William Tyler
The First Tsar: Ivan the Terrible 1533-1598
William Tyler | The First Tsar Ivan the Terrible 1533-1598 | 05.09.22
- Now, last week, looking at the earliest history of Russia at Kievan Rus, I also attempted to identify a number of issues and characteristics that I believe have influenced Russia, Russians and Russian leadership over succeeding centuries. I won’t go through the whole list, but just to remind you, if you were with me last week, or if you were not with me last week, to get you to see that history is important to the understanding of Russia, even Putin’s Russia in 2022. And I highlighted an obsession that Russia has had through the centuries with the security of its borders, the fact that Russia looks both East and West, Jainist style, the fact that it is a Slav country with a Slavic language, that it is Orthodox Christian and not Western Christian, and that it regards Moscow as the third Rome, the first being Rome, the second being Byzantium, Constantinople, and the third Moscow. And we also noted that violence was often the basis of the Russian state. So that’s where we’re at and this week I’m looking at a person rather than her period of time. I’m looking at the reign of the first crowned Tsar of Russia. Former rulers had technically been Grand Dukes of Muscovy.
And our man is Tsar Ivan IV, who most people know better as Ivan the Terrible. He was the grandson of Ivan III, whom I talked about last week. Ivan IV, Ivan the Terrible, presents Russia then and now with an image of an autocrat who brooks no restraints on his autocracy. And in a book that I put on my subsequent book list for you, on my blog, an additional book list about Russia, I read in the book “Russian Chronicles,” which is by numerous historians this. More than anyone else, Ivan the Terrible determined the image of the Russian Tsar and his shadow lay to a greater or lesser degree upon all his successors. And I think it’s more than that. I don’t think it’s just his successor Tsars. I think it’s successors like Stalin, and I think it’s successors like Putin as well. So, what is it? It’s autocracy that knows no restraints. When I say no knows restraints, I mean, there are no constitutional restraints. Okay, there are constitutional restraints, so say, on Putin today, but you must judge how effective any constraints in Russia are on Putin. Ivan the Terrible dominated Russia for half a century. He ruled for over 50 years, from 1533, when he succeeded to the throne at the age of three and thus with regents until his death 50 odd years later in 1584. So in English history terms, he’s with the Tudors, Henry VIII and later Elizabeth I.
Now, I’ve used the word czar, and I’ve used the word terrible and I think I need to unpack those two words. The word czar as I said last week, and I’m sure all of you knew anyhow derives from the Latin word Caesar. By the lifetime of Ivan in the middle of the 16th century it was a title used both by the Byzantine Emperor, and by the Mongol Khan, because the title Caesar drew up pictures of ancient Rome, and that huge empire of ancient Rome that stretched right across Europe, from east to west, north to south, into the Middle East and along the coast of North Africa. So by taking a title like that, you were claiming to be in some sense, the inheritors of Rome. And certainly, that’s what Ivan wanted people to think. He wanted to be seen as an equal of the Byzantine emperor, the Mongol Khan, and he wanted Russia, remember they talked about Russia and Moscow as the third Rome within the Orthodox Church, he wanted Russia to be seen as the heir to the empire of Rome. This imperial nationalistic view of Russia is alive, and well in 2022 in Putin’s Kremlin. The full title is Tsar of all Russia. Sometimes that’s given in English incorrectly as the Tsar of all the Russians, although the title Tsar of all the Russians is a useful one, because it reminds us that when we started last week with Kiev and Rus, there were various Russian little mini states like the two big ones, Novgorod and Kiev, and later they were joined by Moscow.
But it was Moscow or Muscovy under Ivan the Terrible’s grandfather Ivan III and his father Vasily III that all of those states were brought under the control of Moscow. The last to be brought under the control was Novgorod in 1522, a decade before Ivan the Terrible came to the throne. So he’s united all those Russian mini-stateless. That is part of the beginning of Imperial Russia. Last week was the beginning of Russia, this week is the beginning of Imperial Russia. And when the Imperial Russia is a Russia of the Tsars, the Russia of the Soviet Union, or Putin’s dreams of a greater Russian empire today, the concept of empire is ingrained in the Russian leadership from this moment on, from 1522 and the seizure of Novgorod onwards. Then we come to the word terrible. Now, you probably, many of you know stories about Ivan the Terrible and think the word terrible is an appropriate English word to use to describe him. Well, I don’t challenge that. But actually, the Russians don’t use that word. The Russians use a word, grozny, G-R-O-Z-N-Y. And if you translate that, it means formidable. It does not mean terrible in the sense of dreadful. It means terrible in the sense that we sometimes use it in, well, at least in Christian religion, I’m not sure about Judaism, when you refer to the almighty as terrible. It doesn’t mean dreadful, it means formidable.
And the Russians call Ivan, not Ivan the terrible, but Ivan Grozny, Ivan the Formidable. Putin goes further, and in the last revision of textbooks for Russian schoolchildren in history, Ivan the Terrible is referred to as the Great Reformer. Wow. Now, he did reform the legal code to some extent and he reformed, well if you use reform in a different sort of way, he managed to control the feudal lords, the boyars, and make them subject to him, but not a reformer in the sense that any of us would understand in the West, even in the West in the 16th century. This is not like Henry VII in England when we’re in a different ball game. I mentioned the boyars, the nobility. Now his first use of terror as a weapon of state, terror as a weapon of state, now that’s important because that is another thing that goes through Russian history. Think about Stalin, think about Putin. Terror as a weapon of state. He turned on the boyars. Why? Well, in Kievan Rus, which developed a feudal system, not much different from that in feudal England, or feudal France in the Middle Ages, except in Russia, the boyars, the feudal lords, had enormous power, their own armies, they were really like France rather more than England, that the king or in this case the Grand Duke of Muscovy had little control over them unless they chose to give him some power.
