated in the investigations and the horrid tortures and executions. Weirdly he alternated dissolution and utmost cruelty with repentance, and blasphemy with prayer. Some contemporary accounts of the events defy imagination. In 1581, in a fit of violence, Ivan the Terrible struck his son and heir Ivan with a pointed staff and mortally wounded him. It has been said that from that time on he knew no peace at all. The tsar died in March 1584, a Soviet autopsy of his body indicating poisoning.
While the oprichnina was raging inside Russia, enemies pressed from the outside. Although the Crimean Tartars failed to take Astrakhan in 1569, in 1571 Khan Davlet-Geray led them to Moscow itself. Unable to seize the Kremlin, they burned much of the city. They withdrew from the Muscovite state only after laying waste a large area and capturing an enormous booty
and 100,000 prisoners. Famine and plague added to the horror of the Tartar devastation. The following year, however, a new invasion by the Crimean Tartars met disaster at the hands of a Russian army.
The Muscovite unpreparedness for the Crimean Tartars resulted largely from the increasing demands of the Livonian War. Begun by Ivan the Terrible in 1558 and prosecuted with great success for a number of years, this major enterprise, too, started to turn against the Russians. In his effort to expand in the Baltic area, the tsar found himself opposed by a united Lithuania and Poland after 1569, and also by Sweden. After the death of Sigismund II in 1572, Poland had experienced several turbulent years: two elections to the Polish throne involved many interests and intrigues, with the Hapsburgs making a determined bid to secure the crown, and Ivan the Terrible himself promoted as a candidate by another party; also, the successful competitor, Henry of Valois, elected king in 1573, left the country the following year to succeed his deceased brother on the French throne. The situation changed after the election in 1575 of the Hungarian Prince of
Transylvania, Stephen Bathory, as King of Poland. The new ruler brought stability and enhanced his reputation as an excellent general. In 1578 the Poles started an offensive in southern Livonia. The following year they captured Polotsk and Velikie Luki, although, in exceptionally bitter combat, they failed to take Pskov. On their side, in 1578, the Swedes smashed a Russian army at Wenden. By the treaties of 1582 with Poland and 1583 with Sweden, Russia had to renounce all it had gained during the first part of the war and even cede several additional towns to Sweden. Thus, after some twenty-five years of fighting, Ivan the Terrible's move to the Baltic failed dismally. The Muscovite state lay prostrate from the internal ravages of the oprichnina and continuous foreign war.
In concluding the story of Ivan the Terrible, mention should be made of one more development, in the last years of his reign, pregnant with consequences for subsequent Russian history: Ermak's so-called conquest of Siberia. Even prior to the Mongol invasion the Novgorodians had penetrated beyond the Urals. The Russians used northern routes to enter Siberia by both land and sea and, by the middle of the sixteenth century, had already reached the mouth of the Enisei. In the sixteenth century the Stroganov family developed large-scale industries, including the extracting of salt and the procurement of fish and furs, in northeastern European Russia, especially in the Ustiug area. After the conquest of Kazan, the Stroganovs obtained from the government large holdings in the wild upper Kama region, where they maintained garrisons and imported colonists. The local native tribes' resistance to the Russians was encouraged by their nominal suzerain, the so-called khan of Sibir, or Siberia, beyond the Urals. In 1582 the Stroganovs sent an expedition against the Siberian khanate. It consisted of perhaps 1650 cossacks and other volunteers, led by a cossack commander,
Ermak. Greatly outnumbered, but making good use of their better organization, firearms, and daring, the Russians defeated the natives in repeated engagements and seized the headquarters of the Siberian Khan Kuchum. Ivan the Terrible appreciated the importance of this unexpected conquest, accepted the new territories into his realm, and sent reinforcements. Although Ermak perished in the struggle in 1584 before help arrived and although the conquest of the Siberian khanate had to be repeated, the Stroganov expedition marked in effect the beginning of the establishment of Russian control in western Siberia. Tiumen, a fortified town, was built there in 1586, and another fortified town, Tobolsk, was built in 1587 and subsequently became an important administrative center.
Explanations
The eventful and tragic reign of Ivan the Terrible has received different evaluations and interpretations. In general, the judgments of historians have fallen into two categories: an emphasis on the tsar's pathological character, indeed madness, and an explanation of his actions on the basis of fundamental Muscovite needs and problems, and thus in terms of a larger purpose on his part. Personal denunciation of Ivan the Terrible, together with the division of his reign into the first, good, half, when the tsar listened to his advisers, and the second, bad, half, when he became a bloodthirsty tyrant, derives from the accounts of Andrew Kurbsky, as well as, to a lesser extent, of some other contemporaries. Karamzin adopted this view in his extremely influential history of the Russian state, and it has been accepted by many later scholars.
