IVAN IV., called "the Terrible" tsar of Mus covy, was the son of Vasily [Basil] III. Ivanovich, grand duke of Muscovy, by his second wife, Helena Glinska. Born on Aug. 25, 153o, he was proclaimed grand duke on the death of his father (1533), and took the government into his own hands in 1544, being then 14 years old. Ivan IV. had a neurotic strain in his character. His father died when he was three, his mother when he was only seven, and he grew up in a brutal and de grading environment where he learnt to hold human life and human dignity in contempt. He was maltreated by the leading boyars whom successive revolutions placed at the head of affairs, and he conceived an inextinguishable hatred of their whole order and a liking for the merchant class, their natural enemies. He threw to his dogs the last of his boyar tyrants, and announced his intention of assuming the title of tsar, a title which his father and grandfather had not dared to assume. On Jan. 16, 1547, he was crowned the first Russian tsar by the metropolitan of Moscow ; on Feb. 3 in the same year he selected as his wife from among the virgins gathered from all parts of Russia for his inspection, Anastasia Zakharina-Koshkina, the scion of an ancient and noble family better known by its later name of Romanov.
Hitherto, by his own showing, the private life of the young tsar had been abominable, but in 155o he summoned a Zemsky Sobor or national assembly, the first of its kind, to which he made public confession of the sins of his youth, and at the same time promised that the realm of Russia (for whose dilapidation he blamed the boyar regents) should henceforth be governed justly and mercifully. In 1551 the tsar submitted to a synod of prelates a hundred questions as to the best mode of remedying existing evils, for which reason the decrees of this synod are gelierally called stoglav or centuria. At this time Ivan deliberately broke with his disreputable past and surrounded himself with good men of lowly origin. The chief of these were Alexis Adashev and the monk Sylvester, men of obscure origin, and the best Muscovites of their day. The period of their administration coincides with the most glorious period of Ivan's reign—the period of the con quest of Kazan and Astrakhan.
In 1551 one of the factions of Kazan offered the whole khanate to the young tsar, and on Aug. 20, 1552 he began the siege with an army of 150,000 men and 5o guns. On Oct. 2 the fortress, which had been heroically defended, was taken by assault. The conquest of Kazan was the first territorial conquest from the Tatars, before whom Muscovy had humbled herself for genera tions; at Kazan Asia, in the name of Mohammed, had fought behind its last trench against Christian Europe marshalled be neath the banner of the tsar of Muscovy. For the first time the Volga became a Russian river. Nothing could now retard the natural advance of the young Russian state towards the east and the south-east. In 1556 Astrakhan fell almost without a blow. By 156o all the Finnic and Tatar tribes between the Oka and the Kama had become Russian subjects. Ivan was also the first tsar who dared to attack the Crimea. In 1555 he sent Ivan Sheremetev against Perekop, and Sheremetev routed the Tatars in a great two days' battle at Sudbishenska. Some of Ivan's advisers, including both Sylvester and Adashev, now advised him to make an end of the Crimean khanate, as he had already made an end of the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan. But Ivan recognized the difficulties involved. He coveted Livonia, which was com paratively near at hand and promised him a seaboard and direct communication with western Europe. Ivan IV. desired to raise Muscovy to the level of her neighbours. He proposed immigra tion into his tsardom of master-workmen and skilled artificers. But his neighbours combined to thwart him. Charles V. dispersed 123 skilled Germans whom Ivan's agent had collected and brought to Lubeck for shipment to a Baltic port. Therefore, when Sweden, Poland and Denmark were contesting the possession of Livonia, Ivan intervened in 1558. He captured Narva, Dorpat and a dozen smaller fortresses; then, in 156o, Livonia placed herself beneath the protection of Poland, and King Sigismund II. warned Ivan off.
