WEBVTT - What Was Terrible About Ivan the Terrible? 0:00:01.890 --> 0:00:07.550 Welcome to BrainStuff, a production of iHeart Podcasts. Hey BrainStuff, 0:00:07.610 --> 0:00:13.149 Lauren Vogelbaum here. History has witnessed horrifying atrocities committed by 0:00:13.220 --> 0:00:16.620 world leaders, yet only one of them is known as Terrible, 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:20.820 Ivan the Terrible. But what did this medieval Russian ruler 0:00:20.900 --> 0:00:25.700 do to earn his foreboding nickname? For starters, he bloodied 0:00:25.739 --> 0:00:28.850 his own subjects in a series of sweeping repressions. He 0:00:28.890 --> 0:00:32.090 fought unending wars that cost his country dearly in life 0:00:32.229 --> 0:00:36.590 and wealth. But he also implemented military and judicial reforms, 0:00:36.909 --> 0:00:40.310 and built up Russia's power and trade capacity. In the 0:00:40.330 --> 0:00:44.169 late 1700s, Russian historian Mikhail Shabratov wrote that Ivan was 0:00:44.570 --> 0:00:51.620 notable among earthly rulers for intelligence, legislation, ambition, conquests, losses, pride, baseness, 0:00:52.020 --> 0:00:56.110 and severity. But Ivan didn't begin his reign as a 0:00:56.130 --> 0:01:01.990 bloodthirsty tyrant. Ivan IV Vasilyevich was born in 1530, and 0:01:02.030 --> 0:01:04.340 when he was just three years old, his father, Grand 0:01:04.400 --> 0:01:09.200 Prince Ivan III Vasily, died of an infection. Ivan immediately 0:01:09.260 --> 0:01:12.420 became the Grand Prince, destined to become the country's ruler 0:01:12.560 --> 0:01:15.919 once he came of age. Throughout his childhood, he was 0:01:15.980 --> 0:01:19.830 targeted by various groups of power-hungry elites called boyars, a 0:01:19.930 --> 0:01:23.330 noble class landowners who were hoping to expand their influence 0:01:23.370 --> 0:01:28.190 and wealth. Meanwhile, Ivan's mother died, possibly was murdered, and 0:01:28.330 --> 0:01:33.010 the boy himself was essentially neglected. The boyars were clannish 0:01:33.050 --> 0:01:36.170 in their allegiances and wielded control in civil affairs and 0:01:36.190 --> 0:01:40.690 the military. As they bickered and murderously conspired against each other, 0:01:40.970 --> 0:01:44.229 the young Ivan grew to seriously resent them. It was 0:01:44.270 --> 0:01:48.060 a sign of things to come. When he turned 16 0:01:48.060 --> 0:01:51.180 in 1547, Ivan was handed the reins to the country, 0:01:51.500 --> 0:01:54.520 given the title of Tsar and Grand Prince of all Russia. 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:58.330 he was the country's first officially crowned Tsar, though his 0:01:58.370 --> 0:02:02.270 father and grandfather had both used the title occasionally. It 0:02:02.350 --> 0:02:05.310 lent a divine element to his powers and hearkened back 0:02:05.350 --> 0:02:08.870 to the family's supposed connections, or at least parallels, to 0:02:08.910 --> 0:02:13.290 the Byzantine and Roman emperors. In his first years as leader, 0:02:13.530 --> 0:02:17.840 Ivan was less terrible and more peaceful and progressive. He 0:02:17.860 --> 0:02:21.340 attempted to reform and modernize Russia. He and his chosen 0:02:21.380 --> 0:02:25.139 council updated and improved the codes of law. He formed 0:02:25.180 --> 0:02:28.460 a standing army of full-time soldiers to encourage good training 0:02:28.500 --> 0:02:32.340 in professionalism with commanding rank based on merit, not nobility. 0:02:33.540 --> 0:02:36.060 He implemented the practice of self-government in some regions of 0:02:36.100 --> 0:02:39.620 the country. And he embraced Christian theology and worked to 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:44.620 improve justice throughout the Tsardom. So maybe Ivan wasn't so 0:02:44.650 --> 0:02:47.970 terrible after all? We have more to discuss there, but 0:02:48.290 --> 0:02:51.110 either way, the terrible was not a term applied to 0:02:51.169 --> 0:02:54.680 Ivan during his own lifetime. It's not even clear when 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:58.430 after his death this moniker first appeared, though historians generally 0:02:58.490 --> 0:03:01.530 trace it to the 1700s at the earliest, well over 0:03:01.550 --> 0:03:06.329 a century after his death. Furthermore, the original Russian-language term 0:03:06.530 --> 0:03:10.130 was grozny, and it wasn't necessarily used as a pejorative. 