History of Russia
Heads of the stateGrand Prince Tsar Ivan IV Vasilyevich the Terrible of Moscow and All Rus (1530 - 1584)
Reign 1533-1584Parents:
Grand Prince Basil III and Elena Glinskaya.
Wives:
Anastasia, daughter of courtier Roman Yuryevich Zakharin-Koshkin. died on 7 August 1560.
Maria Temryukovna, daughter of a Khabar prince, Married on 21 September 1561 and died on 1 September 1569.
Martha Sobakina, daughter of a merchant from Novgorod. Married on 28 October 1571 and died on 13 November 1571.
Anna Alexeyevna Koltovskaya. Married in early 1572. Two years later, banished to a nunnery and forced to take the veil under the name of Daria. Died at the Tikhvin Convent in 1626.
Maria Dolgorukova. married in 1573, she was pushed through a hole in a trozen river for "falling in love with a man before her marriage and not telling the tsar".
Anna Petrovna Vasilchikova. Married in 1575, died in 1579 of a "chest complaint" and buried at the Suzdal Convent.
Vasilisa Melentieva. Very little is known about her, except that she is rumoured to have been buried alive along with her lover, Ivan Kolychev.
Maria Fedorovna Nagaya. Married in September 1580. Forced to take the veil under the name of Martha. Died in 1608.
Not long before he died, Ivan divorced Maria Nagaya in order to marry Lady Mary Hastings, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth of England.
Children :
Besides those who died in infancy, Ivan had three children. He had two sons (Ivan and Fedor) by his first wife, Anastasia, and one son (Dmitry) by his last wife, Maria Nagaya.
Ivan was born in 1554. In 1581, Ivan IV killed him in a rage. His remorseful father made a large endowment to the Russian church in his memory and even planned on abdicating and retiring to a monastery.
Fedor (see Fedor I)
Dmitry was born soon after Ivan's murder in 1582. He died in suspicious circumstances in Uglich in 1591.
Important events:
......1547 The
cap of Monomachus was part of the regalia of the grand princes and
tsars of Russia. This was a golden crown trimmed with sable and
decorated with precious stones and a cross. one legend claims that it
was sent to Grand Prince Vladimir I in 988 by Byzantine emperors Basil
II and Constantine IX, on the occasion of his baptism and marriage to
their sister Anna.
......1487-1491 The Palace of Facets is the oldest secular building in Moscow. Constructed by order of Ivan III it owes its name to the decorative stonework on its east facade. It was part of the palace in Russia's history were marked here with festivities. Thus, it was here that Ivan the Terrible celebrated his victory over the city of Kazan. The interior is a spacious, almost square in form, hall with a tetrahedral pillar in the centre supporting its cross-shaped vaults.
......1552 In 1552, Ivan the Terrible besieged Kazan with an army of 150,000 men, 150 large cannons and qualified engineers. Russian sappers dug under the city walls and exploded barrels of gunpowder in the tunnels. The troops then poured through the holes in the walls and captured the city after a fierce battle.
......1565-1572 In 1565, Ivan Introduced a from of dictatorship known as the oprichnina - a state within a state under his own personal control. This personal fiefdom was ruled by the oprichniki - an elite corps of lifeguards who wore black robes similar to monks' habits. They tied dogs' heads and brooms to their saddles, symbolising their intention of brushing or tearing away their enemies.
......1560-1564 Ivan the Terrible accused the boyars of poisoning his wife Anastasia and vowed to avenge her death. On 3 December 1564, he suddenly abandoned Moscow. The boyars were confused and the people were frightened. The metropolitan was sent to bed the tsar to return to the capital. Ivan agreed, but warned that he planned to chop off the heads of all his enemies. This signalled the start of his reign of terror.
......1573 Believing that he was dying, Ivan the Terrible asked to be carried to his treasure room to say farewell to his magnificent jewels. Picking up several turquoises, the tsar turned to the English ambassador, Jeremy Harsey, and said: "Look how they change colour... This means that I have been poisoned. This is a portent of death".