Now that all changed with Ivan the Terrible’s grandfather, Ivan III, who began to bring power, centralised power to himself. And that is continued by Ivan the Terrible, and it continues right up to the revolution in 1917. The Tsar pulls the power to himself. And although boyars were originally, as in England and France feudal system, family affairs. So I’m a noble lord in my, where I live here in south of England, I might be in, I might have enormous power in the county of Sussex, my own land and so on and so forth. And it’s inherited by my son, and then by my grandson. Ivan the Fourth really changes that and instead he promotes people and gives them titles. He promotes people who he believes are loyal to him, and so the nature of the Russian nobility changes from being an independent group who could think about England in 1215 and Magna Carta, who could make a king sign a document like Magna Carta. Instead in Russia by the time of Ivan the Terrible the king, the Tsar, is the autocrat. Just look at the people that Putin has dismissed in the inner core of the Kremlin since he went to war in Ukraine. It’s no different. And how did he destroy these boyars?
Well, if they wouldn’t submit, they were simply killed. They, their wives, children, handlers, retainers and so on. And who did he use for this reign of terror? Well this is where we reach another part of the history of Russia. He used a secret police force. Now we call it in looking back, historians call it a secret police. I’m not sure the word secret is appropriate, it’s more appropriate perhaps to call it a terror police. It’s called the Oprichniki, O-P-R-I-C-H, so thinking about it O-P-R-I-C-H, Rich, N.I.K.I. Now, they dressed in black, they rode black horses, and they decorated the horses, the side of the horses, with the heads of decapitated dogs. And they would strike at night. Just imagine, just imagine a knock on your door and you see outside a group of six horses, all in black, on black horses, and the heads of dogs flapping at their sides. They were cruel. They were recruited from, they were like the worst sort of bouncer that you would find in a nightclub, basically. They dredged the worst out of Russian society. And a group of 300 of them served as Ivan the Terrible’s personal guard. They are frightening people. One historian simply says a storm of terror was unleashed. And you couldn’t hide from it. We don’t know how many died. One account, well, one assessment says 100,000 people, but your guess is as good as anyone else’s. It was a horrendous moment. Listen to what another historian has written.
In many ways, Ivan the Terrible’s regime echoed Russia of the Soviet Union some 400 years later. The secret police of the communist regime of Stalin, the KGB, can be represented by his army of Oprichnichy, but also we can say of Putin’s FSB. The use of secret police is frightening. When I think of secret police, terror police, some of you may have visited Budapest and been to a house called the House of Terror. I couldn’t bring myself to go into it, I have to admit. The House of Terror is the headquarters of the Gestapo. And when the Germans lost the war, the KGB took over. But the same men, the same Hungarians who’d be members of the Gestapo, became members of the KGB. You simply changed your uniform. That’s what’s horrifying about secret police. They use torture over a wooden bank. And it was on a sort of industrial scale, think Nazi Germany. And Ivan the Terrible watched. He got a kick out of watching torture, but also we have it on record that he actually engaged in the torture himself. You’re beginning to get a picture that Ivan the Terrible deserves the name terrible, as we normally use it in modern English.
He was obviously clearly mentally unbalanced, but what made him unbalanced? Was he born unbalanced or did he become unbalanced? It’s nature or nurture that very difficult question. But a contemporary of his, of Ivan’s, a member of his court, a man called Kupsky, K-U-R-B-S-K-Y, wrote an account of the reign, and in that account he says very clearly what he thinks. I’m looking for a book which I put down and I couldn’t see because it’s beside my chair, and this is what he wrote. This is a man that knew him. At an early age Ivan began to spill the blood of dumb animals by hurling them down from great heights. He did many other improper things which revealed his taste for arbitrary mercilessness. His tutors permitted him to commit such acts and even praised him for his cruelty. Well, if you’ve got the gig as a tutor to Ivan the Terrible, you’d be very careful in saying, please don’t do that. Wouldn’t last long. I don’t mean to say you’d be sacked. He was just entering his 15th year, or so when he took to harming people. He gathered around him gangs of youths and the relatives of counsellors and and began to ride with them around the streets and squares and bazaars of Moscow to beat and rob people of all classes, men and women alike.
For those who are British it sounds like Boris Johnson’s Bullingdon Club, but worse. Indeed, as a boy, Ivan acted like a crude brigand and committed other brutalities which are shameful to relate, says Kursky. That would almost certainly relate to sexual offences. When Ivan had begun to surpass even himself in all manner of countless evil deeds, the Lord, God in other words, the Lord to tame the Tsar’s cruelty, visited an especially harsh fire on the city of Moscow, and by this sign clearly manifested his wrath. Well, they’re still in the age where they believe that things like fires can be caused by God because God is punishing the Tsar. I don’t think he’d ever bothered Ivan. I should think Ivan had a religious feeling in his body. So why did he act like that? Now, remember I said, he came to the throne at the age of three and actually he was treated very badly as an infant and a young boy. He was basically neglected. He was given very little to eat. He was physically abused, maybe even sexually abused, partly because no one liked his father and they were taking it out on this little boy. And he dreamed of revenge. He knows he’s going to be the Grand Duke, he knows he’s going to be in charge, so he bides his time even as a young boy, or certainly as a young teenager, he knows he can get back.
