On November 19, 1582, the son of Ivan the Terrible, Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich, died. Did Ivan IV kill his son? What was the reason for the departure of the heir to the Russian throne? It is important to understand this: this event became fatal for Russian history.
Fatal intercession
One of the main versions of the murder of his son by Ivan the Terrible is known to us from the words of Antonio Possevino, the papal legate. According to this version, Ivan the Terrible found his son's third wife, Elena, in an inappropriate state. Terrible's daughter-in-law was pregnant and lay in one underwear. Ivan IV got angry and began to "teach" Elena, hit her in the face and beat her with a staff. Then, according to the same Possevino, Ivan the Terrible's son ran into the wards and began to reproach his father with these words: “You imprisoned my first wife in a monastery for no reason, you did the same with your second wife, and now you are beating the third in order to destroy your son, which she carries in her womb. " The finale is known. The father's staff also took out his son, breaking his skull.
This version, which has become a textbook, is being criticized today. First, who to believe? The papal legate? Not the most uninterested witness, I must admit. It was beneficial to make Ivan IV a ruthless sonicide for at least two reasons: firstly, the Russian tsar appeared in an unseemly light, and secondly, such horrors that were happening on the assurances of the same Possevino in Russia legitimized the European Inquisition.
Political strife
According to another version, politics became the "stumbling block" between the son and the father. This version was voiced by Nikolai Karamzin in his "History": “The Tsarevich, filled with noble jealousy, came to his father and demanded that he send him with an army to expel the enemy, free Pskov, restore the honor of Russia. John shouted in the excitement of anger: “Rebel! You and the boyars want to overthrow me from the throne, ”and raised his hand. Boris Godunov wanted to keep her. The king gave him several wounds with his sharp rod and hit the prince in the head with them. This unfortunate man fell bleeding! " It is significant that this version, accepted by Karamzin as reliable, belonged to the same Antonio Possevino. The reliability of this completely literary presentation is even more doubtful than the first version, it has not been confirmed by any other evidence. A grain of truth, however, is present in this version. It is that the situation in last years reign of Ivan the Terrible at court was, to put it mildly, tense. It was extremely difficult to survive in such an environment.
Who wrote history
It is amazing how surprisingly trustful Russian historians, and first of all Karamzin, "wrote history", focusing on the testimonies of Antonio Possevino, the legate of Pope Gregory XIII, the German Heinrich Staden and the Frenchman Jacques Marjarette. In all sorts of historical interpretations, especially foreign ones, one should look for who benefits from it. The same Staden, returning to Germany, outlined a project for the conquest of Muscovy, proposing to destroy churches and monasteries, to abolish Orthodox faith, and then turn the inhabitants into slaves. With regret, it is worth recognizing the correctness of the historian Zabelin, who wrote: “As you know, we very zealously only deny and denounce our history and dare not even think about any characters and ideals. We do not admit the ideal in our history ... Our whole history is a dark kingdom of ignorance, barbarism, hypocrisy, slavery and so on ... ”.
Drank the poison
In 1963, the tombs of Tsar John Vasilyevich and Tsarevich John Ioannovich were opened in the Archangel Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. The subsequent reliable studies, medico-chemical and medico-forensic examinations of the honest remains of the prince showed that the permissible content of mercury was 32 times exceeded, and several times the amount of arsenic and lead. Due to the poor preservation of the bone tissue, it was impossible to reliably establish whether Ivan Ivanovich's skull was fractured. Taking into account the fact that Ivan the Terrible's mother and his first wife also died from poisoning with selma, the version with the poisoning of Ivan the Terrible's son seems to be the most probable. Another question: who was the poisoner?
