Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Mankey listener discretion advised.
Speaker 2: Hey guys, this is.
Speaker 1: Danas Schwartz, the host of Noble Blood. If you want
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Speaker 1: every week. Every month I do a bonus episode where
Speaker 1: I talk to someone about a historical period piece movie.
Speaker 1: This month July I talk to my sister about the
Speaker 1: Cough Terrible movie The Other Bolin Girl. And on the
Speaker 1: Patreon every season we have a brand new exclusive sticker club.
Speaker 2: So yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Obviously the best support for the show is just listening,
Speaker 1: So thank you so much. Let's get into it. If
Speaker 1: you were a tourist traveling in Russia on May twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, and you happened to be walking through Moscow's
Speaker 1: Tretchikov Gallery, you would have heard a terrible sound, first
Speaker 1: the tearing of a metal pole away from its security barrier,
Speaker 1: then the shattering of glass guard. Someone would have screamed.
Speaker 1: The smell of vodka was hovering in the air. It
Speaker 1: was eight pm outside, it was just growing dark. Amidst
Speaker 1: the chaos came the sound of a canvas being slashed once,
Speaker 1: then twice, then a third time. The ruined painting was
Speaker 1: called Ivan the Terrible and his Son, considered the Mona
Speaker 1: Lisa of the Tretchikov by its most ardent curators. The
Speaker 1: painting was painted in eighteen eighty five by Ilyaureppin, the
Speaker 1: master of late nineteenth century Russian realism.
Speaker 2: If the painting his.
Speaker 1: Title conjures images of a loving father cradling his child,
Speaker 1: think again. We're closer to Saturn devouring his son territory.
Speaker 1: Here in the painting, Tsar Ivan has haunted eyes. He's
Speaker 1: cradling a man with a bleeding head, wound and a
Speaker 1: limp body. Ivan is looking out over the younger man's head,
Speaker 1: wide eyed, with a look that clearly says, oh God,
Speaker 1: what now?
Speaker 2: That man?
Speaker 1: Ivan is known to history as the Terrible. He was
Speaker 1: the first Tsar of Russia, crowned in fifteen forty seven.
Speaker 1: He remade Russia. He was married at least seven times.
Speaker 1: He brutally murdered thousands, But among those countless massacres, one
Speaker 1: murderer stands out as especially horrifying. The painting all has
Speaker 1: an unofficial name, Ivan the Terrible killing his son the
Speaker 1: philicidal image is too much horror for some to bear.
Speaker 1: The man who slashed the painting in twenty eighteen, who
Speaker 1: would confess to getting drunk on vodka in the museum
Speaker 1: cafe and then being quote overwhelmed by something, was not
Speaker 1: the first to deface the painting. A century earlier, the
Speaker 1: painting was defaced for the first time, also with three
Speaker 1: slash marks. What were the vandals responding to in this
Speaker 1: particular work of art, What did they hate so much
Speaker 1: that they had to rip paint from canvas, remove the
Speaker 1: depravity from sight? And why is it that both times
Speaker 1: these vandals guided their hands by inches centimeters so that
Speaker 1: they tore through the sleeve and the collar, the tip
Speaker 1: of the and the ear.
Speaker 2: Of the painting subject.
Speaker 1: But they never removed a single flake of paint from
Speaker 1: Ivan's haunted eyes. Perhaps it's because Ivan, looking wide eyed
Speaker 1: to the future, is experiencing double panic, not only a
Speaker 1: phylicide of his son by the first wife, the one
Speaker 1: that he loved best, but also the horror of a
Speaker 1: succession crisis. So many rulers throughout history prayed for a
Speaker 1: male successor divorcing or banishing or beheading their wives in
Speaker 1: order to get one. But Ivan brought his fate upon himself.
Speaker 1: Ivan the Terrible, First Czar of Russia had just murdered
Speaker 1: by his own hand his one and only competent male heir.
Speaker 1: I'm Danish schwartz and this is noble blood. Two hundred
Speaker 1: years before Catherine the Great and the Romanov dynasty would
Speaker 1: ascend to the Russian throne, before there were even official
Speaker 1: Russian czars, a different Russian dynasty was dealing with a
Speaker 1: succession crisis. It was August fifteen thirty and the nineteenth
Speaker 1: ruler of the Ruric dynasty was waiting to find out
Speaker 1: whether the child being born to his wife was male
Speaker 1: or female. Vasily the third Ivanovitch was fifty one.
