A boy who becomes an orphan at the age of seven, severely neglected in successive power struggles, uneducated, abused, grows up to be what he will become? When he becomes Tsar, what will happen to the people he rules?
Ivan Vasilyevich (1530–1584), also known as Ivan the Terrible Ivan, reigned for 51 years. He earned his nickname through an iron-fisted policy, and although the manner in which he ruled was heavily scrutinized by historians, his effectiveness as ruler was rarely discussed. In his youth, Ivan IV was known as the Grand Duchy of Moscow and had fewer than three million subjects. It was still in constant struggle with the Muslim khanates left behind by Genghis Khan's Empire and was in constant danger of border subjects being captured in raids and sold to the slave markets of Central Asia. When Ivan IV died, what was left was the Russian Tsarist State. During his lifetime, Russia's population almost doubled, and he seized the Kazan Khanate, the Astrakhan Khanate, and Siberia, giving him complete control of the Volga River and into the Caspian Sea. Through these conquests, he transformed Russia into a multi-ethnic, multi-religious empire. Perhaps anticipating Russia's growing global clout, Ivan declared himself "Tsar" when he came to power at the age of 17, rather than the customary title of Grand Duke.
Ivan IV was the son of Vasily III's second wife, Helena Grimskaya. Vasily III was the Grand Duke of Moscow, but died when Ivan was three years old, pushing the toddler into the vortex of an ongoing power struggle. His mother, Helena Gryskaya, died when he was 7 years old, and after her death, a succession of nobles ruled the Grand Duchy of Moscow in his name, but no one really cared about the young Ivan.
Ivan IV's ugly atrocities can be traced back to his childhood, when Ivan IV would stand at the top of the walls that surrounded the Kremlin and throw cats and dogs from above. As an adult, he liked to beat his attendants, the ministers objected to beating, the elephants from Persia would not kneel down to fight, even when they were simply in a bad mood, they had to beat the maids around them. Legend has it that in his later years, he gouges out the eyes of the two main architects who built st. Basil's cathedral, so that they can never design more beautiful works than the church.
In 1544, when he finally took the position of Grand Duke of Moscow, his first act was to put to death the noble lords around him. In 1547, he proclaimed himself the first Tsar of Russia and immediately chose for himself a wife, Anastasia Zakharinna Koshkina of the Romanov family. During his first years as Tsar, Ivan IV suddenly showed an unusual commitment to morality. He publicly repented of his previous mistakes. At the first National Assembly in Russian history in 1550, the young Russian tsar, who was only 20 years old at the time, vowed that he would henceforth devote himself to the just rule of Russia, and he did so for a time.
By 1553, Ivan had changed, become paranoid and brutal. When Ivan IV was critically ill, he summoned the noble lords to his sickbeds to hear for themselves their oath of allegiance to their infant sons. But many noble lords refused to swear, believing that after Ivan IV's death, everyone had a chance to compete for the throne. But Ivan the Terrible eventually recovered. In 1560, Ivan's carefully selected trusted advisers Sylvester and Adashev left him. Soon after, his empress Anastasia died along with her son Demetrius. Convinced that some noble lord had poisoned his wife, Ivan IV aimed his grief and anger at those whom he had spied out as his enemies, and the bloody slaughter began. He ordered tens of thousands of people to be arrested, tortured, and some were simply killed without interrogation. Ivan IV not only executed the guilty, but also cut the grass and roots of their families, denying them a chance to atone for their sins and leaving no aftermath.
In 1565, Ivan the Terrible divided the territory into two parts: the Special Domain and the Lord's Domain. The special jurisdictions consisted of the most economically and militarily important regions of the country and a part of the cities, under the direct jurisdiction of the Tsar; Ivan the Terrible also established a special army whose main purpose was to retain Ivan's power, which could loot, rape, torture, and kill with the Tsar's permission. Many of the notorious atrocities committed during Ivan's reign were committed by the Special Forces. The Russian Executive Council was still responsible for the day-to-day administration of the Empire, but those who were not special forces were not allowed to contact the Tsar in peacetime. Those who expressed opposition were threatened with executions.
