in a series of wars. Most important, a new phase appeared in the struggle against the peoples of the steppe. After Ivan IV became tsar, just as in the time of his predecessors, Russia remained subject to constant large-scale raids by a number of Tartar armies, particularly from the khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and the Crimea. These repeated invasions in search of booty and slaves cost the Muscovite state dearly, because of the havoc and devastation which they wrought and the immense burden of guarding the huge southeastern frontier. Certain developments in the early years of Ivan the Terrible's reign indicated that the Tartars were increasing their strength and improving their co-ordination. In 1551, however, the Russians began an offensive against the nearest Tartar enemy, the khanate of Kazan, conquering some of its vassal tribes and building the fortress of Sviiazhsk near Kazan itself. But as soon as the great campaign against Kazan opened in 1552, the Crimean Tartars, assisted by some Turkish janissaries and artillery, invaded the Muscovite territory, aiming for Moscow itself. Only after they had been checked and had withdrawn to the southern steppe could the Russians resume their advance on Kazan. The tsar's troops surrounded the city by land and water, and after a siege of six weeks stormed it successfully, using powder to blow up some of the fortifications. The Russian heroes of the bitter fighting included commanders Prince Michael Vorotyn-sky and Prince Andrew Kurbsky, who led the first detachment to break into the city. It took another five years to establish Russian rule over the entire territory of the khanate of Kazan.
Following the conquest of Kazan on the middle Volga, the Russians turned their attention to the mouth of the river, to Astrakhan. They seized it first in 1554 and installed their candidate there as khan. After this vassal khan established contacts with the Crimea, the Russians seized Astrakhan once more in 1556, at which time the khanate was annexed to the Muscovite state. Thus of the three chief Tartar enemies of Russia, only the Crimean state remained, with its Ottoman suzerain looming behind it. Crimean forces invaded the tsar's domain in 1554, 1557, and 1558, but were beaten back each time. On the last occasion the Russians counterattacked deep into the southern steppe, penetrating the Crimean peninsula itself.
Another major war was waged at the opposite end of the Russian state, in the northwest, against the Livonian Order. It started in 1558 over the issue of Russian access and expansion to the Baltic beyond the small hold on the coastline at the mouth of the Neva. The first phase of this war, to 1563, brought striking successes to the Muscovite armies. In 1558 alone
they captured some twenty Livonian strongholds, including the greatest of them, the town of Dorpat, originally built by Iaroslav the Wise and named Iuriev. In 1561 the Livonian Order was disbanded, its territories were secularized, and its last master, Gotthard Kettler, became the hereditary Duke of Courland and a vassal of the Polish king. Yet the resulting Polish-Lithuanian offensive failed, and the Russian forces seized Polotsk from Lithuania in 1563.
Ivan IV and his assistants had many interests in the outside world other than war. As early as 1547 the Muscovite government sent an agent, the Saxon Slitte, to western Europe to invite specialists to serve the tsar. Eventually over one hundred and twenty doctors, teachers, artists, and different technicians and craftsmen from Germany accepted the Russian invitation. But when they reached Lubeck, authorities of the Hanseatic League and of the Livonian Order refused to let them through, with the result that only a few of their number ultimately came to Russia on their own. In 1553 an English captain, Richard Chancellor, in search of a new route to the East through the Arctic Ocean, reached the Russian White Sea shore near the mouth of the Northern Dvina. He went on to visit Moscow and establish direct relations between England and Russia. The agreement of 1555 gave the English great commercial advantages in the Muscovite state, for they were to pay no dues and could maintain a separate organization under the jurisdiction of their own chief factor. Arkhangelsk - Archangel in English - on the Northern Dvina became their port of entry. Ivan IV valued his English connection highly. Characteristically, the first Russian mission to England returned with some specialists in medicine and mining.
However, in spite of improvements at home and successes abroad, the 'good' period of Ivan the Terrible's rule came gradually to its end. The change in the Muscovite government involved the tsar's break with the Chosen Council and his violent turning against many of his advisers and their associates and afterwards, as his suspicion and rage expanded, against the boyars as a whole. His personal despotism became extreme. Furthermore, Ivan the Terrible's assault on the boyars, bringing with it changes in the administrative mechanism of the state and a reign of terror, came to dominate, and to a considerable extent shatter, Russian political life, society, and economy.