It’s at the age of 17 that his crown crowned Tsar, his coronation takes place, and then he’s a man to all intents, and purposes, and he can do what he likes, and what he likes is to seek revenge on those who treated him so badly. It’s amazing he was never murdered because murder was a common element. His mother was murdered, who was taking over as regent, and the boyars around him didn’t approve of her or her influence, so she was murdered. His wife, a number of his wives, Ivan’s wives were murdered and would come to a more harrowing murder within Ivan’s family later in my talk. So one historian has written, physically neglected, emotionally humiliated, personally insecure. From the age of eight, Ivan’s childhood was as hellish as any could imagine. Now, there may be some psychiatrists listening to this talk and I hope you’re nodding in agreement that these experiences of a child would be reflected, or could be and were in his case reflected in the adult man, particularly when there are no constraints on the adult man.
No one to say, please don’t do that. No one ever said don’t to him. That’s the problem with autocracy. It’s a problem even in democracies when even democratically elected leaders are surrounded by those who say yes, yes, no, no, as required, because of course their jobs, their standing depend upon the leader. It’s the same in the States, it’s the same in Britain, it’s the same in every democracy, but it’s worse in an autocracy. Just there isn’t anything that anyone in the end can do, except, and that’s why I’ve mentioned it already, murder, assassination. And that’s why so many people have been talking about assassination of Putin, because there isn’t another way. Or there doesn’t appear to be another way. And an assassination would be an absolute, true Russian response. It may be portrayed as an accident, maybe he have an operation for cancer as some reports in the West say he’s about to, and maybe there will be a bulletin issue that unfortunately he did not survive the operation and we shall never know whether that is true or false. Or maybe it will be said that he died of cancer, crippled with stomach cancer, where maybe someone had slipped something into his nighttime coca. Perhaps one of the worst acts of terror came in the year 1570.
Now, that’s just under half a century after the city of Novgorod had been incorporated within what we can now call Russia. And Ivan gave orders for Novgorod to be sacked. What had happened? Well, he regarded Novgorod as potentially an enemy, this is rather like like Putin and NATO. Now, he had no evidence to suggest that there were plots by the boyars, nobility of Novgorod, to rebel against Moscow’s rule in the same way that Putin has no evidence that NATO was going to invade Russian territory. But truth matters little. He convinced himself, and he was going to teach Novgorod a lesson, and he unleashed what we could only describe as a reign of terror. I’m going to read from an account here. “In 1570 Ivan ordered his oprichniki to attack the city of Novgorod. The attack does not do justice to the ferocity of their campaign of terror. For five weeks the secret police sacked the city, massacring, capturing, torturing, raping the inhabitants.
Marry a pawn? Nobody was safe, from the youngest peasant baby to the matriarch of a local boyar. All were subject to random, unjustifiable cruelty. The attackers entered for all the wrong reasons into the folklore of Russian culture. Some of you may recall the opera by Tchaikovsky which details this. On the 6th of January, 1570 Ivan himself arrived at Nolgorod with his son, and he arrived with one, and a half thousand troops. He ordered the senior clergy and monks to be rounded up and the next day they were executed, or beaten, and returned to their monasteries. It was a dreadful occasion. People confessed that there was a plot against Moscow, but they confessed under torture, and they named other people in a vain attempt to save their own lives. Two of them, the tortures were awful. But the main one was to be put on a griddle, rather like in England against Catholics, like a griddle you might use in a kitchen, put on this griddle on a fire, lit underneath you, you’re grilled alive. Others were hung up by their hands and had their eyebrows singed, their hair singed. Young children were thrown into the river, and this is January, and this is Northern Russia, and they froze to death. And if any managed to try to swim to the shore, the secret police killed them with spears and lances.
It is thought that 15,000 people died in this massacre, Novgorod. Many more died later that winter because their homes had been destroyed and they died in the Russian winter. I tell that story today and I can’t get out of my head what is happening in Ukraine today and we are forced to face, I think, the fact that some of these things, like the violence of troops, is deep within the DNA of Russia. It’s usually not good to stereotype a people, because stereotypes are usually not helpful. Now, I’m not saying this is stereotyping Russians. I’m saying that Russian actions in history and in the present day and in the period of time between 1270 and 2022, sorry, 1470 and 2022, that actions within that period underline the fact that there’s violence. Before anyone says, of course, there was violence and torture, and I mentioned it just now, in the England of the Tudors. But that had long gone. Why shall we say 1700? Gone before that, but let’s say 1700, but in Russia it has not. In 1900 Britain, it’s the past. In 1900 Russia, it’s the present. In 2022 Britain it’s in a distant past, in Russia it’s in a very real present. However, we must always be careful. Not everything was dark and black in the Russia of Ivan the Terrible, and this is an account of an Englishman who was in Moscow.
His name is Richard Chancellor. And he describes the court of Ivan where he’s been invited for a meal. Long tables were set about the room on a dais raised two steps higher than the body of the floor. These tables were fully occupied by those who dined with the Tsar. Each man was dressed in white. In the middle of the chamber there stood a table or cupboard for the display of plate. It was full of cups of gold. The treasure displayed there included four great pots, or prudences, as they called them, of breathtaking magnificence. They were of gold and silver and, as I think, a good yard and a half high. Now in British terms, having a display of plate is something that you may have seen at an Oxford, or Cambridge college or you may have seen in one of in the Inns of Court or in the City of London in terms of various things of the guilds of the City of London. So this would have been something natural for a Chancellor to be aware of, but in the scale of it’s amazing. Two gentlemen waited by the cupboard, each had a napkin on his shoulder and held a top of gold, which was set with pearls and precious stones. These were the Tsar’s personal drinking cups. When he was so minded, he drunk them dry at a single draught. 200 persons dined that day, and each was served with gold vessels. I’d never eaten off gold. I guess somebody might have eaten off gold.