......1581 Ivan the Terrible once entered the apartments of his son Ivan and encountered his daughter-in-law, whom he considered to be immodestly dressed. He began to beat the pregnant woman, causing a miscarriage. When his son came running to the woman's cries, the tsar struck him on he head with his staff, killing his son.
Better known as Ivan IV was the son of Grand Prince Basil III and Elena Glinskaya. He was born on 25 August 1530 in the village of Kolomenskoe near Moscow. When he was three, his father died and was succeeded by his mother. Elena Glinskaya was an energetic and ambitious woman who concentrated power in her hands. Her reign was a long line of palace intrigues, power struggles and violence - all witnessed by the young prince. Elena suddenly died at the age of thirty-five in 1538, inspiring rumours that she had been poisoned. Ivan was orphaned and Russia entered a period of "boyar rule", with different clans fighting for power and murdering their rivals. Surrounded by intrigues and bloody reprisals, the young boy grew suspicious, sadistic and revengeful. At the age of thirteen, he set a pack of dogs on Prince Andrei Shuisky and enjoyed torturing people. In his later letters to Prince Kurbsky, the tsar recalls his childhood as a time of insults and humiliations. Ivan spent much of his childhood in the libraries of the tsar and metropolitan, reading books on autocratic power. On 16 January 1547, he received the chance to put this knowledge into practice when he was crowned at the Dormition Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin. During the ceremony, Metropolitan Macarius handed him the attributes of supreme power - the cross, regalia collar and cap of Monomachus. After taking the holy sacrament, Ivan was anointed with myrrh. In 1561, he was officially recognised as "tsar" by the patriarch of Constantinople and Moscow became the successor to the Byzantine capital or the "Third Rome".
Two weeks after his coronation, Ivan married Anastasia, the daughter of Roman Zakharin-Yuriev. Now officially confirmed as the sovereign, he began to rule the country. Ivan IV had all the qualities needed to be a good tsar. He had a shrewd mind and an excellent grasp of politics and diplomacy. His hot temper and despotic nature, however, earned him the epithet of "terrible". Ivan initially relied on the help of a "select assembly", consisting of Alexei Adashev, Prince Andrei Kurbsky, Metropolitan Macarius and Father Sylvester. He also convened the Land Council (Zemsky Sobor), which included representatives of all classes. The tsar sought to centralise the government and to limit the power of the duma of boyars. In the early 1560s, Ivan dissolved the select assembly and persecuted the former members.
Ivan the Terrible overhauled the Russian army. The main component of the armed forces was an irregular army composed of members of the nobility. Ivan stationed a body known as the Chosen Thousand outside Moscow. This was a group of 1,070 provincial noblemen, whom the tsar hoped to rely upon. The Streltsy regiments were formed in 1550 from free citizens, who were supposed to serve all their lives. The military occupation became an hereditary profession. By 1584, around twelve thousand men served in the Streltsy regiments. Seven and a half thousand were stationed in Moscow. Ivan also created a permanent artillery force. The Streltsy guard did not constitute the entire army. The main military power remained a body of public servants known as the rat' or "host". Each town or district was supposed to supply a certain number of volunteers from the general population. Foreigners were also invited to join the Russian army, though their numbers were not large. Cossacks patrolled and protected the Russian borders.
The separate khanates of Kazan and Astrachan emerged from the remnants of the Golden Horde. They controlled the trade along the River Volga and often invaded Russian territory. In 1552, Ivan the Terrible besieged Kazan with an army of 150,000 men, 150 large cannons and qualified engineers. Russian sappers dug under the city walls and exploded barrels of gunpowder in the tunnels. The troops then poured through the holes in the walls and captured the city after a fierce battle. In honour of the defeat of Kazan, Ivan built the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin on Red Square in Moscow. Popularly known as St. Basil's Cathedral, the building consisted of nine high chapels crowned with cupolas and joined to one another by arched passageways. Construction of the church was headed by a master called Postnik Jakovlev.