The view stressing political, social, and economic reasons for the events of Ivan rV's reign has also had numerous adherents. Platonov did particularly valuable work in elucidating the nature of the oprichnina and the reasons for its establishment. He argued that the Chosen Council had indeed ruled Russia, representing a usurpation of power by the boyars. Ivan the Terrible's struggle against it and against the boyars as a whole marked one of the most important developments in the evolution of the centralized Russian monarchy. Moreover, the tsar waged this struggle with foresight and intelligence. Platonov pointed out that the lands taken into the oprichnina, in particular in central Russia, included many estates of the descendants of former appanage princes and princelings who in their hereditary possessions had retained the prestige and largely the authority of rulers, including the rights to judge and collect taxes. Their transfer to other lands where they had no special standing or power and their replacement with reliable new men, together with the wholesale suppression of the boyar opposition, ensured the tsar's victory over the remnants of the old order.
Henceforth, the boyars were to be their monarch's obedient servants both in the duma and in their assigned military and administrative posts. In addition, the oprichnina territory contained important commercial centers and routes, notably the new trade artery from Archangel to central Russia. Platonov saw in this arrangement Ivan the Terrible's effort to satisfy the financial needs of the oprichnina; some Marxist historians have offered it as evidence of a new class alignment. Furthermore, the oprichnina gave the tsar an opportunity to bypass the mestnichestvo system and to bring to the fore servicemen from among the gentry, most of whom remained in important government work even after the country had returned to normalcy. And it provided an effective police corps to fight opposition and treason. The bitterness and the cruelty of the struggle stemmed likewise from more basic reasons than the tsar's character. In fact, in this respect too Ivan the Terrible's reign provided a close parallel to those of Louis XI in France or Henry VIII in England, who similarly suppressed their aristocracies. Platonov added that the tsar began with relatively mild measures and turned to severe punishments only after the boyar opposition continued.
Marxist historians developed an analysis of Ivan IV's reign in terms of the class struggle. Pokrovsky and others interpreted the reforms of 1564 as a shift from boyar control of the government to an alliance between the crown and the service gentry and merchants, to whom the tsar turned at the zemskii sobor of 1566 on the issue of the Livonian War and on other occasions. In fact, Ivan IV tried to establish, long before Peter the Great, an effective personal autocracy. Other Soviet scholars, especially Wipper, placed heavy emphasis on the reality of treason in the reign of Ivan the Terrible and the need to combat it. In general, Soviet historians gradually came to stress the progressive nature of Ivan IV's rule in Russia as well as the tsar's able championing of Russian national interests against foreign foes, although Makovsky did reinstate emphatically the negative view of the reign. The Soviet cinema versions of the reign of Ivan the Terrible reflect some of the major characteristics and problems of the shifting Soviet interpretations of the tsar and the period. It might be added that the Soviet evaluation of Ivan IV has, apparently, interesting points of contact with the image which the brilliant and restless tsar left with the Russian people. It seems that his popular epithet Groznyi - usually rendered ambiguously and inadequately in English as "Terrible" - implied admiration rather than censure and referred to his might, perhaps in connection with the victory over the khanate of Kazan or other successes. On occasion the epithet was also applied to Ivan III in this sense.
Yet, after all the able and valuable rational explanations of Ivan the Terrible's actions in the broad setting of Russian history, grave doubts remain. Even if the boyars, or at least their upper layer, constituted an element linked to the appanage past and opposed to the Muscovite centraliza-
tion, we have very little evidence to indicate that they were organized, aggressive, or otherwise presented a serious threat to the throne. Probably, given time, their position would have declined further, eliminating any need for drastic action. The story of the oprichnina is that of civil massacre, not civil war. Also, even Platonov failed to provide objective reasons for many of Ivan IV's measures, such as his setting up Simeon as the Russian ruler to whom Ivan himself paid obeisance - although it should be added that some other historians tried to find rational explanations where Platonov admitted defeat. Most important, the pathological element in the tsar's behavior cannot be denied. People of such character have brought about many private tragedies. Ivan the Terrible, however, was not just a private person but the absolute ruler of a huge state.
The Reign of Theodore
The reign of Ivan IV's eldest surviving son Theodore, or Fedor, 1584-98, gave Russia a measure of peace. Physically weak and extremely limited in intelligence and ability, but well meaning as well as very religious, the new tsar relied entirely on his advisers. Fortunately, these advisers, especially Boris Godunov, performed their task fairly well.
An important and extraordinary event of the reign consisted in the establishment of a patriarchate in Russia in 1589. Largely as a result of Boris Godunov's skillful diplomacy, the Russians managed to obtain the consent of the patriarch of Constantinople, Jeremiah, to elevating the head of the Russian Church to the rank of patriarch, the highest in the Orthodox world. Later all Eastern patriarchs agreed to this step, although with some reluctance. Boris Godunov's friend, Metropolitan Job, became the first Muscovite patriarch. The new importance of the Russian Church led to an upgrading and enlargement of its hierarchy through the appointment of a number of new metropolitans, archbishops, and bishops. This strengthening of the organization of the Church proved to be significant in the Time of Troubles.