Ivan the Terrible (82 page)

56
Zimin,
Oprichnina
, p. 176.

57
Tikhomirov,
Rossiiskoe gosudarstvo
, pp. 53–4;
PSRL
XXIX,
Aleksandro-Nevskaya letopis'
, pp. 350–1.

58
Zimin,
Zemskii Sobor 1566 god
, p. 222.

59
Ibid., p. 351.

60
Kliuchevsky uses the bureaucratic phrase ‘po dolzhnosti’, see his
Sochinenia,
vol. II,
kurs russkoi istorii
, part 2, Lecture XL, pp. 383ff.

61
J.L.H. Keep, ‘The Decline of the Zemsky Sobor. Afterword’, in
Power and the People, Essays on Russian History
, Boulder Col., 1995, pp. 82 and 73ff. for a summary of the debate among several historians, and notably J. Torke, on the question of the existence of genuine representative institutions in Russia.

62
S.M. Kashtanov in ‘O tipe russkogo gosudarstva XIV–XVI vv’, in
Chtenia pamiati V. B. Kobrina: Problemy otechestvennoi istorii i kul'tury perioda feodalizma
, Moscow, 1992, p. 86, had put forward the view that though Russia was following the general economic path taken by other countries in Europe, it was seven to eight centuries behind, and that it was vital to take this backwardness into account in any comparative approach. Quoted in S.N. Bogatyrev, ‘“Smirennaia groza.” K probleme interpretatsii istochnikov po istorii politicheskoi kul'tury Moskovskoi Rusi’, in
Istochnikovedenie i kraevedenie v kul'ture Rossii. K 50-letiu Sigurda Ottovicha Schmidta. Istorikoarkhivnomu Institutu
, Moscow, 2000, pp. 79–93.

63
The word ‘state’ (
gosudarstvo
in modern Russian) is often used interchangeably with ‘empire’ (
tsarstvo
) or realm.

64
See Inge Auerbach's illuminating analysis of Kurbsky's political conceptions, which were probably typical of a Russian aristocrat, in ‘Die politische Vorstellungen …’,
JGOE
, 117, 1969, pp. 177–83.

65
I am paraphrasing here the very perceptive article by S.N. Bogatyrev, cited in n. 15, at p. 80.

66
See Neale,
Elizabethan House of Commons,
p. 417 for a list of Elizabeth's Parliaments. In the course of a reign lasting forty-seven years there were thirteen sessions of Parliament. The rest of the time Elizabeth managed without.

67
Fletcher,
Of the Russe Commonwealth
, p. 23. His use of the word Parliament has misled many a Russian. In general the mixture of Herberstein and Horsey on which his work is based leads to odd remarks.

1
Schlichting, ‘A Brief Account’,
CASS
, IX, 2, p. 248. And note 140.

2
Piskarevsky Chronicle,
PSRL
, XXXIV p. 190: Zimin,
Oprichnina
, p. 203: ‘o oprichnine, chto ne dostoit semu byti’.

3
There is very little evidence of what they did indeed think, but Skrynnikov quotes a letter of 20 December 1566 from a German trader in Nuremberg, quoted by Karamzin, which referred to the discontent of the nobles.
Tsarstvo terrora
, pp. 288–9 and note 63.

4
Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo
, p. 298 suggests that the demonstration took place while
the Lithuanian embassy was still in Moscow and that Ivan hastened their departure so that he could deal with it.

5
The functions of the
koniushii
are stated to be head of the
prikaz
concerned with horses according to the dictionary of the Russian language of the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries. It would be, as in other countries, an extremely important function in a society in which the horse was the only means of transportation and locomotion.

6
See Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora
, pp. 294–5, drawing on Schlichting for details and some of the names of the condemned; far smaller figures (fifty
dvoriane
) are given in Skrynnikov's earlier
Sviatiteli i vlasti
, 1990; Schlichting, ‘A Brief Account’, pp. 248–9. Taube and Kruze, ‘Poslanie Ioganna …’, pp. 42–3. Kurbsky also gave the figure of 200.