Ivan's army captured Astrachan in 1556. The following year, Chuvashia and a large part of Bashkiria were absorbed by Russia. Ivan's authority was also recognised by the Nogai Horde - a nation of nomadic warriors who left the Golden Horde in the late fourteenth century. In this way, Russia took the place of the Tatar-Mongols in the Volga lands, inheriting control of the trade route along the River Volga and opening up the road to Siberia. The lands beyond the Ural mountains, along the rivers Tobol and Irtysh, were the home of the Siberian khanate. Ivan the Terrible awarded the Stroganov family of merchants and industrialists the rights to the territories around the River Tobol. In 1581, the Stroganovs raised a Cossack army headed by Yermak Timofeyevich and invaded the Siberian khanate. Yermak defeated the forces of Khan Kuchum and occupied his capital of Kashlyk. The following year, Yermak was ambushed and killed, but the conquest of western Siberia continued. After seventeen years of fighting, Kuchum was finally defeated in 1598 and western Siberia became part of the Russian state.
Ivan's reign of terror was a period of executions, plots and open gangsterism. In 1565, he introduced a from of dictatorship known as the oprichnina - a state within a state under his own personal control. This personal fiefdom was ruled by the oprichniki - an elite corps of lifeguards who wore black robes similar to monk's habits. They tied dogs' heads and brooms to their saddles, symbolising their intention of brushing or tearing away their enemies. In 1570, the oprichniki murdered almost the entire population of Novgorod, including all the infants. The total number of victims was more than fifteen thousand people. Led by a man called Grigory (Malyuta) Skuratov-Belsky, the only strength of the oprichniki was their ability to repel foreign invasians and in 1571 the suburbs of Moscow were burnt by the Crimean khan, Devlet-Girei. The oprichnina was eventually dissolved in 1572.
Ivan the Terrible had at least wives. When his first wife Anastasia died in 1560, it was rumoured that she had been poisoned. In 1561, the tsar married Maria Temryukova, daughter of a Khabar prince. When she died in 1569, she was also rumoured to have been poisoned. In 1571, Ivan married the daughter of a merchant from Novgorod, Martha Sobakina, who died a month later. When Ivan wanted to marry for the fourth time, the Russian Orthodox Church reminded him that a man was not allowed to have more that three wives. The tsar simply disregarded the church laws, forcing the church council to grant him permission or entering into common-law marriages. In 1572, Anna Koltovskaya became the tsar's fourth wife. After living together for less than a year, she was banished to a nunnery, where she spent the next fifty-four years of her life. In 1573, Ivan married Maria Dolgorukova, who was pushed through a hole in a frozen river for "falling in love with a man before her marriage and not telling the tsar". Ivan's next wife was Princess Anna Vasilchikova. They married in 1575 and lived together for four years, until Anna died of a "chest complaint" in 1579. Ivan's seventh wife was Vasilisa Melentievna. Very
little is known about her, except that she is
rumoured to have been buried alive along with her lover, Ivan Kolychev.
In autumn 1580, the tsar married his eighth wife, a boyar's daughter
called Maria Nagaya. Not long before he died, Ivan divorced Maria
Nagaya in order to marry Lady Mary Hastings, a lady-in-waiting to Queen
Elizabeth of England.
At the age of fifty-three, Ivan began to suffer from a strange disease - a rotting of his internal organs. The illness spread and he died on 18 March 1584. Although chiefly known as a tyrant, Ivan IV was one of the best educated men of his time. He had an excellent memory and a good knowledge of theology. Besides his letters to Prince Kurbsky, he also composed music, the text of the church service in honour of Our Lady of Vladimir and the canon to the Archangel Michael. He printed the first Russian books in Moscow and built St Basil's Church on Red Square.
On
our pages you can make the
travel to history Russia
, and to the history Moscow
and S-Peterburg
Grand Prince Basil III and Elena Glinskaya.
Wives:
Anastasia, daughter of courtier Roman Yuryevich Zakharin-Koshkin. died on 7 August 1560.
Maria Temryukovna, daughter of a Khabar prince, Married on 21 September 1561 and died on 1 September 1569.
Martha Sobakina, daughter of a merchant from Novgorod. Married on 28 October 1571 and died on 13 November 1571.
Anna Alexeyevna Koltovskaya. Married in early 1572. Two years later, banished to a nunnery and forced to take the veil under the name of Daria. Died at the Tikhvin Convent in 1626.
