Terror's Legacy

Ivan the Terrible abdicates

In December 1564 Muscovites were horrified to learn that their ruler – 34-year old Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, who had already begun to earn the sobriquet “the Terrible” – had gone missing. The tsar had quit the city, taking with him not only a rather large cohort of loyal followers, but also the state treasury, the royal seal, and many of Russia’s most revered icons. It is hard to say what was more horrifying for Ivan’s abandoned subjects: the disappearance of the icons was a terrible blow, but life without the tsar was simply unimaginable.

Soon royal messengers came to spread the word that the sovereign, angered by the traitorous boyars, had retreated to his palace in Alexandrov (aka Alexandrova Sloboda), a summer residence that Ivan’s father had used as a sort of hunting lodge. The idea that the tsar could leave Moscow and take up permanent residence there seemed absurd.

Crowds began streaming toward Alexandrov: members of the clergy, ordinary folk, and the boyars, who had a feeling that Ivan’s maneuver could not possibly end well for them. They all beseeched the tsar to forgive them and return to Moscow.

In January Ivan announced his decision to change Russia’s entire governmental order. Since the boyars were so power-hungry, let them rule. He placed them in charge of most of the country and kept a small piece for himself, an “oprichnina.” This term was ordinarily used for the land left to a widow after her husband’s death, at a time when most wealth went to a family’s sons. True, Ivan’s “widow’s share” did include the richest and most strategic lands, and he still exercised real power in the rest of the country, but in formal terms this new order endured for seven years, at which point, in 1572, Ivan not only abolished the oprichnina, but even made it a crime to utter the word.

In those seven years, the oprichnina army the tsar created – supposedly to battle the hated boyars – managed to plunder the entire country and terrify the populace, putting in place a medieval police state, complete with torture chambers and brutal executions, as well as the oprichniks’ frightening appearance: dressed in black, they affixed dogs’ heads to their saddles (to sniff out treason) and sported brooms (to sweet away betrayal). The oprichniks formed something akin to a strange and perverted monastic order, following the horrific torture of arrestees and raucous feasting with long periods of prayer.

What was going on here? Why did Ivan need the oprichniks? One possibility is that, like any tyrant, the Terrible felt he could rely only on those who were entirely dependent on him. The boyars, Russia’s aristocrats, were too independent, while the oprichniks, who had been elevated to positions of power solely through the tsar’s good graces, seemed more trustworthy. (Later, when the oprichniks started to look a bit too comfortable in their positions of power, it came their turn to feel Ivan’s sting.)

What was the point of this masquerade with horsemen in black with dogs’ heads and brooms? Some say that Ivan was playing up the idea of an impending apocalypse, although for him this was probably no game. We know that after he retreated to the Alexandrov kremlin, the young tsar lost all his hair as he awaited petitioners from Moscow. The devious and malevolent plan to upend the entire system of government in Russia was hatched while Ivan was in the grip of a downward psychological spiral. He may have believed in what he was doing, but the external crisis he provoked was paralleled by an internal crisis of exceptional intensity, one likely provoked by the death (murder, he suspected) of his wife.

The oprichnina lasted just seven years, but for centuries these seven years have generated more than their fair share of controversy. Was the oprichnina a manifestation of paranoia or a product of cool calculation by a tyrant assembling a meticulously designed apparatus of terror? To what extent did Ivan know what he was doing? And, most important, what is the legacy of those seven years?

Historians generally agree that this episode in Russian history left the country debilitated and impoverished. There is also general consensus that the oprichnina, created in part to assure victory in the war against Poland and Lithuania, so weakened the country that it made defeat almost inevitable. It was only under Stalin that historians were compelled to treat the oprichnina as progressive and beneficial to the country, an idea only a like-minded tyrant could love.

What impact did the oprichnina have on subsequent Russian history? Should we see these seven bloody years as no more than one horrible episode, primarily of interest as an aberration – one tsar’s exceptional brutality? Or was it more than that? Many historians see the oprichnina’s legacy affecting many later chapters of Russian history.

What role did it play in shaping the Time of Troubles, the stormy rebellions and upheavals that rocked the early seventeenth century? Did the oprichnina pave the way for the tyranny of autocratic rule in Russia? Is the financial ruin that Ivan brought on Russia what led the country to enslave its impoverished peasantry in the late sixteenth century, a time when European peasants were enjoying increasing economic freedom? In short, is there a link between these seven years in the sixteenth century and Russia’s subsequent tragic history, all the way to Stalinism and perhaps even the present day?

Today, we recoil at such a thought. We want to believe that the oprichnina is a thing of the past, with no hold on the present. Today, no one takes pleasure in searing the flesh of political opponents in frying pans, as Ivan apparently did. But can we still see signs of Ivan’s guiding principles – governing through force and cruelty, a disdain for the individual? And if so, will we ever rid ourselves of these vestiges?

Only time will tell.