Kazan was added to Ivan's title in 1553 and Astrakhan in 1554. The titles "tsar of Kazan, tsar of Astrakhan" first appeared in 1556. The title "master of all the Siberian lands" first appeared in 1555, and from 1582, was written as "dominator of all the Siberian lands and northern countries". During the Livonian War, Livonia first appeared in his title in 1558. Polotsk was also included following its capture in 1562. Despite Russia's defeat in the Livonian War, the title of Livonia was not abandoned.

In English, Ivan's title of tsar was often translated as "emperor" from the first visit of Richard Chancellor to Moscow in 1553. For example: "We, greatest Ivan Vassilleviche by the Grace of God Emperor of all Russia and Great Duke". However, the title was not consistently translated as "emperor", such as in 1582: "The Great Lord, King and Great Duke John the sonne of Vasili of all Russia...".

Legacy

thumb|16th-century German engraving of Ivan IV

thumb|Coins of Ivan IV: [[kopecks and dengas, in silver.]]

Ivan completely altered Russia's governmental structure, establishing the character of modern Russian political organisation. Ivan's creation of the oprichnina, answerable only to him, afforded him personal protection and curtailed the traditional powers and rights of the boyars. Henceforth, tsarist autocracy and despotism would lie at the heart of the Russian state. Ivan bypassed the mestnichestvo system and offered positions of power to his supporters among the minor gentry. The empire's local administration combined both locally and centrally appointed officials; the system proved durable and practical and sufficiently flexible to tolerate later modification.

Ivan's expedition against Poland failed at a military level, but it helped extend Russia's trade, political and cultural links with other European states. Peter the Great built on those connections in his bid to make Russia a major European power. At Ivan's death, the empire encompassed the Caspian to the southwest and Western Siberia to the east. His southern conquests ignited several conflicts with the expansionist Ottoman Empire, whose territories were thus confined to the Balkans and the Black Sea regions.

Ivan's management of Russia's economy had negative consequences, both in his lifetime and afterwards. He had inherited a government in debt, and in an effort to raise more revenue for his expansionist wars, he instituted a series of taxes on the peasantry and urban population. Martin (2007) stated: "The reign of Ivan IV the Terrible was, in short, a disaster for Muscovy. (...) his subjects were impoverished, his economic resources depleted, his army weakened, and his realm militarily defeated. (...) By the time Ivan IV the Terrible died in 1584, Muscovy (...) was on the brink of ruin".

Posthumous reputation

thumb|Portrait of Ivan IV in the [[Tsarsky titulyarnik, 1672]]

Ivan's notorious outbursts and autocratic whims helped characterise the position of tsar as one accountable to no earthly authority but only to God.

In the 1920s, Mikhail Pokrovsky, who dominated the study of history in the Soviet Union, attributed the success of the oprichnina to their being on the side of the small state owners and townsfolk in a decades-long class struggle against the large landowners, and downgraded Ivan's role to that of the instrument of the emerging Russian bourgeoisie. But in February 1941, the poet Boris Pasternak observantly remarked in a letter to his cousin that "the new cult, openly proselytized, is Ivan the Terrible, the Oprichnina, the brutality." Joseph Stalin, who had read Wipper's biography, had decided that Soviet historians should praise the role of strong leaders, such as Ivan, Alexander Nevsky and Peter the Great, who had strengthened and expanded Russia.

A consequence was that the writer Alexei Tolstoy began work on a stage version of Ivan's life, and Sergei Eisenstein began what was to be a three-part film tribute to Ivan. Both projects were personally supervised by Stalin, at a time when the Soviet Union was engaged in a war with Nazi Germany. He read the scripts of Tolstoy's play and the first of Eisenstein's films in tandem after the Battle of Kursk in 1943, praised Eisenstein's version but rejected Tolstoy's. It took Tolstoy until 1944 to write a version that satisfied Stalin. Eisenstein's success with Ivan the Terrible Part 1 was not repeated with the follow-up, The Boyar's Revolt, which angered Stalin because it portrayed a man suffering pangs of conscience. Stalin told Eisenstein: "Ivan the Terrible was very cruel. You can show that he was cruel, but you have to show why it was essential to be cruel. One of Ivan the Terrible's mistakes was that he didn't finish off the five major families." The film was suppressed until 1958.

In post-Soviet Russia, there was a campaign to seek the granting of sainthood to Ivan IV, but the Russian Orthodox Church opposed the idea, due to his execution of Metropolitan bishop Philip II, who had been canonised way back in 1652. The first statue of Ivan the Terrible was officially open in Oryol, Russia, in 2016. Formally, the statue was unveiled in honor of the 450th anniversary of the founding of Oryol, a Russian city of about 310,000 that was established as a fortress to defend Moscow's southern borders. Informally, there was a big political subtext. The opposition thinks that Ivan the Terrible's rehabilitation echoes Stalin's era. The erection of the statue was widely covered in international media like The Guardian, The Washington Post, Politico, and others. The Russian Orthodox Church officially supported the erection of the monument.

