The Father of Tsarism

Four hundred and fifty years ago this month, Ivan the Terrible became the first Russian ruler to hold the title ‘tsar.’ Andrei Yurganov examines the life of this exceptionally talented and cruel ruler, and discovers that his legacy goes far beyond the founding of a 470-year institution.

“The new system which he set up was madness, but the madness of a genius.”

Pares

On January 16, 1547 in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, Russian Grand Prince Ivan Vassilyevich IV, later to be known as ‘Ivan the Terrible,’ was crowned tsar. Metropolitan Makary brought the Grand Prince to his throne, and placed on him the symbols of the title of tsar: the Cross of the Life-Giving Tree and the robes and headgear of Monomakh. After initiation into the Holy Secrets, Ivan was anointed with unction, a ritual that for Orthodox Christians was believed to prepare anointees for tsardom (Christ was also anointed in this way). That glorious day, the tsar held a feast for Russian churchmen and titled persons. Even the poor were not left wanting; no expense was spared. Everyone realized that things like this happened only once.

None of Ivan IV’s predecessors had been crowned tsars (though beginning with his grandfather, Ivan III, Moscow’s rulers had adopted the title ‘autocrat,’ sometimes called themselves ‘tsar’ and began to hold coronation ceremonies). In fact, the word ‘tsar’ came from the Latin Caesar, a word which had been taken from the name of the great general, Julius Caesar, and transformed into a title meaning Emperor [the title Imperator would not be used by Russian tsars until the reign of Peter the Great]. Previously in Russia, however, this title had only been given to Byzantine emperors and Mongol khans.

By giving himself the title ‘tsar,’ Ivan achieved several aims. He demonstrated Russia’s complete independence from the Golden Horde, even equality with it. In 1237, Northeastern Russia, the historical forerunner of the 16th century Muscovite state, was attacked by Mongol hordes, and forced to become part of their Empire. If in the 12th century Russian grand princes were believed to have been given power by God, they were now given it by the khan, a very earthly being with his own preferences and political plans.

From the 13th century onwards, the ritual of crowning the Russian grand princes took place under the Horde and was distinguished by its extravagance. The khan would hand the grand prince a sword before the eyes of the court. Then high officials of the Empire would lead the grand prince out of the khan’s palace by the arm, seat him on a richly decorated horse and see him to his residence. The most senior of the other Russian princes would lead the horse by the bridle. Arriving at his residence, the new grand prince would spare no expense on feasting and presents for the participating Mongolian officials.

After liberation from the yoke in 1480, attitudes to titles and attributes of power changed. Ivan IV’s grandfather, Grand Prince Ivan III, striving to raise the prestige of his kind, held inaugurations for the grand princedom according to ancient Constantinople customs. Thus he declared his grandson Dmitry Grand Prince in a special ceremony using tsar’s regalia as symbols of power.

According to a tradition accepted then as an ideological basis for the power of Moscow’s rulers, 12th century Russian prince Vladimir Vsevolodovich received these regalia from the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Monomakh. According to legend, the Russian prince was crowned by the Byzantine Metropolitan Neophytes, without the anointing ritual, called Monomakh and given the title ‘Tsar of all Russia.’

When Byzantium fell to the Turks in 1453, Russia was already strong enough to stand as its worthy successor, as ‘orthodox tsarstvo (empire).’ In Russia, God himself was called Tsar, as was Christ, who was to come to earth a second time and become Judge and Tsar of all the living and the dead. Thus the power of the earthly tsar would be replaced by the power of the eternal Tsar. This idea was very popular, and in the 16th century people awaited the second coming with particular zeal, believing that the last days of humankind were approaching.

The title of tsar allowed Russia to occupy a completely different position in diplomatic relations with Western Europe. Titles like ‘grand prince’ or ‘grand duke,’ as the Russian veliky knyaz was translated, were a lot less impressive than ‘tsar,’ which if translated at all became ‘emperor.’ Thus Russia’s ruler could put himself on an equal footing with Europe’s only emperor, the Holy Roman Emperor. Moreover, the question of title was extremely important in the middle ages — there were even wars which broke out because one ruler did not desire to call another by his full title.

By becoming tsar, the grand prince would make himself unassailable by other Russian princes. In Byzantium, the emperor effectively headed even the church. All the teachings of the fathers of the Byzantine church on reverence of the tsar were now transferred to Russia’s ruler.

