Ivan IV of Russia

“ Ivan would never have gained the title of Great from his deeds in war. He won it, and with some justice, from his deeds in peace. He was great in diplomacy, great in duplicity, great in that persistent pursuit of a single object through which men rise to [Pg 63] power and fame. This object, in his case, was autocracy. It was his purpose to crush out the last shreds of freedom from Russia, establish an empire on the pernicious pattern of a Tartar khanate, which had so long been held up as an example before Russian eyes, and make the Prince of Moscow as absolute as the Emperor of China. ”

“ If his contemporaries did not always do justice to the great unificator of the land of Russia, neither is posterity always just to him. We must allow that much had been prepared by his predecessors, and this was also recognised by contemporaries; but it is nevertheless impossible not to acknowledge that Ivan towers far above his predecessors, both by his solution of ancient problems—the unification of Russia (which he had almost completed) and the throwing off of the Tatar yoke—and the raising of new ones. The ability to take advantage of circumstances places Ivan in the rank of great men. ”

“ He resolved to seize the opportunity thus placed in his hands to crush all his enemies at one blow, and to inaugurate in old Russia a reign of terror that should recall the days of Ivan IV. The particular point of attack had been his taste for foreign fashions, for shaven chins, and abbreviated garments. These therefore should be the rallying-sign of the Russia of the future. Long beards had been the standard of revolt; long beards must fall. He ordered all the gentlemen of his realm to shave, and even performed that office with his own hand for some of the highest nobles of his court. ”

“ Victorious in war, Ivan was, in peace, a wise, enlightened, and magnificent prince. He assumed great state, embellished his capital, welcomed at his court scholars fleeing from the infidel conquerors of Byzantium, and endeavored, in Moscow, to revive the glories of Constantinople. He extended his favors to all members of the Greek communion; prelates came to the Russian metropolitan for consecration, and the patriarch of Jerusalem found refuge in Russia from the tyranny of the Sultan of Egypt. While solicitous for the national faith, he was tolerant of other religions. ”

“ The empire of the Horde was so broken up that Ivan achieved an almost bloodless triumph, which made Russia free. In wars with Lithuania, Western Russia was reconquered up to the Soja. Ivan married Sophia Palæologus, a niece of the last Christian emperor of the East. She taught him "to penetrate the secret of autocracy." Numerous Greek emigrants of different arts and professions came to Moscow. Ivan took for the new arms of Russia the two-headed eagle of the Byzantine Cæsars, and thenceforward Russia looked on herself as the heir of the Eastern Empire. ”

“ A bloodthirsty despot, Russia yet owes him much. The people, demoralised by Tartar rule, needed rigid laws and severe treatment. Ivan promulgated a code far superior to any previously in use. He invited to Russia foreign mechanics, artists, and men of science; established the first printing-press seen in the country; and laid the foundation of Russian trade, by a treaty of commerce with our own Elizabeth. By the conquest of Kazan, of the kingdom of Astracan, and of districts adjacent to the Caucasus, he extended the limits of the Russian empire. ”

“ Thus, the macchiavellism of Ivan prospered. It is true that, by the confidence with which he inspired the horde, and the terrible war which he waged against his kinsmen, he restored to Russia a tranquillity to which she had long been a stranger. A dawning of order and justice reappeared under a sceptre acquired and preserved by such horrible acts of injustice; the depredations to which Russia had been a prey were repressed; commerce again flourished; great marts and new fairs were established, in which were displayed the productions of the East, of Greece, and of Italy ”

“ This is the theory of morals peculiar to the period to which Ivan's name is attached. The ideal it evolves is one of material greatness and brute force—a twofold postulate to which the Russian race has proved itself ready to sacrifice everything else, though it has endeavoured to delude itself as to the value of the end pursued, and the extent of the sacrifice it has entailed. In this other dream, Tsar and people both had their part, and they were to make it a living reality on the day when Peter took Ivan's place, and completed the incarnation which gave birth to modern Russia. ”