Did not kill
Ivan the Terrible did not kill his son. This is the version that Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod, adhered to, for example. Seeing the famous painting by Repin at the exhibition, he was outraged and wrote to the emperor Alexander III: "The picture cannot be called historical, since this moment ... is purely fantastic." An analysis of what happened in 1582 confirms Pobedonostsev's idea, it is precisely that "fantastic". Since the time of Repin's painting, the version "Ivan the Terrible killed his son" has become a kind of historical meme. She is so deeply rooted in the mind that the thought of Grozny's innocence in the death of his son is often simply not considered. By the way, the picture has a difficult fate. In February 1913, she suffered greatly from the knife of the Old Believer Abram Baloshov, and more recently Orthodox activists turned to the Minister of Culture with a request to remove the painting from the Tretyakov Gallery.
You, of course, know the painting by the remarkable Russian artist I.E. Repin Ivan the Terrible kills his son". Someone saw this canvas in the Tretyakov Gallery, someone is familiar with it from numerous reproductions. Remember, Tsar Ivan - his face is twisted from pain, fear and remorse - supports the reclining, bloody prince.
Nearby is the staff with which he just hit his son. It was this fatal blow that doomed the most ancient Russian monarchist to extinction.
So why Tsar Ivan killed his son? Is it because of the ridiculous, senseless quarrel that happened on that unfortunate day in? Let's try to understand the origins of this bloody drama, although, I must confess, it is extremely difficult to do this. For it is difficult to understand the soul of a person, especially one like Tsar Ivan the Terrible.
What character did Tsar Ivan the Terrible have?
Tsar Ivan IV Vasilyevich (1533-1584), nicknamed the Terrible for his unbridled temper, is a figure in our history as significant, as mysterious. Some consider him an outstanding military leader, others - a sovereign completely devoid of military prowess and even a coward. Indeed, twice during the capture of Kazan, he was begged to move with his regiment to the aid of the storming ones, but he cowardly waited for the outcome of the battle and appeared at the walls of the Kazan fortress only when Russian banners were hoisted on them. Some call him a model of statesmanship, while others call him a bloody tyrant and almost crazy.
His father, the great Moscow prince Vasily III, died when Ivan was only three years old. Until the age of seven, he was raised by his mother Elena Glinskaya. After her death, several boyar clans launched a struggle for power around the young Ivan.
The upbringing of the prince was entrusted to the board of trustees, which consisted of noble boyars. But what kind of upbringing was that? "Caressing pestuns" did not force him to study too much, although, historians believe, Ivan possessed extraordinary abilities.
The tough temper of the future king was already evident then. He soon got rid of all guardianship and began to live "in self-righteousness." As a teenager, Ivan indulged in wild pleasures. In the company of boyars, he rode through the Moscow streets, trampled on horses, beat and robbed the people. Those around them were amazed by the riot and violent fury of the young heir to the throne. In a word, Ivan was "preparing" for his bloody rule. And no one had power over him. And so it happened.
The heirs of Ivan the Terrible
In 1547, Ivan was married to the kingdom, the first of the Russian princes to accept the title of tsar. And soon after that he married the boyar daughter Anastasia Zakharyina. Anastasia gave birth to six children to Ivan, but only two survived: the eldest son Ivan and the younger Fyodor. Unfortunately, Fyodor turned out to be a child not only frail, but also feeble-minded.
After the death of Anastasia, Ivan Vasilyevich married six more times, but these marriages did not bring him either happiness or children. True, the last wife of Grozny, Maria Nagaya, gave birth, but, firstly, this marriage was contracted in violation church rules, and many considered it illegal, and secondly, Tsarevich Dmitry, who was born in 1582, that is, in the year of the death of Tsarevich Ivan, could not claim royal throne by their early childhood.
Why do we dwell on the circumstances in such detail family life Ivan Vasilievich? Only in order to show how dear the king was to be his only full and worthy successor to the throne and sovereign power. How did it happen that the king and father could not contain the anger caused by a trifling cause and dealt that fatal blow?
The people love the heir more than the king?