Certainly, if you’ve been to a diplomatic dinner in Buckingham Palace, you might well have eaten off gold. The best I’ve ever done is eaten off silver. I’m very much a peasant, really. 200 persons dined that day and each was served with gold vessels. All the gentlemen that waited at table were dressed in cloth or gold. When serving the Tsar, they wore their caps on their heads. Before dinner, the Tsar changed his crown. During the meal, he changed it twice more. Don’t ask me why. I have no idea why he would change a crown. Hang on. I said just now that Richard Chancellor wrote that. He’s an Englishman, actually, comes from my city of Bristol. Why did Chancellor, what on earth is Chancellor doing in the middle of the 16th century in Moscow? Well that well-known phrase of President Clinton, so often fits in history. It’s the economy, stupid. He’s there on business. England in the reign of Elizabeth I was beginning to look at outwards. It was an entrepreneurial, thrusting England. And in 1555 a company was set up in London. them to open up trade with Russia. It was called the Muscovy Company and it was to operate in Russia right through to the revolution in 1917 and today the Muscovy Company still exists, but as a charity to do good works in Russia. Two years before the charter was given by Queen Elizabeth I to these merchants in London to establish the Muscovy Company.
That is to say in 1553, three ships set sail from London to go to Russia. They went northwards. Only one ship made it. That was the one commanded by Chancellor. He penetrated the White Sea round the North. St Petersburg doesn’t exist, they’re going round the North. He went through right round the top and local fishermen who saw him, local Russians, were amazed at the size of this English ship and he reached a harbour in what became in 1584 the town and later city of Archangel and why? Well, because Archangel became a point of trade for Russia and England and later for Russia and other countries as well. When he reached Archangel, what was to become Archangel, and began to trade, the English wanted Russian fur beyond anything, but amber as well, but primarily fur. And the Tsar heard about it and he invited Chancellor to travel to Moscow and Chancellor needed to go because he’s under orders of the Queen to make trade arrangements, and so he went over 600 miles to Moscow through snow, and ice and when he reached it he found Moscow a city larger than London, although he comments rather primitive in its buildings. He was a guest of the Tsar, as I’ve just illustrated by dining with the Tsar, and the Tsar was very pleased to open trade links with England.
Russia didn’t have a safe link in the Baltic. This is Sweden, this is Poland, this is Livonia. Russia has to go through the north. What did we exchange for Russian fur? English wool. Always English wool. And so trade opens up between England and Russia. And one mind blowing situation arose. Ivan learnt all about Queen Elizabeth and realised that she was unmarried. And he proposed marriage. I can’t even begin to conceive of what would have happened to a marriage between Ivan and Elizabeth I. God knows what child such a marriage would have produced, but in the end as with every other suitor Elizabeth was wedded only to England, and not to any foreign prince, as she said. So that gives you a flavour, I hope, of the Russia of the Tsar. Consolidating the country we now call Russia, making links in terms of trade with the West, which is already advancing further than Russia. We’ve got manufacturing, Elizabethan England has the first industrial revolution, for example. So he’s doing all of that. At the same time, he’s centralising power to himself by crushing the boyars.
But there’s something else he does. He begins to look east and he begins to look at countries or states, mini states, whatever words you want to use. He looks east to those where no Russians live and he takes Kazan, the Karnator Kazan, which is Islamic, to the immediate east of Moscow, Mongol-held Kazan. He then takes Astrakhan to the south on the shores of the Caspian Sea and then, and then finally, he reaches the Pacific. They take Siberia. Now the conquest of, or the acquisition of Siberia is of great interest. Well, at least I think so. Because it was undertaken by a man from a very small group in the Russia of the 16th century, a merchant entrepreneurial class. I hesitate to use the word middle class, but they’re entrepreneurial class. Of course, in the England of Elizabeth, we have a large merchant middle class, enormous with power, power through the House of Commons. But here in Russia, you know, it doesn’t quite work like that. But there was a family called Stroganoff. Yeah, they’re the family that gave us beef Stroganoff in the 19th century. But in the 16th century, they were producers of salt on the White Sea coast, and salt was an absolute essential of life.
Even as late as the 16th century and later, I mean, we know it’s an essential now, but we go down to the supermarket. But in the past, to control the salt trade was everything. and the Stroganoff controlled the salt trade, and then they decided to push their business, their entrepreneurial business, eastwards over the Urals into Siberia. Now they were not nobility, they become nobility and indeed nobility and indeed by the time of Beef-Stroganoff they are nobility. Let me just share this little piece about the Stroganoff, such an interesting family really. I read this, a turning point of history came when the Stroganoff, a rich family of industrialists, sent the free booter, your with a tiny force of 1000 men across the US in 1581, year max force managed to defeat the Muslim calm of Western Siberia.
