ABOUT THE VICTIMS OF JOHN THE GROZNY
One of the main, but the most baseless accusations against the Terrible Tsar is the accusation of unprecedented "bloodthirstiness" and mass murder.
Meanwhile, objective and competent historians describe his reign in a completely different way. So, the candidate of historical sciences N. Skuratov in his article "Ivan the Terrible - a view of the time of the reign from the point of view of strengthening the Russian state" writes: the guardsmen of Ivan the Terrible killed half of the country's population.
Meanwhile, the number of victims of political repression during the 50-year reign is well known from reliable historical sources. The overwhelming majority of the dead are named in them by name: those executed belonged to the upper classes and were guilty of quite real, and not of mythical conspiracies and treason: almost all of them were previously forgiven under the oaths of crucifixion, that is, they were perjurers, political recidivists."
The famous Soviet historian RG Skrynnikov and Vladyka John (Snychev) adhere to the same point of view. Both the one and the other indicate that during the 50 years of the reign of Ivan the Terrible, 4-5 thousand people were sentenced to death.
At the same time, the legality of these sentences passed on state criminals is fully justified. It is unworthy of an objective historian to accuse the ruler of the state of imposing a death sentence and hypocritically to talk about the value of every human life, pretending that we are talking about innocent victims.
Let us recall the chronicle story about St. Prince Vladimir. The newly baptized prince refused to punish the robbers with the death penalty and explained it this way: "I am afraid of sin." Vladimir left only the "virus", i.e. monetary compensation to the relatives of the killed. It took a council of bishops to convince the Grand Duke that among his duties before God there is a duty to punish the wicked. And they are trying to present the fulfillment of these duties by Ivan the Terrible as a crime!
During the reign of John IV, the law punished with the death penalty for murder, rape, sodomy, kidnapping, setting fire to a residential building with people, robbing a temple and high treason. For comparison, let's say that during the reign of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, nicknamed the Quietest, 80 types of crimes were punished by death, and under Peter I - more than 120!
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Moreover, during the reign of John IV, each death sentence was pronounced only in Moscow and was personally approved by the Tsar. A special institute of bailiffs was created to deliver criminals accused of serious crimes to Moscow for the tsarist court. The death sentence to the princes and boyars was approved by the Boyar Duma. So, only a deliberately biased critic can accuse the tsar of arbitrariness and tyranny!
For the sake of fairness, it should be noted that in the same 16th century in other states, governments committed really monstrous lawlessness. In 1572, during the St. Bartholomew's Night in France, over 30,000 Protestants were killed. In England, in the first half of the 16th century, 70,000 people were hanged for vagrancy alone! In Germany, when the peasant uprising of 1525 was suppressed, more than 100,000 people were executed. The Duke of Alba killed 8,000 in the capture of Antwerp and 20,000 in Harlem, and in total in the Netherlands the Spaniards killed about 100,000. And there are many such examples. But for some reason it was Grozny that was made a symbol of despotism …
Wives of Ioann the Terrible
The confusion with the Tsar's wives is beyond imaginable proportions.
First of all, you need to understand the terms. A wife is a woman who has undergone one or another officially recognized rite of marriage with a man. For the 16th century, such a ceremony was a wedding. Therefore, it is not correct to call the wives of the king those women with whom John did not marry. There are many terms for them, but not "wife". To argue about such, without having any reliable historical data on hand, is simply blasphemous in relation to the Anointed One of God, which is Tsar John Vasilyevich.
As for the number of wives, modern historians and popularizers name seven or eight "wives" of Grozny. Where does this myth originate? They should be looked for in the acute political struggle that gripped the upper circles of Russian society after the suppression of the Rurik dynasty.
For example, Boris Godunov, in a letter sent by him, forbade the commemoration of the holy Tsarevich Demetrius at the Liturgy on the pretext that he was allegedly the son of the Tsar's sixth wife. Jerome Horsey, a contemporary of events, in his memoirs calls Queen Maria Nagaya the last, fifth wife, but at the same time another notoriously mythical “wife” of the Terrible - Natalya Bulgakova, whose existence modern science confidently denies, appears in his notes. If you exclude her, then Maria Nagaya becomes the fourth wife.
Historians traditionally counted the burials of four wives of Ivan the Terrible: Anastasia Romanova, Maria Temryukovna, Martha Sobakina and Maria Naga in the Ascension Women's Monastery, the burial vault of the Moscow Grand Duchesses and Queens. Some also refer to these royal wives as Anna Koltovskaya, claiming that she was not buried in the Ascension Monastery just because she was tonsured as a nun. However, Maria Nagaya was also tonsured, and this did not prevent her burial (in 1608) in the royal tomb, moreover, in a monastic attire.
It would seem that everything is clear: John IV had four wives. So the Mazurin chronicler under the year 7078 tells how the Consecrated Cathedral gave the Tsar permission for a fourth marriage. But here's what's strange. The Novgorod second chronicle reports on the Tsar's marriage to his third wife - Martha Sobakina - under the entry dated October 28, 7080. And this date is two years later than the date of permission for the fourth marriage indicated in the Mazurin chronicler (7078)! How can you give permission for a fourth marriage if there has not yet been a third?
So confusing is the situation with the "wives" noted in written sources. What, in this case, can be said about such “wives” of the tsar as Anna Vasilchikova, about whom, according to modern historians, “almost nothing is known” or Vasilisa Melentieva, whose very existence many historians reject?
But in the arsenal of haters of Ivan the Terrible there are also completely mythical "wives", such as Natalya Bulgakova, Avdotya Romanovna, Anna Romanovna, Marya Romanovna, Marfa Romanovna, Mamelfa Timofeevna and Fetma Timofeevna: This is where the scope for slanderous fabrications!
It is worth mentioning that the dates of life and the details of the biography of the tsarins buried in Moscow in the Ascension Monastery are well known. Three of them had children. Whereas in relation to other "wives" who did not deserve burial in Moscow, this cannot be said. The fact that they are mentioned in chronicles or memoirs cannot even testify to the fact that they actually existed, as can be seen from the history of the appearance of Natalia Bulgakova's “wife” in D. Horsey's memoirs.
Thus, with a certain degree of certainty, one can speak only of the four wives of Ivan the Terrible. Moreover, the fourth marriage was committed by the decision of the Consecrated Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Tsar carried the penance imposed for it. This union was allowed only in view of the fact that the third marriage (with Martha Sobakina) was purely nominal: the queen died without actually becoming a royal wife.
V. Manyagin