Ivan IV Vasilyevich (Russian: Ivan Chetvyorty, Vasilyevich; 25 August 1530 – 28 March 1584), known in English as Ivan the Terrible (Russian: Ivan Grozny), was Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533. His long reign saw the conquest of the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and Siberia, transforming Russia into a multiethnic and multiconfessional state spanning almost one billion acres, approximately 130 km2 (50 sq mi) a day. Ivan oversaw numerous changes in the transition from a medieval nation state to an empire and emerging regional power, and became the first Tsar of a new and more powerful nation.
Historic sources present disparate accounts of Ivan's complex personality: he was described as intelligent and devout, yet given to rages and prone to episodic outbreaks of mental illness. One notable outburst may have resulted in the death of his groomed and chosen heir Ivan Ivanovich, which led to the passing of the Tsardom to the younger son: the weak and possibly mentally retarded Feodor I of Russia. His contemporaries called him "Ivan Grozny" the name, which, although usually translated as "Terrible", actually means something closer to "Awe-Inspiring" and carries connotations of might, power and strictness rather than horror or cruelty
Ivan was the son of Vasili III, who had divorced his first wife in 1525 on the grounds that she was barren (he charged her with sorcery and had her forcibly tonsured as a nun). When Ivan was just three years old his father died from a boil and inflammation on his leg which developed into blood poisoning. Ivan was proclaimed the Grand Prince of Moscow at his father's request. At first, his mother Elena Glinskaya acted as a regent, but she died of what many believe to be assassination via poison when Ivan was only eight years old. She was replaced as regent by boyars from the Shuisky family until Ivan assumed power in 1544. According to his own letters, Ivan and his younger brother Yuri customarily felt neglected and offended by the mighty boyars from the Shuisky and Belsky families.
Ivan was crowned tsar with Monomakh's Cap at the Cathedral of the Dormition at age sixteen on 16 January 1547. Despite calamities triggered by the Great Fire of 1547, the early part of his reign was one of peaceful reforms and modernization. Ivan revised the law code (known as the sudebnik), created a standing army (the streltsy), established the Zemsky Sobor or assembly of the land, a public, consensus-building assembly, the council of the nobles (known as the Chosen Council), and confirmed the position of the Church with the Council of the Hundred Chapters, which unified the rituals and ecclesiastical regulations of the entire country. He introduced local self-government to rural regions, mainly in the northeast of Russia, populated by the state peasantry. During his reign the first printing press was introduced to Russia (although the first Russian printers Ivan Fedorov and Pyotr Mstislavets had to flee from Moscow to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania).
Portrait of Ivan IV by Viktor Vasnetsov, 1897 (Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow). In 1547 Hans Schlitte, the agent of Ivan, employed craftsmen in Germany for work in Russia. However all these craftsmen were arrested in Lübeck at the request of Poland and Livonia. The German merchant companies ignored the new port built by Ivan on the river Narva in 1550 and continued to deliver goods in the Baltic ports owned by Livonia. Russia remained isolated from sea trade.
Ivan formed new trading connections, opening up the White Sea and the port of Arkhangelsk to the Muscovy Company of English merchants. In 1552 he defeated the Kazan Khanate, whose armies had repeatedly devastated the Northeast of Russia, and annexed its territory. In 1556, he annexed the Astrakhan Khanate and destroyed the largest slave market on the river Volga. These conquests complicated the migration of the aggressive nomadic hordes from Asia to Europe through Volga and transformed Russia into a multinational and multiconfessional state.
Ivan IV corresponded with Orthodox leaders overseas as well. In response to a letter of Patriarch Joachim of Alexandria asking the Tsar for financial assistance for the Monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai, which had suffered from the Turks, Ivan IV sent in 1558 a delegation to Egypt lead by archdeacon Gennady, who, however, died in Constantinople before he could reach Egypt. From then on, the embassy was headed by a Smolensk merchant Vasily Poznyakov. Poznyakov's delegation visited Alexandria, Cairo, and Sinai, brought the patriarch a fur coat and an icon sent by the Tsar, and left an interesting account of its two and half years' travels.
The Tsar had St. Basil's Cathedral constructed in Moscow to commemorate the seizure of Kazan. Legend has it that he was so impressed with the structure that he had the architect, Postnik Yakovlev, blinded, so that he could never design anything as beautiful again. In fact, it is known that Yakovlev designed several churches and the kremlin walls in Kazan itself in the early 1560s, as well as the chapel over St. Vasilii's grave that was added to St. Basil's Cathedral in 1588, several years after Ivan's death, indicating that he had not, in fact, been blinded by the tsar years earlier.
Having rejected peace proposals from his enemies, Ivan IV found himself in a difficult position by 1579, when Crimean Khanate devastated Muscovian territories and even burned down Moscow (see Russo-Crimean Wars). The dislocations in population fleeing the war compounded the effects of the concurrently occurring drought and exacerbated war engendered epidemics causing much loss of population.
All together, the prolonged war had nearly fatally affected the economy, Oprichnina had thoroughly disrupted the government, while The Grand Principality of Lithuania had united with The Kingdom of Poland and acquired an energetic leader, Stefan Batory, who was supported by Russia's southern enemy, The Ottoman Empire (1576). Ivan's realm was now squeezed by two of the great powers of the day.
With the failure of negotiations, Batory replied with a series of three offensives against Muscovy in each campaign seasons of 1579–1581, trying to cut The Kingdom of Livonia from Muscovian territories. During his first offensive in 1579, he retook Polotsk with 22,000 men. During the second, in 1580, he took Velikie Luki with a 29,000-strong army. Finally, he started the Siege of Pskov in 1581 with a 100,000-strong army.