Speaker 2: Years old and childless.
Speaker 1: He was Grand Prince of Moscow, the area that would
Speaker 1: later become the Tsardom of Russia, and the woman in
Speaker 1: labor was his second wife. This felt like his last chance.
Speaker 1: His first wife, Salamonia, had given him no male heirs
Speaker 1: after twenty one years of marriage, so he divorced her
Speaker 1: despite the controversy and has her shipped off to a monastery. Coincidentally,
Speaker 1: Henry the Eighth in England was dealing with a similar
Speaker 1: lack of male heirs after a twenty plus year marriage
Speaker 1: at the exact same time, but back in Russia, post divorce,
Speaker 1: Vassili remarried the much younger Elena Glinskaya, only twenty years old,
Speaker 1: less than half of her new husband's age. She had
Speaker 1: literally not yet been born when Vassili and his first
Speaker 1: wife had gotten married, and now Elena was in labor.
Speaker 1: The fate of the dynasty now rested upon the sex
Speaker 1: of the child that.
Speaker 2: She would have.
Speaker 1: Young Elena breathed heavily, sweat glistening on her forehead, and
Speaker 1: she pushed for the final time, and then there was
Speaker 1: a sigh of relief in the room. The child was
Speaker 1: a boy, to be named Ivan. The crisis was averted.
Speaker 1: The Ruric dynasty, thus far, nineteen generations long, male heir
Speaker 1: to male heir remained intact. Ivan's father died when he
Speaker 1: was only three, leaving Ivan and a younger brother, Yuri behind.
Speaker 1: In early Russia, the older son was destined to become
Speaker 1: the ruler, but there was extra pressure in Ivan's case,
Speaker 1: not quite a typical air and despair situation, because Yuri
Speaker 1: might have been disabled, but he wasn't considered competent at
Speaker 1: the time to rule. Ivan was named Grand Prince of
Speaker 1: Moscow as a toddler, not exactly an age when most
Speaker 1: people generally showed an interest in taxation or international relations.
Speaker 1: His mother, Elena ruled for him with such power and
Speaker 1: ambition that she actually inspired a rebellion against her in
Speaker 1: fifteen thirty seven, and then died the following year at
Speaker 1: the age of thirty in what has long been speculated
Speaker 1: to have been a poison. Some historians are almost certain
Speaker 1: of it. Others say that the background amounts of arsenic
Speaker 1: and mercury found in her exhumed corpse may just have
Speaker 1: been the normal amount of poisons in a sixteenth century
Speaker 1: Muscovite bloodstream. Either way, Ivan was both the holder of
Speaker 1: the most powerful title of Russia and an orphan by
Speaker 1: the age of eight years old. His youth meant that
Speaker 1: the ruling classes of Russia had almost ten years to
Speaker 1: fill with their own violent power struggles before the young
Speaker 1: prince could rise to any meaningful throne. A lot of
Speaker 1: bloody and complicated political machinations followed, but the important thing
Speaker 1: to know is that they all involved a group of
Speaker 1: people called the Boyars, a ruling class of a.
Speaker 2: Couple hundred families.
Speaker 1: They were basically ruling Russia in this time, and they
Speaker 1: were responsible for raising the child Ivan and his brother.
Speaker 1: A letter to his friend andre Krubsky, a grown Ivan
Speaker 1: would look back at this time, writing that the Boyar's
Speaker 1: quote were bent on acquiring wealth and glory and were
Speaker 1: quarreling with each other. And what have they not done
Speaker 1: me and my brother Yuri of blessed memory? They brought
Speaker 1: up like vagrants and children of the poorest. What have
Speaker 1: I not suffered for want of garments and food?
Speaker 2: End? Quote?
