Even the official version of history contains a huge amount of facts testifying to historical forgeries and the constant desire of our sworn partners to throw mud at Russia and the Russian people. Why did Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich not please the propagandists?
The merit of Ivan the Terrible in the publication of the first Russian printed books is beyond doubt. In general, much in Russian history, called the "first", is associated with the name of this tsar. The first pharmacy appeared with him, the first regular army - archers, also with him. Ivan Vasilievich - the founder of the regular border troops, who approved on February 16, 1571 the "Charter of the Guard and Border Service".
Firefighters will not let you lie - before Ivan Vasilyevich, fires in Russia were not extinguished and did not allow to extinguish - they say, the will of God; the Terrible Tsar had to cut down several especially orthodox heads in order to change the view of firefighting in society. In 1584, shortly before his death, Ivan the Terrible established the Stone Order, to which stone craftsmen and brick-makers were subordinate.
“And it is known in that Order, of the entire Moscow state, stone work and craftsmen; and for what royal building those craftsmen are needed, and they are collected from all cities, and the king's treasury give them money for daily fodder, than they can be fed up with water. Yes, in Moscow, the known (producing lime) and brick yards and factories are known in that order, and where the white stone is born and lime is made, and those cities are given taxes and incomes in that Order …"
In general, he was an outstanding ruler, unjustly slandered by foreigners and court historiographers of the Romanov dynasty, and in order to deal with the tangled history of the library named after him, one will involuntarily have to clean up the centuries-old heaps of slander and slander, conscientious delusions, outright lies and concealment of documents.
For example, one of the most valuable sources of the era of Ivan the Terrible, Stoglav, was inaccessible to historians for a long time. In 1667, Patriarch Nikon banned it as a heretical work. For almost two hundred years this document has been classified!
And Jerome Horsey assured the European community that the bloodthirsty Ivan the Terrible brutally killed 700 thousand people in Novgorod, despite the fact that the population in that Novgorod was barely 30 thousand … And the dog's heads and brooms near the oprichniki saddles is a fiction. The guardsmen wore on their belts the symbol of a broom sweeping treason, a woolen brush.
Generations of historians were so pleased, they tried so hard, painting with black paint the deeds of Ioannov, that in the understanding of the average man they called him Grozny because of his unparalleled cruelty.
Promotional video:
Few now remember that his grandfather, Ivan III, was first named the Terrible, who earned this nickname at the age of twelve, when in 1452 he drove Dmitry Shemyak through the Vologda forests. This name was given to him in a laudable sense; he was formidable for enemies and obstinate disobedient ones.
“Rarely are the founders of Monarchies renowned for their tender sensitivity, and the toughness necessary for the great deeds of government borders on severity. They write that timid women fainted from the angry, fiery gaze of Ioannov; that the petitioners were afraid to go to the throne; that the nobles trembled and at the feasts in the palace did not dare to whisper a word, nor to move, when the Emperor, tired of conversation, heated with wine, dozed for hours at dinner; everyone sat in deep silence, awaiting a new order to amuse him and be merry.
Having already noticed the severity of Ioannov's punishments, we add that the most noble officials, secular and spiritual, were not exempt from the terrible commercial execution; so, they popularly flogged the Ukhtomsky prince, the nobleman Khomutov and the former Archimandrite of Chudovsky for a forged letter, composed by them on the land of their deceased brother Ioannov …"
Who wrote this about Karamzin? About Ivan the Terrible, that's just about whom? When quoting, I deliberately omitted the date, and if you do not know what happened in 1491, then you will not understand that this was written about John III. But it so happened that in public opinion it was John IV who is a pathologically cruel tyrant, sadist and executioner, and who does not drink human blood for a day, then he does not go to bed.
Even the book by Alexander Bushkov, written as if in defense of the good name of the first Russian tsar, is called “Ivan the Terrible. Bloody poet ". But the historian R. G. Skrynnikov, who devoted several decades to the study of the era of Ivan the Terrible, irrefutably proved that during the "mass terror" of the times of John IV in Russia, about 3-4 thousand people were executed, moreover, by court decisions, in accordance with the law.
For example - in 1577 the head of Prince Ivan Kurakin was cut off. Kurakin at one time participated in the conspiracy of Vladimir Staritsky, when Ivan the Terrible was to be seized and surrendered to the Poles. The spiritual fathers begged forgiveness to the traitorous prince, and Kurakin was even appointed governor of the city of Venden. But when the city was besieged by the Poles, Kurakin fell into a binge, and as a result the Poles took the city. Here Terrible's patience ran out, and he shortened the prince by the head … But the boyar duma approved the sentence to the princes and boyars!
English historian and philosopher R. J. Collingwood said that "the personality of any more or less significant historical figure should be considered without fail taking into account the time in which he lived and worked, as well as specific historical conditions." And yet - the scale of any event can be understood only in comparison - during the reign of Henry VIII, at about the same time, 72 thousand people (about 2.5% of the total population of the country) were executed in "civilized" Britain "for vagrancy and begging", and under Queen Elizabeth - 89 thousand people!
And where did so many vagabonds suddenly come from that they had to hang along the roads in a picturesque mess? And these were just peasants driven from their lands - industrial England needed pasture for sheep. Armed guards stood at the crossroads, stopped anyone passing, and if he could not convincingly prove that he was a local tenant, they dragged him to the gallows, without bothering himself with proof of guilt and the trickery of legal proceedings. So the former peasant had a choice - either to go to the gallows or to the manufactory, to work for a pittance.
In 1525, more than 100 thousand people were executed in Germany during the suppression of a peasant uprising.
It was during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, from 1547 to 1584 in the Netherlands, under the rule of the Spanish kings Charles V and Philip II, that the number of victims reached 100 thousand! Moreover, these were, first of all, "heretics" executed or died under torture.
On August 23, 1572, the French king Charles IX took a personal part in St. Bartholomew's Night, during which more than three thousand Huguenots were killed. In one night - about the same as for the entire period of the reign of Ivan the Terrible. But this is only one night. And in just two weeks, about 30 thousand Protestants were killed throughout France.
