societies such as Sweden, Lithuania and Poland and in the south and east by the Mongols' successors, the fierce Tatars.
Ivan came from the Danilovich wing of the Riurik clan which dated back to the great 9th century Kievan Rus. Its hold on power had been threatened from time to time by dynastic succession struggles among relatives. According to Hosking, the pre-eminence achieved by Vasilii II (1425-1462) "had finally replaced the steppe system of lateral succession with primogeniture" (p. 82). The birth of Ivan IV in 1530 was warmly welcomed by the aging Vasilii III and his new wife Elena Glinskaya because it narrowly saved the clan from extinction. The Patriarch of Jerusalem, who opposed Vasilii's marriage as sinful, however, prophesied that they would give birth to "a wicked son" (Koslow, 1961, p. 3).
Ivan was orphaned by the death of his father at the age of three and he lost his mother when he was eight. He grew up amidst terrifying struggles among the boyar families at court who vied, sometimes violently, for royal preferment, position and patronage. The boyars were aristocratic families which counseled the Grand Dukes. Originally drawn from the warrior (cavalry) families which supported them in return for grants of inheritable land and other stipends, the boyars grew in wealth and power as Moscow expanded at the expense of rival principalities. Hosking said "the Muscovite grand princes relied implicitly on the cooperation of the great boyar clans" (p. 92).
Cold and withdrawn, Ivan's personality emerged in the games played by the childhood gangs which he led. They tossed dogs from the high battlements of the Kremlin onto crowds below into which they also galloped horses at high speed. Florinsky (1964) said that Ivan's leading characteristics as an adult were "boundless suspicion, insatiable cruelty, and extreme depravity" (p. 91).
According to Hosking, Ivan acquired from his boyhood experiences "a permanent smolde...