A history of Russia

that is, apart, beside - to be managed entirely at the tsar's own discretion; and an endorsement of the tsar's right to punish evil-doers and traitors as he would see fit, executing them when necessary and confiscating their possessions. After the tsar returned to Moscow, it became apparent to those who knew him that he had experienced another shattering psychological crisis, for his eyes were dim and his hair and beard almost gone.

The oprichnina acquired more than one meaning. It came to stand for a separate jurisdiction within Russia which consisted originally of some twenty towns with their countryside, several special sections scattered throughout the state, and a part of Moscow where Ivan the Terrible built a new palace. Eventually it extended to well over a third of the Muscovite realm. The tsar set up a separate state administration for the oprichnina, paralleling the one in existence which was retained for the rest of the country, now known as the zemshchina. Much later there was even established a new and nominal ruler, a baptized Tartar prince Simeon, to whom Ivan the Terrible pretended to render homage. Our knowledge of the structure and functioning of the oprichnina administration remains fairly limited. Platonov suggested that after the reform of 1564 the state had actually one set of institutions, but two sets of officials. In any case, new men under the direct control of Ivan the Terrible ran the oprichnina, whereas the zemshchina stayed within the purview of the boyar duma and old officialdom. In fact, many landlords in the territory of the oprichnina were transferred else-

where, while their lands were granted to the new servitors of the tsar. The term oprichnina also came to designate especially this new corps of servants to Ivan the Terrible - called oprichniki - who are described sometimes today as gendarmes or political police. The oprichniki, dressed in black and riding black horses, numbered at first one thousand and later as many as six thousand. Their purpose was to destroy those whom the tsar considered to be his enemies.

A reign of terror followed. Boyars and other people linked to Prince Kurbsky, who had escaped to Lithuania, fell first. The tsar's cousin; Prince Vladimir of Staritsa, perished in his turn, together with his relatives, friends, and associates. The circle of suspects and victims kept widening: not only more and more boyars, but also their families, relatives, friends, and even servants and peasants were swept away in the purge. The estates of the victims and the villages of their peasants were confiscated by the state, and often plundered or simply burned. Ivan the Terrible brooked no contradiction. Metropolitan Philip, who dared remonstrate with the tsar, was thrown into jail and killed there by the oprichniki. Entire towns, such as Torzhok, Klin, and, especially, in 1570, Novgorod, suffered utter devastation and ruin. It looked as if a civil war were raging in the Muscovite state, but a peculiar civil war, for the attackers met no resistance. It might be added that the wave of extermination engulfed some of the leading oprichniki themselves. In 1572 Ivan the Terrible declared the oprichnina abolished, although division of the state into two parts lasted at least until 1575.

Following the death of his first wife, Ivan the Terrible appeared to have lost his emotional balance. His six subsequent wives never exercised the same beneficial influence on him as had Anastasia. The tsar was increasingly given to feelings of persecution and outbreaks of wild rage. He saw traitors everywhere. After the oprichnina began its work, Ivan the Terrible's life became part of a nightmare which he had brought into being. With Maliuta Skuratov and other oprichniki the sovereign personally participated in the investigations and the horrid tortures and executions. Weirdly he alternated dissolution and utmost cruelty with repentance, and blasphemy with prayer. Some contemporary accounts of the events defy imagination. In 1581, in a fit of violence, Ivan the Terrible struck his son and heir Ivan with a pointed staff and mortally wounded him. It has been said that from that time on he knew no peace at all. The tsar died in March 1584, a Soviet autopsy of his body indicating poisoning.

While the oprichnina was raging inside Russia, enemies pressed from the outside. Although the Crimean Tartars failed to take Astrakhan in 1569, in 1571 Khan Davlet-Geray led them to Moscow itself. Unable to seize the Kremlin, they burned much of the city. They withdrew from the Muscovite state only after laying waste a large area and capturing an enormous booty

and 100,000 prisoners. Famine and plague added to the horror of the Tartar devastation. The following year, however, a new invasion by the Crimean Tartars met disaster at the hands of a Russian army.