Maria Dolgorukova. married in 1573, she was pushed through a hole in a trozen river for "falling in love with a man before her marriage and not telling the tsar".
Anna Petrovna Vasilchikova. Married in 1575, died in 1579 of a "chest complaint" and buried at the Suzdal Convent.
Vasilisa Melentieva. Very little is known about her, except that she is rumoured to have been buried alive along with her lover, Ivan Kolychev.
Maria Fedorovna Nagaya. Married in September 1580. Forced to take the veil under the name of Martha. Died in 1608.
Not long before he died, Ivan divorced Maria Nagaya in order to marry Lady Mary Hastings, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth of England.
Children :
Besides those who died in infancy, Ivan had three children. He had two sons (Ivan and Fedor) by his first wife, Anastasia, and one son (Dmitry) by his last wife, Maria Nagaya.
Ivan was born in 1554. In 1581, Ivan IV killed him in a rage. His remorseful father made a large endowment to the Russian church in his memory and even planned on abdicating and retiring to a monastery.
Fedor (see Fedor I)
Dmitry was born soon after Ivan's murder in 1582. He died in suspicious circumstances in Uglich in 1591.
Important events:
- 1548 - Ivan convenes the first Land Council and announces that he will henceforth be the sole judge and defender of the nation, blaming the boyars for all previous problems.
- 1550 - Compilation of a new code of laws. Formation of the Streltsy guards.
- 1551 - The Hundred Chapters Council approves a religious code called the Hundred Chapters.
- 1552 - Conquest of Kazan.
- 1553 - Establishment of trading relations with Britain.
- 1555-56 - Abolition of the system of keeping officials at the expense of the local population and introduction of the Code of Service.
- 1556 - Conquest of Astrachan.
- 1558-83 - Livonian War to gain access to the Baltic Sea. The war ends in Russia's defeat and the loss of several territories.
- 1560 - Resignation of the starets Sylvester and Alexei Adashev.
- 1561 - Defeat of the Livonian order and the absorption of Livonia by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the anneation of Estonia by Sweden and the island of Osel by Denmark, and the formation of the duchy of Courland.
- 1564 - publication of the first printed book in Russia - Apostle.
- 1565 - Formation of the oprichnina.
- 1570 - Conquest of Novgorod.
- 1571 - Crimean khan Devlet-Girei sets fire to Moscow.
- 1574 - publication of the first Slavonic alphabet.
- 1578 - Sudden end to executions; memorial lists of endowments are compiled and endowments are made to monasteries in memory of their souls.
- 1581 - Start of the annexation of Siberia. Peasants are prohibited from traditionally leaving their owners on St George's (Yuriev) Day.
- 1582 - Treaty of Jam Zapolski with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, depriving Russia of all claims to Livonia/ Annexation of Siberia.
- 1583 - Theaty of Plussa with Sweden, depriving Russia of Narva and other towns south of the Gulf of Finland. Death of Ivan Fedorov, first printer of Moscow.
......1487-1491 The Palace of Facets is the oldest secular building in Moscow. Constructed by order of Ivan III it owes its name to the decorative stonework on its east facade. It was part of the palace in Russia's history were marked here with festivities. Thus, it was here that Ivan the Terrible celebrated his victory over the city of Kazan. The interior is a spacious, almost square in form, hall with a tetrahedral pillar in the centre supporting its cross-shaped vaults.
......1552 In 1552, Ivan the Terrible besieged Kazan with an army of 150,000 men, 150 large cannons and qualified engineers. Russian sappers dug under the city walls and exploded barrels of gunpowder in the tunnels. The troops then poured through the holes in the walls and captured the city after a fierce battle.
......1565-1572 In 1565, Ivan Introduced a from of dictatorship known as the oprichnina - a state within a state under his own personal control. This personal fiefdom was ruled by the oprichniki - an elite corps of lifeguards who wore black robes similar to monks' habits. They tied dogs' heads and brooms to their saddles, symbolising their intention of brushing or tearing away their enemies.