Frederick II had trouble continuing the fight against Muscovy, unlike Sweden and Poland. He came to an agreement with John III in 1580 giving him the titles in Livonia. That war would last from 1577 to 1582. Muscovy recognized Polish-Lithuanian control of Ducatus Ultradunensis only in 1582. After Magnus von Lyffland died in 1583, Poland invaded his territories in The Duchy of Courland and Frederick II decided to sell his rights of inheritance. Except for the island of Saaremaa, Denmark was out of the Baltic by 1585. As of 1598, Polish Livonia was divided into:
* Wenden Voivodeship (województwo wendeńskie, Kieś)
* Dorpat Voivodeship (województwo dorpackie, Dorpat)
* Parnawa Voivodeship (województwo parnawskie, Parnawa)
Ivan the Terrible And His Son Ivan, 16 November 1581 by Ilya Repin, 1885 (Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)
In 1581, Ivan beat his pregnant daughter-in-law for wearing immodest clothing, and this may have caused a miscarriage. His son, also named Ivan, upon learning of this, engaged in a heated argument with his father, which resulted in Ivan striking his son in the head with his pointed staff, causing his son's (accidental) death. This event is depicted in the famous painting by Ilya Repin, Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan on Friday, 16 November 1581 better known as Ivan the Terrible killing his son.
Death
Ivan died from stroke while playing chess with Bogdan Belsky on 18 March 1584. Upon Ivan's death, the ravaged kingdom was left to his unfit and childless son Feodor.
Ivan was a patron of the arts and himself a poet and composer of considerable talent. His Orthodox liturgical hymn, "Stichiron No. 1 In Honor of St. Peter," and fragments of his letters were put into music by Soviet composer Rodion Shchedrin. The recording was released in 1988, the millennium of Christianity in Russia, as the first Soviet-produced CD.
Today, there exists a controversial movement in Russia campaigning in favor of granting sainthood to Ivan IV. The Russian Orthodox Church has stated their opposition to the idea.
Ivan Tsar IV: Timeline
Ivan The Terrible - Part 1
The birth and Coming to Power Ivan Tsar.
Ivan The Terrible - Part 2
Secret Police The Oprichniki, KGB, Religion, and Torture (Opposition leaders, Intellectuals and Civilians).
Ivan The Terrible - Part 3
Ritualistic and Fearful Tactics.
The Most Evil Man - Ivan IV
Source from: TV Tropes
Ivan the Terrible was Sergei Eisenstein's second (and last) sound film, a spiritual successor to Alexander Nevsky. Made under direct supervision of Joseph the Terrible, who idolized Ivan IV and personally intervened in the movie's production.
The first film of the projected trilogy was released in 1945, to critical applause; the director was awarded the Stalin Prize (Soviet Nobel Prize-cum-Oscar). The reasons for critical success were pretty obvious: the movie presented Ivan the Terrible, a controversial and polarizing figure at the very least, as a national hero who bravely fought external and internal enemies in his quest to unite Russian lands.
The second part was released only in 1958, five years after Stalin's death. The reasons were also very clear: It dealt with the dark side of the tsar's personality, and depicted his Oprichnina terror campaign as Necessarily Evil - but evil nonetheless. The movie was shelved, the director was fired, and production of the third part was cancelled.
Despite the fact that the movie hasn't aged well, it is regarded as a classic of Soviet/Russian and world cinema.
Ivan the Terrible, Parts One and Two are films when combined) are in the top ten films of all time, and are of enormous genius, but because of this are not easy to digest. The story of the tortured Ivan the Terrible, first Czar of Russia, from boyhood to near the end of his czarhood, it was filmed with extravagated acting, and each scene having multiple symbolic interpretations. For example, all the main characters or groups of characters are portrayed with the characteristics of animals, Ivan the Terrible being a bird. The cinematography is brilliant, and strangely beautiful, relying on parallels, and close ups of the characters (this is among the first films to have this technique, now one of the most common cinematography techniques). Because this film is such a classic, it will make watchers review it, and think on the film itself. As such, it is not "light" watching. It is most definitely one of the greatest films of all time, and is worth the time without question. Do not be held back by the black and white or that it is in Russian. Also, watch both Part One, and Part Two, they were meant to work off each other. The DVD contains what remains of the incomplete Part Three, which the director Sergei Ensenstein did not finish. When told by phone that Stalin would not allow for Part Two to be distributed in Russia and be vaulted due to it's anti-Communistic implications, Ensenstien hung up the phone, and promptly died by heart attack, leaving a trilogy without its ending.
Ivan the Terrible - Part One - 1/10
Ivan the Terrible, Parts One and Two are films when combined) are in the top ten films of all time, and are of enormous genius, but because of this are not easy to digest. The story of the tortured Ivan the Terrible, first Czar of Russia, from boyhood to near the end of his czarhood, it was filmed with extravagated acting, and each scene having multiple symbolic interpretations. For example, all the main characters or groups of characters are portrayed with the characteristics of animals, Ivan the Terrible being a bird. The cinematography is brilliant, and strangely beautiful, relying on parallels, and close ups of the characters (this is among the first films to have this technique, now one of the most common cinematography techniques). Because this film is such a classic, it will make watchers review it, and think on the film itself. As such, it is not "light" watching. It is most definitely one of the greatest films of all time, and is worth the time without question. Do not be held back by the black and white or that it is in Russian. Also, watch both Part One, and Part Two, they were meant to work off each other. The DVD contains what remains of the incomplete Part Three, which the director Sergei Ensenstein did not finish. When told by phone that Stalin would not allow for Part Two to be distributed in Russia and be vaulted due to it's anti-Communistic implications, Ensenstien hung up the phone, and promptly died by heart attack, leaving a trilogy without its ending.Author: DragonaFireis333 from United States
Ivan the Terrible - Part Two - 1/9
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