What is Oprichnina
Oprichnina (from the word "oprich" - except) began to call the land lot specially allocated to the sovereign, and the staff of the tsar's entourage, and a special army. The oprichnina possessions included a number of cities and counties in the center of the country (Suzdal, Mozhaisk, Vyazma), the rich lands of the Russian North, and some counties on the southern borders of the state. The rest of its territory was named "Zemshchina".
The entire state apparatus was divided into two parts - oprichny and zemstvo. The feudal lords who entered the oprichnina (at first there were 1000, and by 1572 - 6000) wore a special uniform: a black caftan and a black pointed hat. Devotion to their king, the willingness to “sweep and gnaw out” the traitors were symbolized by brooms and dog heads tied to the necks of horses and quivers for arrows.
The very word "oprich" ("oprichnina") began to be used long before the reign of Ivan the Terrible. Already in the XIV century, the oprichnina was called part of the inheritance, which goes to the widow of the prince after his death. She had the right to receive income from a certain part of the land, but after her death, all this returned to her eldest son. This is what oprichnina is - a lot specially allocated for life-long possession.
Over time, the word "oprichnina" acquired a synonym that goes back to the root "oprich", which means "except". Hence "oprichnina" - "pitch darkness", as it was sometimes called, "oprichnik" - "pitch-black". But this synonym was used only from the 16th century.
Oprichnina reasons
In general, all the disagreements between historians about the reasons for the emergence of oprichnina can be reduced to two mutually exclusive statements:
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• The oprichnina was conditioned by the personal qualities of Ivan the Terrible and had no political meaning (V. Klyuchevsky, S. Veselovsky, I. Froyanov);
• It was a well-balanced political step of Ivan IV and was directed against the social forces opposing his "autocracy". This statement, in turn, is also “bifurcated”. Some researchers believe that the purpose of the oprichnina was to crush the boyar-princely economic and political power (S. Soloviev, S. Platonov, R. Skrynnikov). Others (A. Zimin and V. Kobrin) believe that the oprichnina was “sent” to the remnants of the appanage-princely antiquity (Staritsky Prince Vladimir), and was also directed against the separatist aspirations of Novgorod and the resistance of the church as a powerful organization opposing the power. And any of these provisions is not indisputable, because the dispute about the oprichnina continues.
and:
1560 - they abolished the Chosen Rada, although it was she who was able to create the base on which the sovereign's greatness later blossomed in magnificent color.
1558 - the Livonian War began. Many representatives of the boyar nobility were against her. They openly expressed their dissatisfaction. All this contributed to the intensity of passions in the highest echelons of power. The sovereign increased the pressure on the boyars, but they did not want to obediently bow their heads before the royal will. Some princes began to leave the country. For example, the betrayal in 1563 of the military leader Prince Andrei Kurbsky, who was part of the Chosen Rada and fled to hostile Lithuania (after which the already suspicious sovereign began to see the conspiracy everywhere, became convinced of the boyars' infidelity).
Painting by N. V. Nevrev. It depicts the murder of the boyar I. Fedorov (1568), whom Grozny, accusing him of wanting to seize power, forced him to put on the royal clothes and sit on the throne, after which he stabbed to death.
Introduction of the oprichnina
The sovereign opened his actions against the boyars-princes with an unprecedented act. At the very end of 1564, he left Moscow, without saying where, and stopped behind the Trinity-Sergius Monastery in the Alexander Sloboda (now the city of Alexandrov). From there, in January 1565, he sent a letter to Moscow stating that he was leaving his kingdom because of boyar treason. The Muscovites, sending an embassy headed by the clergy to the emperor, persuaded him not to leave the kingdom. Ivan the Terrible agreed to remain in the kingdom, only on the condition that they would not interfere with "putting their disgrace" on the traitors, and executing others, and for him to inflict "oprichnina" for himself: "he should make a special court for him and for all his life. … This is how the famous oprichnina was introduced.