The list of glorious deeds of European monarchs is continued by Ivan Vasilievich himself, in a conversation with the English envoy said: “I am condemned abroad that I committed a terrible atrocity in Novgorod … But was the mercy of King Louis XI great, who turned their cities of Liege and Arras to ashes and decay ? Treason was severely punished by him. And the Danish ruler Christians tortured many thousands of people for treason."
Something dims the image of an unprecedented tyrant, despot and executioner against the background of the acts of "civilized" monarchs … Why is it our Ivan Vasilyevich who is a super-tyrant, super-executioner all over the world?
Well, first of all, he inked himself mercilessly: “Alas, for me, a sinner! Woe to me, accursed! Oh, me, bad! I, a stinking dog, is always in drunkenness, fornication, adultery, filth, murder, robbery, embezzlement and hatred, in any villainy …”This is Ivan Vasilyevich writing to the abbot of the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery. After reading this, gullible foreigners made a completely logical and well-grounded conclusion: “Ivan the Terrible, nicknamed“Vasilyevich”for his cruelty !!! (This is not my typo, dear reader, as in the French encyclopedic dictionary it was written - "nicknamed for his cruelty" Vasilyevich ").
And besides, one should not forget that the Western Church in every possible way approved and blessed the execution of heretics, but Metropolitan Philip of Moscow publicly refused to bless Ivan the Terrible, even though he humiliatedly asked him about it three times. The Metropolitan could not forgive Ivan "for the shed Christian blood." It turns out that we are accused of cruelty only because higher moral standards are adopted in Russia?
And if we ourselves, and he himself, calls himself an unprecedented villain, then why would the West argue with us? By the way, these same foreigners, calling Ivan the Terrible an unprecedented tyrant, at the same time were unspeakably surprised - it turns out that in Russia they don't hang for theft! Understandably their surprise - at the same time in England, a theft worth sixpence guaranteed the gallows.
But there are people who must know the truth, and must convey this truth to us - these are professional historians. Take the work of the historian V. B. Kobrin "Ivan the Terrible". It says that "the era of Ivan the Terrible was characterized by an incredible scale of repression." And how did Kobrin know this? He's all right with the source. This is V. I. Lenin told him that the Russian autocracy was "Asiatic wild", that "there is a lot of antediluvian barbarism in it."
He is echoed by other luminaries of historical science, who so fiercely accused Ivan the Terrible that in the heat they piled up a great deal of utter nonsense. For example, they miraculously synthesized the three Vorotynsky brothers, Mikhail, Alexander and Vladimir into one exemplary victim of the unprecedented cruelty of Ivan the Terrible.
Let's start with Karamzin: “The first of the Russian governors, the first servant of the sovereigns - the one who, in the most glorious hour of John's life, sent him to say:“Kazan is ours”; who was already persecuted, already marked by disgrace, the dishonor of exile and dungeon, crushed the khan's force on the banks of Lopasnya and still forced the tsar to express gratitude to him for saving Moscow, ten months after his triumph he was betrayed to death, accused by his slave of witchcraft and intent lime the king … They brought a man of glory and valor to the king, bound …
John, hitherto having spared the life of this last of Adashev's faithful friends, as if in order to have at least one victorious voivode in case of extreme danger. The danger was over - and the sixty-year-old hero was tied up and laid on a tree between two fires; burned, tortured. They assure that John himself, with his bloody rod, raked the burning coals to the body of the sufferer. Burnt out, barely breathing, they took Vorotynsky and took him to Beloozero. He died on the way. His famous ashes lie in the monastery of Cyril. "Oh, great husband!" - writes the unfortunate Kurbsky. - A strong husband in soul and mind! Your memory is sacred in the world! You served an ungrateful fatherland, where valor destroys and glory is silent …"
My reader! Hold back the bitter tears! Let's better take a look at the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery and we will be surprised to see that not Mikhail is buried there, but his brother, Vladimir. The widow placed a temple over his grave. (Kobrin) Vladimir has been in the monastery since 1562, when his brothers Mikhail and Alexander fell into disgrace (Zimin, Khoroshkevich).
But, since a purely concrete history of the kingdom of terror was written, the brothers Alexander and Vladimir were pushed aside, and all the hardships were attributed to the most famous of the brothers - Michael. As a result, a completely wild and ridiculous version appeared, in which incredible adventures and transformations take place with Mikhail.
If you believe our historians, trustingly repeating Kurbsky's confused nonsense, then in 1560 Mikhail was exiled to Beloozero, but in 1565 he was summoned from there, and, according to Kurbsky, was tortured. Here it was burned over a low fire, and (well, of course!), The king personally shoveled burning coals under it. After that, Vorotynsky seemed to have died on the way to Beloozero (Valishevsky).
After that, the prince, tortured to death, takes possession of the city of Starodub-Ryapolovsky (Platonov) and at the same time sends a complaint to the tsar from the monastic imprisonment that his family and 12 servants who are with his person are not being sent the Rhine and French wines from the treasury, fresh fish, raisins, prunes and lemons (Valishevsky).
In 1571, Mikhail suddenly, without leaving the monastery cell, finds himself in the chair of the chairman of the commission for the reorganization of the defense of the southern borders, valiantly defeats the Crimeans in the battle of Molodya (Zimin, Khoroshkevich) in July 1572, and in April 1573 the indefatigable Ivan the Terrible again with his own hand roasts it over the fire (Zimin, Khoroshkevich). A year after the second death, on February 16, 1574, Mikhail signed a new charter of the guard service (and again - Zimin, Khoroshkevich).
Western historians are not lagging behind our historians. In 1560 Ivan the Terrible captured the grandmaster of the Livonian Order Furstenberg. Already Western historians took their souls away, painting how the unfortunate grandmaster, along with other prisoners, was led through the streets of Moscow, beaten with iron sticks, after which they tortured him to death and threw him to be devoured by birds of prey. Nevertheless, 15 years after his painful death, he sends his brother a letter from Yaroslavl, where he was granted land by a cruel tyrant. In the letter, Furstenberg writes that "he has no reason to complain about his fate." Ivan the Terrible invited him to become the governor in Livonia, he refused, and lived out his life in peace.
