Ivan the terrible, p.61
Ivan the Terrible, page 61
8 Prince P.M. Shcheniatev, a leading general, already arrested, was very cruelly put to death in August 1566, and the names of four of those who were executed for protesting after the sobor, are known (see above, p. 207 and see P.A. Sadikov, Ocherki po istorii oprichniny, reprint. Mouton, The Hague, 1969, p. 29; Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, p. 294 and note 96). Shcheniatev had also offended by taking the cowl without asking permission of the Tsar a few years before. This had been forbidden in 1565.
9 Floria, Ivan Groznyi, p. 208.
10 Karamzin, Istoria, IX, ch. 1, p. 59, supposes that Sylvester exercised considerable influence on Filipp's image of Ivan. But it is not certain that Sylvester ever went to Solovki.
11 See Staden, Land and Government, p. 20. He signed the sentence of the boyar curia in the Assembly of 1566 in third place after Bel'sky and Mstislavsky, Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, p. 292.
12 Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, p. 294.
13 See in general Zimin, Oprichnina, pp. 240ff. These conditions were duly recorded in a Zapis o postavlenii Filippa, signed by some of the archbishops (Pimen of Novgorod but not German of Kazan').
14 Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, p. 217.
15 Kurbsky, Correspondence, Ivan's first letter to Kurbsky, passim. One must remember that it had been written only three years before.
16 ‘Ivan IV’, in ‘Poslanie v Kirillobelozerskii monastyr’, in Likhachev and Lur'e, eds, Poslania Ivana Groznogo, pp. 352–3
17 Floria, Ivan Groznyi, p. 214.
18 Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, p. 341, note 31; Sadikov, ‘Iz istorii oprichniny’, p. 210.
19 ‘Stikhi pokaiannie’ (‘I came into this vale of tears, as a naked boy, and naked will I depart …’) in Dmitriev and Likhachev, eds, Pamiatniki literatury.
20 Taube and Kruse, op. cit., pp. 38ff. Some of this applies to a slightly later time.
21 Roberts, The Early Vasas, pp. 225ff. In the years 1562 to 1567 the Swedish high court issued more than 300 death sentences for an enormous range of serious and trivial offences; many were not carried out but were commuted for heavy fines. Extra-judicial torture was widely used to obtain the names of accomplices in cases of sedition. It is generally believed that torture was prohibited by common law in England at this time, but see Clifford Hall, ‘Some Perspectives on the Use of Torture in Bacon's Time and the Question of his “Virtue”’, Anglo-American Law Review, XVIII, 1989, pp. 289–321 on the frequent use of extrajudicial torture in England.
22 See above, Chapter XII, p. 192.
23 Zimin (Oprichnina, p. 261) suggests that Ivan thought a marriage with Catherine would entitle him to become heir to the Polish–Lithuanian throne.
24 SIRIO, 129, no. 12, stateinii spisok of the boyar Ivan Mikhailovich Vorontsov, 20 July 1567 to 4 June 1569, at pp. 134ff.
25 Sigismund Augustus had been both elected and crowned before the death of his father Sigismund I. Floria, Russko-Pol'skie otnoshenia, p. 32.
26 Such an outcome was even hinted at in negotiations at the time between the Russian and the Polish envoys. SIRIO, 71, pp. 31ff.
27 She was then over forty and eventually married Stephen Bathory when he was elected King of Poland in 1577.
28 SIRIO, 129, pp. 153–6, 11 July 1567, the Russian account of negotiations with the Swedish envoys.
29 …niotkuda pana sebe dostat' ne khoteli krome ego roda to est' ego samogo i detei ego.
30 Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, pp. 307ff. Was it a coincidence, Skrynnikov asks, that not long before, in February 1567, the large crown estate of Kowel was bestowed by Sigismund on Kurbsky? The deed of grant referred to the oppression of a Christian people and to the cruel panovania (‘rulership’) by Ivan which led people to flee to Lithuania where they were lavishly rewarded by the King.
31 See Zimin, Oprichnina, p. 274.
32 Likhachev and Lur'e, ed. Poslania Ivana Groznogo. In the 1951 edition the letters are printed in sixteenth-century Russian, with a translation into modern Russian which, not surprisingly in view of the date of publication, leaves out the references to God, Jesus Christ, the defence of the Orthodox religion etc. They are also printed in SIRIO, 71 (see under dates). I do not see who but Ivan could have written them, at any time, nor who could have faked them in the seventeenth century and why.