Who was Ivan IV?

Ivan’s father, Basil III, died on the night of 3-4 December 1533, when Ivan was just three years old. Yelena Glinsky, Ivan’s mother, was his capricious regent until her death in 1538, after which battles for the regency became the focus of palace coups, murders, imprisonment and exiles. In this atmosphere, the very intelligent Ivan learned to be suspicious and vengeful, and to take pleasure in inflicting pain. At the age of 12 he began to ‘shed the blood of our dumb friends,’ throwing animals off high roofs. By the age of 15 he began to do the same with people. But boyars who noted the youth’s temperament, praised him, saying: “Oh how brave and courageous this tsar will be!”

Ivan’s most powerful impressions of his teenage years (he was 16 when crowned tsar) came shortly after his coronation and marriage to Anastasia Zakharina-Yuryeva, a member of the popular boyar family which later became the Romanov dynasty. During Moscow’s Great Fire and the ensuing riots of 1547, crazed mobs killed one of Ivan’s uncles and intended to do the same with the rest of the family. A crowd appeared in the village of Vorobyovo, where the Tsar was staying, and demanded that the relatives be handed over to them. The Tsar succeeded with great difficulty in persuading them to disperse, convincing them that the Glinskys were not in Vorobyovo.

It is believed that, during the fire, a priest from the Annunciation Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin called Sylvester angrily accused Ivan of ‘frenzied temperament,’ explaining the fire as God’s punishment for his sins.

The Tsar took these words very seriously, and repented publicly in Red Square, promising to rule in future in the interests of the people. [In any case, medieval people believed that they would be accountable to Christ for their deeds]. Even the tsar, anointed by God, but mortal as all other men, would be held responsible.

But Ivan’s interpretations of what the ‘interests of the people’ were varied drastically in different parts of his reign, depending on where he saw evil. And for medieval man, the means, whether it be good government, murder and execution or devout prayer, were always justified by the end — the defeat of evil.

Successes at home

Perhaps this promise was what prompted Ivan in 1549 to begin making changes in the Russian state. It might be misleading to call these changes reforms, however. For the word ‘reform’ only entered the Russian language at the end of the 18th century. In fact, it would not have occurred to Ivan’s contemporaries that ‘deep structural changes’ in society were necessary — things were subject to change only if they did not correspond to ideas of truth and justice or were defined as ungodly. In any event, in 1549 the first, full zemsky sobor — a gathering of all landed gentry — was called. In 1550 a new Sudebnik (legal code) was passed. In 1551 a church assembly  called the Stoglavy (Council of a Hundred Chapters — so-called because Ivan’s resolutions on church life were written under 100 headings) was held that would regulate the relations between church and state for many years to come.

These changes were initiated by a group of advisers formed close to the tsar which later came to be known as the Chosen Council. According to one of the active members of this government circle, Prince Andrei Kurbsky (who later opposed Ivan and fled abroad), it was made up of ‘reasonable’ and ‘accomplished’ men. It was these people who began building the foundations of new state organs of power. After all, apart from the great power of the tsar himself, the country had no developed system of government either in the regions or in Moscow itself.

Victories abroad

Along with changes at home, Russia faced a multitude of threats from without. Not the least of these was the Tatar armies seeking to resubjugate the Muscovite state. In 1552, Ivan the Terrible personally took part in the campaign against the nearest of the Tatar enemies, the Kazan Khanate. It was this campaign that earned him the title Grozny, normally translated as ‘terrible’ but really closer to ‘awesome,’ and reflecting his positive qualities, as a mighty ruler, rather than his negative ones as an instigator of terror.

This victory was celebrated widely with the building of several monuments, the most famous of which was the remarkable Intercession Cathedral on Red Square. The church is now more usually called St. Basil’s, after a holy man Basil the Blessed who predicted the Tsar’s evil deeds.

It should be pointed out, though, that these deeds only came later in Ivan’s reign. This period was relatively prsperous and constructive, and not yet marred by repressions and executions. In fact, the early part of his reign (1547-60) was generally considered his ‘good period.’