Ivan the Terrible demanded that the nobles kiss the cross of allegiance, everyone swore allegiance and kissed the cross in it, and then Prince Dmitry Vishnevetsky fled to Poland, having previously fled from Poland to Ivan. Once again, not getting along with Sigismund, three times the traitor Vishnevetsky goes to Moldova, where he starts a coup d'etat, for which the Turkish Sultan executed him in Istanbul as a troublemaker and rebel. But guess at once, on whom historians recorded the execution of Vishnevetsky? That's right, against the Moscow bloodthirsty despot and tyrant …
Kostomarov, at the suggestion of Kurbsky, talks about the execution in 1561 of Ivan Shishkin with his wife and children, and meanwhile, in Zimin we read that two years after the execution, in 1563, Ivan Shishkin serves as a voivode in Starodub.
The Novgorod bishop was sentenced to death. Oh God! O cruel king!
Only he was sentenced for “… treason, minting a coin and sending it and other treasures to the kings of Poland and Sweden, accused of sodomy, keeping witches, boys and animals and other terrible crimes. All his property - a huge amount of horses, money and treasures - was confiscated in favor of the king, and the bishop himself was sentenced to eternal imprisonment in a cellar, where he lived in chains on his arms and legs, painted images and pictures, made combs and saddles, eating one bread and water”. (J. Horsey). It turns out - sentenced, but not executed. He lived alone, worked, ate modestly … As befits a monk.
According to Kurbsky, the evil tsar sent Sylvester to prison in Solovki, the companion of Ivan the Terrible, the compiler of Domostroi, the priest of the Annunciation Cathedral in Moscow;
“In addition, Ivan sent Simeon the Naked, another instrument of his atrocities, to rob and rob Shchelkan, a big bribe-taker who, having married a beautiful young woman, divorced her by cutting and cutting her bare back with a saber. Having killed Ivan Latina, his faithful servant, Simeon Nagoy knocked out 5 thousand rubles from Shchelkan's heels”(J. Horsey). Not bad? Divorced by cutting and cutting through the bare back with a saber! And 5 thousand rubles! You can roughly imagine how much it is - the proud Polish gentry fought for 50 kopecks a month.
The bribe-taker who made out the divorce in such an original way, Andrei Shchelkalov, survived Ivan the Terrible and died around 1597.
According to Karamzin, trustingly repeating the absurdities of Kurbsky, Ivan Vasilyevich Sheremetev was shackled in "heavy fetters", imprisoned in a "stuffy dungeon", "tortured by the monster king." Leaving prison, Sheremetev, they say, only saved himself by taking the monastic vows of the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery, but even there he got the "fiend-tsar" and reprimanded the abbot for "indulging" Sheremetev …
In fact, it was so - in 1564 Sheremetev tried to escape, was captured, but the tsar forgave him, and after that the boyar continued to perform his duties (Valishevsky), for several years sitting in the Boyar Duma (Karamzin). In 1571, Sheremetev commanded the troops during the war with the Krymchaks, and only 9 years after attempting to escape, he ended up in a monastery, where he lived very comfortably, which is why the great sovereign was angry with the hegumen.
Few of Sheremetev's example? Need more? You are welcome!
Prince V. M. was caught trying to escape and forgiven. Glinsky, fled twice and was forgiven twice by I. D. Belsky. He entered into an agreement with the Poles, but the governor of the city of Starodub, Prince V. Funikov, was pardoned. And they all ran … They ran to the enemy during the hostilities in the winter of 1563, boyar Kolychev, T. Pukhov-Teterin, M. Sarokhozin … And Karamzin subsequently justified breaking the oath and fleeing to the enemy: “… flight is not always treason, civil laws are not can be stronger than natural: to be saved from the tormentor ….
Almost all "reliable evidence of cruelty" of this period is based on the letters of Kurbsky. Well, let's take a closer look at him … Prince Andrei Kurbsky was a direct descendant of Rurik and the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir, moreover, in the senior line, while Grozny was in the junior, and therefore considered himself entitled to claim the throne. It is believed that the king hated him for this, as well as for being "an outstanding statesman and a great commander."
And that it was out of hatred that John appointed him governor of Livonia and commander-in-chief of the 100-thousandth army in Livonia?
In August 1562, the "great commander" at the head of a 15,000-strong army suffered a crushing defeat at Nevel from 4,000 Poles. Whether it was treason, as Waliszewski points out about Kurbsky's "suspicious relations" with Poland, or criminal negligence, the wound saves Kurbsky from responsibility. He was demoted - from the commander-in-chief he was transferred to the governors of the city of Dorpat (now - Tartu).
Is this town such aura? In 1991, the head of the Tartu garrison, division commander Dzhokhar Dudayev, also threw out something similar - he suddenly hated the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, of which he had been a member for many years, and, breaking his oath, began to fight against the army in which he made a career …
The commander of the Russian troops in Livonia, Prince Kurbsky, maintained personal correspondence with King Sigismund-Augustus, detailing the conditions for his transition. From the king himself, hetman Radziwill and the Lithuanian sub-chancellor Volovich, "closed sheets" were received, in which they offered Kurbsky to leave Muscovy and move to Lithuania. Having received preliminary consent, Kurbsky was already sent "open sheets" - official letters with large royal seals, guaranteeing "royal affection" and a solid monetary reward. (These documents have been preserved in the Polish archives).
And only then, on an April night in 1564, the "victim of the tsarist tyranny" Prince Kurbsky on ropes descended from the fortress wall of Dorpat, where the boyar children S. M. Veshnyakov, G. Kaisarov, I. Neklyudov, I. N. Cockroaches … In total - 12 people. He forgot his wife and 9-year-old son, and the "cruel tyrant" released the traitor's family to Lithuania so that they could reunite with the "noble" fugitive, but Kurbsky had already married a rich widow by that time. And then it turned out that a year before his escape, the prudent prince took a large loan from the Pechora monastery, and was not going to return it.