33 Likhachev and Lur'e, Poslania Ivana Groznogo, Prince I.D. Bel'sky to Sigismund, pp. 417ff.
34 Ibid., but here I have drawn on both the original old Russian text, pp. 241–8, and the translation into modern Russian, pp. 417–21.
35 Ibid., p. 419. In a commentary on these letters, Ia.S. Lur'e suggests that the ‘freedom’ mentioned by Ivan must be the concept of free will used extensively in religious debate at the time, particularly by the Catholics (pp. 510–11). However it is clear that Ivan is referring to freedom of action, but it is difficult to be precise in view of the large number of different words used at the time (and today) to express freedom. The Poslania were published in 1951, just before the Doctors' Plot, which may have induced a certain discretion in the treatment of the topic.
36 The grandfather of I.D. Bel'sky had fled Lithuania in 1482 because of the persecution of the Orthodox by the Catholics; his great uncle fled in 1499 with all his lands. I.D. Bel'sky had secured a safe conduct from the Polish–Lithuanian King to flee back in 1562.Ibid., Notes, pp. 669–70.
37 Jagiello was Grand Duke of Lithuania, and married Jadwiga, heiress of Poland in 1386, thus becoming also king of Poland. Whereupon his cousin Vitovt disputed the succession with Jagiello, and emerged as Grand Prince of Lithuania until his death in 1430.
38 The marriage of Sigismund Augustus to Barbara Radziwill was very unpopular, and she died a few months after her coronation. She is said to have been poisoned at the instigation of her mother-in-law, Bona Sforza.
39 Both were ex-princes of military orders of chivalry, the Prince of Prussia of the Teutonic Order and the Prince of Courland of the (Livonian) Order of the Sword.
40 Ustanavlivat' zakon dlia chuzhogo gosudarstva', see SIRIO, 71, p. 497. Paragraphs omitted in the 1951 translation.
41 The use of the phrase ‘rastlen umom’ either by Ivan himself or by Vorotynsky, raises an important point. In Ivan's letter dated 1577 to Kurbsky, (Correspondence, p. 187 at p.188) Ivan writes: ‘You write that I am mentally deranged’, using almost these same words: ‘Yaz rastlen razumon’ as he used in the letter from Ivan/Vorotynsky to Chodkewicz. Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, p.309 suggests that this may indicate that Ivan believed Kurbsky to have written the letters from Sigismund to the boyars, and that they therefore existed. But he adds that Kurbsky never in fact used this phrase, only Ivan, so we are none the wiser. It is of course extremely unlikely that a boyar (or a d'iak) in the Office of Foreign Affairs would have written about Ivan as ‘mentally deranged’ to a foreigner, let alone a Russian. Only Ivan himself could do it.
42 Isaiah, 14, 5. 4 onwards. The pot calling the kettle black.
43 Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, pp. 308–9.
44 Likhachev and Lur'e, Poslania Ivana Groznogo, p. 675, note 18. In the instructions to envoys, they were told to say: ‘we know nothing about an oprichnina; the lord decides who is to be near him and who is to be far away’; see also SIRIO, 71, pp. 331, 593, 597, where the letters are printed.
45 See Donnert, Der livländische Ordensritterstaat und Russland, pp. 236ff.
46 Tolstoy, England and Russia, p. 34, 10 April 1567. There is some confusion about the date of Jenkinson's visit and whether he made one journey or two to Russia in 1566/67. See articles by H.R Huttenbach, ‘Antony Jenkinson's 1566 and 1567 missions to Muscovy from unpublished Sources’, CASS, vol. 9, no. 2, Summer 1975, pp. 179–203. Huttenbach argues that Jenkinson returned to England in autumn 1567, before the sea route became impossible and sailed again to Russia in the spring. He bases his case on the supposed existence of a missing letter from Queen Elizabeth which can only be fitted in by postulating an unmentioned journey by Jenkinson. On the problem of dates see also note 7 above.
47 This interview is not mentioned in any of the contemporary dispatches because its subject was so secret, and it is referred to for the first time in a personal note sent by Ivan to Jenkinson's interpreter, and later himself an envoy, Daniel Sylvester, printed in Tolstoy, op. cit., pp. 179ff. No. 39 and No. 40, dated 29 November 1576.