Towards the end of his life, Ivan the Terrible was ill a lot, decrepit, while his twenty-seven-year-old son reached a "courageous fortress" and, as if "Inrog, angrily breathed the fire of his rage against enemies"... At that time, the people said that the prince asked his father for an army to oppose the Poles who besieged Pskov. It was even reported that Ivan told the Emperor: “I prefer valor to treasure. They say, even without wealth, I can devastate your possessions with sword and fire and take away most of the kingdom from you ... " It is not known whether he spoke like that, but the prince was very popular among the people, tired of the rule of a despot. Future changes for the better were associated with his name. Of course, the extremely suspicious Ivan Vasilievich could not help but know about this. The Englishman Horsey, who was then serving in Moscow and had many friends at court, bluntly declares: “The king feared for his power, believing that the people were too good opinion about his son ".
Isn't it true that all this suggests that the murder of the prince was not a tragic accident. Moreover, the reason for the quarrel was so insignificant! ..
Was Ivan the Terrible's murder of his son an accident or deliberately?
And it happened like this. Ivan Vasilyevich found Ivan's wife, Princess Helena, in a hotly heated room in one shirt. And according to the concepts of that time, a woman was considered fully dressed if she was wearing at least three shirts. The Tsar was offended by such a frivolous dress of his daughter-in-law, although no one invited him to her room. Enraged Ivan Vasilyevich hit Elena. The prince, of course, tried to protect his wife and grabbed his father by the arms. Then the Terrible, pushing him away, unexpectedly struck Ivan on the temple with his staff. From this blow and a terrible nervous shock, the prince fell into a fever and, having suffered for eleven days, died.
The death of his son shocked the king. He nearly lost his mind from grief. Having lost his son and heir to the throne, Ivan Vasilyevich, until his death, which came two years later, in 1584, did not come out of a deep mental crisis.
So judge for yourself: was this fatal murder accidental or deliberate?
Seeing in 1885 in St. Petersburg at the exhibition new painting Ilya Repin's "Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan November 16, 1581", which later became known under the simplified name "Ivan the Terrible kills his son," Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod and outstanding Russian thinker Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev was extremely outraged by her plot, in which fiction was presented as a fact, and wrote to Emperor Alexander III: "The picture cannot be called historical, since this moment ... is purely fantastic."Why did the Tsarevich die?
Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan on November 16, 1581. Hood. I. E. Repin. 1885 g
Indeed, the fact that Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible killed his son, Tsarevich John, until recently seemed indisputable, because he was reflected even in school textbooks, as one of the evidence of the alleged cruelty of the Russian Orthodox Autocracy. And no one thought about where this fact got into the historical literature. Only Metropolitan John of St. Petersburg and Ladoga refuted this slander against the tsar for the first time in his book "The Autocracy of the Spirit", where he proved that Tsarevich John died of a serious illness and that in the surviving historical documents there is not even a hint of filicide.
But what do the documents say?
In the Moscow chronicler for 7090 (1581. - N.Sh.) year it is written: "... reposed Tsarevich John Ioannovich."
The Piskarevsky chronicler points out in more detail: "... at 12 o'clock in the summer night of November 7090 on the 17th day ... the repose of Tsarevich John Ioannovich."
The Novgorod Fourth Chronicle says: "In the same year (7090), Tsarevich John Ioannovich died at Matins in Sloboda ..."
The Morozov Chronicle states: "... Tsarevich John Ioannovich has passed away."
As you can see, not a word about the murder.
As for the facts testifying to the death of Tsarevich John from poisoning, they are fully justified.
V.V. Manyagin in his book "The Leader of the Militant Church" (2003) writes: "With regard to the disease, one can say definitely - it was mercuric chloride poisoning. The death caused by it is painful, and the dose causing such an outcome does not exceed 0.18 grams."
Who installed this?
“In 1963, in the Archangel Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin,” writes Manyagin, “four tombs were opened: Ioann the Terrible, Tsarevich Ioann, Tsar Feodor Ioannovich and the commander Skopin-Shuisky.
When examining the remains, the version of the poisoning of Tsar Ivan the Terrible was tested.
Scientists have found that the arsenic content is approximately the same in all four skeletons and does not exceed the norm. But in the bones of Tsar John and Tsarevich John, the presence of mercury was found, far exceeding allowable rate.
