Ivan the Terrible (53 page)

Serious fighting began again on 30 July. It lasted several days, with intervals, and was very fierce, much of it hand to hand unlike the usual battles with the Tatars. The Russians were able to set up the
guliaigoroda
which gave shelter to their artillery and harquebus forces against the rain of arrows from the Tatar cavalry. A service noble, from Suzdal', with the very non-Russian name of Temir Adalykin, was able to take the murza Divey, one of the leading Tatar commanders, prisoner. The Tatars replied with a fierce assault and there were heavy casualties on both sides. But Vorotynsky manoeuvred in such a way as to take the Tatars in the rear; he left the
guliai-gorod
to be used by the commander from the
oprichnina
, Prince D.I. Khvorostinin with his gunners and a small force of mercenary Germans, and moved from its shelter to take the Crimean forces in the rear at the same time as Khvorostinin threw himself upon them. The Tatars did not withstand this double assault, two of the Khan's sons were killed and many high officials. Traditionally Vorotynsky is given credit for the victory, though Skrynnikov considers that he was appointed to lead the army only because of his rank, and that the victory was really due to the younger Khvorostinin. But there was another candidate for the honour of achieving victory: the thirteenth-century martyred miracle-worker, Prince Mikhail of Chernigov, whose relics had recently been transferred to Moscow.
⁵⁴

On 6 August 1572 Ivan received in Novgorod the news of the crushing victory of the Russian forces over the Crimean Tatars and their Turkish allies outside Moscow, in what was in fact a joint
oprichnina
and
zemshchina
operation, and the victory was celebrated with great banquets and rejoicings; ‘and on that day the church bells rang all day and until midnight and prayers were sung all night in churches and monasteries’.
¹
But the victory had shown up the weakness of the
oprichniki
in the military field.

When and why, and whether, Ivan decided to abolish the
oprichnina
remains unknown. No decree was ever issued winding it up and there is no evidence of Ivan's motives in bringing its activities to an end (or for that matter for starting it up). The theory, which Zimin still espoused in 1964, was that Ivan's primary purpose had been to remedy the ‘fragmentation’ of the Russian state by eliminating the appanages and their princes, and extending his control over the Church and Novgorod. In fact many of the appanages had already been eliminated under Ivan III and most of the few which remained were in the hands of members of the royal family and many had been set up by Ivan IV himself.
²

The actual process of winding up the
oprichnina
is hard to follow and historians have long been divided as to whether the old system was fully restored or whether the
oprichnina
continued to exist behind the scenes in the guise of the Tsar's
dvor
or court. Opinion now seems to be that its liquidation was genuine. The court continued, but its staff was much smaller, and the double administration of the country was gradually dismantled. Staden says, for instance, that confiscated estates were restored to their original owners because the Tsar felt they had to be conciliated, that the people from the
zemshchina
‘had resisted the Khan of Crimea, and the Grand Prince could no longer do without them’. He also says that no one was now allowed so much as to mention the name
of the
oprichnina
.
³
Certainly the armed forces had suffered grievously under the terror of the last years. Of twenty high ranking commanders who had led the campaign for the conquest of Polotsk in 1563 nine had been executed in the course of the ensuing ten years, including the most distinguished.
⁴

Ivan may also have decided to abolish the
oprichnina
because he thought it had outlived its usefulness, because it had already achieved his aims, or because he found that it was not an instrument of unlimited power and that such an unreliable institution could not achieve them. As a fighting force against external enemies it had proved a broken reed and the Tsar had been forced to call upon the older generation of seasoned fighters in the
zemshchina
. He may also have been struck by the fact that it had not served to save his third wife from poison, and therefore that it gave him no guarantee of security.
⁵

By autumn 1572 when Ivan embarked on his campaign to put an end to Swedish pretensions, the armed forces were no longer separated into two corps under separate commanders, and officers were united under one command under the overall supervision of the military chancellery.
⁶
Ivan did not abandon his use of terror. But it was easier to re-establish the unification of the armed forces, even it they were not of their former quality (leaving aside Ivan's own special guard), than to set up a new administration under a body of officials now drawn from both the
oprichnina
and the
zemshchina
, both decimated over the past years. The restoration of lands confiscated from members of the
zemshchina
by
oprichniki
proved difficult and was unprofitable for the new owners who received ravaged and ruined estates from which the peasants had fled.
⁷
There remained moreover an abyss between the
zemshchina
, the government of the land, and the
dvor
, or court of Ivan, which could not easily be bridged.

The financial strains created by war, plague, drought, taxation and famine were also acute, particularly in the territory of Novgorod and the north-east which had suffered so much from the ravages of the
oprichniki
, the constant shifting around of landowners and the displacement, flight or death of peasants by starvation, illness or brutality. Ivan made himself unpopular by forbidding in October 1572 any form of donation of land to monasteries. It had already been forbidden, evidently in vain, and Ivan himself had broken his own law, but he now revived a prohibition which did not increase his popularity either with the monks or those able to care by donations to monasteries for the future of their souls.
⁸

One piece of news reached Ivan unofficially in August which galvanized his foreign policy, and radically changed the political
horizon. Sigismund II Augustus had died at last on 19 July 1572 some ten days after the battle at Molodi. His death, which rendered the succession problem in Poland actual instead of speculative, as it had been until now, may have been one of the factors which led Ivan to abolish the
oprichnina
, the existence of which he had always endeavoured to keep hidden from the Poles, on the grounds that his candidature stood more chance as the ruler of a united country than of a divided one. The fate of the Polish throne had presumably been the object of discussion in the court of Ivan but there is little evidence of preliminary planning.
⁹
The King's death was officially communicated to Ivan in Moscow, in October 1572, by a Commonwealth envoy, F. Voropay, who asked for the prolongation of the three-year truce between their two countries, due to expire in July 1573. The envoys also took the initiative in proposing a candidate for the throne, namely Tsarevich Fedor, in an attempt to block Ivan's election. Ivan then, for the first time, spontaneously put forward his own candidature and tried to dispel the poor impression that his treatment of members of his own court had made on the Poles.