“ Ivan the Terrible was the third of the independent Tsars; and already under Ivan, sometimes called the 'Great'—to whom indeed belongs the honour of having finally liberated Russia from the Tartar yoke—endeavours had been made to enter into relations with various European nations. Foreigners, too, were encouraged to visit Russia and settle there. The movement of foreigners towards Russia increased with each succeeding reign ”

“ He was content with the banishment of many others, and then Ivan IV. peacefully commenced his reign. He seemed a gentle, indolent youth; very confiding in those he trusted; inclined to be a voluptuary, loving pleasure and study and everything better than affairs of state. In 1547 he was crowned Tsar of Russia, and soon thereafter married Anastasia of the house of Romanoff, whom he devotedly loved. ”

“ Russian historians are apt to claim that Ivan was a great man marred by a cruel disposition and an environment which fostered it. No one will doubt either the savagery of his disposition or the barbarity and peculiar pressure of his environment, but his constructive work hardly entitles him to be called great. His domestic reforms seem to have been made out of antipathy to the boyars, and we should probably not be far wrong in attributing his other services to Russia mainly to a selfish motive. ”

“ VII. RUSSIA. RUSSIA: IVAN III.—For two centuries Russia paid tribute to the Tartar conquerors in the South, the "Golden Horde" (p. 283) . The liberator of his people from this yoke was Ivan III.,—Ivan the Great,— (1462-1505) . In the period when the nations of the West were becoming organized, Russia escaped from its servitude, and made some beginnings of intellectual progress. Ivan was a cold and calculating man, who preferred to negotiate rather than to fight ”

“ Kezan is ours. The khan is in your power, the people are slain or taken captive. Unspeakable riches have fallen into our hands."
"Let God be glorified," cried Ivan, raising his eyes and his hands to heaven. Then taking the sacred standard in his own hands, he entered the city, planted the banner in one of the principal squares, ordered a Te Deum there to be chanted, and then directed that upon that spot the foundation should be laid of the first Christian temple. All the booty Ivan surrendered to the army, saying,
"The only riches I desire, are the repose and the honor of Russia." ”

“ In 1580, when Russia was sore beset on every side, a council assembled at Moscow eagerly responded to the monarch's call for aid, and relinquished to the crown all the landed estates which the Church had acquired by gift or purchase from the princes of Moscow. At this critical juncture Ivan's wonted energy deserted him. Hidden from his people in the gloomy retreat of Alexandrov, he revelled and caroused with his favorites, giving his son in marriage and espousing his seventh wife, while defeat and disaster overwhelmed the empire. ”

“ He only took men's bodies, but Ivan was to take their souls, and shut them up in that iron cage of his, within which all Russia was to live, bent double, for centuries to come.
It is easy to show how this cage was built. When a sufficient tale of 'comrades,' tempted from neighbouring Princes, had been enticed away, and Moscow was overflowing with men fit for service, the lord of the city grew eager to put down the system of free enlistment which had enabled him to fill up his fighting corps. ”

“ His boyars were desperate and determined, and even with their foreheads in the dust were conspiring against him. They were no less terrible than he toward their inferiors. There never could be anything but anarchy in Russia so long as this aristocracy of cruel slave-masters existed. Ivan (like Louis XI.) was girding himself for the destruction of the power of his nobility, and, as one conspiracy after another was revealed, faster and faster flowed the torrent of his rage. ”

“ Or, as the national poet, Pushkin, has sung, will there be a pouring of many Slavonian rivulets into the Russian sea, a powerful attraction of the Slav races towards a common centre to create an era of peace and development within, whereby Russia may rise free and rejoicing to face her great destinies? Hard and bitter is the shaping of nations. Uvar Ivanovitch still fixes his enigmatical stare into the far distance. ”