Some historians have tried to argue that this is not poisoning at all, but a consequence of the treatment of syphilis with mercury ointments. However, studies have shown that no syphilitic changes were found in the remains of the tsar and tsarevich.
After a study of the burials of Moscow Grand Duchesses and Tsaritsa was carried out in the 1990s, the fact of poisoning of the same sublimate mother of Ivan Vasilyevich, Elena Vasilievna Glinskaya (died in 1538), and his first wife Anastasia Romanova (died in 1560) was revealed. ...
This indicates that the royal family was a victim of poisoners for several decades.
The data of these studies made it possible to assert that Tsarevich John was poisoned. The content of poison in his remains is many times higher than the permissible norm. Thus, Soviet historical science refutes the version about the murder of his son by Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich. "
THE MYTH ABOUT SON-KILLING IS CREATED BY FOREIGNERS
Ivan the Terrible at the body of his murdered son. Hood. Schwartz V.G. 1864
Who is the author of the slander against Ivan the Terrible? The names of this writer and his followers are well known. Their inventions are just links in a chain of false inventions about our great past.
Metropolitan John believed that "the testimonies of foreigners had a decisive influence on the formation of the anti-Rus' beliefs of 'historical science'." The outstanding researcher of antiquity Sergei Paramonov spoke about the same in the book "Where are you from, Russia?", Which he published under the pseudonym Sergei Lesnoy:
"Our history was written by Germans who did not know or knew little Russian at all." An example of this is the false Norman theory, the myth of the vocation of the Varangians and other myths.
"During the Bironovschina, when to defend Russian beginning in whatever it turned out to be very difficult, in St. Petersburg, among the scientists invited from the German principalities, the idea of borrowing statehood by the Slavs from the North German tribes was born. The Slavs of the 9th-10th centuries were recognized as "living in a bestial manner" (the expression of the Normanists), and the northern bandits of the Norman Varangians who were hired to serve various rulers and who kept Northern Europe at bay were declared the builders and creators of the state.
So, under the pen of Siegfried Bayer, Gerard Miller and August Schletzer, the idea of Normanism was born, which is often called the Norman theory, although the entire sum of Norman statements over two centuries does not give the right to name Normanism not only a theory, but even a hypothesis, since there is no analysis here sources, no review of all known facts. "
It would seem that we are talking about an era that is not related to the topic. But if you do not understand the desire of the West to distort the truth about our great past, it is difficult to believe that what foreigners write about Ivan the Terrible is a common lie.
There are thousands of examples of the distortion of the history of our state by Western historians.
But the epoch of Ivan the Terrible was especially viciously attacked.
"WITH " light hand"Karamzin has become a sign of good manners to abundantly smear this era with black paint," wrote Metropolitan John. as the self-evident features of the era. " Moreover, the evidence of the alleged horrors of that era for historians was not eyewitness testimony, not archival data, not the testimony of courtiers recorded and preserved in archives, but slanderous fabrications of Western envoys.
The myth of filicide and other false myths were necessary not only to present the tsar as a bloodthirsty tyrant in the eyes of his descendants, but also to prove to the Western world, by that time "famous" for the horrors of the Inquisition, that the order in Russia was no better.
"Starting with Karamzin," wrote Metropolitan John, "Russian historians reproduced in their writings all the filth and filth that foreign" guests "poured over Russia, and the creative" heritage "of such as Staden and Possevin, long time was perceived as evidence of the life and customs of the Russian people. "
A. Gulevich says the same in the book " Royal power and revolution ":" National history usually written by friends. The history of Russia was written by its enemies. "
But who was the first to slander one of the greatest Russian autocrats?
