What comes to mind when we talk about Russia? The world's largest population, one of the five permanent members of the United Nations, the military power has long been at the top level of the world, the terrifying reserves of nuclear weapons, the successor of the Soviet Union in the bipolar pattern, and the title of fighting nation that has always been praised or ridiculed. In short, whenever we talk about Russia, a country that is very important in today's world, we can't help but feel that it is powerful, and at the same time, we can't help but feel jealous of its tyranny hidden behind its powerful military power.
And when we want to trace the origins of this powerful and tyrannical national identity of the Russians, we must talk about the name of one person, and that is the protagonist of our article today, Ivan the Terrible. As the first Tsar in Russian history, during his reign he profoundly embodied how the somewhat contradictory theme of greatness and tyranny united in him.
Ivan the Terrible, the founding emperor of the Russian Tsarist State, the Monarch Ivan IV of the Rurik Dynasty. When Ivan IV was born, lightning and thunder came out, which earned him the title ivan the Terrible, but his subsequent reign added a hint of horror to the title. Ivan IV was not happy at the beginning of his life, although it is said that there are few happy children born in the imperial family, but Ivan IV's experience is ranked first in misfortune.
When he was born, his father was nearly fifty years old, and he was his only heir, so he was a well-deserved heir from birth. It stands to reason that no one should be very lucky to have competed with them for the succession to the throne. But the problem is that Ivan IV's father died only when he was three years old. Because Ivan IV was still young, he had to leave a testament for Ivan IV's mother, Yelena, to form a regency council with the seven nobles to help Ivan IV act as regent before he reached adulthood.
But Yelena was never able to reach an agreement with the nobles, and the relationship between the two sides was intolerable. Yelena was no weak woman either, and she acted decisively and abolished the Regency Council, thus monopolizing power in Korea. But the good times did not last long, and only five years later, Yelena died suddenly, and some accounts say that Yelena's death was due to the poisoning of political enemies. Therefore, when Ivan IV was only eight years old, he lost his father and mother in just a few years and became an orphan, and it is difficult to say whether these sufferings encountered at a young age had an impact on the character of ivan IV.
After Yelena's death, Ivan IV's uncle, Yelena's brother, won the battle with his political enemies and successfully took control of the government. Fast forward to 1547, when Ivan IV, an adult, reached the age of pro-government, and coincidentally, his uncle was killed by the people in a civil unrest caused by a fire in the same year. So Ivan IV took back his reins with great ease.
It was also in that year that Ivan IV was officially crowned Tsar of Russia, becoming the first Tsar in Russian history. You know, for Europeans, it is very difficult to call the emperor, there are countless kings and grand dukes in Europe, but there are very few who can be called emperors in the end, because The European emperor pays attention to jurisprudence, and it is not something that can be called casually. Ivan IV was able to claim the title of emperor because his grandfather married the last princess of the Eastern Roman Empire. Thus Ivan IV's legal source of emperorship was the successor of the Eastern Roman Empire, which naturally transformed Russia from an ordinary Grand Duchy of Moscow into a resounding empire.
Of course, we all know that the empire was not built by changing the title from king to emperor, and Ivan IV himself understood this truth. Thus, after his coronation, Ivan IV began his path to the construction of absolute monarchy. At the beginning of Ivan IV's coronation, Russia still practiced a system of lords similar to the caiyi system in the Middle Ages, and the lords had great power and even limited the power of the monarch.
In response to this constraint from the lords, Ivan IV carried out a series of reforms after his coronation, including administrative, military, legal, financial, religious, and other aspects. Among the reforms of these early periods of rule, the most prominent was the reform of the military. He perfected the military command system and limited the system of selecting officers by door, thereby limiting the infiltration of the army system by nobles and lords, and established a standing army under central command. These military reform measures have increased Russia's military strength, which is also the basis for Ivan IV's continuous promotion of reform.
From 1547 to 1560, the newly established Russian Tsarist State launched a war against the surrounding major khanates created after the disintegration of the original Mongolian Golden Horde, and under the continuous expansion of the Russians, the surrounding Kazan Khanate, Astrakhan Khanate, Siberian Khanate and other countries were conquered by Ivan IV, and the Golden Horde was basically swept into the garbage heap of history.
He even fought for 25 years with several major countries along the Baltic Sea in order to seize the outlet of the Baltic Sea region, and although he did not succeed in the end, the military might of the Russian Tsarist State had already made Europe feel frightened. At the same time, Ivan IV fought and severely damaged the Crimean Khanate, a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire, in 1572, thus inhibiting the expansion of Ottoman power in the Crimea region.
But as we mentioned at the beginning, Ivan IV, as the great Emperor of the Russian Tsarist State, was also an incomparably tyrannical tyrant. The turning point of all this stemmed from the poisoning of Ivan IV's wife in 1560, and since then, the dissatisfaction accumulated by Ivan IV over the years has completely exploded, he does not want to trust the ministers around him, his mental state is getting worse and worse, and he is often suspicious, which eventually makes him make a move to leave Moscow.
When he returned to Moscow, he already had the power of arbitrary executions granted by the Archbishop, and after obtaining this power, Ivan IV began to implement a more radical dictatorship. He established a special jurisdiction under the jurisdiction of the Tsar, drove the original noble lords into the so-called ordinary districts, and set up a special jurisdiction army loyal only to himself. The territory was still expanding, and the living space of the lords and nobles was constantly squeezed, but once these lords and nobles were dissatisfied or even tried to resist, Ivan IV's special army would play their role and execute these nobles, in the process, thousands of lords and nobles were killed throughout the country, and in the end only nine of the ancient lords' families survived, and their territory and property were also dispossessed by Ivan IV.
Ivan IV, who wielded the power of life and death, became more and more tyrannical, killing more and more people, and even got the title of "Ivan the Terrible". But Ivan IV's unstable mental state eventually ate himself, and when he clashed with his crown prince Ivan over a trivial matter, tragedy occurred, and Ivan IV, who was furious, took up his scepter and smashed it on his son's head, and as a result, Ivan IV was killed by Ivan IV by mistake, and when Ivan IV woke up from his anger, he regretted it a lot, but to no avail.
A few years later, Ivan IV died of illness, and because the prince was killed by Ivan IV by mistake, he could only pass the throne to his mentally handicapped son Fyodor, who had no heirs in his lifetime, and the Rurik dynasty was extinct. Ivan the Terrible made Russia great both because of his iron fist, but also because his tyranny eventually tasted the worst of the bitter fruit.