Taking the conduct of diplomacy into his own hands, Ivan urged Voropay to arrange for ambassadors to be sent from the Commonwealth to discuss with him the terms for an offer of the throne. In a very long speech, as usual, Ivan addressed the envoys emphasizing the advantages Lithuania would enjoy from union with Russia, what a good ruler and a strong defender he would prove:

Ivan went on to account for the reputation for harshness he had acquired by his need to fight against constant treason. It was this perpetual treason which had forced him to deviate from the path he would have followed with his forces in the battle against the Tatars in 1571. As a result he explained, the Tatars threw themselves into Moscow, which could have been defended with 1,000 men, and burnt it. But if the great men will not fight how can one expect the little men to do so? ‘Do they not execute traitors in your country?’ he asked the Commonwealth envoys. If he were offered the crown he would respect the liberties of the citizens of the Commonwealth and even increase them. They would see
how wicked and how kind he could be. He offered an amnesty to those Russians who had deserted Moscow for Lithuania –

As regards Livonia, added Ivan, ‘If I become your lord then Livonia, Moscow, Novgorod, Pskov, it will be all one.’ He did not wish one of his sons to be chosen, for they were to him like his two eyes, and anyhow they were too young to stand alone. As regards religion, there were adherents of Martin Luther in the Commonwealth who destroyed icons, and did not want him as their lord. ‘But I will say nothing about them because Holy Writ has been given to us not for brawling and quarrelling but for peace and submission.’
¹⁰

At this time Ivan was evidently wishing that he himself should be elected to the throne, but he wanted to cleanse his reputation from the charge of cowardice he had displayed before the battle with the Tatars in May 1571, and also to clear his name of the charge of cruelty towards his boyars. What was not discussed in any of these meetings between Ivan and the envoys was the means by which the government of the two or the three parts of the new united kingdom was to be organized, what relationship there would be, could there be, between the Boyar Council and Ivan's
dvor
on the one hand, and the Commonwealth Senate, Diet and dietines on the other.

One might think that a reputation for ruthlessness and the arbitrary use of power would make Ivan an unlikely choice for the Polish
szlachta
as ruler, but for some years now there had been a substantial rift between the run-of-the-mill nobles in both Poland and Lithuania and their respective magnates who, particularly in Lithuania, conducted themselves oppressively towards the poorer nobles. But Ivan was not prepared to be considered as one of many candidates however distinguished; he wished to be invited, and therefore did not send his own ambassadors to take part in the canvassing at the election
Sejm
in the Commonwealth.

Before he left Moscow, Ivan had another little matter to clear up, the relegation to a convent of his fourth wife, Anna Koltovskaia, which took place in October 1572. Nothing is known of the reasons for the separation.

Back in Novgorod, where Ivan now stayed more frequently, since Moscow, after the fire, was unliveable in, he had to reconstruct his court. Various buildings and palaces were prepared for his use, and huge stables for his horses, necessary for the cavalry ravaging the Finnish coasts in the course of the prosecution of the war against Sweden. But on 6 January 1573 he lost one of his most faithful servants. In the course of the renewed campaign against Sweden which Ivan had promised to John III, a widely vaunted attack on a Swedish held fort in Livonia, Paida, took place, in which King Magnus of Livonia and Sain Bulat Bekbulatovich, the Khan of Kasimov, took part as commanders of substantial Russian forces. The Russian attack was unexpected and the Swedish and Estonian forces were caught celebrating the feast of Epiphany, at the end of the Christmas festivities. The Russians advanced, destroying houses, killing the inhabitants and raping the women, meeting with practically no opposition. But when the local people put up some resistance, Maliuta Skuratov Bel'sky, to give him his full name, was killed. Ivan greeted his loss with grief and anger, and had his body conveyed to the monastery of Iosif of Volokolamsk where his family was buried, with a goodly sum of money to pray for him, and burnt all his Swedish and German prisoners alive.
¹¹
Though never a boyar, Maliuta Skuratov had long been the lynchpin of Ivan's more ruthless and sordid undertakings. Perhaps his last service to Ivan was the drowning of a sizeable number of his subjects in the river Volkhov in unknown circumstances.
¹²

The Boyar Council, which was now again united, was reconstructed in 1573 and consisted of fifteen boyars and six
okol'nichi
, an unusually large number, but it was soon to be reduced. Five boyars had come over from the
oprichnina
, including the distinguished military commander, Prince N.R. Odoevsky, brother of Vladimir of Staritsa's poisoned wife, uncle of her dead child. Nine boyars had belonged to the
zemshchina
. Until recently the senior member of the Council, though never a boyar, had been a baptized Tatar, Prince Mikhail Kaibulatovich, son of the one-time Khan of Astrakhan' (who was married to a Sheremeteva and hence a cousin by marriage to the Tsarevich Ivan). He had recently died and the senior boyar was again the indestructible Prince I.F. Mstislavsky. Prince M.I. Vorotynsky was also a member together with the boyars M.Ia. Morozov and N.R. Iur'ev Zakhar'in (Tsaritsa Anastasia's brother, Nikita Romanovich). The other hero of the defeat of Devlet Girey outside Moscow in July 1572, Prince D.I. Khvorostinin, was an
okol'nichi
who had served in the
oprichnina
.