To the southeast, in Kazan, the wife of the Khan had thoughts of things to come. Of the child born on the 25th of August, 1530, she reportedly said:

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1 Ivan the Terrible BEGGAR IN THE PALACE Vasily III, Grand Prince of Muscovy, was worried. The ruler of Russia had no heir. If he stayed married to his current wife, he might die without a successor. Deciding not to take that chance, Vasily disposed of his first wife by sending her to a convent. (He was, in 1524, the founder of Moscow s famous Novodevichy Convent where Nikita Khrushchev, among other notables, is buried.) Yelena Glinskaya, Vasily s second wife, bore him two sons. During the birth of the first (the heir, Ivan Vasilyevich) Moscow experienced a fearsome thunderstorm. Safe within the walls of the Kremlin, all seemed well with the royal family. But there were other omens, it seems, beyond the thunderstorm. Omens that warned of troubles ahead. To the southeast, in Kazan, the wife of the Khan had thoughts of things to come. Of the child born on the 25th of August, 1530, she reportedly said: A Tsar is born among you; two teeth has he. With one he will devour us. But with the other, you. Three years after the birth of his son, Vasily III knew his own life was nearly over. On his deathbed, inside the Kremlin, he named his firstborn as his successor. Obviously too young to rule, Ivan needed regents to act in his name. Before he died, Vasily named those regents, one of whom was Ivan s mother. Palace intrigues insured that Vasily s widow would not live long. In 1538, when her son was not yet eight, Yelena died. Ivan and his deaf-mute brother, Yuri, were orphans. At the time, land-owning nobles (called boyars ) had considerable power in Russia. Although they treated the royal princes with respect in public, they behaved shamefully toward them in private. The children often roamed through the palace without shoes or proper clothes, begging for food. Shabby treatment was not limited to neglect. Boyars entrusted with the children s care were cruel. Armed men would sometimes enter Ivan s room, removing whatever they wished. Before long, young Ivan - the Grand Prince - took out his frustrations on animals. Cruelty breeds cruelty; torture of animals gives way to torture of people. And memories - of those responsible for making one s life utterly miserable - are often long-lived. Very long indeed, as the boyars would find out. THE FIRST TSAR Everyone bowed to Ivan Vasilyevich, the royal child who played inside the Kremlin. He was, after all, the named ruler of Muscovy. Because he was just a boy, however, people disrespected him. The prince himself had other views: I am god on earth. During Ivan s youth, a powerful boyar family (the Shuiskys) captured Fyodor Mishurin (one of Ivan s confidants). Perhaps in an attempt to demonstrate their own power, or to denigrate that of

2 the Grand Prince, the Shuiskys skinned Mishurin alive, leaving his remains for public viewing in a Moscow square. By the time he was thirteen, the young ruler relied on himself, not just his regents, to make crucial decisions. Fed up with the Shuisky family, he had Prince Andrei Shuisky arrested. For his punishment, the boyar was thrown into an enclosure with ravenous hunting dogs. It is doubtful there was much left for public viewing. Because the boyars were actually in charge of the country, as regents for the young ruler, they could decide when Ivan would officially take the throne. They made him crown prince at age seventeen. Ivan, however, resented the nobles. Not content to be a crown prince, or even the Grand Prince (as his father and rulers before him were called), the teenager decided he would be a Russian Caesar. He took the title Tsar, which is the Russian word for Caesar. He was officially the first to be so called in his country. In 1547, a busy year for Ivan, the newly crowned seventeen-year-old also decided to marry. Instead of looking outside the country for a bride who could provide Russia with political connections, however, Ivan wanted a Russian wife. He found Anastasia Romanovna, daughter of a minor, untitled boyar family. (The descendants of that family - the Romanov dynasty - would one day rule the Russian Empire. In fact, the last Tsar of Russia - Nicholas II - was a Romanov.) Ivan selected Anastasia from a gathering of potential brides (perhaps akin to this 1884 painting by Ilya Repin - Choosing a Bride for a Grand Duke). One could reasonably expect that such a marriage would not be happy. Ivan and Anastasia, however, were devoted to each other. By most accounts, theirs was a relatively happy (albeit short-lived) marriage. THE GOOD REIGN When Ivan took power in his own right, he faced massive problems in a tumultuous country that was nearly bankrupt. There were no banks, no roads, no infrastructure. After all, less than a century had passed since his grandfather, Ivan III, began to integrate other Russian lands into the Muscovy Principality. It was next to impossible for any ruler - including the new Tsar - to exert meaningful authority in the realm. The country badly needed reforms, which Ivan began to introduce. Complicating the situation further were religious differences between Muscovy and its neighbors. During the previous century, Constantinople (the "Rome of the East") had fallen to the Ottoman Turks (who were practicing Muslims). Constantinople was renamed Islambol ("Islam Abounds") or, as it is known today, Istanbul. With prior Christian territory now under Muslim control, Muscovy (a country of Orthodox Christians) considered its capital city (Moscow) to be the "Third Rome." On the 21st of June, about a year after his lavish coronation - Moscow was massively damaged by a sudden, terrible fire. The city s mostly wooden buildings quickly succumbed to the flames. Even part of the Kremlin - the walled-in fortress looking down over the city - was damaged. With two-thirds of the city destroyed, the young Tsar was furious. Thinking the fire had been deliberately set, Ivan retaliated by having people executed in Red Square.