7
E.D. Morgan and C.H. Coote, eds,
Early Voyages and Travels in Russia and Persia by Anthony Jenkinson and Other Englishmen
, Hakluyt Society, London 1886, vol. I, pp. 186ff. Jenkinson is probably referring to the same incident quoted above, p. 207. He adds that Ivan also arrested all the families of the victims, made a hole in the river and drowned them all. This adds to the confusion since it is not easy to make a hole in a river in June. However there is considerable doubt about the date of this letter for, though Jenkinson does end it with the words: ‘from Kholmogory this 26 of June 1566’, in a later report he states that he embarked on 4 May for St Nicholas and arrived on 11 July, and in Moscow on 23 August. The editor has added a footnote to the effect that Jenkinson evidently wrote July for June by mistake in this second letter, whereas from the context it is much more likely that the editor's dating is wrong and that the date 26 June, added by him, should be corrected to 26 July 1566. This makes it possible for Jenkinson to be referring to the repression after the
sobor
. See Morgan and Coote, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 186 and 189. Anthony Jenkinson says that these events were also witnessed by his servant Edward Webbe, aged twelve. Webbe wrote a brief account of his many adventures which included his capture by the Crimeans during the fire in Moscow in 1571, and a period as a slave in Kaffa, from which he was ransomed, and later as a galley slave in Turkey. See E. Webbe
His Travails
, London, 1590, pp. 3ff.; Webbe says that some eighty-three Danish prisoners taken aboard a ‘freebooter’ (privateer) at Narva in 1570 had been impaled, ‘spitted upon powles as a man would put a Pig unpon a Spitte and so vij score were handled in that manner’ (p. 19). He adds that Ivan also arrested all the families of the victims, made a hole in the river and drowned them all.

8
Prince P.M. Shcheniatev, a leading general, already arrested, was very cruelly put to death in August 1566, and the names of four of those who were executed for protesting after the
sobor
, are known (see above, p. 207 and see P.A. Sadikov,
Ocherki po istorii oprichniny
, reprint. Mouton, The Hague, 1969, p. 29; Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora
, p. 294 and note 96). Shcheniatev had also offended by taking the cowl without asking permission of the Tsar a few years before. This had been forbidden in 1565.

9
Floria,
Ivan Groznyi
, p. 208.

10
Karamzin,
Istoria
, IX, ch. 1, p. 59, supposes that Sylvester exercised considerable influence on Filipp's image of Ivan. But it is not certain that Sylvester ever went to Solovki.

11
See Staden,
Land and Government
, p. 20. He signed the sentence of the boyar curia in the Assembly of 1566 in third place after Bel'sky and Mstislavsky, Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora
, p. 292.

12
Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora,
p. 294.

13
See in general Zimin,
Oprichnina
, pp. 240ff. These conditions were duly
recorded in a
Zapis o postavlenii Filippa
, signed by some of the archbishops (Pimen of Novgorod but not German of Kazan').

14
Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora
, p. 217.

15
Kurbsky,
Correspondence,
Ivan's first letter to Kurbsky, passim. One must remember that it had been written only three years before.

16
‘Ivan IV’, in ‘Poslanie v Kirillobelozerskii monastyr’, in Likhachev and Lur'e, eds,
Poslania Ivana Groznogo,
pp. 352–3

17
Floria,
Ivan Groznyi
, p. 214.

18
Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora
, p. 341, note 31; Sadikov, ‘Iz istorii oprichniny’, p. 210.

19
‘Stikhi pokaiannie’ (‘I came into this vale of tears, as a naked boy, and naked will I depart …’) in Dmitriev and Likhachev, eds,
Pamiatniki literatury
.

20
Taube and Kruse, op. cit., pp. 38ff. Some of this applies to a slightly later time.

21
Roberts,
The Early Vasas
, pp. 225ff. In the years 1562 to 1567 the Swedish high court issued more than 300 death sentences for an enormous range of serious and trivial offences; many were not carried out but were commuted for heavy fines. Extra-judicial torture was widely used to obtain the names of accomplices in cases of sedition. It is generally believed that torture was prohibited by common law in England at this time, but see Clifford Hall, ‘Some Perspectives on the Use of Torture in Bacon's Time and the Question of his “Virtue”’,
Anglo-American Law Review,
XVIII, 1989, pp. 289–321 on the frequent use of extrajudicial torture in England.

22
See above, Chapter XII, p. 192.

23
Zimin (
Oprichnina
, p. 261) suggests that Ivan thought a marriage with Catherine would entitle him to become heir to the Polish–Lithuanian throne.

24
SIRIO
, 129, no. 12,
stateinii spisok
of the boyar Ivan Mikhailovich Vorontsov, 20 July 1567 to 4 June 1569, at pp. 134ff.

25
Sigismund Augustus had been both elected and crowned before the death of his father Sigismund I. Floria,
Russko-Pol'skie otnoshenia
, p. 32.