The purpose of the oprichnina
When the oprichnina got settled, she began to act. The purpose of the oprichnina was to take away all power and significance from that princely aristocracy, which was formed in the capital from the offspring of appanage princes and considered itself as a co-ruler of the king. Having experienced the lust for power of his boyars, Ivan IV considered them "traitors" and, not content with disgrace on individuals, decided to render harmless all the boyars.
Formation of the oprichnina
In his new "courtyard", where he did not allow the "traitor boyars", he received forces and means to act against them. He took to his oprichnina, one after another, those cities and counties in which there were old appanage estates of the boyars-princes, and applied to them the same procedure that was applied by Moscow in the captured regions (Novgorod, Pskov, Ryazan). It was from the districts taken to the oprichnina that all the dangerous and suspicious people for Tsar Ivan were taken out, as a rule, the descendants of appanage princes. They were resettled to the outskirts of the state, to new lands, where there were no specific memories and where these people did not pose a danger.
Their old lands were taken "for the sovereign" and they went "for distribution." Instead of a distant nobility, the sovereign settled in their old estates small landowners-oprichniks, devoted to him and who depended only on him. In doing this business of ruining and expelling the old nobility, the sovereign, in his words, "went over the little fellows." He did this until the end of his life, for almost 20 years, and gradually took half of the entire state to the oprichnina. The remaining half was in the old position, ruled by the Boyar Duma and was called "Zemshchina", or "Zemsky" (people). 1575 - Ivan the Terrible put a special "Grand Duke" in the person of the baptized Tatar (Kasimov) Tsar Simeon Bekbulatovich, who was subordinate to him, over the Zemstvo region, but soon brought him to Tver.
Course of events
The oprichnina was a cruel measure that ruined not only the princes, but also many other people - all those who were forcibly resettled from place to place, from whom their estates and households were taken away. The oprichnina itself was supposed to arouse the hatred of the persecuted. However, the actions of the oprichnina were accompanied by more terrible atrocities. Ivan the Terrible not only expelled nobles from her estates: he tortured and executed people unpleasant to him. By order of the tsar, the heads of the "traitors" were chopped off not only in dozens, but in hundreds. 1570 - the sovereign ruined the whole city, namely Veliky Novgorod.
Suspecting the Novgorodians of some kind of treason, he went to war with them as real enemies and destroyed them without any trial for several weeks.
Hike to Novgorod
Ivan gathered all the guardsmen who were able to carry weapons, patrols were sent ahead, which occupied all post stations and towns along the road, under the pretext of fighting the plague, entry and exit from Novgorod was banned so that no one could warn the northerners about the movement of the oprichnina troops.
Robberies and murders began on the way - in Tver and Torzhok, and on January 2, 1570, the advance detachments of the guardsmen approached Novgorod and immediately surrounded it, "so that not a single person would escape from the city." A bloody massacre was staged in Novgorod by the guardsmen: “The Tsar and the Grand Duke sat at the trial and led from Velikago Novgorod the sovereign boyars, and the servants' children of the boyars, and guests, and all the townspeople and orderly people, and wives, and children, and led before him torment fiercely."
Moscow torture chamber of the times of the oprichnina. A. Vasnetsov.
They burned the unfortunate people with fire, then tied them to the sleds with a long rope and dragged them two miles to Novgorod, where they tied them (they tied the children to their mothers) and threw them from the bridge into the river, where other "kats" pushed them under the ice of a huge ice hole with sticks. The “head of the conspiracy,” Archbishop Pimen of Novgorod, was sent to Moscow - an old man who had been nursing Novgorod for more than 30 years, put on a mare backwards and ordered to blow into bagpipes all the way - an attribute of buffoons. In the capital, the church court deprived Pimen of the dignity, he was imprisoned in the Nikolsky monastery in Venev, where he died a year later.
The city was completely sacked, huge fines were imposed on the surviving Novgorodians, which were knocked out - literally - with a whip on the "right" for many months. Years later, the tsar will write in the "Synodic of Disgraced" compiled by him, a list of people killed by his will, a terrifying phrase in its brevity: "According to Malyutin's skaska, Novgorodians finished a thousand four hundred ninety people." And historians to this day argue whether this figure is the total number of people killed in Novgorod or is it an "achievement" only of the detachment under the command of Malyuta Skuratov.