After the subjugation of Kazan, and Astrakhan in 1556, Russia was already well on the way to becoming the huge country it is today (in the 1580s Cossacks under Yermak also penetrated western Siberia). But when Ivan turned his attentions to the North, beginning a major war in 1558 for control of the Baltic Sea, he was in effect laying the foundations for strife among his subordinates and for his own arbitrary and cruel tyranny.

At first, the campaign went well. By 1560 the army of the Catholic Livonian Order was completely routed, and the Order itself ceased to exist. At the same time there were some serious changes in Ivan the Terrible’s internal policy. In about 1560 the tsar broke with his entourage. By force of his character and conditions of upbringing he could not tolerate ‘wise advisers’ for long. He used the death of his beloved wife (this event was to him a crushing psychological blow, although there is no direct evidence that his early benevolence was prompted by her influence) as an excuse to remove first Council members Sylvester and Alexei Adashev, then their relatives and other councillors.

In 1563 Russian forces took the large Lithuanian fortress at Polotsk. Ivan was especially proud of this victory, which was accomplished after his break with the Chosen Council. According to some historians, Sylvester and Adashev, thinking that the Livonian war bode no good for Russia, had angered the Tsar by advising him to seek agreement with the enemy. Ivan’s success at Polotsk, however, seemed to prove them wrong.

However, in 1564 Russia suffered serious defeats. The Tsar found scapegoats — or, as he believed, perpetrators of this ‘evil’ — and exiled or executed them (it was at this time that his close adviser and military commander Andrei Kurbsky fled abroad). He sought the immediate implementation of his decisions, which he associated with the absolute obedience of his subjects. However, in reality the central authorities were too weak for this: in the provinces a state apparatus for carrying out his decrees had not yet been set up. The Tsar’s impatience was a precursor of terror.

The terror begins

This impatience came to the surface in 1564 when Ivan retreated from Moscow to his residence in Alexandrov and threatened to retire from the throne, an absurdity because, for 16th century people, he was not just considered head of state but the state itself. As a result of this ploy (repeated by many of his successors with equal success), he persuaded the people to take him back on his terms, i.e. greater personal powers and an endorsement of his right to punish misdemeanors as he saw fit.

This led directly in 1565 to Ivan announcing the introduction of the oprichnina. Coming from the old Russian word oprich meaning ‘apart,’ this was the collective term for several areas of Russia put under the direct jurisdiction of the Tsar. Thus the country was divided into oprichnina and zemshchina, the latter remaining under the control of the Boyar Duma (Nobles’ Assembly).

The oprichnina was the main focus for the terror which came to be inflicted by Ivan’s devoted servants, known as oprichniki. Each oprichnik took an oath of allegiance to the Tsar and vowed not to have any contact with people from the other areas. They dressed in black monk’s clothing, and their horsemen had special defining marks, grim symbols of an era, affixed to their saddles — a broom to sweep away treachery and dogs’ heads to gnaw it away.

Noble families were the first victims of executions. No one knows whether a conspiracy was discovered or not — the value of confessions extracted by such methods as ripping out fingernails and pulling limbs out of joint is dubious to say the least. In 1568 Ivan Fyodorov, a well-known boyar and a very wealthy man, who was known not to take bribes despite the traditional corruptibility of courtiers, was executed on the Tsar’s orders. Ivan rarely limited himself to simple executions, he almost always liked to torment his victims as well. Having given Fyodorov his robes and scepter, the tsar sat him on his throne and theatrically ‘paid his respects:’ he took off his hat and bowed. Then with the words “just as it is in my power to put you on this throne, it is also in my power to remove you from it” he seized a knife and stuck it in the boyar’s chest. The disemboweled Fyodorov was then dragged by the feet through the Kremlin and thrown upon the square.

All Fyodorov’s servants were killed, as were other people considered to be ‘supporters’ of the plot against the Tsar. In 1569 Ivan’s cousin Prince Vladimir of Staritsa and his wife and daughter were killed. Ivan ordered them to drink a poison prepared in advance. At the same time the Prince’s mother, the elder Yevfrosiniya, along with twelve nuns, were killed on the tsar’s orders at the Goritsky Monastery.

Soon Metropolitan Philip, who had condemned the oprichnina and executions, became a victim of the terror. He was arrested and exiled to the Otroch Monastery at Tver, where according to legend he was smothered by one of the most feared executioners, Malyuta (‘Babe’) Skuratov Belsky. The reason for his murder was that he had failed to bless the Novgorod pogrom, led by the Tsar personally in January-February 1570. It is believed that as many as 10-15,000 people were killed in this city of little over 30,000. The city became so empty that, in folk songs an image of this tragic desertion appeared: “Wherever Ivan the Terrible went, there the cocks don’t crow.”

