Ivan the Terrible (3 page)

I have also adopted a number of expressions which may seem idiosyncratic to my readers, but which are based on my determination not to mislead them by using words which distort what they meant at the time. The first of these is the word ‘autocracy’, used everywhere now as the translation of the Russian
samoderzhavie
. In the sixteenth century, and later,
samoderzhavie
signified sovereignty.
Samoderzhets
was translated into English as ‘self-upholder’.
²³
Secondly, I use Russia, not Muscovy to describe the realm of the Tsars, and Russian as an adjective for both Rus' and Russia. Muscovy was only one principality forming part of Russia, and its Riurikovich Grand Princes maintained their dynastic claims to the principalities on the Dnieper which had been absorbed by Lithuania after the Mongol conquest. Thirdly, I have tried to evade the use of the name ‘Byzantium’. Thanks to Gibbon, It has become associated with deviousness, intrigue, and corruption, and leads readers to forget that Constantinople was founded by a Roman emperor, that for a thousand years it was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, using first the Latin, then the Greek language. Not that the Roman empire of Augustus, Tiberius, Nero, Heliogabalus was not also corrupt – but then we are less critical of our own fathers. Finally, faced with the real difficulty of finding suitable terms for the cavalry of Russia, I have borrowed from Professor Valerie Kivelson the designation
‘service gentry’ to describe the
boyarskiye deti,
and the later
dvoriane
of Russia because as a class they seem to me closest to the English landed gentry at a time when the latter were not at all genteel.

Highgate, 2004

It is with deep gratitude that I acknowledge all the help that I have been given in the preparation of this book. In the first place I must thank the Leverhulme Trust for a generous grant for research assistance to enable me to complete it. I also wish to thank Professors Michael Branch and George Kolankevich, successively Directors of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, now part of University College London, for the facilities which they granted me, as an Honorary Research Fellow, and which enabled me to make use of the rich collection of the Library of the School. My thanks also go to the Librarian, Dr Lesley Pitman, and the staff of the Library, for their kindness and patience with me, and to Vladimir Smith Mesa for extra special attention. I must also record my gratitude to the London Library, a centre of excellence if ever there was one, and to Raj Khan who looked after my computer.

I must single out five people whose help was invaluable. My old friend and colleague, Professor W.F. Ryan, who helped me with offprints and suggestions, read the whole work, and saved me from many infelicities. Needless to say he is not to be blamed for any which remain. Secondly, my new friend (made on the Internet!) Dr Sergey N. Bogatyrev, who was generosity itself, supplying me with offprints, photocopies of his articles, and suggestions for reading, read the whole of my MS, and allowed me to pick his brains in endless conversations. He too, however, must be absolved of responsibility if I have occasionally wilfully refused to follow his lead. And to my old friend, Professor H.M. Scott, who also read the early chapters and gave me sound criticism and advice. Fourthly, Mrs Gwyneth Learner, who took on the chore of being my research assistant and gave me invaluable help in areas beyond my reach. And finally Mrs Vlasta Gyenes, Senior Library Assistant at SSEES, without whose constant friendly and kind assistance I would not have been able to complete my work in the Library now that I can no longer
climb stairs or ladders. All these kind friends gave me enormous moral support, and sometimes physical support.

In Russia I am grateful to Professor R.G. Skrynnikov, who kindly gave me his book,
Tsarstvo Terrora
; to Professors A.B. Kamensky and S.A. Kozlov, who also sent me books, and to Dr Oleg Omel'chenko, who was more than kind in procuring books for me as well as photocopies of obscure articles.
Na dobruyu pamyat
'.

I am also grateful to Dr J. Lehtovirta, who gave me his book, to Dr Julia Gerasimova of Leyden University, for advice on illustrations, to Professor R. Frost, for much good advice, to Professor W.E. Butler for advice on Russian law, to Professor A. Pippidi, Director of the Institute of Modern History in Bucharest, who filled me in on the background to relations between Moldavia and Russia and sent me photocopies of articles, to Professor Averil Cameron who advised me on Byzantium, to Dr Susan Reynolds, who educated me in medieval history, to Professor John Guy who put me on the right track in English history, and to Dr N. Mears for information on the courtship of Queen Elizabeth by Erik of Sweden. I would also like to thank Robert Baldock at Yale University Press for his constant support, and Candida Brazil who coped with a difficult manuscript with unfailing patience and efficiency. Finally I am deeply grateful to Dr Stephen Sebag Montefiore, who gave me most useful help and information on sixteenth-century medicine and advised me and provided me with literature on the psychiatric problems of Ivan the Terrible.