So, who was Yermak and what was this army that the stroganoff paid to take their business over the Urals? The answer was they were Cossacks and the Cossacks are going to feature, of course, incredibly in our later story of Russia and just to sort of short circuit is to give you a definition of costs that’s to keep us going. The costs were Russian and Ukrainian essence, who sort of distinctive lifestyle, free from certain free from taxation. In the valleys of the Great Steppe they banded together for self-protection in democratic, semi-military, strongly disciplined, self-reliant host under an elected leader. And from the mid-16th century, where we are today, these tough soldiers and adventurers began to play a significant part in Russian history. And I’ll say more about the Cossacks in due course. acts in due course. So Ivan’s empire is going west, inherited from his father and grandfather, consolidated, it’s going east and south of the Caspian Sea, it’s trading right across Europe to England.
This is becoming what Ivan dreamt of, a Russian empire that people look up to. He is the Czar, the Caesar. Now, one of the things that is important to remember about the Russian Empire, as well as the Soviet Empire, and well, I’ll come to Putin in a minute, is that the Russian Empire is a contiguous empire. That is, it’s one landmass. St Petersburg to Vladivostok, the White Sea to the Black Sea. It’s contiguous, not like the British Empire, not like the French Empire, which were dots all across the globe. This is not, it’s contiguous. Rather like the United States of America is a contiguous. And if you want to regard America as an empire, and you can do so, but the point of it is that it means it’s made up of different ethnicities, different cultures, different nationalities, different languages, different religions. It is not one. Now, on British television this morning, while they were filming or showing live Putin’s speech in Moscow to celebrate the end of the Second World War, Putin claimed there were 27 million Russian dead. A Ukrainian politician appeared live on British TV to say that is not true because there weren’t 27 million Russians, there were lots of other peoples as well, not least a large number of Ukrainians. Then General Danet came on British TV to say, well hang on a moment, we’ve got to be clear about this.
At the time of World War II, it was not the Russia of Putin, it was the USSR. And under the USSR, all the citizens, whether they were Orthodox Christians, whether they were Jews, whether they were Roman Catholic, whether they were Muslim, whatever religion, and whatever language they spoke, whatever ethnicity they were all considered Russian. So he said, you can’t make that argument that not 27 million Russians died. This is the problem of language. This is the division between Russia and Ukraine to a certain extent, which is going to bedevil any peace settlement because they’re using words in different ways. And it is important to understand that, remember under the USSR, I don’t know about America, Canada, Israel, wherever else, but in Britain we use the terms Russia and the USSR interchangeably and incorrectly because Russia was going to be one of the republics within the USSR, but it was still the Russian Empire. Confusing? Yes, it is.
But what I thought I would do is look up the number of different ethnicities, peoples, there were in the Russia of the Soviet Union. Now just read you the list. Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tajiks, Turkmen, Azerbaijanis, Georgians, Armenians, Moldovans, Jews, Germans, Tatars, and Poles. And there are various subgroups. So this is an empire and that’s why Putin doesn’t regard Ukrainians as anything but Russian. If you go back to the days of ancient Rome, we have the phrase, qui vis romana sum, I am a Roman citizen. But when a province like Britain, Britannia, broke free from Rome as it did in the fourth centuries, from time to time, well from the third century onwards, Rome still regarded them as Roman, but luckily they regarded themselves as Roman. And the interesting thing about that is, and I can’t answer this question, when Rome finally abandoned Britain in 410 AD, did the people there regard themselves as Roman? Forget them, they’re not Italians, never have been many Italians here. Did they regard themselves as Romans, or did they regard themselves as British?
Well historians call them Romano-British, they certainly would have done that. I wonder how, if you could go back in time to the early 5th century and you met a landowner in southern England and you said, are you Roman? Key words, Romano, so? Or are you British? I’m not sure what sort of answer you would get. They had broken from the Roman Empire, but they nevertheless saw themselves as Roman. Now, with Ukraine, Russia sees the Ukrainians as Russian. The Ukrainians don’t see it that way. So we’ve got a problem when it comes to thinking about the Russian empire. And the fault lies with us using the word Russia and Russian loosely, but so does Putin. If we go back to Ivan the Terrible, towards the end of his reign, Ivan became increasingly ill physically, and increasingly ill mentally, unbalanced. Medical historians today attribute this to the fact that he had rheumatoid arthritis, and we know that because his tomb was gone into and DNA taken and so on and so forth, he had rheumatoid arthritis, and the pain would have been intolerable almost at times because there was very little cure and the cure was mercury and mercury would have affected his brain.
He also undoubtedly, they believe, suffered from sexual disease and again mercury was given as a cure, and mercury, and they found mercury in his body, and mercury is it would have affected him badly, but he didn’t die of mercury poisoning. He died of a stroke while playing chess. For all of those of you who enjoy a game of chess in your retirement, just a word of warning, do not get over excited or your end may be like that of Ivan the Terrible. No, don’t. Chess is a dangerous game to play for those of us who are older. Now, seriously, Ivan the Terrible should have been succeeded by his eldest and favourite son, also called Ivan. Now, Ivan the Terrible died in March 1584, but his son Ivan, his eldest and favourite son Ivan, died two years previously in 1582. But he was killed by his father. And the story goes, he’s an adult, married. In 1581, an argument burst out between the young Ivan and Ivan the Terrible, his father. And Ivan the Terrible abused the son’s wife. Well, bluntly, he beat her up and she was pregnant and she miscarried. And after that, there was no peace between them. And finally, his father attacked him, the son, and killed him.