From Novgorod, the oprichnaya army moved to Pskov, which awaited the same fate. However, the "Pskopskys" were saved by the local holy fool Nikola, who handed the emperor a piece of meat. To the tsar's bewilderment - why would he need meat during fasting, the holy fool, according to legend, answered: "Does Ivashka think that eating a piece of meat from some animal during fasting is a sin, and there is no sin to eat as much human meat as he has already eaten?" According to another version, the holy fool demanded: "Stop torturing people, go to Moscow, otherwise the horse you came on won't take you back." The next day, the king's best horse fell, and the frightened king ordered to return to the capital. Whatever it was, but Pskov was able to get away with a little blood - the king believed the sign and obeyed, as he believed, God's will.
Sovereign's dogs
Throughout the state, for many years in a row, breaking into private houses, the guardsmen shed blood, raped, robbed and remained unpunished, as it was believed that they "took treason" from the kingdom. Tsar Ivan, who received the name "Terrible" for his executions and atrocities, himself reached the point of fury and extraordinary licentiousness. Bloody executions gave way to feasts on which blood was also shed; feasts turned into praying, in which there was also blasphemy. In the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda, Ivan the Terrible set up something like a monastery, where his depraved guardsmen were "brethren" and wore black robes over a colored dress.
The brethren passed from humble pilgrimage to wine and blood, mocking true piety. Metropolitan Philip of Moscow (from the Kolychev family of boyars) could not come to terms with the licentiousness of the new royal court, denounced the sovereign and the guardsmen for which he was deposed by Ivan from the metropolis and exiled to Tver (to the Otroch monastery), where in 1570 he was strangled by one of the most cruel oprichnikov - Malyuta Skuratov. The tsar did not hesitate to deal with his cousin, Prince Vladimir Andreevich, whom he suspected of plotting against himself since his illness in 1553. Prince Vladimir Andreevich was killed without trial, just like his mother and wife. Without moderating his cruelty, the sovereign did not limit any of his desires. He indulged in all sorts of excesses and vices.
Consequences of the oprichnina
The goal that Ivan IV set for himself, arranging the oprichnina, was achieved. The princely aristocracy was defeated and humiliated; the old appanage estates of the princes passed to the tsar and were exchanged for other lands. The oprichnina undoubtedly led to the ruin of the state, because it destroyed the economic order in the central Moscow regions, where the princes were concentrated with their appanage estates.
When Grozny evicted large patrimonials from their old lands, their slaves left with them, and then the peasants began to leave, for whom it was unprofitable to remain with the new owners, small landowners who did not have any land benefits. The people willingly went to the outskirts of the state, where there were no horrors of the oprichnina, which is why the central regions were all empty and empty. By the end of the reign of Grozny, they were desolate to such an extent that the emperor did not receive any military men or taxes from them. Such were, in the end, the consequences of the oprichnina.
The oprichnina also had far-reaching political consequences. It led to the elimination of the vestiges of specific time and the strengthening of the regime of the personal power of the sovereign. Its socio-economic order proved to be disastrous. The oprichnina and the protracted Livonian War ruined the state. The deep economic crisis that gripped Russia in the 1570s – 1580s was called by contemporaries “ruin”. One of the pernicious consequences of Tsar Ivan's internal policy was the enslavement of the Russian peasantry. 1581 - “Reserved Summer” was established, until the abolition of which the peasants were forbidden to leave their owners. In fact, this meant that the peasants were deprived of the ancient right to transfer to another owner on St. George's Day.
Only one thing is clear, that the oprichnina was not a step towards a progressive form of government and did not contribute to the development of the state. This was a bloody reform that was destroying it, as evidenced by its consequences, including the onset of the "Time of Troubles" at the beginning of the 17th century. The dreams of the people, and above all of the nobility, of a strong sovereign "standing for great truth" were embodied in unbridled despotism.