Speaker 1: At the age of eight, Ivan had already lost his parents,
Speaker 1: and now he felt himself and his little brother mistreated
Speaker 1: by the grown ups who were left behind. It was
Speaker 1: the start of a grudge against the Boyars that he
Speaker 1: would hold for the rest of his life. It was
Speaker 1: also perhaps the start of his education in the bloody
Speaker 1: mechanics of murder, warfare, and destruction. But as much as
Speaker 1: the Boyars fought for positioning back when Vasili the third
Speaker 1: had been alive, he had clearly wanted his son Ivan
Speaker 1: to be his successor. Vasili had even gotten a child
Speaker 1: sized helmet made for his little firstborn son, featuring all
Speaker 1: the adult regalia of a future ruler. So on January sixteenth,
Speaker 1: fifteen forty seven, seventeen year old Ivan was crowned not
Speaker 1: only Prince of Moscow like his father, but Tsar of
Speaker 1: all russ It was the first time any Russian ruler
Speaker 1: had been called tzar, a word derived from the Latin caesar.
Speaker 1: It was a reference to the titles of the Old
Speaker 1: Testament kings and Byzantine emperor, but above all it suggested
Speaker 1: a rule ordained by God. This God ordained teenager Ivan
Speaker 1: had in the meantime been spending a decent amount of
Speaker 1: his adolescence trying to find a foreign wife and failing,
Speaker 1: I just don't trust their foreign temperaments, he would decide,
Speaker 1: only after he had almost certainly been turned down. But
Speaker 1: don't feel too bad for Ivan. Here he would make
Speaker 1: up for the romantic failures of his teenage years with
Speaker 1: a long list of wives.
Speaker 2: Later.
Speaker 1: The first of these, Anastasia Romanovna, he married one month
Speaker 1: after his coronation. Russian names are very similar, but don't
Speaker 1: confuse this Anastasia with the much more famous Anastasia Romanov
Speaker 1: who comes along during the Russian Revolution we are still
Speaker 1: squarely in the sixteenth century. Here back to Ivan and
Speaker 1: his first wife, Anastasia. They were both seventeen. Anastasia was
Speaker 1: from a powerful Russian family and had been chosen from
Speaker 1: as many as fifteen hundred potential wives brought to the
Speaker 1: Kremlin for the Czar to examine, And although he'd wanted
Speaker 1: a foreign wife earlier in his life, presumably to bolster
Speaker 1: his global power, by all accounts, Ivan loved Anastatia. Their
Speaker 1: marriage was happy, maybe even blissful. They had six children together.
Speaker 1: They seemed to balance each other's temperaments. Ivan was excitable,
Speaker 1: Anastasia affable but calm, and able to pacify her husband's
Speaker 1: darkest tempers. Legends and stories and movies now view Anastasia
Speaker 1: as the one great true love of Ivan's life, but
Speaker 1: he couldn't have her forever. In fifteen sixty, in Unlucky,
Speaker 1: thirteen years after their wedding, Anastasia died. Ivan was grief stricken.
Speaker 1: Modern historians see his mental health faltering here. Emotionally, he
Speaker 1: seemed to fall apart. He grew paranoid that the boy AARs,
Speaker 1: those old hated enemies of his youth, had poisoned his wife,
Speaker 1: perhaps in a misguided effort to poison him. Who knows,
Speaker 1: maybe they had had a hand in murdering his mother too,
Speaker 1: who internally Ivan vowed to take revenge and what was
Speaker 1: left of his beloved wife. Of their six children, only
Speaker 1: two survived. Ivan Ivanovitch born fifteen fifty four and six
Speaker 1: years old at the time of his mother's death, and
Speaker 1: Fyodor three years younger. Just a note for listeners that yes,
Speaker 1: both our Ivan the Terrible and his son are named Ivan.
Speaker 1: Must have been great for the guy's ego, but I
Speaker 1: know it can be hard to keep track of I'll
Speaker 1: be calling Ivan the Terrible Ivan and his son Ivan
Speaker 1: Ivanovitch to help us keep it straight. Ivan Ivanovitch's younger brother, Fyodor,
Speaker 1: was considered slow at the time. Perhaps today we might
Speaker 1: call him developmentally disabled. But what we know is he
Speaker 1: was not considered competent to rule, and if God forbid
Speaker 1: something should happen to his older brother, it meant that
Speaker 1: the dying ynasty was in a precarious situation. If this
Speaker 1: family dynamic sounds familiar.