(Later, after the death of Kurbsky, his descendants were again accepted into Russian citizenship … The poor Kurbsky gentry adopted the surname Krupsky, and in all things - Nadezhda Konstantinovna is his descendant …)
In Lithuania, the traitor was happily greeted and took possession of the city of Kovel with a castle (at the junction of present-day Belarus, Ukraine and Poland) Krevo old age, 10 villages, 4 thousand acres of land in Lithuania and 28 villages in Volyn. It was then that the noble and disinterested knight began to write accusatory letters, with which, again, many legends and speculations are associated.
For example, as a faithful servant of Kurbsky, Shibanov undertook to deliver a message from Kurbsky to the king: "From my lord, your exile, Prince Andrei Mikhailovich." The angry king struck him in the leg with his sharp rod: blood flowed from the ulcer; the servant, standing motionless, was silent. John leaned on a rod and ordered to read aloud Kurbsky's letter.
But this scene, so touchingly described by Karamzin, did not exist and could not be for a simple reason - Vasily Shibanov could not be a messenger from Lithuania; the faithful servant was abandoned by the traitorous prince in Russia and arrested while investigating the circumstances of the prince's flight.
But the scene is painfully picturesque, and Alexei Tolstoy picks up: “Shibanov was silent. From the pierced leg the Blood flowed like a crimson current …"
The noble exile did not confine himself to writing accusatory letters. Kurbsky handed over to the Lithuanians all Livonian supporters of Moscow, with whom he himself negotiated, named the Moscow intelligence officers at the royal court.
“On the advice of Kurbsky, the king set the Crimean Tatars against Russia, and then sent his troops to Polotsk. Kurbsky took part in this battle. A few months later, with a detachment of Lithuanians, he crossed the Russian borders for the second time. As evidenced by the newly found archival documents, the prince, thanks to his good knowledge of the area, managed to surround the Russian corps, drove it into a swamp and defeated”(R. Skrynnikov).
The “exile” wanted to regain his patrimonial rights to the Yaroslavl principality. He asked the king to give him an army of 30,000 in order to capture Moscow.
“Kurbsky stuck to the enemies of the fatherland … He betrayed his honor and soul to Sigismund, advised how to destroy Russia; reproached the king for weakness in the war; urged him to act more boldly, not to spare the treasury in order to incite the khan against us - and soon they heard in Moscow that 70 thousand Lithuanians, Poles, Prussian Germans, Hungarians, Volokhs with the traitor Kurbsky were going to Polotsk, that Devlet-Girey with 60 thousand predators entered to the Ryazan region …"
And this is written by the same Karamzin!
Do you think that the policy of "double standards" was invented by the Americans, or by some other malicious foreigners? Figushki, it is we who create an opinion about the unprecedented cruelty and, in general, the "incorrectness" of the history of Russia.
V. V. Kozhinov gives an example - in 1847, Alexander Herzen, our exemplary "Westerner", emigrated from Russia, because he considered his homeland the focus of evil - five Decembrists were executed. And it should be noted that from 1773, when the six leaders of the Pugachev region were executed, until 1847 - in almost 75 years - the execution of the Decembrists was the only one in Russia.
But a little more than a year passed after Herzen's departure to the fertile, meek and humane Europe, and right before his eyes, in just three days, eleven thousand (11,000) participants in the June uprising in Paris were shot. Horrified by such bloodshed, Herzen first wrote to his friends in Moscow: "God grant that the Russians take Paris, it's time to end this stupid Europe!" But then he got used to it, and managed to convince Europe that the execution of the Decembrists should be qualified as an expression of unprecedented cruelty inherent in Russia …
Perhaps to compare Ivan Vasilievich with figures closer to our time? No, no, I don't mean Joseph Vissarionovich at all!
When the Stolypin reform was carried out in 8 months of 1906, 1102 people were executed according to the decisions of the military field courts, more than 137 per month, and if we take those executed under Ivan the Terrible to the maximum - 5 thousand people in 50 years (they were also executed for murder, rape, arson a residential building with people, a robbery of a temple, high treason), then the simplest estimate gives barely 8 people a month throughout the country. The overwhelming majority of those executed are known by name. The "political" belonged to the upper classes and were guilty of quite real, not mythical, conspiracies and treason. Almost all of them were previously forgiven under the oath of the cross, that is, they were perjurers, political recidivists.
… Poland, which is close to Russia both in language and geographically, collapsed, disappeared from the face of the earth as a state, precisely as a result of the processes of state nihilism, liberty and separatism of the gentry, which Ivan Vasilyevich burned out with a red-hot iron in Russia. It was the criminals who were executed, and there is no need to pretend that we are talking about the innocent victims. Each death sentence under Grozny was passed only in Moscow and was personally approved by the tsar, and the sentence to the princes and boyars was also passed by the boyar duma.
Well, at the beginning of the twentieth humane century - to the limit simplified legal proceedings - they looked thoughtfully at a man - barefoot, shaggy, and he smells like a riot … Well, not otherwise, like a rebel! They brought me behind the shed and spanked. Then, at the suggestion of Stolypin, Nicholas II signed a decree on military-field courts, they were then called "rapid-fire".
It was enough to declare some kind of province on martial law, as a certain category of criminal cases passed into the jurisdiction of military-field courts, consisting of ordinary combat officers, even military lawyers were not involved. The trial took place within 48 hours after the arrest of the suspect, and the sentence, most often by hanging, was carried out within 24 hours. Of course, there could be no serious investigation, so most of the deaths were innocent! Well, what could two or three randomly appointed combat officers, who did not know how to carry out even the simplest investigative actions, understand in the evidence and evidence?
And after that, Ivan is a tyrant and despot, and darling Stolypin is almost an icon for our liberals.