0:03:11.430 --> 0:03:14.010 For the article this episode is based on, HowStuffWorks spoke 0:03:14.050 --> 0:03:17.050 via email with James Pickett, an associate professor of history 0:03:17.169 --> 0:03:21.110 at the University of Pittsburgh. He said, The terrible is 0:03:21.190 --> 0:03:25.130 actually a translation issue. In Russian, grozny means something more 0:03:25.150 --> 0:03:28.210 like inspiring awe or fear, similar to the way the 0:03:28.310 --> 0:03:31.210 English terrible can be used as in the terrible wrath 0:03:31.270 --> 0:03:35.990 of God, i.e. inspiring fear. Ivan did some nasty things, 0:03:36.050 --> 0:03:39.430 to be sure, but then so did greats like Catherine 0:03:39.490 --> 0:03:42.050 and Peter, who were every bit as terrible in their 0:03:42.110 --> 0:03:48.270 own rights. Of course, Ivan the awe-inspiring doesn't have quite 0:03:48.290 --> 0:03:50.770 the same ring to it, and as a ruler, he 0:03:50.830 --> 0:03:54.880 was just getting started. After a great fire in Moscow 0:03:55.120 --> 0:03:57.520 and the sickness and death of his first beloved wife 0:03:57.640 --> 0:04:01.800 in the 1550s, Ivan disbanded his chosen council and moved 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:04.640 toward an autocracy, a form of government in which a 0:04:04.700 --> 0:04:09.180 single person holds absolute power. Then, after one of his 0:04:09.240 --> 0:04:12.940 best military officers defected to join the enemy, then Poland, 0:04:13.240 --> 0:04:17.520 in 1564, Ivan split Russia into two types of territory, 0:04:17.540 --> 0:04:22.680 the Zemstvina and the Okhristina. The Zemschina was ruled more 0:04:22.700 --> 0:04:25.900 or less as usual by boyars and other government administrators. 0:04:26.500 --> 0:04:30.180 But the Oprishnina was where Ivan became the ultimate czar 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:33.620 of everything, where he could rule by fear, destroy the 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:35.680 boyars that he had come to hate as a child, 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:40.539 take their wealth, and consolidate his own power. The Pristina 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:44.420 was not a single continuous landmass, but rather a blobby 0:04:44.480 --> 0:04:47.529 conglomeration of territory that included a lot of the state's 0:04:47.589 --> 0:04:53.090 financial resources and property in every major city. HowStuffWorks also 0:04:53.150 --> 0:04:56.230 spoke via email with Michael Khodorkovsky, a history professor at 0:04:56.270 --> 0:05:01.100 Loyola University Chicago. He said, To achieve his goals, Ivan 0:05:01.260 --> 0:05:05.099 drowned Russia in blood. He murdered thousands of boyars and 0:05:05.180 --> 0:05:08.690 high church officials. The lands and property belonging to both 0:05:08.810 --> 0:05:12.180 were taken into his own treasury. He burned down and 0:05:12.250 --> 0:05:15.480 killed thousands of civilians in Russian cities that were deemed 0:05:15.580 --> 0:05:20.779 to be rebellious. To carry out these deeds, Ivan created 0:05:20.820 --> 0:05:25.180 the oprychniki, a type of political or secret police. They 0:05:25.200 --> 0:05:28.200 were chosen for their extreme loyalty, and they dressed in 0:05:28.279 --> 0:05:31.520 black and rode in black carriages driven by black horses. 0:05:32.380 --> 0:05:35.760 They had the freedom to purge anyone deemed traitorous, however 0:05:35.800 --> 0:05:39.140 they saw fit. They displayed symbols of a dog's head 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:42.100 and a broom, meant to symbolize their willingness to hound 0:05:42.140 --> 0:05:46.770 their enemies and sweep them away. All sorts of atrocities ensued, 0:05:46.970 --> 0:05:51.410 ranging from imprisonment to execution and impalement. Even women and 0:05:51.450 --> 0:05:54.730 children were killed. Ivan went on to have at least 0:05:54.830 --> 0:05:57.680 five other wives, a few of whom were poisoned or 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:03.560 sent to monasteries. Ivan's mental state only exacerbated these appalling acts. 0:06:04.740 --> 0:06:09.710 Khodorkovsky said, Ivan IV saw treasonous plots everywhere, and like 0:06:09.770 --> 0:06:13.500 all dictators past and present, he inevitably crossed the line 0:06:13.560 --> 0:06:16.180 into the world of paranoia, where one could not tell 0:06:16.240 --> 0:06:19.200 a reasonable suspicion from a product of his sickened mind. 0:06:20.040 --> 0:06:23.380 Some believed he became mentally ill, and he probably was 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:29.350 by modern standards. Ivan also warred constantly during his reign. 