3 Meanwhile, terrorists were storming the gates. Problems in the north harmed the country s Baltic trade while the Tatars - Russia s traditional enemy - prevented expanded Asian trade. Facing such circumstances, Ivan declared a holy war against the Muslim Tatars of Kazan (where the Kazanka joins the Volga River) and Astrakhan (where the Volga flows into the Caspian Sea). Only 22 years old when he took his newly organized army to the Khanate of Kazan, Ivan IV greatly benefitted from the abilities of his general, Prince Andrei Kurbsky, and the use of Dutch gunpowder. Tunneling under Kazan s garrisoned walls during a siege of the city, the Russians gained the upper hand. After five months, Kazan - gateway to the Urals and Siberia - fell. Decimating Kazan s Muslim culture (and annexing the city as part of Muscovy), Ivan showed no mercy. Perhaps people in Kazan recalled the legendary comments of the Khan s wife when she learned of Ivan s birth. Clearly he had used one of those envisioned two teeth to devour us. The other tooth, for the most part, was still idle. Anastasia, by all accounts, was a calming influence on her husband. While she was alive, she was able - for the most part - to control him. With his many accomplishments, Ivan was effectively ruling Muscovy and expanding the realm. Scholars refer to the first part of his reign ( ) as the Good Reign. But palace intrigues, resulting in Anastasia s death, would soon alter the course of history. With Anastasia, Ivan was manageable. Without her, he would quickly descend into madness. DEATH BY POISON After his great victory at Kazan, in 1552, Ivan IV was referred to as Ivan Grozny - "Ivan the Awe- Inspiring" (or in more contemporary terms, Ivan the Terrible.) His marriage to Anastasia was still strong. She was everything he had never had as a child and, more than anyone else, she was able to keep his cruelty in check. To celebrate the victory over Kazan, Ivan ordered that a church be built near the Kremlin. Architects began to formulate plans for the great cathedral now known as St. Basil s. Life in the palace seemed good, but Anastasia was unwell. Something was making her ill and, in the summer of 1560, after a long illness, she died at the age of 25 (or 26). Always believing his mother was poisoned, Ivan was convinced his wife had suffered the same fate. The Tsar was absolutely inconsolable. Becoming increasingly unstable, he accused his nobles of murdering Anastasia. Beyond reach, Ivan suffered a severe mental collapse. Banging his head on the floor, in the presence of his court, he punished himself. Throughout the succeeding centuries, scholars had always dismissed Ivan s claims that his wife was murdered. But after their bodies (together with the remains of other royals, including Ivan s mother, Elena Glinskaya) were exhumed in 2000, Moscow scientists at the Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences, were shocked. Their forensic tests revealed that Anastasia had more than ten times normal levels of mercury in her hair. Glinskaya s hair contained high mercury levels as well. As reported in the 3/9/2001 issue of Himiya i Zhizn (Chemistry and Life): She [Tsaritsa Anastasia Romanovna] died in 1560 at the age of and the legend says that she was poisoned. In collaboration with the experts from the Bureau of Forensic Medicine, the scientists carried out the spectral analysis of her well preserved light brown braid and found the

