Ivan the terrible, p.8
Ivan the Terrible, page 8
But with the accession of a young heir in the charge of a Grand Princess in her early twenties, the direction of the central government slackened. Whether on Elena's initiative or that of the boyars, a new member was added to the Council in January 1534, Prince Ivan Telepnev Obolensky, and it was soon rumoured that he was the Grand Princess's lover. Acting together with her, Obolensky proceeded to eliminate potential dangers such as the younger brothers of Vasily III, Iuri of Dmitrov and Andrei of Staritsa (who might well become rivals of the younger Grand Prince). Iuri was a popular prince and, in circumstances that remain obscure, a plot was devised to compromise him in a conspiracy to seize the throne. Whatever the truth, by 11 December 1534 he had been arrested together with his boyars and followers and lodged in that same palace prison where Grand Prince Dmitri had died in 1509. Iuri died of hunger three years later. Other princes fled to Lithuania. The Grand Princess's uncle, Mikhail L'vovich Glinsky, condemned her policies or her private behaviour, or both. He was accused of attempting to seize the crown and sent back by his niece to the very prison where he had already spent twelve years, and where he too soon starved to death. Andrei of Staritsa was the next to be trapped in an alleged plot, arrested and placed in irons, his wife and young son imprisoned, in 1537. His boyars were particularly ruthlessly treated, tortured in spite of their princely rank, and some thirty members of his retinue of service gentry were flogged and hanged at intervals on the road to Novgorod. But both Iuri and Andrei were solemnly buried as members of the Grand Prince's family in the Archangel Cathedral in the Kremlin. Thus potential rivals for the throne were quickly eliminated, leaving only Ivan's young cousin Vladimir Andreevich of Staritsa, at the time under arrest. The cruelty manifested by Elena's regime and the dishonour inflicted on a number of princes of noble family by public execution, without any form of trial, lowered her government in public esteem and led to an increasingly brutal treatment of the privileged élite.9
How much Elena herself actually influenced the government it is impossible to say. But as a government it undertook several positive measures, such as the introduction of elected officials in the provinces to deal with brigandage (gubnye starosty); the building of a new defensive wall around Moscow, this time enclosing what came to be known as the Kitaigorod (middle town); attracting settlers from Lithuania; ransoming prisoners; and introducing a currency reform and a new coin, the kopek. Then, seemingly without warning, according to Herberstein, this healthy and relatively young woman, who spent much time visiting monasteries, died in 1538. Inevitably, the rumour spread that she had been poisoned.10 She was buried the same day, without much ceremony, apparently unmourned, except probably by her eight-year-old son.
Deprived of his mother's protection, and by her of the protection of his maternal and paternal uncles, the young Ivan's life seems now to have entered a particularly unhappy period. Prince Vasily Vasil'evich Shuisky, one of the executors of Grand Prince Vasily's will, took control of the Council and within seven days Ivan's governess, Agrafena Chelyadnina, a sister of Telepnev Obolensky, and Obolensky himself had been seized and were in chains in spite of Ivan's wails. Agrippina was sent to a convent in Kargopol', and Obolensky himself suffered the fate he had inflicted on members of Ivan's family: he was starved to death in the prison to which he had condemned Mikhail Glinsky.11
It is at this point that one can pick up Ivan IV's own story of what happened to him in the ensuing years, as he described it many years later in his first letter to Prince A.M. Kurbsky, dated July 1564.12 There is no reason to suppose that Ivan's own account is more reliable than those of the surviving Chronicles, but it gives his own special slant on events. Once Obolensky had been eliminated, Ivan felt himself quite alone and unprotected, ‘receiving no human care from any quarter’. His brother Iuri was too young to be of any help and in any case would have been unable to help him, for the child had been born deaf and dumb. It is possible that he was mentally quite normal, but at that time no one knew how to teach a deaf child how to speak. He was later to take part in Ivan's coronation, being charged with flinging silver and gold coins in his brother's path on the way to and from the cathedrals in the Kremlin, and he sat ‘one yard away’ from Ivan when the latter received ambassadors in the Kremlin.13
