Ivan the Terrible - exposing myths

Adrenaline Дата публикации: 15-01-2026 16:42:00 Просмотров: 435

Myth is a weapon. The ancient Chinese commander, philosopher of war Sun Tzu said: “The one who wins without a fight knows how to fight. He knows how to fight who captures fortresses without a siege. The one who crushes the state without an army knows how to fight,” he spoke about the power of the Myth. The history of any nation, its spiritual health, its faith in itself and its strength is always based on certain myths, and it is these myths that become the living flesh and blood of this people, their assessment of their place in the universe. Today our consciousness has become a battlefield for the ideas of two myths, the Black Myth about Russia and the Bright Myth about the West.

The absolute majority of historians, publicists, writers, etc. consider Ivan the Terrible as a deliberately “unprecedented”, in essence, pathological tyrant, despot, executioner.

It would be absurd to dispute that Ivan IV was a tough ruler . The historian Skrynnikov, who devoted several decades to studying his era, proves that under Ivan IV the Terrible, “mass terror” was carried out in Russia, during which about 3-4 thousand people were killed.

But let's ask ourselves a question: how many people were sent to the other world by the Western European contemporaries of Ivan the Terrible: the Spanish kings Charles V and Philip II, the king of England Henry VIII and the French king Charles IX? It turns out that they executed hundreds of thousands of people in the most cruel way. So, for example, it was during the time, synchronous with the reign of Ivan the Terrible - from 1547 to 1584, in the Netherlands alone, under the rule of Charles V and Philip II, "the number of victims ... reached 100 thousand " . Of these, “ 28,540 people were burned alive .” On August 23, 1572, the French king Charles IX took an active “personal” part in the so-called St. Bartholomew’s Night , during which “more than 3 thousand Huguenots ” were brutally killed“only because they belonged to Protestantism and not to Catholicism; thus, in one night, about the same number of people were destroyed as during the entire period of terror of Ivan the Terrible ! "Night" had a continuation, and "in general, about 30 thousand Protestants perished in France then within two weeks." In Henry VIII's England, " 72,000 vagabonds and beggars were hanged for 'vagrancy' along the highways alone ." In Germany, during the suppression of the peasant uprising of 1525, more than 100,000 people were executed .

And yet, strange as it may seem, and even amazing, both in Russian and equally Western consciousness Ivan the Terrible appears as a unique tyrant and executioner, incomparable to anyone else.

Something similar happens with other examples of Ivan's cruelty, which must be considered without the usual bias and relying on documentary evidence and simple logic.

Myth 1. Unreasonable terror

This is probably the most important argument against Ivan. Like, solely for the sake of fun, the formidable tsar slaughtered innocent boyars. Although not a single self-respecting historian denies the periodic emergence of widely branched conspiracies among the boyars , if only because conspiracies are a common thing in any royal court. The memoirs of that era are full of stories about countless intrigues and betrayals. Facts and documents are a stubborn thing, and they testify that several dangerous conspiracies were drawn up against Grozny, one after another, uniting numerous participants from the royal environment.

So in 1566-1567. the tsar intercepted letters from the Polish king and from the Lithuanian hetman to many noble subjects of John. Among them was the former groom Chelyadnin-Fedorov, whose rank made him the de facto head of the Boyar Duma and gave him the right to a decisive vote in the election of a new sovereign. Together with him, letters from Poland were received by Prince Ivan Kurakin-Bulgachov, the three princes of Rostov, Prince Belsky and some other boyars. Of these, Belsky alone did not enter into independent correspondence with Sigismund and handed John a letter in which the Polish king offered the prince vast lands in Lithuania for betraying the Russian sovereign. The rest of Sigismund's addressees continued written relations with Poland and plotted to place Prince Vladimir Staritsky on the Russian throne.