On July 25 of that same year, the terror reached a fever pitch in Moscow. It was a black day by even oprichnina standards. The city had seen heretics burnt at the stake before, but never on this scale. On one of the city squares, a wooden stand was erected and fires started. Over the fire was a cauldron full of boiling water. Three hundred condemned men, who had already been subjected to torture, were brought to the place of execution. First ‘clemency’ was shown — the Tsar forgave 194 people, then executed the rest. The first to go was talented statesman and diplomat Ivan Viskovaty. Unbroken by torture, he stood firm and did not confess his guilt. Offered life in exchange for repentance, he refused. To such people the Tsar was especially unmerciful, and he ordered Viskovaty to be ‘torn limb from limb.’ Anyone who received the order was supposed to approach the victim and tear off some or other part of his body. On that day fathers, mothers and children were executed indiscriminately.

New threats from without

Most historians believe that in 1572 Ivan abolished the oprichnina. One reason for this could have been the continuing Tatar threat: the attack on Moscow in 1571 by the Crimean Tatars under Davlet-Geray. Fording the Oka river where there were no defensive barriers, the Khan reached the Russian capital without meeting any resistance and razed any settlements not defended by the walls. A fire spread from Kitaigorod, the merchant’s quarter, to the Kremlin, and in it many Muscovites were killed — so many in fact that there was almost no one to bury them.

The Tsar himself fled north, first to the fortress at Alexandrov, then to Pereslavl, then Yaroslavl and finally to Beloozero near Vologda. In 1572 Davlet Geray attacked again, intending to capture the tsar himself. On this occasion, however, Ivan was able to unite the forces of the oprichnina and zemshchina, and put in charge of them the talented zemshchina general Prince Mikhail Vorotynsky. On June 30, 1572 at a battle near the village of Molodi (50 km south of Moscow), the Russian forces soundly defeated Geray.

As it turned out, the division of Russia into the oprichnina and zemshchina had a disastrous effect on its defensive capabilities. The oprichnina led the country to catastrophe — almost all its lands were ravaged. Peasants fled to the Urals and Siberia.

This emptying of the countryside in turn played its role in the strengthening of serfdom in Russia. In 1581, Ivan introduced so-called ‘preservation years’ and temporarily forbad peasants from leaving their masters on Yuryev den [the one day in the year when they were allowed to do so], in order to prevent estates from being deserted. He could not have realized that this hasty ban could lead to centuries of serfdom, and it probably would not have been possible to drive peasants under its yoke without using terror.

Repentance and tragedy

The Livonian war ended in 1583 in complete defeat and the loss of Russian lands to the Poles and Swedes. But the objective results of Ivan’s rule were visible even during his lifetime — the failure of all internal and foreign projects. Perhaps this was why in his 1579 will he admitted to his mistakes and warned his sons: be merciful rulers, and think before casting people into disgrace, don’t do it in haste or in anger. In 1578, Ivan stopped executions altogether. He repented for what he had done, and prayed to God to forgive him.

His repentance was probably also inspired by great physical suffering. The anthropologist and sculptor Mikhail Gerasimov did research into the Tsar’s skeleton at the beginning of the 1960s and came to the conclusion that in the last six years of his life (1578-84) he had developed large saline deposits on his backbone. The slightest movement would have caused him excruciating pain. He could not wear himself out with fasting and prayer — because of physical exhaustion he would have been barely able to kneel or bow down. His body was worn out by heavy drinking and debauchery. And his endless executions, which would drive him into a frenzy, finally  unhinged his nerves.

In 1579, not long before his death, he asked for special lists to be made for prayers for those wrongly killed during the years of the oprichnina and began sending contributions out to monasteries for prayers for their souls. In his 1579 will, he let it be known that he was ready to stand at the Day of Judgment and give account of his deeds, together with those whom he deprived of life without repentance and in a most barbarous manner.