48 Likhachev and Lur'e, Poslania Ivana Groznogo, pp. 417ff, at p. 422, from Prince I.D. Bel'sky. According to Jenkinson, Tolstoy, op. cit., p. 26, and to the Polish chronicler Martin Belskii, Kozlov was seized and impaled. Zimin, Oprichnina, pp. 267–8.
49 Tolstoy, op. cit., p. 38, Jenkinson, November 1567; Ivan expected to hear Elizabeth's reply by St Peter's day (29 July or another St Peter?).
50 See above, pp. 213.
51 Sigismund had written to Elizabeth directly to explain his interference with navigation to Russia, not only because of its effect on him but because it affected religion and the whole of Christianity. See Tolstoy, op. cit., pp. 30–3, three letters of 13 July 1566, 13 March 1568 and 6 December 1569.
52 Soviet historians e.g. Zimin, reject the assertion that the service gentry taken into the oprichnina were of baser birth, but both Staden and Schlichting assert that they were men of little substance and no personal qualities. Staden was a German and not precisely savoury.
53 S.A. Kozlov and Z.V. Dmitrieva, Nalogi v Rossii do XIX veka, St Petersburg, 1999, conveniently sums up taxation policy (pp. 28ff).
54 Donnert, op. cit., pp. 236ff.
55 A Russian embassy to Poland–Lithuania and a Polish-Lithuanian embassy to Moscow had continued useless discussions on terms for a truce, which are recorded in SIRIO, 71, pp. 521–54 and 554–63. Donnert, op cit., at p. 236, argues that the fact that his boyars refused to go over to Sigismund was considered by Ivan as a great victory over Kurbsky's treasonable efforts to win over Russian nobles to Sigismund's side.
56 It is near Minsk, and now in Belarus.
CHAPTER XIV The Boyar Plot: 2) the Executions
1 See H.E. Dembkowski, The Union of Lublin – Polish Federation in the Golden Age, Columbia University Press, New York, 1982, pp. 82ff. and for the financial burden on Lithuania, pp. 119ff.
2 Ibid., pp. 117ff.
3 See e.g. Staden, Land and Government, pp. 20ff, where the chronology is all wrong.
4 SIRIO, 71, p. 563. Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, p. 316, suggests that the real reason for the withdrawal was news of a new plot in the zemshchina, led by Fedorov, which Ivan had received. Schlichting, ‘A Brief Account’, p. 317, also mentions the plotting of the boyars, declaring that some thirty committed themselves in writing. See also Floria, Ivan Groznyi, p. 218.
5 Zimin, Reformy, pp. 277–9.
6 Ibid., Staden, Land and Government, pp. 19–20.
7 Schlichting, quoted from Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, p. 317. Schlichting's dating of the event to 1567 is correct. He also suggests that the conspiracy was betrayed by Vladimir of Staritsa himself, who obtained the names of the conspirators from Fedorov, and the other boyars and passed them on to Ivan. See also Floria, Ivan Groznyi, p. 217.
8 Staden, Land and Government, pp. 21 and 24
9 Zimin, Oprichnina, p. 274, note 1.
10 Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, pp. 308ff and 319. Schlichting states that the great Russian nobles were completely disunited and that Staritsky, Mstislavsky and Bel'sky asked Fedorov for a list of the conspirators on the grounds that others might wish to join, and then handed it over to Ivan. Indeed. Skrynnikov suggests that this was a provokatsia by Ivan, deliberately making use of Staritsky to ensure betrayal of the plot. See Schlichting, ‘News from Muscovy’, pp. 271–2 and Schlichting, ‘A Brief Account’, pp. 222–3, note 59.
11 Graham's note 61 on Schlichting, ‘A Brief Account’, p. 223.
12 Schlichting, ‘A Brief Account’, p. 223.
13 But did Kurbsky get his information by reading Schlichting's account in Poland, or even personally from him?
14 Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, p. 325. Skrynnikov argues that the Church Council was not supported by the Boyar Council.
15 Ibid., pp. 325–6.
16 Ibid., p. 324.
17 Taube and Kruse, ‘Poslanie loganna …’, pp. 39–41. The authors accuse Ivan of having the sixteen-year-old wife of his brother-in-law, Mikhail Temriukovich Cherkassky and her six-month-old son killed, laying the bodies in the yard of his palace where her husband was bound to pass by her body every day, but his dating seems rather unlikely. On 19 July 1568 Ivan sent his henchmen to collect as many women and girls as they could, of all classes, throw them into waggons and remove them from Moscow (probably to Aleksandrovskaia Sloboda); he then chose a few for himself and left the others to his oprichniki, and for six weeks he roamed around Moscow, burned and killed animals and everything that breathed. The women had to run around naked after chickens and were then shot. When he had finished with them, they were put back in the waggons and those who had survived were sent home to their husbands. There are echoes here of the harassment of Fedorov's lands and people, and a number of fantasies seem to have been merged together. But for once a date is given.