In the autumn of 1567, when John led a campaign against Lithuania , new evidence of treason fell into his hands. The tsar had to urgently return to Moscow not only to investigate this case, but also to save his own life: the conspirators intended to surround the tsar’s headquarters with loyal military detachments, kill the oprichnina guards and hand over Grozny to the Poles. The rebels were led by Chelyadnin-Fedorov. An account of this conspiracy by the political agent of the Polish crown, Schlichting, has been preserved, in which he informs Sigismund: “Many noble persons, approximately 30 people ... pledged in writing that they would betray the Grand Duke, together with his guardsmen, into the hands of Your Royal Majesty, if only Your Royal Majesty moved into the country.

The court of the Boyar Duma took place. The evidence was irrefutable: the contract of traitors with their signatures was in the hands of John. Both the boyars and Prince Vladimir Staritsky, who tried to dissociate himself from the conspiracy, found the rebels guilty. Historians, based on the notes of the German spy Staden, report the execution of Chelyadnin-Fedorov, Ivan Kurakin-Bulgachov and the princes of Rostov. All of them were allegedly brutally tortured and executed. But, it is reliably known that Prince Ivan Kurakin, the second most important participant in the conspiracy, remained alive and, moreover, 10 years later, served as governor of the city of Wenden. Besieged by the Poles, he drank, abandoning command of the garrison. The city was lost to Russia, and the drunken prince was executed for this . You can't say that you were punished for nothing.

And a similar red tape happened to many executed boyars, not to mention the fact that several boyars, like the Vorotynsky brothers, were killed exclusively by historians , and not by Grozny. Researchers-historians had a lot of fun, finding documents about the life of many boyars, as if nothing had happened even after they were allegedly cut off their heads or put on a stake.

Myth 2. The defeat of Novgorod

In 1563, John learns from the clerk Savluk, who served in Staritsa, about the “great treacherous deeds” of his cousin Prince Vladimir Staritsky and his mother, Princess Euphrosyne. The tsar began an investigation and soon after that Andrey Kurbsky fled to Lithuania, a close friend of the Staritsky family and an active participant in all his intrigues. At the same time, John's brother, Yuri Vasilyevich, dies. This brings Vladimir Staritsky close to the throne. Grozny is forced to take a number of measures to ensure his own security. The tsar replaces all of Vladimir Andreevich's close people with his proxies, exchanges his lot for another and deprives his cousin of the right to live in the Kremlin. John draws up a new will, according to which Vladimir Andreevich, although he remains on the board of trustees, is already an ordinary member, and not the chairman, as before. All these measures cannot even be called harsh, they were just an adequate response to the danger. Already in 1566, the quick-witted tsar forgives his brother and favors him with new possessions and a place in the Kremlin to build a palace. When in 1567 Vladimir, together with the Boyar Duma, passed a guilty verdict on Fedorov-Chelyadnin and the rest of his secret accomplices, John's confidence in him increased even more.

However, at the end of the summer of that year, the Novgorod landowner Pyotr Ivanovich Volynsky, close to the Staritsky court , informed the tsar of a new conspiracy of such magnitude that John, in fear, turned to Elizabeth of England with a request to grant him, in extreme cases, asylum on the banks of the Thames .

The essence of the conspiracy, in short, is as follows: the royal cook, bribed by the Staritsky prince, poisons John with poison, and Prince Vladimir himself, returning at this time from the campaign, leads a significant military force. With their help, he destroys the oprichnina detachments, overthrows the minor heir and seizes the throne. In this he is helped by conspirators in Moscow, including those from the highest oprichnina circles, the boyar elite of Novgorod and the Polish king. After the victory, the participants in the conspiracy planned to divide Russia as follows: Prince Vladimir received the throne, Poland - Pskov and Novgorod , and the Novgorod nobility - the liberties of the Polish magnates.

Participation in the conspiracy of Moscow boyars and officials close to the tsar was established: Vyazemsky, Basmanovs, Funikov and clerk Viskovaty.