The idea of installing the monument was literally in the air - in 2005 they wanted to erect a monument to John IV in the city of Lyubim, Yaroslavl Region, very close to the Vologda Region. The local administration was already ready to pay the costs, and Zurab Tsereteli himself undertook to embody the monument in bronze, the idea of installing the monument was also supported by the inhabitants of the town, first mentioned in the chronicles since 1546.
But the installation of the monument was opposed by the Yaroslavl diocese of the ROC MP. Archbishop Kirill of Yaroslavl and Rostov sent a message to the governor, regional prosecutor and chief federal inspector with a demand to prevent the installation of a monument to Tsar John IV.
Archbishop Kirill claimed that the installation of the monument would lead "… to the most unpredictable consequences, worsen the crime situation in the region …" and could become a "destabilizing factor". Fearing creeps and horror films, imagining how the population of a town of less than 7 thousand people would be excited by the sight of a monument to a person who died more than 400 years ago, and go to destroy everything in the district, the idea of the monument was abandoned.
Nobody demolishes monuments to murderer kings in Europe, both compatriots and our historians write about them, at least respectfully, but only talk about Ivan Vasilievich … Splashing saliva, proceeding bloody foam, they begin to talk about a completely unique, exceptional, inimitable villain, consummate tyrant and executioner!
Practically his contemporary, separated from Ivan the Terrible by a very small number of years, Tsar Vaska Shuisky (on the throne from May 1606 to July 1610) in 1607 promised pardon to Bolotnikov and his associates; when they surrendered, the promise was forgotten - Bolotnikov himself was drowned in Kargopol, and four thousand captured rebels were executed in a very simple way - they took them to the banks of the Yauza and … Four thousand blows - four thousand corpses swam along the Yauza and further - along the Moscow River … Ileyka, who called himself Peter, the son of Tsar Fyodor, was also executed in Moscow, despite his promise to grant life.
But! On the monument by Mikeshin's Millennium of Russia (1862) to Vasily Ioannovich Shuisky, there was a place among 109 outstanding figures of our country, but it is useless to look for Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible there …
Even closer is the brilliant commander of all times and peoples, called by Astafiev "the poacher of the Russian people", Georgy Zhukov. 1939, Khalkhin-Gol. "For several months 600 people were shot, and 83 were nominated for the award …" (General Secretary of the USSR Writers' Union V. P. Stavskikh.)
Let's count? 600 executions are just 104 days (from June 5 to September 16). There are six death sentences a day. And look what a monument was heaped up to him in Moscow, and a bust in his homeland …
And now let's return to the second half of the 16th century and take a look at the “unprecedented villain” who killed his own son, a polygamist (either seven or eight wives are counted by the popularizers of historical science). It turns out that a lot of rumors, versions and speculations that Tsar Ivan killed his son, Ivan, are unfounded and unsubstantiated.
Vladyka John (Snychev), Metropolitan of St. Petersburg and Ladoga, writes about these versions: "It is impossible to find a hint of their reliability in the entire mass of documents and acts that have come down to us."
In the Moscow chronicler under the year 7090 we read: "Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich has died." In the Piskarevsky Chronicler: "At 12 o'clock in the summer night of November 7090 on the 17th day … the death of Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich." In the Novgorod Chronicle: "The same year Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich died at Matins in Sloboda."
Well, where is there even a hint of murder?
Confirmation that the quarrel between the father and the son and the death of the tsarevich are separated in time - in many chronicles, and the cause of his death has now been established reliably - the tsarevich was poisoned; the content of mercury chloride in his remains exceeds the maximum allowable 32 times!
Moreover, when Ivan Ivanovich's sarcophagus was opened, although his skull was not preserved (crumbled), they found "a shock of well-preserved bright yellow hair up to 5-6 cm long. No signs of blood on the hair were found." If the current means of blood testing were not found, then it was not. There were no detergents then that could wash off the blood so that our forensic scientists would not find it.
Regarding the unthinkable number of his wives - here you need to make it clear right away - the wife is a woman who has undergone an officially recognized marriage ceremony. It was a wedding in the 16th century. So it is impossible to call women wives whom the tsar did not marry. For their designation there are many terms, legal and colloquial, but certainly not "wife".
In the Ascension Women's Monastery, the burial vault of the Moscow Grand Duchesses and Queens, there are the burial places of the four wives of John IV: Anastasia Romanova, Maria Temryukovna, Martha Sobakina and Maria Naga, so we can only talk about four wives, and the fourth marriage was committed by the decision of the Russian Consecrated Council Orthodox Church, and the tsar humbly bore the penance imposed on him. The fourth marriage was allowed because the previous marriage, with Martha Sobakina, was purely nominal - the queen died without actually entering into a marriage. And that's it! He had no more wives!
But, nevertheless, in the museum of the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda in one of the chambers on the wall there was a description of the wedding ceremony with an unknown wife. When the writer Vyacheslav Manyagin asked for a copy of this document to be made for him, the head of the museum said literally the following: “You see, very few written sources have survived from the 16th century. So we took a description of a 17th century marriage ceremony and used it. After all, the rite has not changed in a hundred years …”But the accompanying plate indicated that this was a description of the wedding of Ivan the Terrible, and even indicated who it was!
Interestingly - now removed this "one more proof of the" polygamy "of the king"?
So Anna Kolotovskaya, Anna Vasilchikova, Vasilisa Melentyevna, Natalya Bulgakova, Avdotya Romanovna, Marfa Romanovna, Mamelfa Timofeevna and Fetma Timofeevna were not the wives of the tsar.
And there was no murder of his son.
What happened? The kingdoms of Kazan, Astrakhan, Siberian, Nogai Horde, part of the territory of the North Caucasus (Pyatigorye) were added. And at the same time, Ivan the Terrible wrote to the conqueror of Siberia Ermak: “Timoshka, do not force the local peoples with the Orthodox faith. There may be trouble in Russia. Population growth was about 50%.
This time is marked by a decrease in the population of the Russian North, which is traditionally attributed to the consequences of the oprichnina - they say, as a result of the bloody policy of the cruel tsar, cities and villages were depopulated. Only the majority of those who left their homes did not go to the grave.