4 high content of mercuric salts: 4.8 mg per 100 grams of the sample. The scraps of the shroud and the decayed matter from the bottom of Anastasia s stone sarcophagus also contained mercury. What was the meaning of such findings? The scientists believe that the body of the young woman could not accumulate such amount of mercury even if she used cosmetics and ointments daily. [At the time, women were required to whiten their faces when they participated in official ceremonies. The cosmetics they used contained lead, mercury and arsenic.] Upon acute poisoning the body tries to excrete mercury through kidneys, bowels, and with sweat. Bones do not have enough time to accumulate mercury. However, the hair is soaked with poisoning sweat and keeps the metal for a long time. It is worth mentioning that mercuric salts were the main poisons in the Middle Ages. The hair of Ivan s mother was also examined: The spectral analysis of the princess s cap, on which the scientists found strands of her red hair, showed that it contained much more than a normal concentration of mercury. The scientists believe that the versions of poisoning Russian Tsaritsas Anastasia Romanovna and Elena Glinskaya are clearly proved with the chemical analysis of their hair. Ivan married six more times - not for love but for political advantage. In 16th century Moscow, divorce was not possible. If a king tired of his wife, he would simply send her to a convent and have the marriage annulled. Two of Ivan s subsequent wives went to the convent. It is said three others were poisoned and one drowned. Meanwhile, work on St. Basil s proceeded. One of Ivan Grozny s more extreme acts of cruelty was associated with the building of that church. THE BAD REIGN Ivan IV was a dichotomy. Often cruel, he was an effective leader who strengthened Russia s stature at home and abroad. Primitive at times, he thrust Russia into the modern world. Bringing order out of chaos, he personally caused great despair with his senseless terror. Very religious, he committed all kinds of atrocities. From boiling people in oil to cutting out their tongues, impaling their bodies, and executing entire families, Ivan Grozny lived up to his name. As his paranoia increased, the Tsar appeared to go completely mad. Kurbsky, the great general of Kazan, defected to Poland. Perceiving he needed a cadre of troops completely loyal to him, Ivan created the first secret police (the Oprichnina) in Russia. Dedicated to the Tsar, and devoted to do his bidding only, members of this elite group (called Oprichniki) gave their total allegiance to Ivan. He handpicked each one. Dressed as monks, they wore black garments and rode black horses (whose saddles were adorned with symbols of a broom and a dog s head). Their job was to sniff out terror. Many (but not all) were criminals who became marauding thugs. (Notable exceptions were the future Tsar, Boris Godunov, and Anastasia s brother, Nikita Romanov.) Committing crimes, under the apparent authority of the Tsar, Oprichniki swept across the countryside, confiscating boyars lands and estates.

5 Contributing to the terror which gripped the country, Ivan sentenced thousands to internal exile in remote areas of the country. When he ordered executions, families and servants were often condemned as well. On one of the Tsar-led marches, in 1570, Ivan s generals were unsure of their destination. It was Novgorod, a former Moscow rival, where Ivan sacked the city and had thousands of people butchered. Novgorod, it is said, never fully recovered. The carnage did not escape the attention of foreigners like Sir Jerome Horsay, who carried and delivered letters which Queen Elizabeth I and Ivan IV exchanged. Sir Thomas Randolph noted (in The Account of Sir Thomas Randolph) that he "will leave" the country. George Turbervile, Randolph s secretary on that 1568 British diplomatic visit to Muscovy, put his observations into scathing lyrics (quoted in Rude and Barbarous Kingdom: Russia in the Accounts of Sixteenth Century English Voyagers, Lloyd E. Berry and Robert O. Crummey [editors], pages 75-84): In such a savage soil where laws do bear no sway But all is at the king his will to save or else to slay. As the Tsar descended into madness, he saw enemies both real and imagined. He retreated inward, into churches and palaces, into safe places surrounded by walls. Secrecy was important to him while nobles lost heads, their bodies cut into pieces. It is said that Ivan planned torture sessions while he attended mass. Although he cared deeply for his family, even they did not escape his explosive personality. His son Ivan, the Tsarevich, was one of his victims LEGACY and MURDER In the later years of Ivan IV s reign, Muscovy was becoming a world power. Despite a disastrous twenty-five year war with Lithuania and Sweden, Ivan Grozny had expanded his country s territory into Siberia, tapping its vast forests and mineral deposits. Failings usually overshadow accomplishments when one considers Ivan the Terrible. Aside from the obvious, however, part of the reason may be that most first-hand sources were destroyed when Ivan s archival holdings burned in a 1692 fire. Notwithstanding the loss of those authentic primary sources, historians know that during his reign Russia s first print shop was opened in Moscow, the country had its first code of laws, the Stoglav (meaning, the "One Hundred Chapters"), and an interesting set of rules for Russian households (the Domostroi) were issued. In 1572, the Tsar unexpectedly dissolved the Oprichnina. Thereafter, he sought to court Russia s most precious resource: its people. Within ten years, however, he committed an act so heinous that it sent his country - and its people - into confusion. Two of Ivan and Anastasia s children had survived. The oldest son, Ivan Ivanovich, was heir to the throne. Twenty-eight years old, Ivan the younger was married to a woman who often annoyed the Tsar.