These lines, which were composed by Anthony Possevin (papal spy), were picked up by Heinrich Staden (German spy) and quoted by the too gullible (?) Karamzin:
“The tsarevich, full of noble zeal, came to his father and demanded that he send him with an army to expel the enemy, free Pskov, restore the honor of Russia. John, in the excitement of anger, shouted:“ Rebel! You, together with the boyars, want to overthrow me from the throne, "- and raised his hand. Boris Godunov wanted to hold it: the Tsar gave him several wounds with his sharp rod and hit him hard in the head. This unfortunate man fell bleeding!"
The Jesuit monk Anthony Possevin came to Moscow in 1581 to serve as an intermediary in the negotiations between the Russian tsar and the Polish king Stephen Bathory, who invaded during Livonian War to the Russian lands. As the legate of Pope Gregory XIII, Possevin hoped, with the help of the Jesuits, to achieve concessions from John IV, taking advantage of the difficult foreign policy situation in Russia. His goal was not at all the reconciliation of the hostile, but the subordination of the Russian Church to the papal throne ...
The Catholic Church, having lost hope of breaking the Russian State and the Orthodox Russian Church openly, by means of crusades, and secretly, with the help of heresies, now sought to achieve this by deception, promising to Ivan the Terrible, in case he betrayed the true faith, the acquisition of territories that previously belonged to Byzantium ...
“But the pope’s hopes and Possevin’s efforts were not crowned with success,” wrote Mikhail V. Tolstoy in “History of the Russian Church.” about permission to build Latin churches in Russia, rejected disputes about faith and the unification of Churches on the basis of the rules of the Florentine Council and was not carried away by the dreamy promise of acquiring the entire Byzantine empire, lost by the Greeks allegedly for apostasy from Rome. "
Florentine union, in other words, an agreement on the unification of the Orthodox and catholic churches, was signed in 1439 in Florence. This union was another attempt by Rome to spread Catholicism by force. In response, in 1448, a council of bishops in Moscow declared the Russian Orthodox Church autocephalous, that is, independent of the Patriarch of Constantinople.
Commenting on M.V. Tolstoy, Metropolitan John wrote:
"A well-known historian of the Russian Church could add that the intrigues of Rome in relation to Russia have a long history, that the failure of the mission made Possevin the personal enemy of the tsar, that the very word" Jesuit ", due to the shamelessness and unscrupulousness of the members of the order, has long become a household name, that the legate himself arrived in Moscow a few months after the death of the tsarevich and under no circumstances could he be a witness of what had happened. "
John Vasilyevich answered the Jesuit firmly and menacingly: "You say, Anthony, that your Roman faith is one with the Greek faith? And we carry a truly Christian faith, but not a Greek one. The Greeks are not the gospel for us. We have not Greek, but Russian faith."
The mission suffered a complete failure, and the enraged Possevin, out of his malice, composed a myth that Ivan the Terrible, in a fit of anger, killed his son and heir to the throne, Tsarevich John Ioannovich.
"Possevin says," writes Metropolitan John, "that the tsar was angry with his daughter-in-law, the wife of the tsarevich, and during the outbreak of a quarrel he killed him. The absurdity of the version (already from the moment of its appearance) was so obvious that it was necessary to" refine "the story, find more." reliable “pretext and“ motive for the murder. ”This is how another tale appeared - that the tsarevich led the political opposition to his father's course in negotiations with Bathory on the conclusion of peace and was killed by the tsar on suspicion of involvement in a boyar conspiracy. Both versions are completely unfounded and unsubstantiated. It is impossible to find hints of their reliability in the entire mass of documents and acts that have come down to us, relating to that time.
But information about the "natural" death of Tsarevich Ivan has a documentary basis.
Back in 1570, the sickly and pious prince, reverently fearing the hardships of the imperial service that lay ahead of him, granted a huge contribution of a thousand rubles to the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery at that time. Preferring monastic exploit to worldly glory, he accompanied the contribution with the condition that "someone else wants to get a haircut, the prince Prince Ivan will be tonsured for that contribution, and if, due to his sins, the prince will not, then commemorate him."
It indirectly testifies to Ivan's death not from a staff blow, and the fact that in the "modified" version of filicide his death did not follow immediately after the "fatal blow", but four days later, in the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda. Subsequently, it became clear why the prince was extinguished for four days - this was caused by mercuric chloride poisoning.
