Ivan IV (The Terrible)

Ivan IV (The Terrible)

Pretend that the greatest leader to ever rule your country wanted to resign. You would want him to come back, but the price of that is to give him complete and absolute power. Would you pay that price? The people of Russia did, and as soon as Ivan IV came back, he killed them by the thousands. Ivan Vasilyevich began as Tsar at the age of 16. He was a great ruler for the first part of his life. He unified, and vastly improved his country, creating a more modern government. Unfortunately, his mental state unraveled as he got older, and he was prone to violent fits of rage that would lead to his own people calling him Ivan the Terrible. During his time as Tsar, he conquered vast amounts of land, greatly contributing
Without a leader, his people begged for him to return. He made a deal with the Muscovites, that if he came back and led them, he would get absolute power and control of the area, with the ability to punish traitors and lawbreakers with confiscation of property and execution. This state he created was called the Oprichnina. When he returned to rule, he began executing all of the local boyars, who he believed had killed his mother and his wife and then started his reign of terror for 24 years upon all of the boyars of Russia. At this point in his reign of terror, he was four times remarried but still had not succeeded in recapturing the happiness that he enjoyed with Anastasia. Also during this time, through the Oprichnina, Ivan IV created his own private army to act as bodyguards and secret police, called the Oprichniki. The Oprichniki contained 1,000-6,000 men. He destroyed all of the major Boyar families in the area and not just the men, he ordered the execution of women and children as well. One of his worst displays of terror is the sacking of Novgorod. Novgorod was a very wealthy city and was a strategic defense point for the Livonian war. Vasilyevich was paranoid, and believed that the city would defect to the enemy, so Ivan sent the Oprichniki to pillage Novgorod and all areas around it. He killed thousands of families and left nothing behind. All of the lands that he claimed was given to his chosen class of gentry. He tortured his enemies and even friends for simply displeasing him. He boiled them in oil, cut out their tongues, and impaled them on spikes, starting at the top, the more the person moved, the faster the spike would move through them, and this was a very long and drawn out death. This and many other heinous displays of rage led him to be nicknamed “Grozny”. This roughly translates to formidable or sparking terror or fear. The