Now that’s the story accepted by historians in the West. Putin has recently given out a different story. Talking to a miners group, he said that Ivan the Terrible did not kill his son, but it was a Vatican emiracy that killed the son in order to discredit Orthodox Christianity and Ivan the Terrible. Putin actually said, quote, ”‘Many researchers think that Ivan didn’t kill anyone at all.’“ Well, not researchers in the West, I have to say. And that this story was concocted by the papal emiracy who came to Russia for negotiations and wanted to turn Orthodox Russia into Catholic Russia. There’s no evidence of that. Again you see using Orthodoxy as central to the DNA of Russia in the 21st century. I said before that in a new textbook on history in Russian schools, Ivan the Terrible is described as a reformer, Stalin is described as a moderniser, and Gorbachev and Yeltsin have no mention at all. And Putin is stated to be the hero who restored Russia’s greatness. That’s at the bottom isn’t it, of Putin the man and the Ukrainian invasion. He wants to be seen as the hero who restored Russia’s greatness. The second Peter the Great, if you like, a second Catherine the Great, but he’s more like Stalin. After Ivan’s death in 1584, and that’s the problem with autocracies, Russia began to come apart. True, his second son, Theodore, succeeded him, and we’ll talk about that next week.
But 1584, when the autocrat Ivan dies, there’s a vacuum basically and Russia begins to come apart. And coming apart soon led to complete disarray. So that the period of history we look at next week is called a time of troubles. A time of troubles. It’s a complete melange of disasters out of which emerge a new royal house, the house of Romanov, which is to rule in Russia until the revolution of 1917. So Ivan the Terrible’s reign doesn’t lead to nothing, as you might say suggest, by me talking about the time of troubles and the emergence of Romanov, instead it leads all sorts of things in the Russian psyche. all sorts of things in the Russian psyche. Strong leaders, autocratic and ruthless. That’s what the Romanovs become. Well, at least autocratic and ruthless up to the time of Nicholas II’s father, Alexander III. Nicholas II is too weak really to be ruthless, but he’s autocratic. Secondly, the expansionism we talked about last week continues East and West, the duality of Russia, a European West and a nation East. And that continues and it brings in Muslims to the empire, it brings in Asians to the empire. And thirdly, the means of ensuring his autocracy, Ivan introduces a secret police torture, and that’s a model, that’s a model for all succeeding centuries in Russian history up to today.
Then there’s the question of borders which we touched on last week. There are no clear borders. Well they haven’t reached the Baltic which they need to do. That’s true. That might provide at least one border. They do reach Siberia. but the problem with empires, which we haven’t touched on, is when do you stop? And a contiguous empire is particularly difficult. Like the Roman Empire. Do you stop at the Rhine? No, over the Rhine. Do you stop in the north of England? No, into Scotland. Where do you stop? It’s so difficult to know with empire. The whole, it’s what Napoleon is a more modern example, it has a speed of its own, it has a trajectory of its own. And Siberia isn’t the end. If you’re American you know darn well they’ve crossed the Bering Straits and Alaska becomes Russian, and some of you may have been on cruises along the Alaskan coast and seen evidence of that with Russian churches along the coast. And some of you may have gone further afield to the northern most Japanese island of the archipelago, Sakhalin, which is now entirely Russian.
And Sakhalin is, those of you who’ve heard me talk over the years will know, that I think Sakhalin is a potential world hotspot for Trump. And it’s got oil now and the Japanese resent Russians having it. They only got it because the Russians came into the Second World War at the last moment and took the whole of the island. Before that it had been divided in half Russian and Japanese and before that it had been Russian, sorry Japanese. So we’ve got strong leadership, expansionists, east and west, secret police and torture, no clear borders and going into Siberia presents them with a further problem and that gives them a border with the Empire of China. And you will know that in recent times there have often been clashes between Russians and Chinese on the border and that’s a major problem for Russia and for China and indeed for the world. And the autocracy had no constraints, constitutional constraints on the Tsar. There’s nothing like the House of Commons in Elizabethan England, which Elizabeth has to be aware of. There’s no constraint in terms of the middle class developing in England, which is a constraint. Or the nobility, or the church, there is no constraint. The Orthodox Church is not like the Catholic church has all Protestant, it has no constraining power.
Look at Putin and the Orthodox Church today, nothing holding Putin back. The Pope has appealed to the Orthodox Church leadership to pull him back from the Ukraine. Well, you might as well be commute and stand on the seashore and command the waves to go back. We noted that Russia is an empire made up of many different peoples, languages, cultures, religions. And we noted that terror has been used as a weapon of state and is today used as a weapon of state. So that’s what I wanted to say in this piece about Ivan the Terrible. And I want to repeat what I said last week, that this early history is important if we are really to get under the skin of what makes Russia, and its leadership tick. We can only understand Putin. I mean, if you were postgraduates doing a degree, my essay for you to do by next week would be, Putin is merely a successor of Ivan the Terrible. Comment. I’m going to stop there because I see in the top of my screen, I’ve already got quite a lot of questions and I will try and answer best I can.
Now I can’t go on forever this evening because I’m also doing another section at half past seven, and I’ve got to have a cup of tea and a break, so I’m going to, we’ve got about 15 minutes and I’ll try and answer as many questions as I can in that time.
Q&A and Comments
What am I asked? I love it, people ask where’s your bear gone somebody said, it’s on the top shelf. Look, I love it.
Q: Oh, why isn’t the first Tsar? A: Well, they don’t start the counting. If he was the first tsar, why is he out in the fourth? Because they count the grand princes of Muscovy, are given titles, they simply continued them. There’s no other reason than that.