Another rogue, the German Heinrich Staden, who arrived in Moscow with reconnaissance missions, picked up and developed the version of "filicide".
Staden wrote slanderous notes, which Karamzin considered to be true and which were exposed by Soviet historians. For example, I.I. Polosin called them "a tale of murder, robbery, and red-handed thrashing," which is distinguished by "inimitable cynicism." According to another Soviet historian, S. B. Veselovsky, "they were an incoherent story of a barely literate, uneducated and uncultured adventurer, containing a lot of boasting and lies."
Returning to Germany, Staden outlined a project for the conquest of Muscovy, proposing to destroy all churches and monasteries, destroy and abolish the Orthodox faith, and then turn the Russian people into slaves. These are the data whose data many Russian historians used when describing the era of Ivan the Terrible in their writings.
Russian philosopher Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin warned that "in the world there are peoples, states, governments, church centers, behind-the-scenes organizations and individuals - hostile to Russia, especially Orthodox Russia, especially imperial and undivided Russia. Just as there are" Anglophobes ", "Germanophobes", "Japaneseophobes" - this is how the world abounds with "Russophobes", enemies of national Russia, promising themselves every success from its collapse, humiliation and weakening ...
Therefore, no matter who we talk to, whoever we turn to, we must vigilantly and soberly measure him by the measure of his sympathies and intentions in relation to a united, national Russia and not expect: salvation from the conqueror, help from the dismemberment a religious seducer - sympathy and understanding, from a destroyer - benevolence, from a slanderer - truth.
Politics is the art of recognizing and neutralizing the enemy. "
And Saint Basil the Great advised to choose from the writings of historians "only what is necessary for oneself and agree with the Truth, and leave the rest without attention."
WHY SCAMMED THE AGE OF THE GROZY?
And why were Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible and the time of his reign suddenly subjected to slander?
The answer is simple: a strong Russia is terrible to the West, and John the Terrible created the Muscovy mighty, fought for the purity of faith and strengthened the Orthodox Russian Autocracy, the foundations of which were laid by the holy noble Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky.
The time of the reign of Ivan the Terrible and the eve of him were very significant for Russia. This is how the doctor assesses this era historical sciences S.V. Perevezentsev in the book "Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible":
"In the 15th century, events took place that were especially important for Russia, which had a huge impact on its entire subsequent history - in 1439 an agreement was signed in Florence on the unification of the Catholic and Orthodox churches; in 1448, in response to the Union of Florence, a council of bishops in Moscow proclaimed the Russian Church autocephalous, i.e. independent from the Patriarch of Constantinople; in 1453 it ceased to exist Byzantine empire; in 1480 Russian state finally got rid of the Tatar-Mongol yoke.
For the Russian religious and mythological consciousness of that time, such a rapid sequence, in fact, the coincidence of these events could not seem accidental. And the meaning was seen quite definite - the Lord Himself chose Russia for the implementation on Earth of some Higher, Divine designs, for Russia remained the only state in the world that brought the light of the right faith to humanity. During this period, Moscow begins to be perceived as a center, a nucleus, a focus not only of Russia, but of the whole world. "
And quite naturally, the West sounded the alarm.
Unable to destroy Russia by military means, the West resorted to slander and defamation in order to undermine the authority of the supreme state power in Russia.
Our historian Ivan Yegorovich Zabelin wrote:
“Everyone knows that the ancients, especially the Greeks and Romans, knew how to educate heroes ... This skill consisted only in the fact that they knew how to portray in their history their best progressive figures, not only in historical, but also in poetic truth.
They knew how to appreciate the merits of heroes, were able to distinguish between the golden truth and the truth of these merits from everyday lies and filth, in which each person must live and always get dirty more or less.