Speaker 2: To you, you're right.
Speaker 1: The older Ivan and his younger brother Yuri were in
Speaker 1: a very similar position when their own mother died.
Speaker 2: As we'll see.
Speaker 1: Ivan's life would come to replicate his father's life in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, though with more tragic ends. In
Speaker 1: any case, Fyodor was not considered competent, and so the
Speaker 1: young Ivan Ivanovitch was Big Ivan's clear hope as heir
Speaker 1: to the dynasty, his only hope, it seemed. When the
Speaker 1: young boy was just three years old, his father Ivan
Speaker 1: gave him a mini helmet emblazoned with double headed eagles,
Speaker 1: just like the one Ivan's own father had given him.
Speaker 1: It was on Ivan Ivanovitch the entire future of the
Speaker 1: tsardom rested.
Speaker 2: His father.
Speaker 1: Ivan was first Tsar of Russia, and he was going
Speaker 1: to need a second. Ivan's rule was bloody. He got
Speaker 1: that name the Terrible from somewhere, after all.
Speaker 2: Although it is a little bit of.
Speaker 1: A misnomer to modern ears, the Terrible may have also
Speaker 1: been a signifier more like the awesome awe inspiring in
Speaker 1: his great power. Terrible, let's not forget, is a hair's
Speaker 1: breadth from terrific. After his wife Anastasia's death, Ivan embarked
Speaker 1: on the Livonian War, a long and losing battle for
Speaker 1: a route to the Baltic Sea. Around fifteen sixty four.
Speaker 1: In what a modern person might view as a bit
Speaker 1: of a temper tantrum. He threatened to abdicate in fifteen
Speaker 1: sixty five, five years after Anastasia's death, he decided not
Speaker 1: to abdicate after all. Instead, he would have a bit
Speaker 1: of twisted fun. Ivan separated himself from the dayDay life
Speaker 1: of Russia, left Moscow and installed himself in a private
Speaker 1: court called the Oprichnina. The name can still strike fear
Speaker 1: into a Russian heart. From his Oprichnina, Ivan could massacre
Speaker 1: whomever he wanted, and who he wanted, who he had
Speaker 1: wanted ever since he was a child, were the boyars.
Speaker 1: Ivan is said to have sent memorials of over three
Speaker 1: thousand executed boyars to monasteries around the country. He directed
Speaker 1: massacres in a reign of terror that lasted seven years.
Speaker 1: Perhaps the worst was the massacre at Novgorod, in which
Speaker 1: his forces brutally murdered thousands for no obvious reason. Was
Speaker 1: Ivan acting out of grief, revenge, paranoia, pure politics, the
Speaker 1: a moral privileged syndrome of so many young princes destined
Speaker 1: to rule from the time that they were born. We
Speaker 1: don't know the Oprichnina's official goals and dogma were never
Speaker 1: totally clear. Documents from the period were destroyed in a fire,
Speaker 1: so Ivan's motives are one of many things that we
Speaker 1: have to guess about. I do want to say this
Speaker 1: Aprichnina has a really weird literal translation. While a lot
Speaker 1: of sources define it as a private court, and the
Speaker 1: Cambridge History of Russia notes that its etymology is from
Speaker 1: opriche separate, the historian Edward L. Keenan notes that the
Speaker 1: term actually had a specific meaning in Ivan's time. It
Speaker 1: was the legal term for the so called widows might
Speaker 1: that is, the widow's portion the property left over for
Speaker 1: the widow of a deceased member of the Moscow Cavalry.
Speaker 1: I can't emphasize enough what a bizarre term this is
Speaker 1: for the headquarters of a violent czar of Russia. As
Speaker 1: Keenan says, quote, Russian historians have been very reluctant to
Speaker 1: let the term mean what it means. This reluctance is
Speaker 1: the reason why we have to use the untranslated term
Speaker 1: in English, much to the chagrin of undergraduate history majors
Speaker 1: end quote. I think Ivan was weirdly possibly declaring himself
Speaker 1: a widow. He was taking the revenge he felt was
Speaker 1: owed him as a widow. It's a strange bit of
Speaker 1: gender bending for a guy who was so brutally using
Speaker 1: his masculine forces as head of state, but it's also
Speaker 1: an important insight, possibly into his mental state. To me,
Speaker 1: it lends some credence to the story that Ivan really
Speaker 1: did love his first wife, Anastasia, and that he really
Speaker 1: was in mourning over her to the point of madness.
