Ivan IV Vasilyevich (25 August 1530-28 March 1584), commonly known as Ivan the Terrible or Ivan Grozny, was Grand Prince of Moscow and all Russia from 13 December 1533 to 26 January 1547 (succeeding Vasili III) and Tsar of all Russia from 26 January 1547 to 28 March 1584 (preceding Feodor I). He infamously worked towards establishing the institution of serfdom (virtually enslaving Russia's peasant class), slaughtered up to 40,000 inhabitants of Novgorod, and killed his own son during an argument, but he also created a standing army and oversaw other reforms that transformed Russia from a medieval state to a fledgling empire.
Biography[]
Ivan Vasilyevich was born in Kolomenskoye, Grand Duchy of Moscow in 1530, the son of Grand Prince Vasili III and his Serbian-Tatar wife Elena Glinskaya. He succeeded his father in 1533 at the age of three, and a group of reformers united around the young Ivan and crowned him Tsar of all Russia in 1547 at the age of 16. Despite calamities triggered by the Great Fire of 1547 in Moscow, Ivan oversaw a peaceful and modernizing early reign. He worked with his reformist Chosen Council to establish the Zemsky Sobor parliament in 1549, revised the legal code, introduced elements of local self-government, and established the first Russian standing army, the streltsy. He also conquered the Khanate of Kazan in 1552 and the Khanate of Astrakhan in 1554-1556, two Golden Horde successor states, and significantly expanded the territory of Russia. The subjugation of these Muslim khanates transformed Russia into an empire. In 1551, the English Muscovy Company established trade ties with Russia, and Ivan attempted to form a military alliance with England and may have even proposed marriage to Queen Elizabeth I.
During the 1560s, however, the death of Ivan's first wife Anastasia Romanovna, Russia's devastation by drought and famine, the treachery of Ivan's advisor Prince Andrey Kurbsky, and unsuccessful wars with Poland-Lithuania, the Tatars, and the Swedes caused a decline of Ivan's mental health and an increase in his paranoia towards Russia's nobility. In 1564, he briefly abdicated before the boyars begged him to return to the throne, which he agreed to on the condition that he be granted absolute power. He proceeded to create the Oprichniki, Russia's first political police. He first targeted the princely clans of Russia, executing, exiling, or tonsuring prominent boyars after accusing them of conspiracy. By 1566, he forced 570 of Russia's 12,000 nobles to become oprichniks and expelled the rest. The oprichniks were granted free rein to seize peasant lands, causing peasants to flee, reduce overall grain production, and cause the price of grain to increase tenfold. A 1570 epidemic killed 10,000 in Novgorod and 1,000 daily in Moscow. Meanwhile, the Livonian War, which Ivan had launched against Sweden, Poland, Lithuania, and the Teutonic Order in 1558, was going poorly, and Ivan suspected Novgorod of planning to defect. In response, he sent the oprichniks to burn Novgorod, resulting in the massacre of up to 60,000 civilians. However, the oprichniks' failures during the Russo-Crimean War of 1571 resulted in Ivan disbanding the oprichnina. The Tatars even raided Moscow, aided by Turkish janissaries. Prince Mikhail Vorotynsky repelled this large army on 2 August 1572, but Ivan - who had sat out in distant Novgorod during the battle - killed Vorotynsky a year later. Ivan also oversaw the colonization of Siberia, giving the Stroganov merchant family a patent to do so in 1558. In 1574, he extended this patent to the lands beyond the Urals, and Yermak Timofeyevich defeated the Khanate of Sibir at the Battle of Chuvash Cape in 1582.
In 1581, Ivan killed his son Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich of Russia after the Tsar lashed out at his son's wife Yelena Sheremeteva for being improperly dressed due to her pregnancy; the Tsar struck his son in the head with his pointed staff, accidentally killing him and causing Yelena to suffer a miscarriage hours later. Ivan also murdered the magnate Dmitri Oblensky Ovchinin for criticizing his homosexual relationship with the courtier Fyodor Basmanov. He died from a stroke in 1584.