In Russian history, there are several rulers, negative myths about whom have overshadowed the whole true essence of their rule, all the achievements and victories. One of the slandered sovereigns is Ivan the Terrible. From childhood, we were all inspired by the idea of Ivan the Terrible as an extremely cruel and almost insane ruler, whose actions are difficult to explain from a reasonable point of view. What do we remember about the era of Ivan the Terrible? Oprichnina? The murder of the prince? How were the opponents of the king boiled in oil? For some reason, it is on this that the emphasis is placed when describing the era of the reign of John IV. Much less time is devoted to the expansion of the Russian state, not to mention the cultural and economic achievements, which are practically ignored. But the tsar is not as formidable as he is portrayed.
First, John IV can be called the real creator of the Russian state. Formally, this outstanding man occupied the throne for fifty years - from 1533 to 1584, having ascended it at the age of three. However, John IV, who was later nicknamed "Terrible", was crowned king in 1547. The seventeen-year-old sovereign, despite his young age, very quickly got his bearings in matters of public administration and began to reform it. During the years of the reign of Ivan the Terrible, a system of government was created that at that time most met the needs of the growing Russian state.
The transformation of Russia into an estate-representative monarchy is also the merit of Ivan the Terrible. Already in 1549, on the initiative of the 19-year-old sovereign, the Zemsky Sobor was convened, in which representatives of all Russian estates except the peasantry participated. Subsequently, some of the powers of the local authorities were redistributed in favor of representatives of the nobility and the black-haired peasantry. By the way, it was Ivan the Terrible who began to form the conditions for the further development of the Russian nobility, which he regarded as a counterbalance to the boyars and their influence. The nobles began to be generously endowed with estates. So, already in 1550, a thousand Moscow noblemen received estates, after which a streltsy army was formed, which for a long time became the mainstay of the Russian sovereigns.
But the main merit of Ivan the Terrible in terms of state building was the territorial expansion of the Russian state. It was under Ivan the Terrible that the territory of Muscovite Rus increased by almost 100% and surpassed all of Europe in area. Thanks to the military victories of Ivan the Terrible and his commanders, Russia included the lands of the fragments of the Golden Horde - the Kazan Khanate, the Astrakhan Khanate, the Big Nogai Horde, as well as the Bashkir lands. The Siberian Khanate became a vassal of Russia, which after Ivan the Terrible finally became part of the Russian state. In addition, Russian troops during the reign of Ivan the Terrible repeatedly made campaigns against the Crimean Khanate, invading the territory of the Crimean peninsula. The formation of the Russian state took place in endless wars with neighboring states and political entities, which were initially very aggressive towards Russia. Who knows if the Russian state could have secured its borders and so increased in size if it had been ruled at that time by a less rigid and purposeful sovereign?
If no one argues with the military successes of Ivan the Terrible, then his domestic policy has always caused a lot of discussion, and in the historical literature as a whole, a critical line regarding the policy of the tsar prevailed. So, the introduction of the oprichnina was interpreted only as the creation of a tough dictatorship with reprisals against dissidents. In fact, in that difficult political situation, the introduction of the oprichnina was a brilliant political move by Ivan the Terrible. Let us recall that Russia, like other states, at that time was corroded by feudal fragmentation. The introduction of the oprichnina was an excellent way to, if not completely defeat, then at least significantly minimize the level of feudal fragmentation in the Russian state. The oprichnina played into the hands not only of Ivan the Terrible, but also of the interests of unification and centralization of the state. A brilliant idea was the organization of the oprichnina army according to the type of a militarized monastic order, which gave religious legitimacy to the activities of the oprichniki. The tsar himself became hegumen of the oprichnina army, Athanasius Vyazemsky became a cellarem, and Malyuta Skuratov became a sexton. The way of life of the guardsmen resembled a monastic one, and this showed that worldly, personal interests were alien to them.