Speaker 1: So was it the brutal, bizarreness of Ivan's political vision
Speaker 1: that would eventually cause him to quarrel with his own son,
Speaker 1: or was it something else, because Ivan wasn't otherwise acting
Speaker 1: like much of a morning widower. In fact, he got
Speaker 1: married again almost immediately after Anastasia's death, to a beautiful
Speaker 1: Cherkisian princess named Maria. Ivan was thirty one at the time,
Speaker 1: but his bride was the same age as Anastasia had
Speaker 1: been at their wedding, only seventeen. As Taylor Swift would
Speaker 1: later say, I'll get older, but your lovers stay my age.
Speaker 1: The Tsaritza Maria died eight years later in fifteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: at age twenty five. From then on, Ivan gave his
Speaker 1: little son no dearth of stepmothers. He married five more
Speaker 1: times between fifteen seventy and fifteen eighty. His third wife, Marfa,
Speaker 1: died within days of their wedding. His fourth, fifth, and
Speaker 1: seventh wives were sent away to monasteries, just like Ivan's
Speaker 1: own father's first wife had been. So little is known
Speaker 1: about the sixth wife that historians are not entirely in
Speaker 1: agreement that she existed at all. It was one year
Speaker 1: into Ivan's sixth or possibly seventh marriage, November fifteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: when his son raced into the room to find his
Speaker 1: father in a paroxyism of violence. Tsarevich ivan Ivanovitch was
Speaker 1: twenty seven years old at this point.
Speaker 2: Looking at his.
Speaker 1: Air running toward him, Ivan the Terrible must have seen
Speaker 1: a chip off the old block. His son had already
Speaker 1: been married three times by this point, his first two
Speaker 1: wives had already been sent off to the monastery. Someday,
Speaker 1: like Ivan, this son would rule Russia. But Ivan Ivanovitch
Speaker 1: wasn't running for no reason. Ivan Ivanovitch which his third
Speaker 1: wife had been running ahead of him into that fateful
Speaker 1: room where her father in law was. Her name was
Speaker 1: Yolena Sharamityeva, and she was pregnant possibly with the future
Speaker 1: heir to the throne, the continuation of Ivan's line. Her father,
Speaker 1: the Czar, had come upon her wearing gasp, only her
Speaker 1: underwear in the fifteen hundred. The underwear was likely even
Speaker 1: more modest than what women wear today, but it didn't matter.
Speaker 1: Ivan had gone berserk. He lashed out at her, dealing
Speaker 1: her a blow to the stomach, such a blow that
Speaker 1: he threatened the fetus's life the life of his own
Speaker 1: possible grandchild. Hearing the shouts, Ivan Ivanovitch raced in to
Speaker 1: protect his pregnant wife. You thrust my first wife into
Speaker 1: a nunnery for no good reason, the young man yelled
Speaker 1: at his father. He was beside himself in a frenzy.
Speaker 1: You did the same thing to my second, and now
Speaker 1: you strike my third, causing the sun in her womb
Speaker 1: to perish. Hot Headed Ivan the Terrible, unmoored by pain
Speaker 1: or grief or decades of violence, or perhaps just insane,
Speaker 1: or perhaps just blindingly, thoughtlessly idiotically angry, turned on his son.
Speaker 1: Did the boy think he was the only one who
Speaker 1: had lost a beloved wife? Did he think he was
Speaker 1: the only one who had lost children? Ivan the Terrible
Speaker 1: couldn't control his rage. He had killed so many by
Speaker 1: this point, so thoughtlessly, so easily before. It wasn't any
Speaker 1: harder this time. The pointed staff was already in his hand.
Speaker 1: He lunged forward, extended the rod, and struck his son
Speaker 1: in the head. Immediately, the rage drained out of Ivan.
Speaker 1: His son, his one chosen air, lay bleeding on the floor.
Speaker 2: What have I done? He must have been thinking.
