Ivan the Terrible

Ivan the Terrible the grand prince of Moscow from 1533 who took the title of tsar in 1547, ruling Russia for more than three decades through reform, conquest and terror. He transformed a regional principality into a vast Eurasian empire, but his later reign was marked by suspicion, violence and the killing of his own heir.

Early Life and Accession

Ivan Vasilyevich was born in 1530, the son of Vasili III, grand prince of Moscow, and his second wife Elena Glinskaya. His father died when he was three, and his mother acted as regent until her death five years later, after which the boy grew up amid the feuds of rival boyar families. He was intelligent, well read and deeply marked by the violence and humiliation he witnessed at court during those years.

He was crowned grand prince at the age of three, and in 1547 he was solemnly crowned tsar, the first ruler of Muscovy to assume that imperial title. He married Anastasia Romanovna, whose family would later found a dynasty, and for a time he surrounded himself with a circle of advisers and reformers who sought to strengthen the state.

In 1552 he captured Kazan, destroying the Tatar khanate on the middle Volga, and four years later he took Astrakhan, opening the great river route to the Caspian Sea. These conquests turned Muscovy into a multi-ethnic empire and gave the tsar control of the eastern trade.

Reforms and the Strengthening of the State

In the 1550s Ivan carried out a series of reforms that reshaped Russian government. He revised the law code, restricted the power of provincial governors, established elected local authorities and created a standing army of musketeers known as the streltsy. He also convened the first assembly of the land, a consultative body that included clergy, nobles and townsmen.

The church was a special concern. He summoned councils that standardised ritual and corrected the lives of the clergy, and he asserted his authority over the appointment of bishops. He extended his domains by annexing the territories of rival princes and by pressing the frontier into Siberia and the northern forests.

He cultivated learning and the arts, patronised the printing of books and encouraged the building of fortresses and cathedrals. The conquests of Kazan and Astrakhan were celebrated in a new Church of the Intercession on the Moat at the edge of Red Square, the famous cathedral of Saint Basil, one of the glories of Russian architecture.

The Livonian War and the Turn to Terror

From 1558 Ivan waged a long and costly war in Livonia to win access to the Baltic Sea and the trade of the West. At first his armies met with success, but the conflict drew in Poland, Lithuania, Sweden and Denmark, and it drained the treasury and the manpower of the realm. It ended in failure with the loss of the Baltic coast to Sweden and Poland.

The death of Anastasia in 1560 is often seen as a turning point. The tsar suspected those around him of poisoning his wife, and in the following years he broke with his old advisers, executing or exiling many of them. In 1564 he suddenly left Moscow and announced his abdication, only returning after the people begged him to resume rule on terms that granted him extraordinary powers.

In 1565 he established the oprichnina, a separate territory and bodyguard under his personal control. The oprichniki, dressed in black and carrying the emblems of a dog and a broom, terrorised the realm, plundering cities and executing thousands of supposed traitors. In 1570 their campaign against Novgorod killed great numbers of its citizens.

Religion, Empire and the Tsar's Family

Ivan understood himself as an Orthodox sovereign ordained by God, and he defended the faith against Catholics, Muslims and Protestants alike. He wrote elaborate letters in which he presented his authority as absolute and derived directly from heaven, taking the side of the church against those who would limit his power. He corresponded with the rebellious prince Andrei Kurbsky in a celebrated exchange on the duty of subjects and the prerogatives of kings.

His empire expanded eastward, where the cossack leader Yermak crossed the Urals in 1581 and began the conquest of Siberia, and southward toward the Caucasus. Trade with England was opened by the voyage of Richard Chancellor, who reached the White Sea, and Ivan granted privileges to English merchants, seeing in commerce a means of strengthening his realm.

His personal life was tragic. Of his several marriages, none brought lasting peace, and in 1581, in a fit of rage, he struck and killed his eldest son and heir, Ivan, an act that left the succession uncertain and haunted his memory. He died in March 1584 while playing chess, and was succeeded by his surviving son Feodor, a pious and unworldly man.

Reputation and Legacy

Ivan's reputation has shifted with the purposes of those who judge him. To some nineteenth-century writers he was a national unifier who broke the power of the boyars and secured Russia against its enemies; to others he was a paranoid tyrant whose cruelty cost his realm dearly. The epithet the Terrible, given by later historians, translates the Russian grozny, which carries the sense of awe, severity and dread.

He left behind a vastly larger state than he inherited, a strengthened central administration, and a dynasty on the brink of extinction. The Time of Troubles followed the death of his son Feodor, when the country was torn by civil war and foreign intervention. The Romanovs, who eventually restored order, were connected to Ivan through the family of his first wife.

He remains one of the most studied figures in Russian history, at once builder and destroyer. He secured the imperial title, expanded the borders of Russia toward Europe and Asia, and demonstrated both the potential and the violence of unlimited autocracy. The image of the tsar as master of his people entered Russian political culture through his reign.

See also

• Tsardom of Russia
• Oprichnina
• Kazan Khanate
• Time of Troubles