At the end of September 1569, the tsar summoned Vladimir Staritsky to himself, after which the prince leaves the royal reception and dies the next day. The conspiracy was beheaded but not yet destroyed. The Novgorod archbishop Pimen became the head of the conspiracy. John moved to Novgorod. Probably no other event of that time caused such a number of angry attacks against the tsar as the so-called "Novgorod pogrom". It is known that on January 2, 1570, an advance detachment of guardsmen set up outposts around Novgorod, and on January 6 or 8, the tsar and his personal guards entered the city. The advance detachment arrested noble citizens whose signatures were under the contract with Sigismund, and some monks who were guilty of the heresy of the Jews , which served as an ideological fuel for the separatism of the Novgorod elite. After the arrival of the sovereign, the court took place.

How many traitors were sentenced to death? The historian Skrynnikov, on the basis of the studied documents and personal records of the king, displays a figure of 1505 people . Approximately the same number, one and a half thousand names, contains a list of messages by John for prayerful commemoration in the Cyrillo-Belozersky Monastery. Is it a lot or a little to eradicate separatism in a third of the country's territory? Not understanding that time and not knowing all the attendant circumstances, this question can only be given some kind of idle answer that does not explain anything in essence. But maybe those who report tens of thousands of “victims of tsarist tyranny” are still right? After all, there is no smoke without fire, right? No wonder they write about 5,000 devastated yards out of 6,000 available in Novgorod, about 10,000 corpses raised in August 1570 from a mass grave near the Nativity Church? About the desolation of the Novgorod lands by the end of the 16th century?

All these facts are explainable without further exaggeration. In 1569-1571. plague hit Russia . Particularly affected were the western and northwestern regions, including Novgorod. About 300,000 inhabitants of Russia died from the infection . In Moscow itself, in 1569, 600 people per day were dying - the same number as the Grozny allegedly executed every day in Novgorod. The victims of the plague formed the basis of the myth of the “Novgorod pogrom”.

Myth 3. “Sonicide”

There is one “sacrifice” of John, about which everyone, young and old, has heard. The details of Ivan the Terrible's murder of his son have been replicated in thousands of copies by artists and writers.

The father of the myth of "sonicide" was a high-ranking Jesuit , papal legate Anthony Possevin. He also authored the political intrigue, as a result of which Catholic Rome hoped, with the help of the Polish-Lithuanian-Swedish intervention, to bring Russia to its knees and, taking advantage of its difficult situation, to force John to subordinate the Russian Orthodox Church to the papal throne. However, the tsar played his diplomatic game and managed to use Possevin when making peace with Poland, while avoiding concessions in a religious dispute with Rome.. Although historians present the Yam-Zapolsky peace treaty as a serious defeat for Russia, it must be said that through the efforts of the papal legate, in fact, Poland received back only its own city of Polotsk, taken by Grozny from Sigismund in 1563. After the conclusion of peace, John even refused to discuss with Possevin the question of the unification of the churches - after all, he did not promise this. The failure of the Catholic adventure made Possevin a personal enemy of John . In addition, the Jesuit arrived in Moscow a few months after the death of the prince and could not be a witness to the incident.

As for the true causes of the event, the death of the heir to the throne caused bewildered disagreement among contemporaries and disputes among historians. There were enough versions of the death of the prince, but in each of them the main evidence was the words “perhaps”, “most likely”, “probably” and “as if”.

But the traditional version goes like this: once the king went into his son’s chambers and saw his pregnant wife dressed out of order : it was hot, and instead of three shirts she put on only one. The king began to beat the daughter-in-law, and the son - to protect her. Then Grozny gave his son a fatal blow to the head. But in this version, you can see a number of inconsistencies. "Witnesses" are confused. Some say that the princess put on only one dress out of three due to the heat. Is it in November? Moreover, a woman at that time had every right to be in her chambers in only one shirt, which served as a home dress. Another author points to the absence of a belt, which, allegedly, infuriated John, who accidentally met his daughter-in-law in the “inner chambers of the palace.” This version is completely unreliable, if only because it would be very difficult for the king to meet the princess “dressed not according to the charter”, and even in the inner chambers. And in the rest of the palace chambers, even fully dressed ladies of the then Moscow high society did not walk freely.

