Ivan the Terrible, 1530-1584

This paper will discuss the life and reign of Ivan the Terrible. The discussion will include a description of Muscovy and Russia during the 16th Century and how Ivan affected this environment. Most of the paper will focus on the reign of Ivan, touching only briefly upon his personal life.

Ivan was born on August 25, 1530 to Vasily III and Elena Glinsky. Vasily III was the son of Ivan the Great, the Prince of Muscovy and ruler of Russia who freed Russia from the control of the Tartars (or Mongols). Vasily expanded and consolidated the power of Muscovy over the greater realm of Russia, establishing the ascendancy of Imperial Russia over the geographical area to the east of Poland. Elena Glinsky, Vasily's second wife, came from a family which had been exiled from Lithuania and was raised with western values and tastes. These western influences would mark the character of Ivan; throughout the course of his reign he maintained contacts with governments in the west and sought to build a special relationship with England.

At the time of Vasily's and Ivan's rules, Muscovy was an agricultural state, built upon an almost enslaved peasantry. Unlike in the emerging monarchical states in western Europe, the commercial merchant class in Russia did not comprise a new monied gentry, with political and social power evolving along with its wealth. There were only two real classes in between the serfs and the monarchy, and they were largely intermixed

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ring Yury Glinsky and demanding that the Glinskys be punished. Ivan was forced to oust the Glinsky family from the boyar council and the other boyar families were frightened enough by the mobs to go along with reforms proposed by Ivan. The architects of these reforms were some of the best educated men in Russia and were not members of the boyar class. Instead, they were bureaucrats in the government and the Orthodox Church administration, men whom Ivan could trust because they were not boyars. Many of the reforms had to do with the administration of localities. Legal and administrative codes were rewritten in order to reduce the dependency of local governors upon local revenue and administrative procedures were rewritten in order to reduce corruption. Harsher penalties for corruption were enacted and laws were made applicable to all classes in a much fairer manner. The traditional relationships between the classes were revised to a certain extent and army ranks were made available on the basis of merit rather than birth. Overall, the most important effect of these reforms was to increase the revenues coming into the central government, providing Ivan with sufficient funding for his army and his expansionist plans. Iva

Category: History - I