On November 9, 1582, another  misfortune served to burden his conscience, supplementing guilt with personal grief. In Alexandrov again, the Tsar hit his oldest son Ivan and accidentally and fatally stabbed him in the temple with the point of his scepter. He did not mean to kill him, and the death of his heir threw him into despair. He even tried to ‘punish’ himself, calling himself not Tsar but Grand Prince for several months. He sent a large contribution to a monastery for eternal prayers for the soul of his son, and even considered retreating to a monastery himself. He had reason to be upset —the new heir was his second son Theodore, also born of Anastasiya, a dwarf with a small head and a huge nose. His power, limited by nothing and no one, would have to pass into the hands of a nobody.

Omens not to be defied

This day was not long in coming. Just before his death, the Tsar summoned 60 soothsayers from Karelia who told fortunes by the stars. This practice was banned by the Orthodox Church, but Ivan’s craving to look into the future overpowered his Christian feelings. The soothsayers were visited by the Tsar’s close adviser Bogdan Belsky, the nephew of executioner Malyuta Skuratov. He was the only person Ivan trusted to find out the results of the fortune-telling. The soothsayers said that he would die March 18, 1584.

That day, Ivan went through his will just in case, but felt perfectly well despite the gloomy predictions. He sent Belsky to warn the soothsayers that they would either be burnt or buried alive for their obvious lying. But the soothsayers were adamant. “The day will end only when the sun goes down,” they said. Having taken a bath, the Tsar settled down to play chess with his closest companions. It was then that he dropped dead. An Englishman who happened to be present, Jerome Gorsay, wrote that the Tsar was ‘asphyxiated.’ Other contemporaries, agreeing that his death was violent, suggested that he was poisoned.

It is unlikely that we will ever know what really happened. The death of the first Russian Tsar is shrouded in secrecy. Mikhail Gerasimov, who made a documentary bust of Ivan (see contents page), rejects the version that he was asphyxiated, because on investigation of the skeleton he found no traces of violence. However, doubts remain: Ivan was so weakened by illness that he could have been smothered with a pillow. Nor does the analysis of his remains confirm the poisoning version — the quantity of arsenic in his bones is not above the norm. A large quantity of mercury was found, but this was present in a number of medicines used in those days. Either people close to him really did serve him faithfully to the end, or, knowing their master’s temperament, they feared for their destinies and exploited his illness maliciously, no one will ever know for sure. This was the end of a man, the greatness of whose title prompted his contemporaries to say that even they did not know what to think of the Russian Tsar: “God but not God, a man, but more than a man.”

The burden of office

The unhappy consequences of the rule of the first Russian Tsar are obvious, both in economics and in politics. But they were reflected most strongly of all in the consciousness of the masses. Ivan created a system in which he who learnt to hold his tongue, who not only never allowed himself to speak his mind but did not even try to have an opinion, survived. The Tsar raised himself up above society and created a myth of his own power.

Thanks to Ivan the Terrible, no one could even conceive that a person from outside the ruling royal family could become tsar, but at the same time some evil destiny brought this family into rapid moral and physical decline. Fate seemed to avenge Ivan for his pride.

In 1598, Tsar Theodore, the last representative of the Ryurik dynasty died (a third son, Dmitry, born to his sixth and last wife Mariya Naga in 1582, had died under suspicious circumstances in Uglich in 1591) and his former servant (and brother-in-law) Boris Godunov took the throne. Some contemporaries called him with contempt the ‘tsar-slave’, and people came to believe that tsarist power was legitimate only when it was hereditary. At the beginning of the 17th century, civil war loomed. Boris Godunov could not hold onto power despite his obvious talent as a statesman, because society passionately yearned for a hereditary tsar. So soon a ‘real tsar’ appeared, claiming to be Dmitry, then another and another — hence the Time of Troubles.

Those who held the title of Russian tsar, each in his or her own way, as a rule experienced the tragedy of a person doomed to be thought of as ‘greater than a man.’ There was not a single European monarch who had as much power as the tsar.

But Ivan embodied a potent mix of temperaments and styles of governing. If he laid the foundation for the top-heavy, unpredictable and often tyrannical autocracy of tsarism, he also swept away the fractious power of the boyars, and left Russia infinitely stronger, at least in relation to her eastern and southern neighbors. The force of his talent and intellect was undoubtedly a mixed blessing, as he himself would have probably agreed.

Andrei Yurganov is a Candidate of History and Assistant Professor at the Russian State Humanitarian University.