......1560-1564 Ivan the Terrible accused the boyars of poisoning his wife Anastasia and vowed to avenge her death. On 3 December 1564, he suddenly abandoned Moscow. The boyars were confused and the people were frightened. The metropolitan was sent to bed the tsar to return to the capital. Ivan agreed, but warned that he planned to chop off the heads of all his enemies. This signalled the start of his reign of terror.
......1573 Believing that he was dying, Ivan the Terrible asked to be carried to his treasure room to say farewell to his magnificent jewels. Picking up several turquoises, the tsar turned to the English ambassador, Jeremy Harsey, and said: "Look how they change colour... This means that I have been poisoned. This is a portent of death".
......1581 Ivan the Terrible once entered the apartments of his son Ivan and encountered his daughter-in-law, whom he considered to be immodestly dressed. He began to beat the pregnant woman, causing a miscarriage. When his son came running to the woman's cries, the tsar struck him on he head with his staff, killing his son.
Better known as Ivan IV was the son of Grand Prince Basil III and Elena Glinskaya. He was born on 25 August 1530 in the village of Kolomenskoe near Moscow. When he was three, his father died and was succeeded by his mother. Elena Glinskaya was an energetic and ambitious woman who concentrated power in her hands. Her reign was a long line of palace intrigues, power struggles and violence - all witnessed by the young prince. Elena suddenly died at the age of thirty-five in 1538, inspiring rumours that she had been poisoned. Ivan was orphaned and Russia entered a period of "boyar rule", with different clans fighting for power and murdering their rivals. Surrounded by intrigues and bloody reprisals, the young boy grew suspicious, sadistic and revengeful. At the age of thirteen, he set a pack of dogs on Prince Andrei Shuisky and enjoyed torturing people. In his later letters to Prince Kurbsky, the tsar recalls his childhood as a time of insults and humiliations. Ivan spent much of his childhood in the libraries of the tsar and metropolitan, reading books on autocratic power. On 16 January 1547, he received the chance to put this knowledge into practice when he was crowned at the Dormition Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin. During the ceremony, Metropolitan Macarius handed him the attributes of supreme power - the cross, regalia collar and cap of Monomachus. After taking the holy sacrament, Ivan was anointed with myrrh. In 1561, he was officially recognised as "tsar" by the patriarch of Constantinople and Moscow became the successor to the Byzantine capital or the "Third Rome".
Two weeks after his coronation, Ivan married Anastasia, the daughter of Roman Zakharin-Yuriev. Now officially confirmed as the sovereign, he began to rule the country. Ivan IV had all the qualities needed to be a good tsar. He had a shrewd mind and an excellent grasp of politics and diplomacy. His hot temper and despotic nature, however, earned him the epithet of "terrible". Ivan initially relied on the help of a "select assembly", consisting of Alexei Adashev, Prince Andrei Kurbsky, Metropolitan Macarius and Father Sylvester. He also convened the Land Council (Zemsky Sobor), which included representatives of all classes. The tsar sought to centralise the government and to limit the power of the duma of boyars. In the early 1560s, Ivan dissolved the select assembly and persecuted the former members.
Ivan the Terrible overhauled the Russian army. The main component of the armed forces was an irregular army composed of members of the nobility. Ivan stationed a body known as the Chosen Thousand outside Moscow. This was a group of 1,070 provincial noblemen, whom the tsar hoped to rely upon. The Streltsy regiments were formed in 1550 from free citizens, who were supposed to serve all their lives. The military occupation became an hereditary profession. By 1584, around twelve thousand men served in the Streltsy regiments. Seven and a half thousand were stationed in Moscow. Ivan also created a permanent artillery force. The Streltsy guard did not constitute the entire army. The main military power remained a body of public servants known as the rat' or "host". Each town or district was supposed to supply a certain number of volunteers from the general population. Foreigners were also invited to join the Russian army, though their numbers were not large. Cossacks patrolled and protected the Russian borders.
The separate khanates of Kazan and Astrachan emerged from the remnants of the Golden Horde. They controlled the trade along the River Volga and often invaded Russian territory. In 1552, Ivan the Terrible besieged Kazan with an army of 150,000 men, 150 large cannons and qualified engineers. Russian sappers dug under the city walls and exploded barrels of gunpowder in the tunnels. The troops then poured through the holes in the walls and captured the city after a fierce battle. In honour of the defeat of Kazan, Ivan built the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin on Red Square in Moscow. Popularly known as St. Basil's Cathedral, the building consisted of nine high chapels crowned with cupolas and joined to one another by arched passageways. Construction of the church was headed by a master called Postnik Jakovlev.