The most senior and authoritative boyar, Prince Vasily Vasil'evich Shuisky, and his brother Ivan Vasil'evich, dominated the Council and together with their cronies seized and distributed posts and riches without any reference to the Council, let alone the youthful heir. In an effort to consolidate his relationship with the Grand Prince's family, at the age of fifty-four, Vasily Shuisky married the young Anastasia, daughter of the converted Tatar Tsarevich Peter, Vasily III's brother-in-law and one of the latter's most trustworthy and trusted friends. Vasily Shuisky moved into the palace of Prince Andrei Ivanovich of Staritsa (killed as mentioned above by order of Elena Glinskaia and Telepnev Obolensky) and behaved ‘as in a Jewish synagogue’;14 one of the leading d'iaki, or officials, who was a member of the Regency Council appointed by Grand Prince Vasily, was executed in a humiliating and cruel manner without any trial; and Prince Ivan Fedorovich Bel'sky was released from the prison in which he had been thrown by the Regent Elena, but the Shuiskys locked him up again. Fortunately, Vasily Shuisky died suddenly at the peak of his power, leaving the senior position in the Council to his brother, Ivan Vasil'evich. The next victim was the Metropolitan Daniil, who was deposed without any consultation with a Church Council or the boyars, and who was replaced by Metropolitan Joseph. These court conflicts were not over policies or principles, but entirely concerned with power and the distribution of lands and riches.
Ivan describes the ill-treatment he and his brother Iuri suffered at this time, in possibly exaggerated terms, because the alleged lack of respect and the informality of the Shuiskys brothers' behaviour deeply offended his dignity as Grand Prince. According to his later recollections, Ivan and Iuri were ill-fed and hungry, and nothing was done as Ivan wished. He wrote: ‘I … recall one thing: whilst we were playing childish games in our infancy Prince Vasily Vasil'evich Shuisky was sitting on a bench, leaning with his elbows on our father's bed, and with his leg upon a chair.’ Shuisky treated the young Grand Prince rudely, he did not bow his head to him either in a fatherly manner or as a master or as a servant: ‘And who can endure such arrogance,’ exclaims the young Ivan. He describes how Ivan Shuisky, in the struggle to control the Boyar Council, arrested Grand Prince Ivan's own followers, such as Prince Ivan Fedorovich Bel'sky, exiled and even murdered them, drove out the Metropolitan Daniil, invaded his, Ivan's, dining-chamber and seized his favourite, the boyar F.S. Vorontsov, ‘and having put him to shame, wanted to kill him’. Ironically enough, it was thanks to the intercession of the newly appointed Metropolitan Makarii that Vorontsov's life was saved, only for him to be executed at Ivan's orders not much later. ‘Is it right’, exclaims Ivan, ‘for a servant to have intercourse with us, his lord, or for a lord to beg favours from a servant?’15 In May 1542 Ivan Vasil'evich Shuisky died, last of the members of the Regency Council appointed by Vasily III. The only remaining Shuisky Prince Andrei Mikhailovich was unable to command the support of members of the Council and was beaten to death by the personal order of the thirteen-year-old Grand Prince in 1543.
Nothing is known of the education of Ivan except by inference. From a young age he was present with his mother when foreign envoys were received, and on one occasion he spoke to them in Tatar. Whether this was a phrase learnt by heart for the occasion, or whether he actually spoke the language as a child is not known. After the death of his mother and her lover (if he was her lover) there was no one man whose duty it was to educate the Prince for his role as a ruler, no male role model, to use modern jargon. It is not impossible that the children of the Tatar Tsarevich Peter at court were his playmates, and they would perhaps speak Tatar together. He almost certainly knew the language later in life because of the large number of Tatars at his court and in his service in the armed forces. It is also possible that the young Vladimir Andreevich of Staritsa, once he was released, was another playmate, as for many years the cousins were friends. Later, Ivan would often leave Vladimir in charge in Moscow when he left the capital for any reason, and Vladimir's mother, the formidable Princess Evfrosin'ya, may have had a role at court when she and her son were finally allowed back. The boy Grand Prince presumably had the usual cohort of dwarfs and fools and skomorokhi (minstrels, clowns, buffoons, etc.) to laugh at. Less agreeable, indeed ominous, was the boy's pleasure in throwing animals down from high towers to be smashed to pieces on the ground.