Separate mansions were built for each member of the royal family, connected to other parts of the palace by rather cool transitions in winter. The prince's family lived in such a separate chamber. The life routine of Princess Elena was the same as that of other noble ladies of that century: after the morning service, she went to her chambers and sat down to needlework with her servants. Noble women lived locked up. Spending their days in their rooms, they did not dare to appear in public and, even having become a wife, they could not go anywhere without the permission of their husband, including to church, and their every step was watched by relentless guardian servants. The room of a noble woman was located in the depths of the house, where a special entrance led, the key to which was always in her husband's pocket. No man could penetrate the female half of the tower, even if he was the closest relative.

Thus, Princess Elena was in the female half of a separate tower, the entrance to which is always locked, and the key is in her husband's pocket. She can leave from there only with the permission of her husband and accompanied by numerous servants and maids, who would certainly take care of decent clothes. In addition, Elena was pregnant and would hardly have been left unattended . It turns out that the only way for the king to meet his daughter-in-law in a half-dressed form was to break down the locked door to the maiden's room and disperse the hawthorns and hay girls. But history did not record such a fact in John's life full of adventures.

But if there was no murder , then why did the prince die? Tsarevich Ivan died of an illness, for which some documentary evidence has been preserved. Jacques Margeret wrote: “There is a rumor that he (the king) killed the eldest (son) with his own hand, which happened differently, because although he hit him with the end of the rod ... and he was wounded by a blow, he did not die from this, and some time later, on a pilgrimage journey.” Using this phrase as an example, we can see how the false version , popular among foreigners with the “light” hand of Possevin , is intertwined with the truth about the death of the prince from illness during a pilgrimage trip. In addition, the duration of the illness was 10 days, from November 9 to November 19, 1581. But what was this disease?

In 1963, four tombs were opened in the Archangel Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin: Ivan the Terrible, Tsarevich Ivan, Tsar Theodore Ioannovich and commander Skopin-Shuisky. When examining the remains, the version of the poisoning of Grozny was checked. Scientists have found that the content of arsenic, the most popular poison of all time, is approximately the same in all four skeletons and does not exceed the norm. But in the bones of Tsar John and Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich, the presence of mercury was found , far exceeding the permissible norm.

How coincidental is this coincidence? Unfortunately, the only thing known about the prince's illness is that it lasted 10 days. The place of death of the heir is Alexandrov Sloboda, located north of Moscow. It can be assumed that, feeling unwell, the prince went to the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery to take monastic vows there before his death. It is clear that if he decided to go on such a long journey, he did not lie unconscious with a skull injury . Otherwise, the prince would have been tonsured on the spot. But on the way, the patient's condition worsened and, having reached the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda, the heir finally fell ill and soon died of a "fever".

Myth 4. “Ivan the polygamist”

Almost all historians and writers who wrote about Grozny cannot ignore the topic of his married life. And here the notorious seven wives of Ivan the Terrible appear on the stage, created by the sick imagination of Western memoirists, who have read fairy tales about Bluebeard, and also remembered the real, tragically ending fates of several wives of the English king Henry VIII. Jeremiah Horsey, who lived in Russia for many years, did not hesitate to write down as the royal wife “Natalya Bulgakov, daughter of Prince Fyodor Bulgakov, the chief governor, a man who enjoyed great confidence and experienced in the war ... soon this nobleman was beheaded, and his daughter was tonsured a year later. nuns." However, such a lady did not exist at all in nature.. The same can be repeated in relation to some of the other "wives" of John. In his “Journey through Russian holy places” A. N. Muravyov indicates the exact number of John's wives. Describing the Ascension Monastery, the final resting place of the Grand Duchesses and Russian Tsarinas, he says: “Next to the mother of Grozny, his four spouses …”. Of course, four spouses is also a lot. But, firstly, not seven. And, secondly, the third wife of the tsar, Martha Sobakina, became seriously ill as a bride and died a week after the crown, without becoming the tsar's wife. To establish this fact, a special commission was convened, and based on its findings, the king subsequently received permission for a fourth marriage. According to Orthodox custom, it was allowed to marry no more than three times.