Russia and Poland-Lithuania, mid-sixteenth century

The world the Grand Prince Ivan Vasil'evich was born into in 1530 was still somewhat strange and mysterious to western Europeans, though better known to travellers from Italy, the Holy Roman Empire and the one-time imperial Roman lands in the Balkans and the Middle East, now under Ottoman rule. Until the Mongol conquest in 1238–42, the Orthodox Christian Slavo-Scandinavian
¹
princes in Russia had maintained relations with the kings of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Moldavia, Hungary and France, and the Holy Roman Emperor, and there had been frequent intermarriages. Harold Hardrada, king of Norway, married a daughter of Vladimir Yaroslavich; the first wife of Grand Prince Vladimir Monomakh, whom he married in 1067, was a daughter of King Harold Godwineson of England; and the Kievan princess Anna, daughter of Iaroslav the Wise, married Henry I, King of France, in 1051.
²

The Mongol conquest profoundly affected the natural evolution of medieval, or Kievan, Russia, but there is no agreement among the experts as to the nature and extent of its impact.
³
It was a traumatic experience, coming only thirty-eight years after the fall of Constantinople to the Latin crusaders in 1204. This was also a considerable shock to the Orthodox Rus', whose religious capital was now in the hands of schismatics, and who had to look to Nicaea for ecclesiastical direction until 1296.

The Mongol conquest destroyed the remaining unity of Kievan Rus'.
⁴
A good deal of the south-western part of the old Kievan grand principality, including Kiev itself, which had been devastated, came under direct Mongol rule, and by the fourteenth century had been absorbed, mainly by conquest, into the Grand Principality of Lithuania. As a result
Kiev went one way and the city of Vladimir on the Kliaz'ma, founded in 1108 by Prince Vladimir Monomakh, went another, with consequences which will be discussed below. The principalities gravitating around the city of Vladimir, in the north-east, and the republic of Novgorod in the north continued under their own princes, subject to Mongol approval. The character of the north-eastern principalities defined the new community which arose around it. The climate was harsher, the winter was longer, the forest was denser, the days were shorter in winter though longer in the brief summer than in Kievan Rus'. Communication with the Eastern Roman Empire or central Europe was more difficult, and settlement was more recent in the north-east. The independent city republic of Novgorod was held by the Mongols on a somewhat loose rein, but it too formed part of the Mongol empire since its trade was of considerable importance to these rulers of the steppe.

Not only was the
zemlia
or land of Rus' thus divided, the north-east and the south-west losing touch with each other, but the fairly continuous contacts with eastern and central Europe which had marked the old ruling élite and the merchant class were much reduced – except for the city republics of Novgorod and Pskov, which continued to trade with the Hanseatic League, and the trade with the West which trickled through Smolensk. Vladimir and Moscow now participated more in trade ventures to the Middle East. There were no more Riurikid marriages with European royal and princely houses. There were some marriages with the Mongol ruling house, but not many after the conversion of the Golden Horde to Islam in 1340.

The Mongols did not settle in Rus', since the land was not suitable for the nomadic life which was the basis of the economy on which their huge cavalry army relied. Khan Baty established his capital in Saray, on the lower Volga, and summoned the Russian princes repeatedly to Saray, or sent them on to the Mongol capital Karakorum, in Mongolia, to have their
iarlyki
(patents to rule) renewed. This long journey was so exhausting that several princes, notably Alexander Nevsky, died on the way or the way back.

The khan of the Mongol empire had to be chosen among the descendants of Genghis Khan, the Golden Kin. Hence the Mongols were quite prepared to accept the Russian principle of confining the choice of princes to a ruling family, the Riurikids, descendants of the semi-mythical Scandinavian prince Riurik, and frequently accepted the choice made by the Russians, though they did not hesitate to reject it when they preferred another candidate. Their policy broadly was not to allow any principality to become too strong. They delegated the task of collecting
the heavy tribute imposed on the Russian lands to the princes, and eventually to the ruler of Moscow, though the assessment was made by Mongol officials. It is estimated that in the late fourteenth century the principality of Moscow paid between five and seven thousand rubles a year, a very large sum bearing in mind that this was not the only financial burden.
⁵