Speaker 1: His little son, who had once been given a child
Speaker 1: sized helmet, was now moments from death. Oh God, no,
Speaker 1: or maybe it didn't happen that way at all. That's
Speaker 1: the story that's been told down the centuries, usually spoken
Speaker 1: with barely controlled glee at all of the sordid details.
Speaker 1: The chivalrous son defending his wife, the near naked pregnant
Speaker 1: daughter in law, the evil that Ivan had done to
Speaker 1: so many families over the years. Finally arriving at his
Speaker 1: own home by his own hand. It all feels ready
Speaker 1: made for a legend, or a soap opera, or a
Speaker 1: painting or an episode of a podcast.
Speaker 2: But is it true?
Speaker 1: As I was writing the story, I looked back to
Speaker 1: see when in August the murder had taken place. After all,
Speaker 1: Allegedly it had been so hot that the pregnant Milena
Speaker 1: was lounging in her underwear. Then I remembered that this
Speaker 1: happened in November in Russia. It would have been unusual
Speaker 1: for Ivan to rush right past his daughter in law's
Speaker 1: ladies in waiting in order to be able to catch
Speaker 1: her in some scandalous state in the first place. Also,
Speaker 1: by this point, Ivan was suffering from a degenerative spinal
Speaker 1: condition that, by most accounts, severely inhibited his movement. Could
Speaker 1: he have physically overpowered his much younger, able bodied son.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's completely believable that a bloodthirsty Czar of
Speaker 1: Russia who had used his position to murder so many
Speaker 1: could have conceivably murdered his own. That a man with
Speaker 1: a long history of violent instability might have been unable
Speaker 1: to restrain his temperer. That a man who had sent
Speaker 1: countless wives off to nunneries and whose other wives had
Speaker 1: died of mysterious poisonings might to assault a pregnant woman.
Speaker 1: But might the story have been something else? Was it
Speaker 1: instead a political dispute, a father son disagreement over the
Speaker 1: best course of military action or governance? An Ivan who
Speaker 1: stood with a rod in his hand as his pompous son,
Speaker 1: a son who had always had a father, who hadn't
Speaker 1: been orphaned and hadn't been mistreated at the age of eight,
Speaker 1: dared to criticize him over losing the Livonian War, dared
Speaker 1: to say he wanted troops under his own command, as
Speaker 1: though his father didn't know what he was doing. Or
Speaker 1: was the death of Ivan Ivanovitch a smaller and more
Speaker 1: domestic and less violent tragedy. A letter from Ivan a
Speaker 1: few weeks before said that he couldn't travel because of
Speaker 1: his son's illness. Perhaps Ivan Ivanovitch was simply struck down
Speaker 1: by ill health, though I want to add, who's to
Speaker 1: say that the younger Ivan wasn't sick when his father
Speaker 1: killed him. Maybe Ivan just conveniently sped the inevitable with violence.
Speaker 1: Even the letter suggesting an illness only has one dubious source.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons Ivan's reign is so fascinating is
Speaker 1: that most of the primary documents have been destroyed. We
Speaker 1: will never know what happened on that night between the
Speaker 1: young heir and his father, but what we do know
Speaker 1: is that Ivan Ivanovitch, the only competent successor to Ivan
Speaker 1: the Terrible's enormous legacy was dead. A lot happened in
Speaker 1: Russia after the death of the air but most important
Speaker 1: for our story, just two and a half years after
Speaker 1: the death of his son, Ivan the Terrible died too.
Speaker 1: His less competent younger son, Ivanovitch's younger brother, Fyodor, took over.
Speaker 1: In fifteen ninety eight. At forty one, Feodor died childless,
Speaker 1: ending the Ruric dynasty after twenty one generations. Fyodor's death
Speaker 1: threw Russia into the Infamous Time of Troubles, a violent
Speaker 1: power struggle that lasted fifteen years and saw a famine
Speaker 1: that killed nearly a third of population that time, concluded
Speaker 1: in sixteen thirteen with the instatement of the Romanov dynasty,
Speaker 1: which would go on to include Catherine the Great and
Speaker 1: continue until the Bolshevik Revolution in nineteen seventeen, when the
Speaker 1: last Romanov rulers were unseated and all of the dynasty's
Speaker 1: heirs were killed, including that young girl with the same
Speaker 1: name as Ivan the Terrible's beloved first wife, Anastasia. But
Speaker 1: Ivan's death wasn't the end of Ivan's legacy. Even the
Speaker 1: end of the Russian monarchy wasn't the end of his legacy.