0:06:29.910 --> 0:06:34.350 His unsuccessful wars with Poland, Lithuania, and Sweden took many lives. 0:06:35.190 --> 0:06:38.210 But some of his conflicts succeeded in growing Russia into 0:06:38.250 --> 0:06:42.679 a larger state. Pickett said, What I find most fascinating 0:06:42.750 --> 0:06:45.950 about his legacy in Russia is his state building. Before 0:06:46.010 --> 0:06:49.500 Ivan IV, in the 15th century, Russia was under various 0:06:49.540 --> 0:06:53.920 degrees of Mongol control, or at least Mongol successor state control, i.e. 0:06:53.960 --> 0:07:00.110 the Golden Horde, gradually becoming more autonomous. Ivan IV ended 0:07:00.150 --> 0:07:03.410 that and centralized both fiscal and military rule in a 0:07:03.430 --> 0:07:06.690 way that hadn't been seen before in the region. His 0:07:06.790 --> 0:07:09.980 ongoing conflicts netted the annexation of lands including the Volga 0:07:10.020 --> 0:07:12.660 River region to the Caspian Sea in the southwest and 0:07:12.700 --> 0:07:16.800 parts of Siberia in the east. Lower nobility lost power 0:07:16.840 --> 0:07:20.060 to the Tsar, and the common people under them became serfs. 0:07:21.140 --> 0:07:24.480 These resources set Tsarist Russia up to become a major 0:07:24.520 --> 0:07:29.820 world power. Still, Ivan's adept political maneuvering was overshadowed by 0:07:29.860 --> 0:07:33.640 his willingness to remove his opponents by force. The last 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:37.270 decade of his reign was characterized by savage brutality. A 0:07:37.370 --> 0:07:41.250 slight suspicion of disloyalty, a rumor, a wrong word, could 0:07:41.290 --> 0:07:46.610 lead to the suspect's arrest, cruel torture, and execution. Khodorkovsky said, 0:07:47.190 --> 0:07:49.760 After Ivan died, his body was found to have large 0:07:49.820 --> 0:07:53.050 amounts of mercury. there were speculations that he was severely 0:07:53.250 --> 0:07:56.010 ill and used it as medicine, or that he participated 0:07:56.070 --> 0:07:59.630 in some rituals that involved alchemy, or that he was poisoned. 0:08:00.410 --> 0:08:03.870 As with all dictators who surround themselves with secrecy and suspicion, 0:08:04.390 --> 0:08:10.150 his end was as predictable as it remains uncertain. Even now, 0:08:10.490 --> 0:08:13.470 hundreds of years later, Ivan's legacy has an impact on 0:08:13.490 --> 0:08:18.760 the country. Khodorkovsky especially stressed two components of Ivan's reign— One, 0:08:18.880 --> 0:08:24.020 of course, is that he forcefully moved Russia towards an autocracy. Secondly, quote, 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:27.660 his image was later used by the Soviet dictator Stalin 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:30.790 to justify his own bloodbath in the country and claimed 0:08:30.810 --> 0:08:33.790 that Russia needed a strong leader and that sacrifices for 0:08:33.809 --> 0:08:37.150 the sake of Russia's glory were inevitable. Just as Russia's 0:08:37.230 --> 0:08:40.510 current president, Vladimir Putin, relies on the images of Ivan 0:08:40.610 --> 0:08:43.650 IV and Stalin to convey the same message and validate 0:08:43.730 --> 0:08:51.970 his own dictatorial rule. Today's episode is based on the article, 0:08:52.130 --> 0:08:55.350 What Was So Terrible About Yvonne the Terrible, on HowStuffWorks.com, 0:08:55.490 --> 0:08:58.270 written by Nathan Chandler. BrainStuff is a production of iHeart 0:08:58.290 --> 0:09:02.059 Podcasts in partnership with HowStuffWorks.com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang. 0:09:02.559 --> 0:09:05.640 For more shows from iHeart Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app, 0:09:05.920 --> 0:09:08.949 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.