Q: Why does Russia have such a relatively small population and is that an important constraint on its military and economic power? A: Oh, cool. Antony, that’s a really difficult question. That is a really difficult question. Part of the answer is that a lot of parts of the Soviet Union are not over pleasant places to live in. So, you’re not living right across the country as you are in Western Europe. Is this an important constraint on its military? No, I don’t believe it is. Its economic power? No, I think there are other reasons for that. The problem of this economic power is the way it spends its money, like all countries. It’s spending its money on on military matters and not on economic progress, but also because economically it declined under socialism, and under the rampant capitalism of Yeltsin and Putin, it isn’t a good base for economic power. It isn’t a model that the capitalism of the countries that you’re listening from follow. It isn’t the capitalism of Israel, Australia, Canada, Britain, South Africa or America. So I think it’s systematised at that.
Find a lot of deaths from alcoholism, yes, but that’s true of all the northern countries. It’s the cold winter long nights. Alcohol is a major problem. When I was in Finland, I was told that there was a major problem with children as young as eight. There are major problems with alcohol, but then don’t ask somebody from Britain to comment about that.
Q: How much is the invasion due to Putin’s ego as opposed to fear? A: Can’t answer that. What do you say? 60-40? 50-50? 40-60? I don’t know. All I do know is that both play a part in it.
Clive says, 1605 Poles came across European plains, Swedes in 1708, French in 1812, Crimean War 1853, and two world wars. Does Putin have a point? Yes, he does. It went back to these, what Clive is saying is that there are occasions in Russian history, where forces from the west of swept through Russia, with the exception of the Crimean War which was a localised, but in all those cases, Russia comes out dominant. Because of the nature of this land and because it doesn’t care how many of its citizens it loses in a war, no Putin in the Ukraine. So does Putin have a point? It’s the paranoia about boundaries. No one is suggesting that Poland, Sweden, France, or Britain, or America, or NATO, are going to invade Russia today. That is clear paranoia. And Stephen answers your question, I hope he’s answered like me. No, not really, those events were back then, he needs to be looking in the mirror as to why the countries of border Russia are afraid of Russian power. I think I sort of said the same thing.
Julia, Russia is actually depopulated, about five million less than several years ago. Actually, it’s also the case for several other East European countries. Yes, a lot of people have emigrated and during the course of the Ukrainian war, we know that large numbers of Russians have left. Tony, I’m sorry, I hope I pronounced your name correctly. Warning for those visiting the Budapest House of Terror, it is one of the early examples of Holocaust distortion. By equating the Gestapo and Hungarian fascist deeds with the later communist efforts, there’s no valid comparison. Well, that’s a very interesting comment, I’m sure you’re right, I just could not bring myself to go into a place like that and I’m jolly glad I didn’t, I went to the circus instead if you really want to know. You were very harsh on Boris Johnson says Michael, the Bullingdon Club drank too much, but were not cruel no but they did cause immense amount of damage by running through Oxford smashing windows.
Yes, Ron you’re right, you’re absolutely right. Ron says the secret police of Ivan the Terrible, Ivan himself and later secret police SS Stasi etcetera must have many social class among their ranks. Absolutely 100% agree with that. Lawrence says secret police. We in the UK have had undercover police infiltrating environmental groups, being planted in peace campaign groups and observing trade union activities. Yes, we do. The point about the secret police in Russia is they’ve acted physically and mentally in appalling ways. That is not so here, although at the time we didn’t have a secret police in England in Tudor times. We had a secret service but not a secret police. A secret service was more concerned about the threat from Spain.
Carol says, it looks like the behaviour of the Russian soldiers in Ukraine follows the tradition of Ivan the Terrible. I think that. Arlene says, it sounds like Ivan the Terrible was insane because of genetic environmental facts. Many mass murders began by mutilating, killing animals. Yeah. Think of Caligula, Cicero, Fred and Young. Yes, absolutely. And somebody picked up what I said, Michael said, please, God, someone put something in his coke. Well, yeah, indeed. Except we don’t know that what follows. Remember, autocrat fail is no guarantee that everything becomes wonderful. Remember, at the death of Ivan the Terrible, you go into this time of troubles. Oh, Judy, oh, great, I’m a psychiatrist listening in and would agree with much of what you say about Ivan except more than formidable, he was, really was terrible, yeah. Carol says, and didn’t behave the same way in Berlin after World War Two. Yes, they did behave in the same way in Berlin.
Q: In Novgorod, how many were killed? A: They think about 15,000.
Q: How many were killed in Novgorod said David? A: The answer is that the figure Norman quoted about 15,000.
Mitzi says Stalin also tortured anyone whom he believed was harmful to his regime, ultimately they would confess and would rightly righteously executed. Yeah, absolutely.
Q: How is it that man can commit such acts against his fellow man? A: Well, there are theological answers to that, which many of you know. And there are there are non theological answers, but they amount to the same thing that we are all capable of doing dreadful things as well as capable of doing good things. We need a society that controls our worst behaviours. What man beats his son to death in a fit of rage? Well, a man who’s not balanced, a man who might well be drunk, and oh Harriet’s answer, that same man that rapes and beats his daughter-in-law. Yeah, exactly.
Q: When did Russia start its interest in Alaska? A: Oh, much, much later. No, back, um, late 18th, 19th century.
Oh, Marilyn, this looks, having just read the first line, this looks interesting. You said Russia is made up of different nationalities. Yes, and that’s correct.
