Ivan the Terrible

Ivan’s father died when he was three, and his mother died—possibly by poison—before his eighth birthday. Ivan’s formative years would be spent as a pawn in the struggles between rival groups of aristocrats.

Ivan had at least six wives—including five in a period of just nine years—and his marriages frequently ended in the poisoning or imprisonment of his spouse. He murdered his son Ivan in a fit of rage and savagely kicked Ivan's pregnant wife, causing her to miscarry. These actions virtually guaranteed the demise of the Rurik dynasty.

Ivan used terror to centralize the Russian state, and his disastrous involvement in the Livonian War nearly bankrupted his newly established empire. He also promoted the Orthodox Church and oriented Russian foreign policy toward Europe.

Ivan is interred in the royal crypt at the cathedral of St. Michael the Archangel within the Kremlin in Moscow.

Ivan the Terrible, Russian Ivan Grozny, byname of Ivan Vasilyevich, also called Ivan IV, (born August 25, 1530, Kolomenskoye, near Moscow [Russia]—died March 18, 1584, Moscow), grand prince of Moscow (1533–84) and the first to be proclaimed tsar of Russia (from 1547). His reign saw the completion of the construction of a centrally administered Russian state and the creation of an empire that included non-Slav states. Ivan engaged in prolonged and largely unsuccessful wars against Sweden and Poland, and, in seeking to impose military discipline and a centralized administration, he instituted a reign of terror against the hereditary nobility.

Ivan was the son of Grand Prince Vasily III of Moscow and his second wife, Yelena Glinskaya. He was to become the penultimate representative of the Rurik dynasty. On December 4, 1533, immediately after his father’s death, the three-year-old Ivan was proclaimed grand prince of Moscow. His mother ruled in Ivan’s name until her death (allegedly by poison) in 1538. The deaths of both of Ivan’s parents served to reanimate the struggles of various factions of nobles for control of the person of the young prince and for power. The years 1538–47 were thus a period of murderous strife among the clans of the warrior caste commonly termed “boyars.” Their continual struggles for the reins of government to the detriment of the realm made a profound impression on Ivan and imbued him with a lifelong dislike of the boyars.

On January 16, 1547, Ivan was crowned “tsar and grand prince of all Russia.” The title tsar was derived from the Latin title caesar and was translated by Ivan’s contemporaries as “emperor.” In February 1547 Ivan married Anastasia Romanovna, a great-aunt of the future first tsar of the Romanov dynasty.

Since 1542 Ivan had been greatly influenced by the views of the metropolitan of Moscow, Makari, who encouraged the young tsar in his desire to establish a Christian state based on the principles of justice. Ivan’s government soon embarked on a wide program of reforms and of the reorganization of both central and local administration. Church councils summoned in 1547 and 1549 strengthened and systematized the church’s affairs, affirming its Orthodoxy and canonizing a large number of Russian saints. In 1549 the first zemski sobor was summoned to meet in an advisory capacity—this was a national assembly composed of boyars, clergy, and some elected representatives of the new service gentry. In 1550 a new, more detailed legal code was drawn up that replaced one dating from 1497. Russia’s central administration was also reorganized into departments, each responsible for a specific function of the state. The conditions of military service were improved, the armed forces were reorganized, and the system of command altered so that commanders were appointed on merit rather than simply by virtue of their noble birth. The government also introduced extensive self-government, with district administrators elected by the local gentry.

One object of the reforms was to limit the powers of the hereditary aristocracy of princes and boyars (who held their estates on a hereditary basis) and promote the interests of the service gentry, who held their landed estates solely as compensation for service to the government and who were thus dependent on the tsar. Ivan apparently aimed at forming a class of landed gentry that would owe everything to the sovereign. All the reforms took place under the aegis of the so-called “Chosen Council,” an informal advisory body in which the leading figures were the tsar’s favourites Aleksey Adashev and the priest Silvestr. The council’s influence waned and then disappeared in the early 1560s, however, after the death of Ivan’s first wife and of Makari, by which time Ivan’s views and his entourage had changed. Ivan’s first wife, Anastasia, died in 1560, and only two male heirs by her, Ivan (born 1554) and Fyodor (born 1557), survived the rigors of medieval childhood.

Russia was at war for the greater part of Ivan’s reign. Muscovite rulers had long feared incursions by the Tatars, and in 1547–48 and 1549–50 unsuccessful campaigns were undertaken against the hostile khanate of Kazan, on the Volga River. In 1552, after lengthy preparations, the tsar set out for Kazan, and the Russian army then succeeded in taking the town by assault. In 1556 the khanate of Astrakhan, located at the mouth of the Volga, was annexed without a fight. From that moment onward, the Volga became a Russian river, and the trade route to the Caspian Sea was rendered safe.

With both banks of the Volga now secured, Ivan prepared for a campaign to force an exit to the sea, a traditional concern of landlocked Russia. Ivan felt that trade with Europe depended on free access to the Baltic and decided to turn his attention westward. In 1558 he went to war in an attempt to establish Russian rule over Livonia (in present-day Latvia and Estonia). Russia was at first victorious and succeeded in destroying the Livonian knights, but their ally Lithuania became an integral part of Poland in 1569. The war dragged on; while the Swedes supported Poland against Russia, the Crimean Tatars attacked Astrakhan and even made an extensive incursion into Russia in 1571; they burned Moscow, leaving only the Kremlin standing. When Stephen Báthory of Transylvania became king of Poland in 1575, reorganized Polish armies under his leadership were able to carry the war onto Russian territory while the Swedes recaptured parts of Livonia. Ivan at last asked Pope Gregory XIII to intervene, and through the mediation of his nuncio, Antonio Possevino, an armistice with Poland was concluded on January 15, 1582. Under its terms Russia lost all its gains in Livonia, and an armistice with Sweden in 1583 compelled Russia to give up towns on the Gulf of Finland. The 24-year-long Livonian War had proved fruitless for Russia, which was exhausted by the long struggle.