Ancestry

Patrilineal descent

Patrilineal descent is the principle behind membership in royal houses, as it can be traced back through the generations – which means that if Ivan IV were to choose a historically accurate house name, it would be Rurikid, as all his male-line ancestors have been of that house.

Ivan is a member of the Rurikid dynasty. Ivan's patriline is the line from which he is descended father to son:

  1. Rurik, Prince of Novgorod,
  2. Igor, Prince of Kiev, –945
  3. Sviatoslav I, Prince of Kiev, –972
  4. Vladimir, Grand Prince of Kiev, –1015
  5. Yaroslav, Grand Prince of Kiev, –1054
  6. Vsevolod I, Grand Prince of Kiev, –1093
  7. Vladimir II Monomakh, Grand Prince of Kiev, 1053–1125
  8. Yuri Dolgorukiy, Grand Prince of Kiev, 1099–1157
  9. Vsevolod the Big Nest, Grand Prince of Vladimir, 1154–1212
  10. Yaroslav II, Grand Prince of Vladimir, 1191–1246
  11. Alexander Nevsky, Grand Prince of Vladimir, 1221–1263
  12. Daniel, Prince of Moscow, 1261–1303
  13. Ivan I, Grand Prince of Vladimir and Moscow, 1288–1341
  14. Ivan II, Grand Prince of Vladimir and Moscow, 1326–1359
  15. Dmitry Donskoy, Grand Prince of Vladimir and Moscow, 1350–1389
  16. Vasily I, Grand Prince of Vladimir and Moscow, 1371–1425
  17. Vasily II, Grand Prince of Vladimir and Moscow, 1415–1462
  18. Ivan III, Grand Prince of Moscow and all Russia, 1440–1505
  19. Vasily III, Grand Prince of Moscow and all Russia, 1479–1533
  20. Ivan IV, Tsar and Grand Prince of all Russia, 1530–1584

See also

  • Domostroy
  • Family tree of Russian monarchs
  • Crisis of the late 16th century in Russia

Notes

References

Bibliography

  • ; a major scholarly biography

General references

  • Bobrick, Benson. Ivan the Terrible. Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 1990 (hardcover, ). (Also published as Fearful Majesty)
  • Hosking, Geoffrey. Russia and the Russians: A History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004 (paperback, ).
  • Payne, Robert; Romanoff, Nikita. Ivan the Terrible. Lanham, Maryland: Cooper Square Press, 2002 (paperback, ).
  • Troyat, Henri. Ivan the Terrible. New York: Buccaneer Books, 1988 (hardcover, ); London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1985 (hardback, ); London: Phoenix Press, 2001 (paperback, ).
  • Ivan IV, World Book Inc, 2000. World Book Encyclopedia. <!-- a pretty anemic reference -->

Further reading

  • Cherniavsky, Michael. "Ivan the Terrible as Renaissance Prince", Slavic Review, Vol.&nbsp;27, No.&nbsp;2. (Jun. 1968), pp.&nbsp;195–211.
  • Hunt, Priscilla. "Ivan IV's Personal Mythology of Kingship", Slavic Review, Vol.&nbsp;52, No.&nbsp;4. (Winter, 1993), pp.&nbsp;769–809.
  • Menken, Jules. "Ivan the Terrible." History Today (Mar 1953) 3#3, Vol. 3 Issue 3, pp.&nbsp;167–73.
  • Perrie, Maureen. The Image of Ivan the Terrible in Russian Folklore (Cambridge University Press, 1987; ).
  • Perrie, Maureen. The Cult of Ivan the Terrible in Stalin's Russia. (New York: Palgrave, 2001 ).
  • Platt, Kevin M. F.; Brandenberger, David. "Terribly Romantic, Terribly Progressive, or Terribly Tragic: Rehabilitating Ivan&nbsp;IV under I.V. Stalin", Russian Review, Vol.&nbsp;58, No.&nbsp;4. (Oct. 1999), pp.&nbsp;635–54.
  • Isolde Thyrêt, "The Royal Women of Ivan IV's Family and the Meaning of Forced Tonsure," in Anne Walthall (ed), Servants of the Dynasty: Palace Women in World History (Berkeley, Univ. California Press, 2008), 159–71.
  • The throne of Ivan the Terrible
  • The holy gospel of Ivan the Terrible
  • Ivan the Terrible with videos, images and translations from the Russian Archives and State Museums
  • , versions of a poem by Felicia Hemans.

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