With adolescence the range of Ivan's activities increased. He was evidently fond of the chase and spent a lot of time hunting bears and other wild animals. A record of his travels in 1544, 1545 and 1546 shows that he was constantly on the move in spring and summer, nearly always with his brother Iuri, and often with his cousin Prince Vladimir of Staritsa. These hunting expeditions were combined with pilgrimages to many important monasteries, attendance at church services, and the giving of alms and gifts for memorial services.16 On 21 May 1545 Ivan went to the Troitsky monastery, then to Pereiaslavl', and leaving his companions to return to Moscow, he continued to Rostov, to the Kirillov monastery at Beloozero, to the Ferapont monastery, to Vologda, Prilutsky, Kornilov, Pavlov, Boris and Gleb on the Ust'ia, then again on 15 September he was at the Troitsky monastery, in Aleksandrovskaia Sloboda, and in Mozhaisk for the hunting.17 It is possible that on his travels in 1545 Ivan was in contact with Maksim Grek, who addressed two missives to the young Grand Prince at that time, with advice on how to be a good ruler: a genuine tsar strives after justice, issues good laws and tries to conquer his evil passions, namely malice, anger and the lawless caprices of the flesh; he closes his ears to slander.18 Also around this time the priest Sylvester admonished the young Grand Prince, asking him to send young people guilty of sodomy away from his court.19
Judging by his letters to Kurbsky, and by his poslania (missives), which he had probably dictated, since writing was often at that time considered a menial occupation fit only for clerks,20 Ivan was very familiar with both the New and the Old Testaments and with the Apocrypha. Indeed, he must have been surrounded by priests and have attended numerous church services every day, which imbued him with a deeply religious image of the world. Biblical language and dramatic symbolic images were ideally suited to his passionate, poetic and angry imagination. He was also familiar with many sermons and homilies by the fathers of the Orthodox Church, and must have been taught the catechism and the psalter, which he probably heard so often in church services that he knew it by heart. He appears also to have enjoyed singing in church. Was Ivan able to read? Or were tales read to him? Learning to read is not, after all, so difficult – even a sixteenth-century Russian manuscript.
At some stage Ivan must have become acquainted with the Tale of the Princes of Vladimir,21 since it formed the subject of one of the most dramatic propaganda frescoes on the walls of the Dormition Cathedral in the Kremlin and the Russian princes' descent from the Emperor Augustus Caesar's brother Prus was worked into the liturgy for Ivan's coronation. Did he know the Tale of Dracula, based on voevoda Vlad epe Dracul, who ruled Wallachia from 1456 to 1462 and again in 1477?22 It may well have been another influence on Ivan's attitude to his subjects, possibly connected with his family background through his mother. Around 1458–60 Vlad epe Dracul, already famous for his cruelty, had invaded Transylvania (then under Hungarian control). Stories of the atrocities he committed on that occasion against the Saxon towns were current in the court of King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, and records of Dracul's lurid doings were carried away to the monastery of St Gallen in Switzerland by Catholic monks who escaped the Turkish advance. The invention of printing made the reproduction of tales of Dracul's real or imaginary atrocities into the best-selling horror stories of the age in the German-speaking world.23
When Fedor Kuritsyn was sent by Ivan III, in 1482–4, on an embassy to Matthias Corvinus of Hungary and Stephen the Great of Moldavia, he met the widow and children of Vlad epe Dracul in Buda, and could have found some things out for himself. A group of narratives of the Dracula tales, written in Church Slavonic, the only written language of Wallachia, found its way, probably by means of Orthodox monks fleeing from the Turks, possibly by means of Kuritsyn, to the monastery of Beloozero. They were then put together by Evfrosin, the well-known copyist and later abbot of the monastery, and cast a somewhat different light on Dracula as a ruler severe and cruel not for cruelty's sake but for the sake of his subjects.24
