Silver Russia
A long and violent history of Russia. Ivan Grozny. part1
Grandson of Ivan the Great, Ivan IV, is remembered as Ivan the Terrible. The Russian word “grozny”, which is translated as “terrible”, actually means “awesome”, and indeed there was a kind of grandeur in Ivan’s excesses. Towards the end of his 51-year reign, which was the longest in Russian history, he was probably mad.
There was much in Ivan’s childhood to account for such an end. At three, he lost his father; at eight, his mother died under mysterious circumstances, supposedly poisoned. Members of two boyar, or noble, families, the Bielskys and Shuiskys, seized power as his regents. In public they accorded him respect, but in private they treated him, in his own words, “as a menial”, denying him food and clothes while they ransacked the imperial treasury. Murders, executions and unexplained imprisonments were commonplace occurrences. One night the boy Ivan was awakened by soldiers who burst into his bedroom looking for a priest they had been ordered to kill.
Ivan took part in formal state affairs from the age of five, and when he was 13 years old, he donned the official robes of the Tsar and presided over meetings of the regents. In that role, he proved anything but pliable. At one meeting he delivered a routine criticism of mismanagement and waste; then, taking advantage of bickering among the regents, he did something utterly unexpected: he signalled out one regent, Andrei Bielsky, and ordered him to be arrested. When the astonished Shuisky tried to escape, he was clubbed to death by palace dogkeepers, whom the young Ivan had befriended. Ivan had not intended Shuisky’s death, only his capture, but the boy took responsibility for the murder and indeed capitalized on it, gathering more and more autocratic power to himself.
When he was 60, Ivan was crowned Tsar in a ceremony that he ensured had the maximum pomp. Three times he was showered with gold and silver coins, to symbolize the prosperity that would distinguish his reign. Bells pealed throughout the country. Three weeks later he was married to Anastasia Zakharina-Romanov, a member of a titled family that was subsequently to play a central role in Russian history. Anastasia was beautiful and intelligent, and Ivan adored her.
Many historians divide Ivan’s reign into a good half and a bad half. Ivan took all real power away from the boyars and governed singlehandedly and dictatorially. However, in the first years of his rule, the benign and progressive half, he called a general assembly made up of boyars from many noble families and issued edicts based on their advise. He required this hereditary aristocracy to supply soldiers to the army, easing a burden that had been born entirely by the landed gentry. A learned man himself, he ordered rare manuscripts to be imported, established presses to publish books, and set scholars to work translating Russian manuscripts into other languages to show the world that Russia was not backward. And he recommended that music – one of his abiding passions – be taught in all schools.
Ivan simultaneously pressed against the Tartars still controlling Russian lands and sent his troops to conquer other peoples, beginning the expansion of the Empire. In 1555, to celebrate the final rout of the Tartars in Kazan, he caused a great church to be built in Moscow’s Red Square, the extravagantly ornate St. Basil’s. actually a cluster of nine chapels forming an eight-point star, it is topped by fancifully carved steeples and cupolas of heights and colours, based on the wooden architecture of traditional churches, though in fact made of stone.
Ivan’s grandiose gestures extended even to the table. He thought nothing of presiding over five- and six-hour banquets for hundreds – sometimes thousands – of guests, each of whom he greeted on arrival by name. Dinner on such occasions was served on gemcrusted gold and silver plates, and guests drank from cornelian goblets or from reindeer horns and ostrich eggshells. The food was similarly lavish. Roast swan might be followed by roast peacock, goose with millet, spiced crane and sturgeon. Between courses the servants changed livery, and Ivan himself often changed crowns.
It was a good half of Ivan’s reign which finished tragically.
About the Author
Stephanie Kio runs several bilingual websites with different themes – including coffee makers website in English and Russian. On this website you can read more quality information on the best Cuisinart Home Coffee Makers and many other brands.
Episode 164 – Keiser Report – Oligarchy Propaganda – (From Russia Today, July 14-2011)
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