The Muscovite unpreparedness for the Crimean Tartars resulted largely from the increasing demands of the Livonian War. Begun by Ivan the Terrible in 1558 and prosecuted with great success for a number of years, this major enterprise, too, started to turn against the Russians. In his effort to expand in the Baltic area, the tsar found himself opposed by a united Lithuania and Poland after 1569, and also by Sweden. After the death of Sigismund II in 1572, Poland had experienced several turbulent years: two elections to the Polish throne involved many interests and intrigues, with the Hapsburgs making a determined bid to secure the crown, and Ivan the Terrible himself promoted as a candidate by another party; also, the successful competitor, Henry of Valois, elected king in 1573, left the country the following year to succeed his deceased brother on the French throne. The situation changed after the election in 1575 of the Hungarian Prince of Transylvania, Stephen Bathory, as King of Poland. The new ruler brought stability and enhanced his reputation as an excellent general. In 1578 the Poles started an offensive in southern Livonia. The following year they captured Polotsk and Velikie Luki, although, in exceptionally bitter combat, they failed to take Pskov. On their side, in 1578, the Swedes smashed a Russian army at Wenden. By the treaties of 1582 with Poland and 1583 with Sweden, Russia had to renounce all it had gained during the first part of the war and even cede several additional towns to Sweden. Thus, after some twenty-five years of fighting, Ivan the Terrible's move to the Baltic failed dismally. The Muscovite state lay prostrate from the internal ravages of the oprichnina and continuous foreign war.

In concluding the story of Ivan the Terrible, mention should be made of one more development, in the last years of his reign, pregnant with consequences for subsequent Russian history: Ermak's so-called conquest of Siberia. Even prior to the Mongol invasion the Novgorodians had penetrated beyond the Urals. The Russians used northern routes to enter Siberia by both land and sea and, by the middle of the sixteenth century, had already reached the mouth of the Enisei. In the sixteenth century the Stroganov family developed large-scale industries, including the extracting of salt and the procurement of fish and furs, in northeastern European Russia, especially in the Ustiug area. After the conquest of Kazan, the Stroganovs obtained from the government large holdings in the wild upper Kama region, where they maintained garrisons and imported colonists. The local native tribes' resistance to the Russians was encouraged by their nominal suzerain, the so-called khan of Sibir, or Siberia, beyond the Urals. In 1582 the Stroganovs sent an expedition against the Siberian khanate. It consisted of perhaps 1650 cossacks and other volunteers, led by a cossack commander,

Ermak. Greatly outnumbered, but making good use of their better organization, firearms, and daring, the Russians defeated the natives in repeated engagements and seized the headquarters of the Siberian Khan Kuchum. Ivan the Terrible appreciated the importance of this unexpected conquest, accepted the new territories into his realm, and sent reinforcements. Although Ermak perished in the struggle in 1584 before help arrived and although the conquest of the Siberian khanate had to be repeated, the Stroganov expedition marked in effect the beginning of the establishment of Russian control in western Siberia. Tiumen, a fortified town, was built there in 1586, and another fortified town, Tobolsk, was built in 1587 and subsequently became an important administrative center.

Explanations

The eventful and tragic reign of Ivan the Terrible has received different evaluations and interpretations. In general, the judgments of historians have fallen into two categories: an emphasis on the tsar's pathological character, indeed madness, and an explanation of his actions on the basis of fundamental Muscovite needs and problems, and thus in terms of a larger purpose on his part. Personal denunciation of Ivan the Terrible, together with the division of his reign into the first, good, half, when the tsar listened to his advisers, and the second, bad, half, when he became a bloodthirsty tyrant, derives from the accounts of Andrew Kurbsky, as well as, to a lesser extent, of some other contemporaries. Karamzin adopted this view in his extremely influential history of the Russian state, and it has been accepted by many later scholars.

The view stressing political, social, and economic reasons for the events of Ivan rV's reign has also had numerous adherents. Platonov did particularly valuable work in elucidating the nature of the oprichnina and the reasons for its establishment. He argued that the Chosen Council had indeed ruled Russia, representing a usurpation of power by the boyars. Ivan the Terrible's struggle against it and against the boyars as a whole marked one of the most important developments in the evolution of the centralized Russian monarchy. Moreover, the tsar