They were able to distinguish in these merits not only their real and, so to speak, useful essence, but also the ideal essence, that is, the historical idea of a fulfilled deed and feat, which was necessary and raised the character of the hero to the level of an ideal. "
About our historians, Zabelin said with regret:
“As you know, we very zealously only deny and denounce our history and dare not even think about any characters and ideals. so on. There is nothing to be hypocritical: the majority of educated Russian people think so ... "
Was John the Terrible Cruel?
While instructing the creators of the film "Ivan the Terrible" directed by Eisenstein and the performer of the role of the Tsar - Cherkasov, Stalin said:
"Ivan the Terrible was very tough. It is possible to show that he was tough. But you need to show why you need to be tough. One of Ivan the Terrible's mistakes was that he did not destroy five large feudal families. If he destroyed these five large families if there would be no Time of Troubles at all. "
John the Terrible was called a tyrant, attributed to him exorbitant cruelty, and meanwhile, Stalin, who carefully studied the policy of the tsar, concluded that he even showed excessive gentleness towards the hostile boyar families, having pardoned them and thereby allowed Russia to be plunged into Time of Troubles, which carried away almost half of the population of Muscovy.
Meanwhile, the facts refute the tsar's cruelty and the inhumanity of the oprichnina "terror".
N. Skuratov in his article "Ivan the Terrible - a look at the time of the reign from the point of view of strengthening the Russian state" writes:
“It may seem to an ordinary person, ignorant of history, who is not averse to sometimes watching films and reading the newspaper that the guardsmen of Ivan the Terrible killed half of the country's population. political repression The 50-year reign is well known from reliable historical sources.
The overwhelming majority of the dead are named in them by name ... the executed 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 godfather's kissing oaths, that is, they were perjurers, political recidivists ".
Manyagin notes that Metropolitan John and the historian R.G. Skrynnikov, who pointed out that no more than 4-5 thousand people were sentenced to death over the 50 years of the Terrible Tsar's reign. But from this figure it is necessary to remove the executed boyars before 1547, that is, before the wedding of Ivan Vasilyevich to the throne. He cannot be responsible for the mutual murders of various boyar clans, striving for power.
Manyagin writes: "During the reign of John IV death penalty punished for: murder, rape, sodomy, kidnapping, arson of a residential building with people, robbery of a temple, high treason.
For comparison: during the reign of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, 80 types of crimes were punished by death, and under Peter I - more than 120!
Each death sentence under John IV was pronounced only in Moscow and personally approved by the tsar. "
The power of the Orthodox Tsar Ioann Vasilievich was much softer than in Europe, about which Manyagin says the following: “In the same 16th century, governments in other states committed really monstrous iniquities.
In 1572, during the St. Bartholomew's Night in France, over 80 thousand Protestants were killed.
In England for the first half of XVI century 70 thousand people were hanged only for vagrancy.
In Germany, during the suppression of the peasant uprising in 1525, more than 100 thousand people were executed.
The Duke of Alba killed 8 thousand in the capture of Antwerp and 20 thousand people in Harlem, and in total in the Netherlands the Spaniards killed about 100 thousand people. "
So, in "enlightened" and "merciful" Europe, over the same period, more than 378 thousand people, mostly innocent, were executed, and in Russia under Ivan the Terrible, 4-5 thousand were executed for specific grave crimes. Why is the Terrible tyrant Tsar, and the Europeans - mercy itself?
During the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the population growth was 30-50%, during the reign of Peter I, the population decline was 40%.
Therefore, Tsar the Terrible is a tyrant, and Peter the Great. Now we see how accurate the definition of I.L. Solonevich: "The Russian historian is a specialist in perverting the history of Russia."
Speaking about executions, one should not forget that it was the "not destroyed" boyar family of Shuisky who was one of those families that pushed Russia towards the Time of Troubles.
It was since the reign of Vasily Shuisky that the Orthodox vertical of power was violated.