As we know, Ivan IV was a frequent visitor to this monastery, and it is not unlikely that he read these tales or had them read to him. On the whole they belong to the species folklore and propaganda rather than true stories: propaganda which proliferated in the wake of the constant and savage warfare between different national groups (Germans, Wallachians, Poles, Hungarians, Turks) breaking in great waves over people living in fear of what the next day and the next world might bring. Impaling his enemies may well have been a form of execution borrowed later by Ivan from the Ottoman Empire through Wallachia and tales of Vlad the Impaler. It does not seem to have been used by Russian rulers either earlier or later. It was not extensively used by Ivan, but mainly, it seems, where he felt particular personal vindictiveness, or against service gentry and boyars who fled to Lithuania. A moment's reflection will show that it was not a very practical form of execution on a large scale, and there are no reports of impalements in Russia similar to the equally unlikely reports of the executions carried out as Vlad epe sat down to his dinner. The English representative of the Russia Company, Jerome Horsey, reports one case, and for good measure throws in that the victim's wife was made to watch the death throes of her husband and was subsequently raped by a hundred gunners – again hard to believe.25
Tales of the heroic deeds of past princes, such as the Tale of Dmitri Donskoi's victory over the Tatars in 1380 and the Alexander Romance (dealing with Alexander the Great and widely read throughout Europe), together with byliny (heroic ballads) and fairy tales, probably formed the background to Ivan's childhood and adolescence. The coming of the last Emperor and of Antichrist, foretelling the end of the world, and the Last Time, were also subjects frequently dealt with, as well as the Homilies on the Second Coming of Christ, ascribed to Ephraim the Syrian, and the Tale of Christ and Antichrist, ascribed to Hippolytus of Rome. Fears of the end of the world were revived by the fall of Constantinople in, for instance, the Tale of the Fall of Tsar'grad, in which the returning emperor defeats the Ishmaelites and is crowned in the Church of St Sophia in the Last Days. At some stage Ivan probably saw the Secretum secretorum, a mirror of princes, said to have been written by Aristotle for the education of Alexander the Great.26 Judging by his letters to Kurbsky, Ivan was familiar with tales from the Iliad.27 He was also certainly familiar with the chet'i-mineii or menologies, comprising collections of extracts from the Bible, the Apocrypha, the writings of the Christian Fathers, sermons and homilies, grouped according to dates in the Christian calendar. At some stage, too, Ivan must have been introduced to the Chronographs, which dealt with world history, and to the Chronicles themselves, for which the material was collected in the court and some of which were composed in all probability in the Office of Foreign Affairs. Could Ivan write? No writing which has been identified as his has survived, but this proves nothing.28
In his first letter to Kurbsky, written in 1564, Ivan hints at unworthy pursuits, youthful vandalism, possibly chasing after women with a band of friends and failure to observe church rituals,29 and in his History of Ivan IV, Kurbsky accuses the Tsar of committing real acts of brigandage and other evil deeds, ‘unbefitting to relate, but shameful too’.30 There is little evidence of Ivan's misbehaviour apart from his own confessions, but there is an obscure reference to something much more serious in a group of documents which suggest that in 1546 and early 1547, when Ivan was preparing for his coronation and his marriage, he also indulged in some of the most savage persecutions of those who had been his friends.
The source is a vypis', or note, on the second marriage of Vasily III. Included in this document is a so-called ‘prophecy after the event’, attributed to an eastern patriarch who foretold that the son of an adulterous union, like Vasily's second marriage, would be a ‘torturer, and a pillager of other people's property’, and described the way in which a number of princes were cruelly put to death. In July 1546 Ivan was in Kolomna with his army, and executed three of his boyars in front of his soldiers, for their entertainment, including F.S. Vorontsov, whom Metropolitan Makarii had once saved by interceding for him with the Shuiskys (see above p. 43). The patriarch's ‘prophecy’ is supported by entries in other regional chronicles to the effect that in 1547, while Ivan was inspecting the girls in his bride-show, he was also ordering the execution of Telepnev Obolensky's son, who was impaled opposite the walls of the Kremlin, and the beheading of Obolensky's nephew, ‘at the request of his [Ivan's] uncle Mikhail Vasil'evich Glinsky and his mother Anna’. A fifteen-year-old princeling was also dispatched, to the disgust of Kurbsky.31