6 On the 19th of November, in the 34th year of his reign - Ivan Grozny was upset with his pregnant daughter-in-law s choice of clothes. It is said the Tsar boxed her ears (some accounts say he beat her) when she refused to change those clothes. Accounts vary on what happened next. The Tsarevich either came to his wife s rescue (she ultimately miscarried) or later argued with his father about the incident. Ivan the son was upset with Ivan the father for harming his wife. Suddenly, in a fit of rage, the Tsar struck his son in the head with his iron-tipped staff. The wound festered for several days while the Prince lay in a coma. When the Tsarevich died, Ivan IV was a murderer not just of opponents but of his own son. Overcome with grief, just as he was when Anastasia died, Ivan knocked his head against his son s coffin. The scandalous murder of the next Tsar threw Russia into a devastating turmoil. OLD BEFORE HIS TIME Causing a litany of terror and tears throughout the second part of his reign, Ivan Grozny had fallen from grace into madness. As he aged, he was in constant pain. Doctors from England, summoned to Moscow, could not cure him. Confined to the Kremlin, he became addicted to mercury. (Historians record that he kept a cauldron of mercury bubbling in his private rooms.) At the time, syphilis was treated with mercury (which, in high doses, can bring on fits of rage), and it has been speculated that perhaps Ivan had the disease. Sir Jerome Horsey (an agent of Britain s Russia Company who carried letters between Elizabeth I and Ivan IV ) met with Ivan Grozny in He could see the Tsar had grown old: His body was shrunken and bent, and although his face seemed more ferocious than ever it was shrivelled prematurely and deathly pale; his ears and lips were tinged with blue and his breathing had become laboured; his eyes moved restlessly, casting furtive glances hither and thither as if he entertained fear of sudden attack; he had grown almost completely bald, and a few rugged grey patches were all that remained of his once luxuriant beard. "I sleep badly," he complained querulously in answer to Sir Jerome's courteous enquiry regarding his health. "Evil dreams torment me; they are produced by my magic-working enemies. Yet I pray daily for the welfare of the souls of such as have been found guilty of treasonable plottings and transferred to the judgment place of the Eternal, there to answer for their sins. Withal, I concern myself greatly regarding the affairs of state, constant wars against hostile nations, and the welfare of my poor people. My health has consequently suffered greatly. I have grown old before my time." (Stories of Russian Folk-Life, Donald A. Mackenize, 1916, page 126.) The man who had grown old before his time, and who had caused such terror throughout the realm, would soon face his own end. I'M SORRY Near the end of his life, wanting to find forgiveness, Ivan - it is said - dramatically changed his attitude and behavior. He was obsessed with sorrow and guilt for all he had done, including killing his son.

7 Praying for those he had executed, he forgave them of whatever supposed crime they had committed. He also paid for prayers to be said for the souls of the murdered. The Tsar was re-christened as a monk, taking the name of "Jonah," perhaps out of respect for the man (St. Jonah) who founded the Pskov-Caves Monastery (Russia's oldest-in-existence) which Ivan had visited. Death for the fearsome ruler came at age 54. Setting up a chess board on his bed, for a match (it is said) with his friend Boris Godunov, he died quietly and naturally inside the Kremlin s walls. He was interred (reportedly wearing the clothes of a monk instead of an emperor) in the Archangel Cathedral where other Russian royals, who lived before and after him, have also been laid to rest. The aftermath of his death was catastrophic for the country. Many of his gains were lost during the fourteen-year rule ( ) of his son Fyodor I (who was married to Boris Godunov s sister). Fyodor had neither the skills nor the grooming of his older brother. During his rule (where power was essentially held by Godunov), serfdom was introduced. When Fyodor died, ending the Rurik dynasty, Boris Godunov (the link depicts the church on his estate near Moscow) was elected Tsar.