Speaker 1: Three hundred years after Ivan's death. In eighteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: a Russian painting at the Itinerant exhibition caused such a
Speaker 1: stir that the police needed to be called in. The
Speaker 1: painting was Ivan the Terrible and his Son Ivan, by
Speaker 1: the contemporary master Ilia Rippine. In nineteen thirteen, the painting
Speaker 1: was vandalized for the first time, after which, legend has it,
Speaker 1: the curator was so mad with himself for not protecting
Speaker 1: the painting that he threw himself under a train. Is
Speaker 1: the story true? Who knows?
Speaker 2: It?
Speaker 1: Strikes me as appealingly Russian, straight out of Anna Karenina.
Speaker 2: What is true? Is this?
Speaker 1: The story of Ivan and his Son has become a
Speaker 1: kind of political lightning rod, a case study in controlling
Speaker 1: a narrative. It's striking that both Stalin and Putin have
Speaker 1: tried to rehabilitate Ivan's image, as if he were just
Speaker 1: a strong masculine leader doing what needed to be done
Speaker 1: in a difficult role. Stalin even edited history books to
Speaker 1: be gentler towards Ivan. It's striking that in twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: a museum near the Kremlin put on a popular exhibition
Speaker 1: that basically renamed Ivan the Terrible, Ivan the not so Bad,
Speaker 1: And it's striking that in twenty eighteen a man came
Speaker 1: to the museum with no particular plan, but of all
Speaker 1: the paintings in the gallery, when he held the metal
Speaker 1: rod of the security poll in his hand, he chose
Speaker 1: to lunge and strike at just that one. That's the
Speaker 1: story of the philocidal end of Ivan the Terrible's family dynasty.
Speaker 1: But stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear
Speaker 1: about but one last way the famous painting has been
Speaker 1: recreated today. Ill European's infamous painting showed up again recently
Speaker 1: in a pretty suddenly relevant piece of pop culture, Servant
Speaker 1: of the People, a TV comedy starring Vladimir Zelensky, the
Speaker 1: current President of Ukraine. In the show, Zelensky played the
Speaker 1: President of Ukraine for three seasons before his actual election.
Speaker 1: But that's not where the uncanniness ends. In the season
Speaker 1: one finale, he meets a fantastical Ivan the Terrible, all
Speaker 1: dressed up in sixteenth century garb. Zelensky's character and Ivan argue,
Speaker 1: Russia will come free you, says Ivan. Zelensky says Ukraine
Speaker 1: doesn't need freeing by the Russians. It wants to join Europe.
Speaker 1: Ivan gets confused, then upset, then angry. Finally, in a
Speaker 1: fit of rage, he pushes Zelenski, who falls arms played,
Speaker 1: and then, in a move right out of art history,
Speaker 1: Ivan iiO falls to his knees, gathers a limp Zelensky
Speaker 1: in his arms, opens his eyes wide, and howls. It
Speaker 1: is an unmistakable exact replica of the famous painting. If
Speaker 1: you have Netflix, you can see it in the show
Speaker 1: Servant of the People, season one, episode twenty three, at
Speaker 1: about the eight minute twenty four second mark. It's probably
Speaker 1: relevant to pause here and say that a European, although
Speaker 1: widely known as perhaps the greatest painter in the Russian
Speaker 1: National School of Art, was actually Ukrainian and in servant
Speaker 1: of the People's version of the painting, Zelenski and Ukraine
Speaker 1: are cast as the Sun killed by the murderous leader
Speaker 1: of Russia, all the way back in twenty fifteen, seven
Speaker 1: years before the tragic current war happening today. Noble Blood
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild
Speaker 1: from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted by me Dana Schwartz.
Speaker 1: Additional writing and researching done by Hannah Johnston, Hannah'swick, Mira Hayward,
Speaker 1: Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is produced by
Speaker 1: rema Il Kayali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive
Speaker 1: producers Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows. The Doctor