“ All these descendants of Rurik or Guedymin, boïars and Tsar alike, had ruled in Russia in the old days—each man apart, on his own appanage. The Government was collective now—one man on the throne, the others at the head of an office or a province. But none the less were they all members of the same company, of the same faimly, and no man of them had any right to say, 'This house is mine, you must go out of it!' And as far as the individuals were concerned, how would Ivan have filled their places? ”

“ It was in this reign (1581-1582) that a brigand chief, Irmak by name (a Cossack, in the service of the Czar) , crossed the Urals with a few hundred followers, and made the conquest of the vast region of Siberia, then under the dominion of the Tartars. Ivan sent thither bishops and priests. He had to cede Livonia to the Swedes, who, with their allies were too strong to be overcome. In Russia, he put down the aristocracy, and crushed all resistance to his personal rule. Whatever tyranny and cruelty this result cost, it prevented Russia from becoming an anarchic kingdom like Poland. ”

“ In The Citizen we have a beautiful picture of the vision of freedom that came to Big Ivan in downtrodden Russia, and we see him and the gentle Anna as they follow the beckoning finger of hope across Europe and the broad ocean until, in the words of Ivan, they found a home in a land “where a muzhik is as good as a prince of the blood.” ”

“ A regency was formed, composed of his mother and a council of boyars, belonging to different factions, who were constantly at war with one another. At no time had Russia been more poorly governed. As Ivan grew up, he was despised and maltreated by the haughty nobility; his favorites were abused. In order to divert his mind from nobler occupations and keep him in profound ignorance of public affairs, he was amused and entertained with coarse and brutal games which developed his innate cruelty and ferocity, and made him, at an early{132} age, the terror of those who were subordinated to him. ”

“ The old devil then went through Ivan's kingdom to secure recruits for the army, saying: "Come, shave your heads [the heads of recruits are always shaved in Russia] and I will give each of you a red hat and plenty of vodki" (whiskey) .
At this the fools only laughed, and said: "We can have all the vodki we want, for we distill it ourselves; and of hats, our little girls make all we want, of any color we please, and with handsome fringes."
Thus was the devil foiled in securing recruits for his army; so he returned to Ivan and said: "Your fools will not volunteer to be soldiers. ”

“ There is only one way in which the besieged can bring the struggle to a victorious conclusion—that employed by Peter the Great under the walls of Poltava; and the valley of the Viélikaïa notwithstanding, the abandonment of Livonia threw the political, military, and social development of Russia back more than a hundred years.
Once Ivan gave up Livonia, the object of Batory's campaign was attained. The King, though he, too, might make reservations as to the future, could not refuse to treat, nor could he, Possevino being present, decline a mediator accepted by the Tsar. ”

“ They were great friends, and during their long confidential talks one question often came uppermost, What was to be done with Ivan when he grew up? In a country like Russia, where sons almost invariably followed the calling of their fathers, and every man’s position was assigned him by the fact of his birth, it was peculiarly difficult to find a niche for a waif like Ivan. A mujik, of course, he could never be; nor a priest, since he was not a popovitch, or priest’s son; nor a merchant, that would have been a terrible degradation for one who was born a boyar ”

“ Before he had been long in office, he gave way altogether under the double responsibility of guiding the affairs of Russia and directing the education of the future emperor. Ivan's mother saw the chance of asserting her rights which the weakness of the duke afforded to her. She was a resolute woman; and she seized her opportunity by banishing Biren to Siberia, and taking his place as Regent of the Empire and guardian of her infant son. ”

“ The barbarian horde at Kezan still continued to annoy Russia with very many incursions. Some were mere petty forays, others were extended invasions, but all were alike merciless and bloody. In February, 1550, Ivan IV., then but twenty two years of age, placed himself at the head of a large army to descend the Volga and punish the horde. The monarch was young and totally inexperienced in war. A series of terrible disasters from storms and floods thinned his ranks, and the monarch in great dejection returned to Moscow to replenish his forces. ”