18 See Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, pp. 529ff., for a list of the killed which includes many retainers of Fedorov. Some were killed with swords or an axe; the lower orders were blown up with gunpowder. See also Taube and Kruse, ‘Poslanie loganna …’, pp. 40–1.
19 Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, p. 337. This was the end of the Cheliadnins.
20 Schlichting, ‘A Brief Account’, pp. 224ff and see note 67; Taube and Kruse (p. 40) report that Ivan ordered his brother-in-law Mikhail Temriukovich Cherkassky to cut up his treasurer Khoziain Iur'evich into little pieces together with his wife and sons and two daughters, and to leave them lying in the open. (This sounds like a confused echo of the tale that Mikhail Temriukovich's wife and daughter were killed and left lying in the open.)
21 Staden confirms Schlichting's and Kurbsky's account with the addition that the naked peasants’ wives were ‘forced to catch chickens in the fields’ (p. 21). One is sometimes led to wonder whether Staden read Schlichting's ‘A Brief Account’, and particularly whether Kurbsky had access to it in Lithuania in view of the similarity of their reports. But the Sinodiki do confirm much of what they write. See above all the careful summary by Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, pp. 529ff, where he gives three accounts of the extermination of Fedorov's people, and places Fedorov's death on 11 September 1568. Those killed are not always mentioned by name, but just lumped together as e.g. ‘twenty of Fedorov's people’; in a number of cases their nameless wives and children are included. Many had their hands cut off and presumably died as a result, since on 11 September 1568 twenty-six people are stated in a Sinodik to have died as a result of this amputation.
22 On the white cowl, see Chapter IX.
23 Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, p. 327, quoted from the life of the Metropolitan Filipp, dating from the 1590s and written in the Solovki monastery. See ibid., p. 324 and n. 159. Archbishop German Polev of Kazan’, who had once protested to Ivan about the oprichnina was one of the few to support Filipp. Zimin, Oprichnina, p. 250.
24 Roberts, The Early Vasas, p. 239, footnote. However, according to Russian accounts their envoys were manhandled and robbed in Sweden.
25 Ibid., pp. 236ff.
26 SIRIO, 129, pp. 164 and 197.
27 Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, p. 352 who argues that this enabled Ivan to benefit from the capital of the English company for his oprichnina activities. There is no evidence of such investment in Russia by the Russia Company and it seems highly unlikely.
28 Morgan and Coote, Early Voyages, I, p. xlix.
29 Tolstoy, England and Russia, p. xxiii; it is possible that Ivan may also have been affected by the calumnies circulated in Moscow by interlopers against the agents of the Russia Company.
30 Ibid., pp. 43 and 44ff., 26 June 1568, delivered February 1569.
31 Ibid., pp. 68, the Tsar to Elizabeth, 20 June 1569; pp. 71ff., contemporary translation into English of Ivan to Elizabeth of 20 June 1569.
32 Willan, The Early History of the Russia Company, p. 104.
33 Ibid., pp. 107–9; Morgan and Coote, op. cit., II, p. 184.
34 Willan, op. cit., pp. 112ff; Morgan and Coote, op. cit., II, pp. 280–3 and Tolstoy, op. cit., pp. 74ff. It is not clear whether Savin negotiated only with the Russia Company or also with the English government. Ivan was worried about the accuracy of the translation of documents from English in the original which he insisted on, into Russian, and there was correspondence on the question between Cecil and the Russia Company, Tolstoy, op. cit., pp. 82–4. The draft treaty and the permission to the Russia Company were both written in Russia and carried to England by Savin (ibid., p. 90).
35 Floria, Ivan Groznyi, p. 260.
36 Kurat, ‘The Turkish Expedition to Astrakhan' in 1569’, SEER, 40, no. 94, December 1961, pp. 7–23. See also for the Turkish background, A. Bennigsen and C. Quelquejay, ‘L'expédition turque contre Astrakhan en 1569’, Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique, 8, Paris, 1967, pp. 427–46.