There has been much debate among historians on the scale of the physical destruction inflicted by the Mongol invasion, on the nature of Mongol influence on Russian social and political development, and the extent of Mongol responsibility for the perceived backwardness of sixteenth-century Russia. To understand the initial impact of this calamity on the Russians many factors must be considered: its suddenness, the destruction of the economy, the depopulation by death and enslavement and by the conscription of potential soldiers and craftsmen, the loss of skills, the plundered cities and devastated fields, all occurring with the speed of a whirlwind, and recurring whenever the Mongols thought the Russians needed a reminder of their subordinate status. The princes, who may well have been relatively protected from the worst effects of the conquest, had to learn to manoeuvre, to intrigue, lie and bribe, in order to achieve their ends, to submit to the demands of their masters, however humiliating.

Inevitably most of the Russian written sources dealing with this period are biased against a people whom they saw as a cruel and destructive oppressor belonging to an alien faith, the Ishmaelites or sons of Hagar.
⁶
Yet Russians and Mongols frequently cooperated on the battlefield, there was some intermarriage, and judging by relationships in the sixteenth century, there was no deep-seated racial prejudice. Moreover, the Russian
ulus
⁷
was but a small and relatively unimportant part of the vast lands ruled over by the Golden Horde. Hence most of the political and diplomatic activity of the Khans was oriented towards the East, where their power originated. The portrayal of the Mongols at this time as barbarians living in tents does not do justice to the sophistication of the imperial administration in the west, based on the capital Saray, on the lower Volga, where there was a luxurious court, the streets were paved and there were mosques for the Moslem Mongols and a Russian bishop to minister to the Russian community of craftsmen and soldiers in Mongol service, as well as caravanserais to lodge the vast trading expeditions.

However, from the latter part of the fourteenth century the Mongol hold on Russia was affected by discord within the Golden Horde. The victory of Dmitri Donskoi, Grand Prince of Vladimir and Prince of
Moscow, supported by some other princes, over a Mongol force in 1380 at the Field of Kulikovo raised the prestige of Moscow among the Russian princes, though it was followed by a Mongol revival under Tokhtamysh, who razed Moscow in 1382. Tokhtamysh and his Russian allies in turn were destroyed by Tamerlane who, from his base in Samarkand, devastated Saray, but refrained from destroying Moscow. In the early fifteenth century the Golden Horde broke up into the Khanate of Crimea, the Khanate of Kazan' and the Great Horde. The two sons of the Khan Ulug-Mehmed of the Golden Horde became vassals of Grand Prince Vasily II, and founded, under Russian protection, the Khanate of Kasimov, on the Oka river. Its Mongol ruler helped Vasily II to regain his throne in the Russian civil wars of 1430–36 and 1445–53, which arose out of the conflict between the traditional Russian principle of lateral succession to the throne (to the next eldest brother) and hereditary succession from father to son, the principle which emerged victorious from the struggle.
⁸
It was against this background of conflict and confusion, of occasional alliances and occasional strife, that the final confrontation took place in 1480, on the River Ugra, between the remnants of the Mongol Great Horde, with its allies in the Crimea and in Poland–Lithuania, and a Muscovite army, with its Mongol allies, the khanates of Kazan', Astrakhan' and Kasimov, under Grand Prince Ivan III of Moscow. There was actually no battle, since both sides withdrew before the armies could engage. But from this date Moscow ceased to regard any Mongol horde as its overlord, though it continued to collect the tribute within Russia and distribute it as presents among its Tatar allies on a smaller scale.
⁹
Muscovite leadership in the two major confrontations between Russians and Mongols, at the Field of Kulikovo in 1380 and on the River Ugra in 1480, as well as its victory in the fifteenth-century civil wars, reinforced the Russian perception that the Grand Duchy of Vladimir/Moscow had become the leading principality in Rus', and Ivan III gradually asserted his sovereignty (
samoderzhavie
) over the remaining independent Russian principalities including, in a notional sense, those which now formed part of the Grand Principality of Lithuania (see below). The theological interpretation of this ‘victory’ also served to increase the authority of Moscow, for as the Tverian author of The Tale of the Death in the Horde of Michael Yaroslavich of Tver tells it, ‘God gave Jerusalem to Titus not because he loved Titus but to punish Jerusalem’. Thus victory came to Moscow to punish the unbelievers.
¹⁰