The Novgorod massacre was one of ivan the most famous manifestations of paranoia and brutality. In 1569, Ivan the Terrible moved thousands of men from Novgorod and Pskov to eliminate the possibility of their treason by side with the rival state of Poland to the west. Poland blocked Ivan the Terrible from exaggerating westward. He executed anyone he thought might pose a threat to his rule. He had taken a similar action the year before, when he executed more than 100 members of the Lords' Council and their families. However, many of these threats to him are imaginary threats. The same may be the case in Novgorod.
After hearing rumors of Novgorod's treason, Ivan the Terrible and his special forces launched a full-scale attack on Novgorod. On January 2, 1569, the Tsar's army rushed to Novgorod and built a barrier around the city from which no one could escape. The Special Forces were ordered to seize the treasures of the monasteries around the city and to beat and imprison the clergy. When Ivan arrived on January 6, he took 1500 musketeers with him. The next day, all the clergy who had been captured a few days earlier—about 500 in all—were beaten to death by Ivan's army. Then the priests and deacons of the local church were rounded up and whipped from dusk until dawn. Their church was looted. For five weeks, Ivan rounded up the citizens of Novgorod every day and systematically slaughtered them. Ivan burned fields and crops in Novgorod and the surrounding area. Cattle were killed, towns were destroyed, churches, estates and warehouses were looted. A total of 60,000 people were killed in the massacre.
In 1571, the Crimean Tatars, who had not yet been completely conquered by Tsarist Russia, raided Moscow. Many citizens were kidnapped and taken to slave markets, and much of moscow's city was burned down. The tatars numbered only 40,000, while the garrison in Moscow was only 6,000 due to the ongoing Russian war in Livonia. As many as 80,000 Muscovites were killed, and since Ivan's army failed to repel these Tatars, he abolished the special jurisdiction and officially disbanded the special jurisdiction.
For Ivan the Terrible, things got worse when he inadvertently killed his son. In 1581, the pregnant Crown Princess attended the event in civilian clothes because she was unwell, which angered Ivan the Terrible, who beat the Crown Princess with a scepter, resulting in her miscarriage. His son, Crown Prince Ivan, could not remain silent about this, so he went to argue with his father. The Thunder Emperor could not hold back his temper, and in a fit of rage, he waved his scepter again, and as a result, he killed his son. He was so distressed by the death of his successor and future Tsar that he fell into a deep depression, and his entourage did not know whether he would be able to recover from it. Three years later, in 1584, Ivan the Terrible fell ill during a game of chess. On his deathbed, he was inspired by the Divine Providence to take the oath of becoming a monk, perhaps in his later attempt to find atonement for his sins.
Like other brutal monarchs in history, Ivan the Terrible committed many terrible crimes, but his legacy was inextricably linked to the modern state under his rule. He centralized the power of the Russian state by establishing a special jurisdiction to crowd out the Russian lords and nobles. Through this mechanism, he could bypass the aristocratic system and directly appoint ordinary citizens to political office. His personal guard, as a means of political control, was also commonly used by later Russian rulers such as Peter the Great and Lenin. In addition, strong centralized rule enabled Russia to control its vast lands, and by the nineteenth century, Russia's lands had extended into the Pacific Ocean, including all of Central Asia, and as far as Eastern Europe. Before the advent of modern technologies such as railways and modern communications, it would have been impossible for the Russian Tsar to control such a vast land without the political system established by Ivan.
Like many other rulers in history, Ivan the Terrible was able to commit atrocities because he was recognized by his subjects. His acts of violence were mainly directed against noble lords, many of whom exploited the peasantry. Walishevsky and Lloyd explained in their biographies of Ivan that Ivan the Terrible, despite his flaws, crimes, weaknesses, and failures, was ultimately popular among the Russian populace, who sympathized with him. When he was violent against the conquered Tatars, when he handed over the noble lords to the executioners on suspicion, the Russian masses were on his side. They applauded the holocaust and rejoiced in the joy of their masters. Sometimes, even without applause, they respectfully and reverently close their eyes and cloak their actually offensive behavior with a cloak of hypocrisy and decency. Indirectly, the Russian populace complicated ivan the terrible crimes.