Ivan the Terrible

Absolute Power

   1565: Ivan divides Russia

in december 1564 the tsar vanished from Moscow. After a while, he turned up at his remote, out-of-town residence, Alexandrova Sloboda. It soon emerged that Ivan Vasilyevich (aka “the Terrible”) had taken the state treasury with him, along with Moscow’s most venerated icons. But the biggest blow was that the tsar himself had left.

For sixteenth century Russians, life without the tsar was something so awful, so unthinkable, it was hard for them to imagine they could survive. There was nothing they could do but set out for Alexandrova Sloboda (“sloboda” at the time meant settlement or village). Muscovites rushed to beg Ivan’s forgiveness. The boyars were among those pleading with him, although they understood that, for them, nothing good would come of it. After all, the tsar had announced that the reason he left in the first place was to escape their malicious plots.

In January 1565, Ivan announced that he would deign to submit to the appeals of his loyal subjects, but not entirely. Supposedly, he would allow the boyars to rule the entire country, leaving himself just a bit — a small parcel for which he used a word that was familiar to people in those days: oprichnina. In sixteenth century Russian oprich meant “except.” An oprichnina was the portion of an inheritance that was left for a widow after the death of her husband. The main share of wealth went to the sons, while the widow got what was left over — everything “except” the main patrimony.

Like a poor widow, Ivan left himself an oprichnina. True, it included all the richest and most strategically important lands, and in actuality those lands that were supposedly ruled by the boyars were still the tsar’s domain. His new oprichnina troops, an enthusiastic army made up of anyone willing to serve the tsar, without regard for rank or title, made themselves quite at home on the boyars’ lands, committing all sorts of outrages. This army was a unique brotherhood whose members wore black clothing and fastened dogs’ heads and brooms to their saddles to symbolize the fact that wherever there was treachery, they would sniff it out, gnaw at it, and sweep it away.

This was the beginning of one of the most gruesome, bloody, and well-known seven years in Russian history. Four and a half centuries have passed and Russia is still trying to regain its equilibrium. People continue to be captivated by the dreadful stories about the atrocities committed by Ivan and his oprichniki. In the early nineteenth century, Nikolai Karamzin painstakingly, as befitted a true historian, collected every last detail about the era into Volume IX of his
12-volume history of Russia, about how people were chopped to bits, about how some were immersed in boiling water, then ice water, while others were skewered on pikes or cut up and fried in a giant frying pan. Volume IX of Karamzin’s History of the Russian State caused a furor, but what exactly was the furor about? For some it was a horrifying condemnation of tyranny, while others immersed themselves in tales of torment with a morbid curiosity. Even today the stories of executions and torture excite great interest.

Some see in these years the source of all the scourges of Russian history, right up to the present day. Parallels between Ivan the Terrible and Stalin (which strongly appealed to the latter) are still seen both by supporters and detractors of the twentieth century dictator. Part I of Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible ends with the arrival of the wailing masses at Alexandrova Sloboda. It is hard to find a more impressive scene in all cinematography. A long ribbon of people stretches across an endless expanse of snow, accompanied by Prokofiev’s wonderful music. The people look tiny, especially in contrast with the huge, imposing profile of Ivan (played by Nikolai Cherkasov), filmed in close up. The tsar comes out onto the palace steps, a tall, oddly crooked figure dressed in black against a no less odd background of elaborate white arches. He looks more like a question mark than a human being. Cherkasov moves as if performing a strange dance, and Prokofiev’s chords only add to the surrealism.

Here it is — the triumph of a great ruler. Insignificant little insects have come crawling to beg him to rule over them again. It is hard to say how many people actually came to Alexandrova Sloboda, but it was undoubtedly fewer than the endless stream Eisenstein depicts. It should be noted that Ivan took this sinister game extremely seriously. During the time he awaited the arrival of supplicants from Moscow, he was under such stress that all his hair fell out. Why not? Every great actor fully immerses himself in his role. What came next is, alas, all too well known — torture and executions; pogroms carried out by the oprichniki; the murder of Metropolitan Philipp, who dared appeal to the tsar to stop the bloodshed; the horrible defeat of Novgorod, which turned Russia’s commercial capital into a poor, insignificant backwater.

What is interesting is that virtually every Russian has heard of these seven years. They might not know the complete history of the oprichnina, but the gruesome details of Ivan’s reign are universally familiar. Probably one of the most famous figures from Russian history is Malyuta Skuratov, Ivan’s bloodthirsty henchman and devoted executioner, who tortured the most prominent prisoners with his own hands.

What is going on here? Why, almost half a millennium later, do we keep returning to these seven bloodstained years? Of course one could argue that such things should not be forgotten — even four and a half centuries later, or that we should draw lessons from history. Somehow it is hard to see what lessons we are drawing, yet we keep returning to the oprichnina again and again. Is it that brutality holds some strange power over us, entrancing us against our will? As if drawn by some mysterious force, we keep looking back on the bloody tyrant, who divided his time between torture, prayer, and orgies. Maybe it is time to stop?

How many Russians know, for example, about the village doctors and teachers who fanned out to villages after Alexander II’s reforms in the 1860s, or about the rudiments of local electoral democracy that emerged as early as the eighteenth century under Catherine the Great, or about Count Kiselyov, who, in the nineteenth century worked to ease the plight of peasants? Nobody makes spectacular films about things like this, and tyrants have no reason to resurrect these images from past centuries, but what about us? We focus on the oprichnina, we attribute all our current troubles to it, and heave a resigned sigh — well, that’s the way it’s always been for us, all the way back to the 16th century.

Sad as it may be, this thought somehow makes life easier. Why scurry about trying to make things better if in Russia one bloodthirsty tyrant always follows another? Why ponder our own responsibility if someone else has been deciding things on our behalf these past 450 years? All that is left for us is to wallow in philosophical sorrow. But perhaps we should think about the fact that in Russian history there have been other eras, other people, other deeds? Maybe we should try to break free of our captivation with gore and torture?

Pavel Lungin recently released the heavily promoted film, Tsar. Again Ivan the Terrible stands before us, again we see the oprichnina. Peter Mamonov, every bit the actor that Nikolai Cherkasov was, depicts an Ivan who is loathsome and insane. But here we go again — the film’s creators, with what looks like humble reverence, depict the cruelty of Tsar Ivan, the submissiveness of the people, the sense of all-encompassing despair. Here he is, a typical Russian ruler, they seem to be saying, in an Eastern robe and some odd-looking Persian slippers, with servants who kiss his feet, with a Caucasian wife who thrashes Russian boyar girls with a whip. Here he is, the eternal Eastern despot. Here is what we are and what we will be to the end of time.

The only thing to take comfort in is the fact that Lungin’s film is unbearably boring and is playing to half-empty theaters. On the other hand, we are not likely to be seeing any blockbusters about village doctors anytime soon.