You are not easy, dear path, If the ashes fly to the shells
If the princes threw the city, And the slaves left their homes …
(Vladislav Kokorin)
"The scribes of Kazan and Sviyazhsk of the 60s mark immigrants from other localities - from the upper Volga cities of Nizhny Novgorod, Kostroma, Yaroslavl, further from Vologda, Vyatka, Pskov." (I. Kulisher. "History of the Russian National Economy"). They settled in Kazan with whole streets - for example, Pskovskaya and Tulskaya. Among the Kazan homeowners are the descendants of many appanage princes: Yaroslavl, Rostov, Starodub, Suzdal … (In total - 10 clans).
In the Kazan region, new cities were set up - Sviyazhsk, (1551), Laishev, (1557), Mokshansk, Tetyushi (1571). Kozmodemyansk, Cheboksary, Kokshaisk were built on the Volga between Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan. Downstream from Kazan, in order to secure the path to Astrakhan, Samara, (1586), Saratov (1590), Tsaritsyn (1589) were placed, Ufa was built in 1586 to observe the Bashkirs. Belgorod (1593), Voronezh (1586), Oskol (1593), Livny (1571), Kromy were installed, as well as the previously founded Kursk - "… inhabiting them with different people, Cossacks and archers and many people living with life." ("New Chronicler", XVII century.)
I do not give this list in full for the sake of saving space (155 cities and fortresses were founded only under Ivan the Terrible!), But it is clear that the decline in the population of Russia, which is blamed on Ivan the Terrible, is in fact just a consequence of the colonization of lands along the Volga and Don. Not less people, but more land! For 51 years of his reign, the territory of Russia has doubled, from 2.8 million square meters. km to 5.4 million sq. km. Russia has become larger than the rest of Europe.
The same time was the time of a sharp increase in the number of Cossacks. In 1521 the Don was deserted, after only 50 years these lands were occupied by the Cossacks. In 1574 there were so many Cossacks that they were able to take the fortress of Azov. And it is difficult at times to make out - where are the free Cossacks, and where are the sovereign people. According to the "painting", the charter of Ivan the Terrible on the protection of the southeastern outskirts of the state, the sentry posts were ordered "not to settle with the horse", it was forbidden to "cook porridge" twice in one place, "in which place who was midday, and in that place do not spend the night. " To protect the near and distant approaches, observation posts - "watchmen" and patrols - "stanitsa" were put forward.
In Russia, the general election of local administrations was introduced at the request of the population.
A reform of the judiciary was carried out - the urban and rural communities were given the right to find thieves and robbers themselves, to try and execute them.
The branches of the armed forces appear - cavalry, infantry, outfit (artillery).
The state post office was created, about 300 post stations were founded.
The first pharmacy and pharmaceutical order were created.
Industry was created, international trade developed: with England, Persia, Central Asia.
In 1549, an extremely important event took place - the Ambassadorial Prikaz was established.
In fact, this is the first specialized institution in Russia dealing with foreign policy, and, as is still common among diplomats, foreign intelligence: before traveling abroad, the Ambassadorial Prikaz developed in detail instructions for the head of mission, including those of an intelligence nature. It was the Ambassadorial order that explained to each clerk included in the diplomatic mission, his tasks, secret and explicit, his behavior and place in the hierarchy of the group traveling abroad.
The order was responsible for all issues related to the reception of foreign representatives in Russia, including elementary surveillance, compiling reports on meetings of foreigners with other foreign guests, and even more carefully tracking meetings with Russians. The first head of the Ambassadorial Prikaz was clerk Ivan Viskovaty; we will come across this name when we deal directly with the library of Ivan the Terrible.
In 1557, on the order of Ivan the Terrible, on the right bank of the Narova River in the Baltic, the Russian engineer Ivan Vyrodkov (who had previously erected the Sviyazhsk fortress near Kazan) built "a city for a bus (ship) parish for overseas people." So who built the first Russian port in the Baltic? Ivan the Terrible or Peter the Great? That's it …
In Russia, the authorities did not bother building prison castles. Most of those accused of crimes were, until the completion of the case, bailed by society or by private individuals who were in charge of them. And if anyone did not have a surety, they were shackled or held in shackles and kept in deep cellars, pits. And who banned underground prisons in 1560? That's right, cruel tyrant, Ivan the Terrible.
It was under Ivan the Terrible that the ransom of the Russian people who were captured by the Tatars was legalized. Before that, such captives were ransomed by the Greeks, Armenians, and Turks and brought them to the borders of the Muscovy, offering to redeem them, but if there were no volunteers, they were taken back. Ivan the Terrible ordered to redeem the prisoners from the treasury, spreading the costs to the whole people.
"No one should be dismissed from such a duty, because this is a common Christian charity …"
But this was a partial solution to the problem - it was necessary to fight against the cause, not the effect. “There were so many Russian prisoners of Kazan that they were sold in huge crowds, like cattle, to various oriental merchants who deliberately came to Kazan for this purpose” (NI Kostomarov).
Kazan, in the words of contemporaries, “worried Rus' worse than Batu's ruin; Batu only once flowed through the Russian land, like a burning firebrand, and the Kazan residents constantly attacked the Russian lands, killed and dragged the Russian people into captivity …"
… From childhood, we were hammered into our heads that the Russian tsars only thought about how to enslave the common man stronger, and seize more land from their peaceful neighbors, but at the same time, the democratic boyars wished liberties to the common man, and the patriotic neighboring khans they only wished that there was peace between the peoples, and then Ivan the Terrible came and mercilessly executed them.
According to the modern British historian Jeffrey Hosking: "Muscovy began its imperial career by conquering and annexing an independent non-Russian state, the Kazan Khanate for the first time … Russia embarked on more than three centuries of conquest and expansion, which led to the creation of the largest and most diverse empire in the world." And many other historians regard the capture of Kazan as a manifestation of the imperial ambitions of the Russians, conquering new territories and enslaving peoples.