For a long time, the historical literature, following in line with the official course, interpreted the oprichnina as a "black page" in Russian history, and the guardsmen as cruel executioners capable of the most notorious atrocities. In pre-revolutionary historiography, the oprichnina was generally viewed exclusively as a consequence of the tsar's mental insanity, they say, Ivan the Terrible went crazy and that is why he created the oprichnina. However, then a more objective point of view nevertheless triumphed, considering the oprichnina through the prism of the opposition of the tsar, who sought to strengthen his sole power, and the boyars, who did not want to part with their capabilities and privileges.
Such a tendentious interpretation missed the real need of the Russian state for such an institution during its formation and accelerated development. Another thing is that the guardsmen really committed many atrocities, many prominent statesmen and religious figures died at their hands, not to mention ordinary people. At some point, Ivan the Terrible could no longer fully control the flywheel of the repressive mechanism he launched.
However, it is worth remembering that many wanted the removal of Ivan the Terrible over the long half-century of his reign. Conspiracies against the king were drawn up regularly. Ivan the Terrible lived in a state of total danger, when it was completely incomprehensible when, where and from whom to expect another attempt to strike. So, in 1563, John IV learned about the conspiracy of his cousin, Prince Vladimir Staritsky, and his mother, Princess Efrosinya. As a result of the investigation, it was established that his friend Andrei Kurbsky was involved in Staritsky's intrigues. After Yuri Vasilyevich, John's brother, died, the tsar was forced to alienate all people close to Vladimir Staritsky from the throne, since it was Vladimir Staritsky who came close to the throne. Staritsky was transferred by the tsar from chairman to rank-and-file members of the board of trustees in his will. Can this be called repression? Despite the fact that in 1566 Ivan the Terrible, famous for his quick-tempered, but easygoing disposition, forgave Vladimir Staritsky and allowed him to start building his palace on the territory of the Kremlin.
But already in 1567 the landowner Pyotr Volynsky informed Ivan the Terrible about a new conspiracy. According to the plan of Vladimir Staritsky, the cook was supposed to poison the tsar with poison, and the prince himself, at the head of the troops loyal to him, would destroy the oprichnina army and, with the help of his Moscow comrades-in-arms, took power in the capital. If this conspiracy was successful, the Russian state would find itself under the rule of Vladimir Staritsky in the status of tsar, and Pskov and Novgorod would be transferred to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Many noble Novgorodians agreed with the latter circumstance, to whom Vladimir Staritsky promised the rights and privileges of the Polish-Lithuanian nobility. As you can see, the plan was quite serious and very frightened Ivan the Terrible himself. At the end of September 1569, Vladimir Staritsky, who came to visit Ivan the Terrible, was poisoned at a gala reception with the tsar and died the day after the banquet. That is, for six years Ivan the Terrible was under the threat of imminent death if the conspirators won, and all this time the tsar did not kill Staritsky, hoping that his cousin would come to his senses and abandon his regicidal plans.
The “Novgorod pogrom”, which is considered one of the bloodiest crimes of Ivan the Terrible, is also correlated with the liquidation of Vladimir Staritsky. In fact, it should be understood that after the death of Staritsky, the conspiracy of the boyar elite against the tsar was not liquidated. It was headed by the Novgorod Archbishop Pimen. It was to neutralize the conspiracy that Ivan the Terrible undertook a campaign to Novgorod, where he arrested a number of noble people of the city, primarily those who entered into an agreement with Sigismund and were going to participate in the overthrow of the tsar and the dismemberment of the Russian state. According to some reports, as a result of the investigation of the conspiracy of Staritsky and his followers, 1505 people were executed. Not so much for that time, considering, for example, the scale of executions in the countries of Western Europe, where the Inquisition raged and bloody religious wars were waged.