Ivan now entered upon the second and evil portion of his reign. As early as 1553 he had ceased to trust Sylvester and Adashev, owing to their backwardness in supporting the claims of his infant son to the throne while he himself lay at the point of death. On his recovery he overlooked their ambiguous conduct, and they continued to direct affairs for six years longer. Then the dispute about the Crimea arose, and Ivan began to distrust their intelligence as well as their loyalty. In 156o both of them dis appeared from the scene, Sylvester into a monastery at his own request, while Adashev died the same year, in honourable exile as a general in Livonia. The death of his wife Anastasia and his son Demetrius, and the desertion of his one bosom friend Prince Kurbsky, about the same time, seem to have infuriated Ivan against God and man. During the next ten years (156o-157o)
terrible and horrible things happened in Muscovy. The tsar imagined that every man's hand was against him. On Dec. 3, 1564 he quitted Moscow with his whole family. On Jan. 3, 1565, he declared his intention to abdicate. The common people, whom he had always favoured at the expense of the boyars implored him to come back on his own terms. He consented to do so, but entrenched himself within a peculiar institution, the oprichina or "separate estate." Certain towns and districts all over Russia were separated from the rest of the realm, and their revenues were assigned to the maintenance of the tsar's new court and household, which was to consist of i,000 carefully selected boyars and lower dignitaries, with their families and suites, in the midst of whom Ivan henceforth lived exclusively. The duma, or council, still attended to the administration ; the old boyars still retained their ancient offices and dignities. But the tsar had cut himself off from all communication with them except on extraordinary occasions. The oprichniki trampled with impunity upon every one beyond the charmed circle. Their first victim was Philip, the saintly metropolitan of Moscow, who was strangled for condemning the oprichina as an unchristian institution, and refusing to bless the tsar (1569). Ivan had stopped at Tver, to murder St. Philip, while on his way to destroy the second wealthiest city in his tsardom—Great Novgorod. A delator of infamous character, one Peter, had accused the authorities of the city to the tsar of conspiracy; Ivan, without even confronting the Novgorodians with their accuser, proceeded at the end of 1569 to punish them. After ravaging the land he entered the city on Jan. 8, 157o, and for the next five weeks, day after day, massacred batches of every class of the population. Every monastery, church, manor-house, warehouse and farm within a circuit of Ioo m. was plundered and left roofless, all goods were pillaged, all cattle destroyed. Not till Feb. 13 were the miserable remnants of the population permitted to rebuild their houses.
An intermittent and desultory war, with Sweden and Poland simultaneously, for the possession of Livonia and Estonia, went on from 156o to 1582. Ivan's generals bore down their enemies by sheer numbers, capturing scores of fortresses and towns. But in the end the superior military efficiency of the Swedes and Poles invariably prevailed. Ivan had as his chief antagonist Stephen Bathory, one of the greatest captains of the age. The West was too strong for him. By the peace of Zapoli (Jan. 15, 1582) he surrendered Livonia with Polotsk to Bathory, and by the truce of Ilyusa he at the same time abandoned Ingria to the Swedes. The Baltic seaboard was lost to Muscovy for another century and a half. In his latter years Ivan cultivated friendly relations with England ; he wished to marry Mary Hastings, one of Elizabeth's ladies, though his fifth wife, Martha Nagaya, was still alive. Towards the end of his life Ivan acquired Siberia, which was first subdued by the Cossack hetman Ermak or Yermak in 1581.
In November 158o Ivan in a fit of ungovernable fury struck his eldest surviving son Ivan, whom he passionately loved, a blow which proved fatal. In an agony of remorse, he would now have abdicated, but the boyars absolutely refused his abdication. Three years later, on March 18, 1584, he died. During the last moments of his life he assumed the hood of the strictest order of hermits, and died as the monk Jonah.
Ivan IV. possessed extraordinary political foresight. He antici pated the ideals of Peter the Great, but the resources for their realization were lacking. His brutal and vicious manners pre pared the way for the horrors of "the Great Anarchy." Person ally, Ivan was tall and well-made, with high shoulders and a broad chest. His face had a sinister, troubled expression, but an enigmatical smile played perpetually around his lips. He was the best educated and the hardest worked man of his age. His mem ory was astonishing, his energy indefatigable. As far as possible he saw to everything personally, and never sent away a petitioner of the lower orders.
See S. M. Solov'ev, History of Russia (Rus.) vol. v. (St. Petersburg, 1895) ; A. Bruckner, Geschichte Russlands bis zum Ende des ',Sten Jahrhunderts (Gotha, 1896) ; E. Tikhomirov, The first Tsar of Moscovy, Ivan IV. (Rus.) (Moscow, i888) ; L. G. T. Tidander, Kriget mellan Sverige och Ryssland dren 1555-1557 (Vesteras, 1888) ; P. Pierling, Un Arbitrage pontifical au XVIe siecle entre to Pologne et la Russie (Bruxelles, 1890) ; V. V. Novodvorsky, The Struggle for Livonia, 1570-1582 (Rus.) (St. Petersburg, 1904) ; K. Waliszewski, Ivan le terrible (Paris, 5904) ; R. N. Bain, Slavonic Europe, ch. 5 (Cambridge, 1907). (R. N. B.; X.)