Q: Does not Russia face the same problem which is coming prevalent in the United Kingdom, which Scotland, Ireland and Wales want their independence from England? A: Well, not really, in the sense that Scotland in the sense that Scotland and Wales are not just making, there are so many Scots living in England, so many English living in Scotland, so many Welsh living in England. I had more Welsh classes in the City Lib where I was principal in London than Cardiff had. I had more Gaelic classes in Manchester, I think, than Glasgow had. We’re a mix and it’s not really a nationality problem. It’s really a problem of centralised government in London which fails to, which has failed, not Northern Ireland’s quite separate, which has failed to take into account even with devolved government in Wales and Scotland, but once you have devolved government, there’s no stopping it. When Blair established a devolution in Wales and in Scotland, many of us thought at the time that we should have had some sort of federal setup. Now I think Canada, because that would have worked. What we’ve got is we’ve allowed it to fester, so that we get calls for independence there’s no way Wales, it will be independent, by the way. There’s not a demand for it. Northern Ireland is quite different. Northern Ireland was a political compromise a hundred years ago, and it has to be reunited. The problem is the South, the Republic, will want Sinn Féin like they will want a hole in the head. No one wants Sinn Féin. And the South will be very unhappy to inherit the problems of the North. They’re quite happy for Britain to have it. So there’s no, I don’t know what you do. Well, I have one solution, and please don’t take me too seriously. If Scotland becomes independent, I think we should give Northern Ireland to Scotland, because it isn’t a province of England, it’s a province of England and Scotland. So, I think Scotland should be given Northern Ireland now and let them sort it out.
Putin said, today "That Russia is surrounded by NATO, but it was pointed out on the radio, only 6% of Russia’s borders face off the NATO countries.” Yeah, you see, the problem is he’s looking west. He thinks he’s resolved east. That’s why he went to China, isn’t it? Before he launched the attack on Ukraine.
Q: Do you consider the Russian to be psychotic of being anti-Nazi, or were they justified in seeing Ukraine as too influenced by Nazis? A: Oh, we’re using the term Nazi today. Not you, I mean, all of us are using the term Nazi in very unspecific ways. And I don’t think it’s helpful to look at it. I’m not sure it’s helpful to use the word Nazi at all in this context.
Dying while playing chess sounds ripe for Vladimir Putin, says Karen. Peter the Great says, Inna was less than 30 years after Ivan III, he also tortured his son. Stalin left his son to be killed by Germans, absolutely. Cossacks equal uncontrolled mafia. Says Marilyn, I’m not sure I agree with that. I’m not sure I agree with that. This has been, oh, and then, well, thank you. Sadly, Putin is not the first ruler to rewrite history to suit their political requirements. Don’t tell us in Britain about that. It is particularly offensive now as so much validated information is available to so many. But then there is still interpretations of that.
Q: When did the Jews reach Russia in any numbers? A: I’ll leave that to Trudy to deal with because Trudy is dealing with Jewish history of Russia and the answer is that there were many Jews in the southern parts in Kiev right from the very beginning. So it’s in the south that there were Jews from the year of God, if you like, before Russia was actually Russian.
Q: How come the Russian Empire succeeded in remaining united throughout the centuries whereas the Habsburg Empire did not? Was it due to terror? A: James that’s a really difficult question to answer. It’s a very interesting question. How can Russian Empire succeeded in remaining united? Well, I suppose the answer would be, if I was answering this as an essay question, is that the Habsburg Empire failed because they lost the First World War and they split apart, aided by the Allies in wanting to break the Empire. Russia was outside of the First World War by the end of the war. When Russia collapses in 1991, the same thing happened as with the Hapsburg Empire. Countries like Georgia, countries like Azerbaijan, countries like Ukraine, broke away from Russia. And so the story is a similar one, I would argue.
Who will Russia before the Tsars, various Khans, K-H-A-N-S. Gerald, 60 years ago, I was reproved in a Russian language class, I think. The food in the dorm, the dams judgement , the weather in Pennsylvania are terrible. Ivan was a living curse, through the embodiment of evil, a unique horror. I thank you for people who said they enjoyed it. I enjoyed doing Russian history, actually. Oh, right. How did the Russian settlement called Fort Ross would deal with in California, would deal with California is interesting. It’s an interesting history. California, of course, should be British. I shouldn’t stir you up. I’ll talk about that later when we come to a much later period of time. Oh, I can’t answer that, Erica.
Q: How different was Ivan so different? Genghis Khan. A: I can’t answer that question. It’s like being asked who was more evil, Stalin or Hitler. I mean, these are virtually evil is evil.
Q: Are the Russian Tsars more like oriental potentates? A: Well that’s the point. At some moments they are and at other moments they are not.
Oh, I’m going to finish on this because I really do have to stop. Nitza writes many years ago there was an exhibition at the Victorian Albert Museum showing the gold plate from Elizabeth to Russia. Fantastic, that’s fantastic. I’m going to stop there if I may, because otherwise I shall be even more incoherent to half past seven. But if you want to come at half past seven, it’s a bit different because Trudy and I hope to engage you after about 45 minutes into a debate about free speech. If you’re American, I would like somebody to talk about the censorship of books in some of the southern states in America, and the issue of free speech. I would also like some of you to talk about free speech in terms of today and the internet and who controls it. Wherever you live, you can comment on that. And you may have issues of free speech in any country that you’re listening from, which are different. So please join me at half past seven. I’ll be delighted to see you. And we’ll have, hopefully, an interesting session.
Thanks for listening to The Russian. I look forward to seeing many of you again next Monday, same time, same place, wherever you are, and it will be a time of promise. Thanks very much, bye bye.
- [Judi] Thank you William, bye everyone.