In a sense, a conflict between the tsar and the boyars followed logically from preceding history. As Muscovite absolutism rose to its heights with Ivan the Terrible, the boyar class, constantly growing with the expansion of Moscow, represented one of the few possible checks on the sovereign's
power. Furthermore, the boyars remained partly linked to the old appanage order, which the Muscovite rulers had striven hard and successfully to destroy. The size and composition of the Muscovite boyardom reflected the rapid growth of the state. While in the first half of the fifteenth century some forty boyar families served the Muscovite ruler, in the first half of the sixteenth the number of the families had increased to over two hundred. The Muscovite boyars included descendants of former Russian or Lithuanian grand princes, descendants of former appanage princes, members of old Muscovite boyar families, and, finally, members of boyar families from other parts of Russia who had transferred their service to Moscow. The first two groups, the so-called service princes, possessed the greatest influence and prestige and also the strongest links with the past: they remained at least to some extent rulers in their own localities even after they became servitors in Moscow. The power of the Muscovite boyars, however, should not be overestimated. They showed little initiative and lacked solidarity and organization. In fact, they constantly engaged in petty squabbles and intrigues against one another, a deplorable situation well illustrated during the early years of Ivan the Terrible's reign. The Muscovite system of appointments, the notorious
Ivan the Terrible's attitude toward his advisers and the boyars as a whole changed over a period of years under the strong impact, it would seem, of certain events. In 1553 the tsar fell gravely ill and believed himself to be on his deathbed. He asked the boyars to swear allegiance to his infant son Dmitrii, but met opposition even from some of his closest associates, such as Sylvester, not to mention a considerable number of boyars: they apparently resented the merely boyar, not princely, family of Ivan the Terrible's wife, were afraid of more misfortunes for the Muscovite state during another reign of a minor, and favored Ivan the Terrible's cousin, Prince Vladimir of Staritsa, as tsar. Although the oath to Dmitrii was finally sworn, Ivan the Terrible never forgot this troubling experience. Shortly afterwards some boyars were caught planning to escape to Lithuania. New tensions resulted from the Livonian War. In fact it led to the break between the tsar and his advisers, Sylvester and Adashev, who disapproved of the proposed offensive in the Baltic area, preferring an assault against the Crimean Tartars.
In 1560 Ivan the Terrible's young and beloved wife Anastasia died suddenly. Convinced that Sylvester and Adashev had participated in a plot to poison her, the tsar had them condemned in extraordinary judicial proceedings, in the course of which they were not allowed to appear to state their case. The priest was apparently exiled to a distant monastery; the layman thrown into jail where he died. Before long Ivan the Terrible's wrath de-
scended upon everyone connected with the Chosen Council. Adashev's and Sylvester's relatives, associates, and friends perished without trial. Two princes lost their lives merely because they expressed disapproval of the tsar's behavior. At this turn of events, a number of boyars fled to Lithuania. The escapees included a famous commander and associate of the tsar, Prince Andrew Kurbsky, who spent the rest of his life organizing forces and coalitions against his former sovereign. Kurbsky is best known, however, for the remarkable letters which he exchanged with Ivan the Terrible in 1564-79 and which will demand our attention when we deal with the political thought of Muscovite Russia.
In late 1564 Ivan IV suddenly abandoned Moscow for the small town of Aleksandrov some sixty miles away. A month later two letters, addressed to the metropolitan, arrived from the tsar. In them Ivan IV expressed his desire to retire from the throne and denounced the boyars and the clergy. Yet, in the letter to be read to the masses, he emphasized that he had no complaints against the common people. In confusion and consternation, the boyars and the people of Moscow begged the tsar to return and rule over them. Ivan the Terrible did return in February 1565, after his two conditions had been accepted: the creation of a special institution and subdivision in the Muscovite state, known as the
