Robert Nisbet Bain

“ The death of his deeply beloved consort 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 (1560–1570) terrible and horrible things happened in the realm of Muscovy. The tsar himself lived in an atmosphere of apprehension, imagining that every man’s hand was against him. On the 3rd of December 1564 he quitted Moscow with his whole family. ”

“ The West was too strong for him. By the peace of Zapoli (January 15th, 1582) he surrendered Livonia with Polotsk to Báthory, 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, in the hope of securing some share in the benefits of civilization from the friendship of Queen Elizabeth, one of whose ladies, Mary Hastings, he wished to marry, though his fifth wife, Martha Nagaya, was still alive. ”

“ Ivan’s refusal to share his conquests with his brothers, and his subsequent interference with the internal politics of their inherited principalities, involved him in several wars with them, from which, though the princes were assisted by Lithuania, he emerged victorious. Finally, Ivan’s new rule of government, formally set forth in his last will to the effect that the domains of all his kinsfolk, after their deaths, should pass directly to the reigning grand duke instead of reverting, as hitherto, to the princes’ heirs, put an end once for all to these semi-independent princelets. ”

“ In 1330 Ivan extended his influence over Rostov by the drastic methods of blackmail and hanging. But Great Novgorod was too strong for him, and twice he threatened that republic in vain. In 1340 Ivan assisted the khan to ravage the domains of Prince Ivan of Smolensk, who had refused to pay the customary tribute to the Horde. Ivan’s own domains, at any rate during his reign, remained free from Tatar incursions, and prospered correspondingly, thus attracting immigrants and their wealth from the other surrounding principalities. ”

“ On the accession of Peter III. the condition of the unfortunate prisoner seemed about to be ameliorated, for the kind-hearted emperor visited and sympathized with him; but Peter himself was overthrown a few weeks later. In the instructions sent to Ivan’s guardian, Prince Churmtyev, the latter was ordered to chain up his charge, and even scourge him should he become refractory. On the accession of Catherine still more stringent orders were sent to the officer in charge of “the nameless one.” If any attempt were made from outside to release him, the prisoner was to be put to death ”

“ A little more than twelve months later, a coup d’état placed the tsesarevna Elizabeth on the throne (December 6, 1741) , and Ivan and his family were imprisoned in the fortress of Dünamünde (Ust Dvinsk) (December 13, 1742) after a preliminary detention at Riga, from whence the new empress had at first decided to send them home to Brunswick. In June 1744 they were transferred to Kholmogory on the White Sea, where Ivan, isolated from his family, and seeing nobody but his gaoler, remained for the next twelve years. ”

“ Subsequent revolts (1479–1488) were punished by the removal en masse of the richest and most ancient families of Novgorod to Moscow, Vyatka and other central Russian cities. After this, Novgorod, as an independent state, ceased to exist. The rival republic of Pskov owed the continuance of its own political existence to the readiness with which it assisted Ivan against its ancient enemy. The other principalities were virtually absorbed, by conquest, purchase or marriage contract—Yaroslavl in 1463, Rostov in 1474, Tver in 1485. ”

“ His father died when he was three, his mother when he was only seven, and he grew up in a brutal and degrading 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 hence he conceived an inextinguishable hatred of their whole order and a corresponding fondness for the merchant class, their natural enemies. ”

“ This movement coincided with a change in the family circumstances of Ivan III. After the death of his first consort, Maria of Tver (1467) , at the suggestion of Pope Paul II. (1469) , who hoped thereby to bind Russia to the holy see, Ivan III. wedded the Catholic Zoe Palaeologa (better known by her orthodox name of Sophia) , daughter of Thomas, despot of the Morea, who claimed the throne of Constantinople as the nearest relative of the last Greek emperor. The princess, however, clave to her family traditions, and awoke imperial ideas in the mind of her consort. ”

“ At a very early age he entertained an exalted idea of his own divine authority, and his studies were largely devoted to searching in the Scriptures and the Slavonic chronicles for sanctions and precedents for the exercise and development of his right divine. ”

“ See R. Nisbet Bain, The Pupils of Peter the Great (London, 1897) ; M. Semevsky, Ivan VI. Antonovich (Rus.) (St Petersburg, 1866) ; A. Brückner, The Emperor Ivan VI. and his Family (Rus.) (Moscow, 1874) ; V. A. Bilbasov, Geschichte Catherine II. (vol. ii., Berlin, 1891–1893) . (R. N. B.)
↑ Ivan V., if we count from the first grand duke of that name, as most Russian historians do ”