26
Such an outcome was even hinted at in negotiations at the time between the Russian and the Polish envoys.
SIRIO
, 71, pp. 31ff.

27
She was then over forty and eventually married Stephen Bathory when he was elected King of Poland in 1577.

28
SIRIO
, 129, pp. 153–6, 11 July 1567, the Russian account of negotiations with the Swedish envoys.

29
…
niotkuda pana sebe dostat' ne khoteli krome ego roda to est' ego samogo i detei ego
.

30
Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora
, pp. 307ff. Was it a coincidence, Skrynnikov asks, that not long before, in February 1567, the large crown estate of Kowel was bestowed by Sigismund on Kurbsky? The deed of grant referred to the oppression of a Christian people and to the cruel
panovania
(‘rulership’) by Ivan which led people to flee to Lithuania where they were lavishly rewarded by the King.

31
See Zimin,
Oprichnina
, p. 274.

32
Likhachev and Lur'e, ed.
Poslania Ivana Groznogo
. In the 1951 edition the letters are printed in sixteenth-century Russian, with a translation into modern Russian which, not surprisingly in view of the date of publication, leaves out the references to God, Jesus Christ, the defence of the Orthodox religion etc. They are also printed in
SIRIO
, 71 (see under dates). I do not see who but Ivan could have written them, at any time, nor who could have faked them in the seventeenth century and why.

33
Likhachev and Lur'e,
Poslania Ivana Groznogo,
Prince I.D. Bel'sky to Sigismund, pp. 417ff.

34
Ibid., but here I have drawn on both the original old Russian text, pp. 241–8, and the translation into modern Russian, pp. 417–21.

35
Ibid., p. 419. In a commentary on these letters, Ia.S. Lur'e suggests that the ‘freedom’ mentioned by Ivan must be the concept of free will used extensively in religious debate at the time, particularly by the Catholics (pp. 510–11). However it is clear that Ivan is referring to freedom of action, but it is difficult to be precise in view of the large number of different words used at the time (and today) to express freedom. The
Poslania
were published in 1951, just before the Doctors' Plot, which may have induced a certain discretion in the treatment of the topic.

36
The grandfather of I.D. Bel'sky had fled Lithuania in 1482 because of the persecution of the Orthodox by the Catholics; his great uncle fled in 1499 with all his lands. I.D. Bel'sky had secured a safe conduct from the Polish–Lithuanian King to flee back in 1562.Ibid., Notes, pp. 669–70.

37
Jagiello was Grand Duke of Lithuania, and married Jadwiga, heiress of Poland in 1386, thus becoming also king of Poland. Whereupon his cousin Vitovt disputed the succession with Jagiello, and emerged as Grand Prince of Lithuania until his death in 1430.

38
The marriage of Sigismund Augustus to Barbara Radziwill was very unpopular, and she died a few months after her coronation. She is said to have been poisoned at the instigation of her mother-in-law, Bona Sforza.

39
Both were ex-princes of military orders of chivalry, the Prince of Prussia of the Teutonic Order and the Prince of Courland of the (Livonian) Order of the Sword.

40
Ustanavlivat' zakon dlia chuzhogo gosudarstva'
, see
SIRIO
, 71, p. 497. Paragraphs omitted in the 1951 translation.

41
The use of the phrase ‘
rastlen umom
’ either by Ivan himself or by Vorotynsky, raises an important point. In Ivan's letter dated 1577 to Kurbsky, (
Correspondence
, p. 187 at p.188) Ivan writes: ‘You write that I am mentally deranged’, using almost these same words: ‘Yaz rastlen razumon’ as he used in the letter from Ivan/Vorotynsky to Chodkewicz. Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora,
p.309 suggests that this may indicate that Ivan believed Kurbsky to have written the letters from Sigismund to the boyars, and that they therefore existed. But he adds that Kurbsky never in fact used this phrase, only Ivan, so we are none the wiser. It is of course extremely unlikely that a boyar (or a
d'iak
) in the Office of Foreign Affairs would have written about Ivan as ‘mentally deranged’ to a foreigner, let alone a Russian. Only Ivan himself could do it.

42
Isaiah, 14, 5. 4 onwards. The pot calling the kettle black.

43
Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora
, pp. 308–9.

44
Likhachev and Lur'e,
Poslania Ivana Groznogo
, p. 675, note 18. In the instructions to envoys, they were told to say: ‘we know nothing about an
oprichnina
; the lord decides who is to be near him and who is to be far away’; see also
SIRIO
, 71, pp. 331, 593, 597, where the letters are printed.