But if you look closely at the facts, it turns out that the battle for Kazan was not between the Russian invaders and the free peace-loving people, but between the troops of Ivan the Terrible and the army brought from Astrakhan by "Krymchak" Ediger. But even if we consider the army of Ediger as disinterested and noble defenders of the Kazan Khanate, then what about arithmetic?
Under the banner of Ivan the Terrible, there were 60 thousand Moscow and Kasimov Tatars, and Ediger had 10 thousand soldiers in the decisive battle.
The Kazan Chronicler describes in detail how Ivan the Terrible set up his commanders: “In the previous regiment of the initial commanders, rule over your strength - the Crimean Tatar prince Taktamysh and the Shiban prince Kudait … In the right hand of the initial governors, the rules are: Kasim's king Shigalei … ruce the initial governors: the Astorozan prince Kaibula … In the sentry regiment the initial governors: the prince Derbysh-Aleio."
It was the Tatars who were the first to break through, into the breach of the Kazan wall, and it was they who were distinguished by special cruelty when they took the city. The Russians, however, fully supported them only after they came across several thousand tortured Russian slaves …
Only on one day, August 16, 1552, and only in the khan's court, 2,700 Russian slaves were freed. With his characteristic cruelty, the utter monster Ivan the Terrible gave an order, according to which - "… if anyone finds a Christian prisoner, that one will punish him with death", and 60 thousand slaves were released.
Go and deal purely with the scumbags who really got sick of the lawlessness - in the language of Western historians this is what they call “imperial ambitions” and “enslavement of peoples”.
Or maybe it's better to read it written in 1564-1565. "History of the Kazan Kingdom"? It describes in detail the last period of the Kazan Khanate and the capture of Kazan by Russian troops. The unnamed author of the history spent about 20 years in Tatar captivity and was released in 1552. Agree that the author, who was a slave to the Kazan Tatars for two decades, has some idea of enslavement …
The struggle for Kazan was between Moscow and the Crimea, and Turkey was behind the Crimea, and the Janissaries took part in the campaigns of the Crimean Khan. According to the concepts, it was a trap to engage in any kind of productive labor for the Crimean lads, and it was much more fun and profitable to make extortionate trips to neighboring countries to seize booty and prisoners for sale into slavery and receive a ransom.
At this time, a saying was formed that a Turk speaks Turkish only with his father and chief. He speaks with the mullah in Arabic, with his mother in Polish, with his grandmother in Ukrainian …
From the 15th to the 18th century, up to five million people were taken into Turkish captivity from Great and Little Russia. These are only those who passed the Perekop Isthmus. And how many were killed, how many died on the way … The Krymchaks did not take adult men, they did not take old people and small children who could not withstand the long journey. “They didn't take” is such a euphemism used by historians. Everyone who was not hijacked was simply cut …
Five million! Yes, the entire population of Russia during the time of Ivan the Terrible - about that much! All the servants of Constantinople, both among the Turks and among local Christians, consisted of Russian slaves and female slaves. Venice and France used Russian slaves in military galleys as rowers, forever chained. They were bought in the markets of the Levant …
The Tatars appeared with raids under the walls of the White-stone capital so regularly that even now in Moscow two old streets in Zamoskvorechye are called Ordynka. The Crimean lads walked along them to the crossings across the Moskva River and to the Crimean ford (now the Crimean bridge here reminds of the bloody past). The steppe posed to the Russian people the question of a life-and-death struggle.
In 1571, the traitor Prince Miloslavsky sent his people to show the Crimean Khan Devlet-Girey how to bypass the notch line from the west, and the Tatars broke through to Moscow, took the city, plundered and burned (only the Kremlin survived), and, taking a huge number of prisoners, left to Crimea. It seemed to the Crimean people that Russia was over.
Moscow burned to the ground, there were so many killed that it was impossible to bury them. The corpses were simply dumped into the river and pushed away from the banks with sticks so that they would float downstream, along the Volga, past Kazan and Astrakhan, to the Caspian …
But it turned out - this was the last time the Krymchaks burned Moscow. In 1572, the Horde again went to Russia, the Astrakhan and Kazan Tatars revolted. Russia, weakened by a 20-year war, hunger, plague and a terrible Tatar raid, was able to put only a 30-thousandth army against the 120-thousandth army of Devlet-Girey. But the reforms of Ivan the Terrible gave a result - the first regular army in Russia utterly defeated a superior enemy fifty miles from Moscow (Battle of Molodya). Krymchaks have never suffered such a bloody defeat. For twenty years they did not dare to appear on the Oka …
Perhaps there was stagnation in the spiritual and cultural life under Grozny?
No, on the contrary, his reign led to many useful innovations: Zemsky Sobor Councils began to convene regularly; The Stoglavy Sobor was held, the Chetya-Minei of Metropolitan Makarii were created - the first spiritual, literary and historical encyclopedia in Russia, 19 huge volumes with a total of 13,258 pages, Seliverst's Domostroy.
And here one very important facet of Ivan Vasilyevich's personality should be specially noted - his literary talent. Ivan the Terrible was one of the most talented writers of that time, perhaps even the most talented in the 16th century, "… in verbal wisdom a rhetorician, natural and quick-witted," according to contemporaries. In literature, of course, Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich was an innovator.
Medieval writing, including Russian, was characterized by a special etiquette, since the estate system of that time subordinated the requirements of etiquette all his life. The person dressed, talked and walked exactly as required by his position on the social ladder. Even the number of horses in a team depended not on a fat wallet, but on a rank, a place in the state hierarchy. And when noblewoman Morozova, accustomed to ride in a cart pulled by six or even twelve horses, accompanied by two or three hundred servants, was taken across Moscow in a simple sleigh pulled by one horse, this in itself was a very cruel punishment.
