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Ivan The Terrible: What Made Him So Terrible

Writer's picture: Ryan markelovRyan markelov

Updated: Jul 9, 2024


Portrait of Ivan IV titled "Tsar Ivan The Terrible", (1897) by Viktor Vasnetsov. Via https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ivan_the_Terrible_%28cropped%29.JPG

 

Crowned as the first tsar in 1553, Ivan lV set a precedent of authoritative and brutal rule in Russia for generations to come. Known as Ivan the Terrible, he was a deeply religious man who became a key figure in Russian statebuilding. After being crowned tsar at sixteen, his fifty years of rule marked himself as a key leader in bringing the Russian foundation together, but also as a brutal, senseless autocrat. He was fundamental in connecting vast territories together, consolidating tsarist power and the conquest of their old Mongol enemies at the city of Kazan. This was achieved through blood alone; on his path to consolidation of power, he found joy and success in the torture and murdering of thousands. 


As a child he was quickly orphaned. By the age of seven, both of his parents had died, and he was raised by various noblemen in Moscow. There were plenty of warning signals in his childhood that foreshadowed the violent nature of his rule. During his free time as a child, he enjoyed killing cats by dropping them from high places and chasing peasants on horseback to later beat them. By the time he was thirteen, he took the position of grand prince and made his first move to order the killing of a person he hated, Andreii Shuyskyi, by being torn apart and eaten alive by ravenous dogs in a dungeon. Ivan thought he had bad manners. Two years later, at 15, he cut off an imprisoned nobleman's tongue for saying an impolite word. 


What would be known as his Great Terror didn’t start until 1560, after the death of his first wife. He was known for mass murder and torture, and by the time of his death in 1584, he had killed an estimated 40,000 Russian subjects. Fueled by rampant paranoia and fear of betrayal from the boyars (the feudal lords), he directed most of the wrath of the terror towards them; which subsequently created an undying loyalty to the tsar from the Muscovian (Medieval Moscow area of Russia) aristocracy. He often had a twisted sense of humor when torturing and killing his victims with a truly horrific level of creativity. He placed a priest on a barrel of gunpowder and blew it up to send him to heaven, he used boiling and then freezing water to peel off the skin of another victim to death, he spit-roasted one of his generals alive over a fire, and he even forced peasant women to strip naked and chase chickens while people fired bows at them. He made sure to do these things during church mass everyday. 


He made sure that the whole country felt his wrath. He established what was known as the Oprichniki; this was essentially a militia with the main goal of using fear to make the general public completely submit to the tsar. They were given the right to essentially do whatever they wanted in the name of the tsar. They were allowed to torture, rape, steal, and murder as they pleased on tsar owned land. In most major towns and cities, mass torture and rape were a daily occurance. 


17th Century Painting of St. Basil's Cathedral

Even people who were close to him that had no association to what he viewed as threats were not safe. After the victory over Kazan (the successor to the Mongol Empire) in 1552, he commissioned the world renowned St. Basil’s Cathedral in 1555 to architect Postnik Yakovlev. There is a legend that after its completion in 1561, Ivan was so impressed that he blinded the man so he could never replicate such a beautiful structure again in any other place. 



The slaughtering of the city Novgorod was an event that truly made the title of “terrible” deserved to Ivan. In 1570, the tsar was completely plunged into war with a Baltic coalition in what's known as the Livonian War, and the city of Novgord had a history of being more liberal minded and preferred to look West rather than stay with Moscow. This caused Ivan to be deeply paranoid of the city jeopardizing the war. 


Mikhail Avilov's "Oprichniki in Novgorod"

In order to deal with this he slaughtered the city in the most brutal of ways, every type of torture and execution he had done in the past was used. There were no limits. He famously tied peoples’ legs to horses and dragged them around the whole city until they died, and he tied mothers to their children to dump them in the river as his men were in boats with spears, hooks, and swords to stab them while they resurfaced.  There was no real evidence or rumors that Novgorod wanted to flip sides; it was only Ivan’s paranoia alone that drove him to commit such a heinous act. 



"Ivan the Terrible and His Son," by Ily Repin (1851)

Ivan the Terrible’s temper and paranoia eventually led him to lash out on his own family. One night in 1581, he saw his daughter-in-law wearing clothes that exposed too much skin in her room and he started to beat her. His son came in to stop him and reason with him, but in a fit of rage he struck him on the head with a septour and killed him. The wife had a miscarage from the beating, and his son was the last person that Ivan ever killed. This scene inspired the famous painting by Repin in 1881 titled “Ivan the Terrible and His Son”. He died three years later in his bed from a stroke after a bath and a chess game. In the lead up to his death, he prayed for those he had killed, and he said “[I am] the worst sinner on earth, corrupt of reason, and bestial of mind”. 



The impact and character of Ivan IV is often disputed, as his stories are hard to tell between fact and fiction. He ruled with an iron fist and built a loyal aristocracy that was bound to the tsar for centuries to come, but it's often debated over whether he really deserves the title of “terrible”. When he was first given the title it came from a point of view that he was a strongman in Russian history, one that got things together. In modern times, it could also be asked: compared to other monarchical rulers, was he any more terrible than Henry Vlll or Isabella l?  It almost seems like most of these rulers should come with these titles as a given. 


 

Sources Used:

Figes, Orlando. The Story of Russia. Thorndike Press, 2023. 


“Ivan the Terrible: Biography, First Tsar of Russia.” Biography.Com, 20 Nov. 2023, www.biography.com/royalty/a45896491/ivan-the-terrible


Jenner, GJ (Host),2021 Aug, Ivan the Terrible, [Audio Podcast Episode]. “You’re Dead to Me”. BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09snh0v 


Kateryna, Minkina. “Centuries of Tyranny in Russia: History of Ivan the Terrible, the First Moscow Tsar • Ukraїner.” Ukraїner, 20 Oct. 2023, www.ukrainer.net/centuries-of-tyranny/


Library, The New York Public. “Russia Engages the World.” NYPL, 2004, web-static.nypl.org/exhibitions/russia/Translation/punishment.html


M., Morris, and Simon Whistler. “Ivan the Terrible: The First Stalin.” YouTube, YouTube, 27 Sept. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqSONHVilTM






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