THE MUSCOVITE TSARDOM The reign of Ivan IV. (the Terrible) was an epoch of great and systematic reform. It gave its final shape to the Muscovite Tsar dom which it preserved until the epoch of Peter the Great. At the age of 17 Ivan demanded to be crowned as tsar (shortened from Latin Caesar) and he connected this official assumption of title with a legend according to which the imperial regalia had been handed over to his predecessor Vladimir Monomachos by a Byzan tine basileus. The Constantinopolitan patriarch was induced to confirm that legend but he substituted Vladimir the Saint for Vladimir Monomachos in order to make good a chronological error. Popular songs preserved the memory of Ivan IV. as a democratic tsar, who "ferreted out treason" (i.e., the boyars) "from Russian land." And indeed, he definitely deprived the "little dukes," who gathered at his court of their remaining sovereign rights and forced them to exchange their hereditary possessions for other landed estates, while their "service" to Moscow was made ob ligatory. To pass over to foreign countries was qualified as trea son. The same measures were extended to boyars. Both dukes and boyars tried to recompense themselves by assuming political power in the duma of the Tsar, and the most powerful of them formed a "selected Rada" (a sort of privy council) through which they ruled the state. They summoned the first Russian zernski sobor (1550)—"men of all people" (i.e., popular representatives), who revised the criminal code of Ivan III. They also took part in a Church council of 1551, where this code was signed and certain traditional rites in church and private life were sanctioned as specifically national. At two previous synods of 1547 and about 4o new Russian saints were canonised.
enemies he left Moscow (1564) and settled in Alexandrovskaya Sloboda. He then divided the kingdom into two parts : his private oprishnina which he ruled personally, and the remaining "land" (zemschina) which he handed over to a christened Tatar, Prince Simeon Bekbulatovich. Far from suspending reconstruction, this curious division helped to reorganise the Russian ruling class—the "men of service"—on more democratic lines. Ivan IV. imitated for this purpose Byzantine patterns. He strictly regulated the con nection between possession of landed estates and military obliga tions. His foreign policy—his long and successful war with Poland, Lithuania and Sweden in order to break through to the Baltic—also forced him to adopt reforms in the army and the financial system. Russian fusiliers (streltsi) and foreign mercenaries first appeared under Ivan IV. He also introduced new military taxation and or dered a first general description of taxable land (pistsoviya knighi) in order to make the levies proportionate to the record of lots of taxed land ; here too he borrowed his system from Byzantium. At the same time he centralised the receipts of the State in a "great treasury" while separating them from his own income, which was concentrated in the "great palace." Through its four boards (the "fourths") the "great treasury" collected taxes chiefly from the north, while the peasants of the Muscovite centre had to work for "men of (military) service." The nobles received the honorary title of "courtiers" (dvoriane), to distinguish their upper section— the tsar's guard—from the "sons of boyars," who formed the lower section—the provincial gentry. Both "courtiers" and "sons of boyars" were yearly sent to defend the western and the southern frontiers—especially the latter, which was fortified by walls and hedge-rows (zaseki), to ward off the Tatar incursions. The posts of commandants for each "campaign" were distributed by the cen tral board called razriadni prikaz.