In the same way, in the literature of that time, everything was subject to strict rules, which regulated what words and expressions should be written about our own and about enemies, about the humble monastic life and about the valiant exploits of a warrior. The set of these rules determined where it was possible to speak in "simple" language, and where it was solemn and dignified. In the Middle Ages, the spoken and literary languages were very far apart from each other. The turns of living folk speech could only be found in business documents and records of testimony during the investigation and at trial. For literary speech, they were unacceptable.
Ivan Vasilievich was the first to include colloquial and vernacular expressions in his messages. The researchers explain this by the fact that, they say, Ivan Vasilyevich did not write his messages with his own hand, but dictated them, since it was considered unworthy of the great sovereign to write with his own hand. Even the name of the tsar was written on the letter by the clerk, and the tsar only applied the seal.
Well, let's say, both before Ivan Vasilyevich, and after him, such an order was observed, but we don't see such a sparkling, juicy language in the messages of other tsars. So the reasons for the originality of the messages of Grozny should be sought in the personal qualities of the tsar.
Tsar Ivan Vasilievich stands out for his broadest erudition against the background of his contemporaries. Arguing his assertions, he easily and naturally gives examples of proof not only from the history of ancient Judea, as described in the Bible, but also from the history of Byzantium. He perfectly knows not only the Old and New Testaments, but also the lives of the saints, the works of Byzantine theologians. The works of the Bulgarian scientist I. Duychev established that Grozny was free to navigate the history and literature of Byzantium.
One can only wonder what kind of memory Ivan Vasilievich possessed - he clearly recites by heart lengthy excerpts from Holy Scripture in his writings. This can be said with confidence because the quotes in the letters of Grozny are given very close to the text of the source, but with characteristic discrepancies that arise when the text is reproduced from memory. The sworn enemy of Grozny, Prince Kurbsky, recognized Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich as a man of "skillful sacred writing."
In his messages, Ivan Vasilyevich simply blows up the etiquette of writing, but stylistically his innovations are certainly justified. It is written in chased style: "The Germanic castles do not wait for abusive battle, but with the appearance of the life-giving cross they worship their heads." And after that we see the grin of the Great Sovereign: “And where, by sin, on occasion, there was no manifestation of the life-giving cross, there was a battle. A lot of all kinds of people were released: if you ask them, take them away."
In the same peculiar style, he also conducts diplomatic correspondence. So he indignantly writes to the Queen of England: “And we hoped that you were the empress in your kingdom and that you own … But you have people who own you, and not only people, but trading peasants, and about our heads of state and about chests and they do not look at the lands of profit, but look for their trade profits. And you are in your girlish rank, like a vulgar girl …"
I will clarify that the word "vulgar" in the language of that time meant "ordinary", but, nevertheless, Ivan Vasilyevich left the queen well, calling the great queen an ordinary girl, besides, she painfully perceived hints of her protracted virginity, about which the king, undoubtedly it was known. So, in the development of Russian literature, the merits of Ivan Vasilyevich are undeniable - it was with him, and thanks, to a large extent, to him, a new genre appeared in Russia - journalism.
And the construction of the Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed is, you see, not so much the folding of stones in a certain order, but the triumph of the spirit; and not visiting architects put it, but their peasants, Barma and Postnik (However, now there is a version that it was one person - Barma Postnik). "There is no doubt that the idea to build this cathedral in the form that it exists, belonged as much to the art of the builder as the architect, as much to the thoughts of the tsar."
Through the efforts of Ivan the Terrible and his entourage, schools were created: “… In the reigning city of Moscow and throughout the city … elect good spiritual priests and deacons and deacons, married and pious … And for those priests and deacons and clerks, set up schools in their homes, so that the priests and deacons and all Orthodox Christians in every city betray their children to be taught to read and write a book letter and a church petition … and read the naloynago … (Stoglav, ch. 26)
In Russia at that time every fiftieth person was literate, that is, two percent of the population; under Catherine the Great, one in eight hundred people was literate. Difference! In addition, we, the present, need to be clearly aware that in the time of Ivan the Terrible, it was very difficult to master the letter. The ancient writing did not know the breakdown into words, the text was in a continuous array. There was no clear order of transfer, and due to the fact that 15-20 characters were placed on a line of handwritten text, transfer was made very often. Very often there was no difference between lowercase and uppercase letters, and, accordingly, between proper and common names. To speed up writing, many words were written in abbreviated form, vowels were omitted when writing, many superscripts were used - titles. In general, the handwritten texts of that time were, in fact, rather ciphers,which was very difficult to decipher.
And at that time writing and reading sounds was a titanic obstacle to literacy. Many of those sounds that we designate with one letter were at that time written in two, three, and even more signs! Particularly distinguished by the complexity of writing the sound, which we now designate simply "y". It could be denoted in five different ways! In addition to three special symbols, it could be written as a digraph "oh" or "o" with a superscript (title). The "e" sound was written in four different ways. The sound "f" could be designated "fit" or "fart". And there were still unknown to us, who came from the Greek language "psi" and "xi", and the notorious "yat" …
In general, personally, I have not completely mastered this literacy, and I act the same way as my ancestors did - they used the services of literacy, who, with a crowd of people, read books aloud, but I read books that today's grammarians rewrote according to the rules of the current grammar … By the way, people have learned to read "to themselves" quite recently, as a boy I found the times when in a Belarusian village I was considered illiterate because I did not pronounce what I read aloud …
Considering that people at that time simply did not know how to read "to themselves", the circle of people who had access to book wisdom should be expanded - in addition to writers and readers, there were listeners at that time. “Literate peasants read the Gospel, the Lives of the Saints and other spiritual literature aloud in the family, neighbors, sometimes at meetings specially gathered for this”. ("Russians. History and Ethnography). And then there was something to read and listen to.
As already mentioned, the beginning of book printing was laid, two printing houses were created. Monasteries and bishops' houses, where there were large libraries, remained the centers of books. The chronicle was given a state character, the "Facial vault" appeared, and, finally, a book treasury was collected, now known as the "Library of Ivan the Terrible" or "Liberia".
Fragment of Pavel Shabanov's book "How to get to the library of Ivan the Terrible", 2008.
Author: Olga Chernienko