Ivan's army captured Astrachan in 1556. The following year, Chuvashia and a large part of Bashkiria were absorbed by Russia. Ivan's authority was also recognised by the Nogai Horde - a nation of nomadic warriors who left the Golden Horde in the late fourteenth century. In this way, Russia took the place of the Tatar-Mongols in the Volga lands, inheriting control of the trade route along the River Volga and opening up the road to Siberia. The lands beyond the Ural mountains, along the rivers Tobol and Irtysh, were the home of the Siberian khanate. Ivan the Terrible awarded the Stroganov family of merchants and industrialists the rights to the territories around the River Tobol. In 1581, the Stroganovs raised a Cossack army headed by Yermak Timofeyevich and invaded the Siberian khanate. Yermak defeated the forces of Khan Kuchum and occupied his capital of Kashlyk. The following year, Yermak was ambushed and killed, but the conquest of western Siberia continued. After seventeen years of fighting, Kuchum was finally defeated in 1598 and western Siberia became part of the Russian state.
Ivan's reign of terror was a period of executions, plots and open gangsterism. In 1565, he introduced a from of dictatorship known as the oprichnina - a state within a state under his own personal control. This personal fiefdom was ruled by the oprichniki - an elite corps of lifeguards who wore black robes similar to monk's habits. They tied dogs' heads and brooms to their saddles, symbolising their intention of brushing or tearing away their enemies. In 1570, the oprichniki murdered almost the entire population of Novgorod, including all the infants. The total number of victims was more than fifteen thousand people. Led by a man called Grigory (Malyuta) Skuratov-Belsky, the only strength of the oprichniki was their ability to repel foreign invasians and in 1571 the suburbs of Moscow were burnt by the Crimean khan, Devlet-Girei. The oprichnina was eventually dissolved in 1572.
Ivan the Terrible had at least wives. When his first wife Anastasia died in 1560, it was rumoured that she had been poisoned. In 1561, the tsar married Maria Temryukova, daughter of a Khabar prince. When she died in 1569, she was also rumoured to have been poisoned. In 1571, Ivan married the daughter of a merchant from Novgorod, Martha Sobakina, who died a month later. When Ivan wanted to marry for the fourth time, the Russian Orthodox Church reminded him that a man was not allowed to have more that three wives. The tsar simply disregarded the church laws, forcing the church council to grant him permission or entering into common-law marriages. In 1572, Anna Koltovskaya became the tsar's fourth wife. After living together for less than a year, she was banished to a nunnery, where she spent the next fifty-four years of her life. In 1573, Ivan married Maria Dolgorukova, who was pushed through a hole in a frozen river for "falling in love with a man before her marriage and not telling the tsar". Ivan's next wife was Princess Anna Vasilchikova. They married in 1575 and lived together for four years, until Anna died of a "chest complaint" in 1579. Ivan's seventh wife was Vasilisa Melentievna.
At the age of fifty-three, Ivan began to suffer from a strange disease - a rotting of his internal organs. The illness spread and he died on 18 March 1584. Although chiefly known as a tyrant, Ivan IV was one of the best educated men of his time. He had an excellent memory and a good knowledge of theology. Besides his letters to Prince Kurbsky, he also composed music, the text of the church service in honour of Our Lady of Vladimir and the canon to the Archangel Michael. He printed the first Russian books in Moscow and built St Basil's Church on Red Square.
recommended
sites:
Internet
shop
of excusive Russian souvenires "ATAMAN".
If you want to present a spesial gift to your relatives or friends,
want to get really unforgettable memory about your trip or you are
interested in the history of russia - this shop is a real find for you
There are history maps, books, souvenires, insignia, heraldry and many
other things on this site. This site have the English
version.
You can find the link for it in the right top corner of the site
We hope that the information of our portal will be useful to you.