His own son, Ivan Ivanovich (1554-1581), is often referred to as the "victims of the cruel tsar". The whole world knows the painting by Ilya Efimovich Repin "Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan on November 16, 1581". According to a widespread myth, Ivan Ivanovich was mortally wounded by his own distraught father, Ivan the Terrible, during a quarrel in the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda in November 1581 and died five days after being wounded on November 19. However, this version is still considered unproven. There is not a single factual evidence in favor of her correctness. Moreover, there is no evidence of the generally violent nature of Ivan Ivanovich's death. Although 27 years old, and Ivan Ivanovich reached this age in 1581, is early even by medieval standards, one should not forget about diseases and the lack of medicine in those distant centuries.
Of course, in relations with his son, Ivan the Terrible often "went overboard". So, Ivan Ivanovich had already three marriages in his young years - the union with Evdokia Saburova lasted a year, with Feodosia Solova - four years, and the last wife of Ivan Ivanovich was Elena Sheremeteva, with whom he married in the year of his death. Such a number of marriages was explained by the dissatisfaction with the son's wives from the "tough" father and father-in-law. Ivan the Terrible did not like all the spouses of the tsarevich. Therefore, they ended up the same way - taking the tonsure as a nun. The tsar's hatred of Elena Sheremeteva allegedly led to a quarrel between father and son. The version of the murder of his son by the tsar was also supported by the papal legate Antonio Possevino. He said that the sovereign allegedly beat Elena Sheremeteva to such an extent that she lost her child. When Ivan Ivanovich intervened in the situation, the Terrible hit him in the head with his staff, which inflicted a mortal wound on the tsarevich. The tsar himself then was very distressed, summoned the best doctors, but nothing could be done, and the heir to the throne was buried with the highest honors.
In 1963, almost four centuries after those dramatic events, specialists opened the graves of Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich and Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich in the Archangel Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. Medical-chemical and medical-forensic examinations were carried out, which established that the permissible content of mercury in the remains of the tsarevich was 32 times exceeded, several times the permissible content of lead and arsenic. But what this could be connected with, no one after centuries could establish. It is likely that the prince could have been poisoned. But then this version does not correspond at all with the violent death at the hands of his own father, which was reported by the papal legate.
A number of researchers consider the version of the murder of the tsarevich by his own father to be a complete hoax, a component of the "information war" that has been waged by the West against Russia and Russian history for centuries. Already in those days, the enemies of the Russian state did a lot to discredit it, and for the papal legate to make one of the most significant Russian sovereigns, collector of Russian lands, Ivan the Terrible, a mentally ill child-killer for the papal legate, was an excellent way to denigrate the tsar and Russia.
Ivan the Terrible died two years after the death of his son Ivan Ivanovich - on March 18 (28), 1584. Despite the fact that the king was a relatively young man, for several years before his death he felt bad and his condition only worsened. Even the papal legate Possevino, as early as 1582, reported that "the tsar did not have long to live." Ivan the Terrible looked bad, could not move independently and the servant carried him on a stretcher. The reason for this state of the king was found out only after centuries, when examining his remains. Ivan the Terrible developed osteophytes that prevented him from moving freely. The scientists who conducted the study argued that even the very old did not find such deposits. Immobility, life in a state of stress and nervous shocks made the king's age much shorter than it could have been.
Fifty-year-old Ivan the Terrible not only looked, but also felt like a deep old man. His condition began to deteriorate rapidly at the end of the winter of 1584. If in February 1584 Ivan the Terrible was still trying to show interest in state affairs, then at the beginning of March 1584 he felt very bad. The ambassador of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, who was on his way to Moscow for a reception with the tsar, was stopped on March 10 precisely because of the tsar's poor health, who could no longer hold an audience. On March 16, 1584, the king fell into a state of unconsciousness. However, the next day there was some improvement associated with taking hot baths recommended by the healers. But they did not prolong the life of the king for a long time. On March 18, 1584, at about noon, one of the greatest sovereigns in the entire history of the Russian state died at the age of 54.
