The role model of John IV was tried on to one degree or another by various rulers of Russia, but without much success. And above all because of the simplified understanding of Tiran Vasilievich.
Burden of power
From a cursory glance, the formula of government of John IV looks like this: a formidable sovereign prone to spontaneous tyranny, bright decisions in the "action" style, tough pressure from the elites, uncompromising attitude towards enemies. All this mixture gives the people love and, as a result, control over the government. It seems that the tsar would be very surprised at such a "muzhik" understanding of his model. For example, the provocation of popular love and the retention of power as the goals of government do not at all relate to the political style of John IV.
Tiran Vasilievich (as historians called him so lovingly) never had the idea of retaining power. On the contrary, he perceived his kingdom as a burden, as a mission entrusted to him by the Lord.
Unlike Joseph Stalin, who tried to model the “formidable imperial image,” John did not think in socio-political contexts. The spontaneity and psychopathy of the tsar, in which historians and psychoanalysts are looking for explanations of bloody repressions, were hardly inherent in Tyran Vasilyevich. On the contrary, the subtle, rational intellect of the autocrat is guessed in building a trouble-free repressive system. It is easier to trace all this through the models of execution that John IV practiced. Whole generations of historians have conveyed to us the idea that John Vasilyevich was very sophisticated in terms of executions. However, to tell the truth, the tsar and his associates did not invent any innovations in murder. It would be more correct to say that Tyran Vasilyevich knew a lot about this. And not in the context of "kind of painful" - he was rather indifferent to sadistic pleasures,namely in the functionality of executions.
Let's say right away that the repressive machine did not work with a demonstrative purpose "so that others would be discouraged."
The Tsar was feared and respected anyway. Any action against the Crowned One was relied on as “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit,” that is, a sin that cannot be atoned for. What was the functionality of the executions?
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Let us recall that the tsar, according to the Russian tradition, acted as the Anointed One of God, as the Image of the Lord on Earth. And as a formidable living instrument of the Almighty, punishing sinners. John IV strove to fully comply with this mission. The main principle of John's executions was the mortification of not only the flesh, but also the soul of the criminal. Here the tsar relied entirely on the Russian cultural tradition …
Sacred executions
Pledged dead - they are "unclean", "ghouls" - in Russia called the unfortunate, who died unnatural or premature death. They included those who died by violent death, suicides, drunkards (who died from drunkenness), drowned people, unbaptized children, sorcerers and witches. The emergence of the word "pledged" itself is associated with the method of burial - unlike ordinary deceased - "parents", "unclean" were not buried in the ground, but were buried at crossroads, field borders, in the forest, in swamps, in ravines, as it was believed that they are "cursed by their parents and the earth does not accept them." And the most important thing is that the pledged deceased, according to legend, is doomed to eternal suffering.
Ivan the Terrible, a connoisseur of the Russian book tradition, decided to put the "production" of the mortgaged dead on stream. All executions were deeply symbolic.
Take, for example, the tradition of drowning as a method of execution, widely used by the then repressive machine. In Russia, it was believed that lakes, rivers, swamps are the habitat of evil spirits. Therefore, with the help of water execution, the criminal was, as it were, sent to "their own".
Another common method of execution was of the same sacred character - cutting the disgraced into pieces. First of all, it symbolized the impossibility of resurrection even on the Day of Judgment. In this execution, Grozny was also not an innovator - dismemberment was actively used in the Middle Ages throughout Western Europe.
The "bear fun" of Tsar John is especially worth mentioning. By the time of the reign of Grozny, the "calling" of bears as executors had been popular in Russia for at least five centuries.
In Russian tradition, a bear, unlike a dog, is considered a pure animal. According to the miraculous qualities attributed to him, he can not only warn a person about the presence of evil spirits, but also act as the Lord's punishment for unrepentant sinners.
According to popular beliefs, a bear could attack a person and eat him only with the permission of God as a punishment for a sin. Thus, giving the disgraced bears to be torn apart, the tsar took into account their ability to act as "disinterested judges." Not only the criminals themselves were subject to execution, but also their property (including household members), which was recognized as "bad" and "unclean." Here the king was strictly guided by the Old Testament Book of Joshua, namely the capture of Jericho by the ancient Jews. According to the Scriptures, the fate of the inhabitants of Jericho was terrible: “… everything in the city, both husbands and wives, young and old, and oxen, and sheep, and donkeys, they destroyed everything with the sword … And the city and everything that was in it was burned fire ", except for" silver and gold, and vessels of copper and iron ", which were declared" cursed ", and it was forbidden to take them for personal use,they were to be passed on only to the Jewish priests. " It must be said that in the Middle Ages, the biblical tradition of destroying "unclean" property was strictly observed in almost all European countries.
mission Impossible
John Vasilievich, as already mentioned, treated his mission as a scourge of God and exorcist of the Russian Land as consistently and with all responsibility that he could understand. However, in 1581, a misfortune happened - his son and heir to the throne, John Ioannovich, died - perhaps by the hand of the king himself. Premature death elevated the unfortunate to the position of a mortgaged deceased doomed to eternal afterlife sufferings. In 1583, the recovered tsar came out with an unprecedented initiative - to introduce the so-called "Synodic of the Disgraced" - "eternal" commemoration of the victims of the Oprichnina into the liturgical use of the monastic cloisters of the Moscow Metropolitanate. In fact, the king offered God a deal: for the sake of saving the soul of the deceased son, to create relief from the posthumous torment of the executed disgraced.