Since the reign of John III, it has been established that the king swears allegiance to God, and the people swear allegiance to the king as God's Anointed One. But the atheist Shuisky did not swear an oath to God - He swore an oath to the boyar elite under the cross. This was the beginning of the destruction of the Autocracy, built by the Rurik dynasty. And this destruction was not the result of cruelty, but, on the contrary, the extraordinary mercy of Ivan the Terrible.
"Gentle and gentle by nature," noted Metropolitan John, "the tsar suffered and was tormented, forced to take drastic measures."
It often happened that as soon as the execution of the vicious criminals sentenced by the court began, a messenger arrived with a royal charter and those who had not yet been executed were released under the kiss of the cross. But what is to the godless demonic servant before this kissing? In gratitude for the Tsar's mercy, they poisoned them with mercuric chloride ...
And Russia rolled to the Time of Troubles, during which it lost 7 million out of 15 million people, and was saved from complete death and transformation into a Polish-Lithuanian colony only thanks to that ingenious invention of Ivan the Terrible, which we have undeservedly forgotten.
Exactly Zemsky Cathedral, convened in 1613 according to the laws and regulations introduced by Ivan the Terrible, was able to revive the autocratic rule.
At this Moscow Zemsko-Local Council, the encroachments of foreign impostors on the throne were finally rejected and Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov was elected Russian Tsar.
After all, the feat of Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Pozharsky not only in the fact that he liberated Moscow, but also in the fact that he was not flattered by the royal throne and did not "shout" himself immediately as king, like Shuisky with the help of those closest to him, but agreed only for the temporary administration of the country, immediately starting preparations for the convocation of the Moscow Zemsko-Local Council of All Russian Land, which supported the introduction of oprichnina in the name of saving the Orthodox faith and the Russian land itself.
Nikolay Shakhmagonov
Russian philosopher Konstantin Pobedonostsev, seeing in 1885 at an exhibition in St. Petersburg the painting by I. Repin "Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan on November 16, 1581", which later became known as "Ivan the Terrible kills his son", was outraged by the fact that that in it the fiction was passed off as the truth. Therefore, he wrote to Alexander III that the picture in no case can be considered historical, since its plot is fantastic.
Indeed, almost everyone has heard about the murder of his son by Ivan the Terrible, even in the school curriculum, as an illustration of the cruelty of the autocracy, there is information about it. N. Karamzin writes about this in his historiography. However, in reality, the fact of Grozny's murder of his son, in reality, turned out to be a lie. The same Karamzin could not but know about the existence of other versions, but for some reason he deliberately ignored them. The only thing that is beyond doubt in this whole story is the date. Indeed, the son of Ivan the Terrible died in November 1581.
Until recently, the autocrat's murder of his son was considered reliable and indisputable. But in all the documents of that time there is information about the death of John Ioannovich, but they do not mention the murder.
The creator of the murder myth was the papal legate, a high-ranking Jesuit Anthony Possevin. He is also known for having invented and tried to implement political intrigue, hoping, with the help of Poles, Lithuanians and Swedes, to put Russia in unbearable conditions, and thus force Ivan the Terrible to subjugate Orthodox Church To the Pope. But the tsar played a difficult diplomatic game, managing to use Possevin to sign peace with Poland and not making concessions to Rome. Despite the fact that historians repeat about the Yam-Zapolsky peace treaty as a defeat for Russia, it should be noted that thanks to the papal legate, the Poles were able to regain only Polotsk, which Ivan the Terrible took from Sigismund back in 1563. After the peace was concluded, the tsar did not even think to discuss with Possevin the issue of the unification of the churches, since he did not promise this. Rome itself deceived itself, because it was always blinded by the idea of establishing dominance over the world. The complete failure of this Catholic adventure led to the fact that Possevin became the personal enemy of Grozny. Moreover, the papal legate came to Moscow much later death prince, so he could not physically witness the murder.
Regarding the essence of what happened, the sudden death of the prince caused controversy among contemporaries and historians. There were a large number of versions of death, but all of them contained the word “possibly”, “most likely”, “maybe”, etc.
Karamzin in his book called the reason for the murder Grozny's unwillingness to send his son along with the army to the liberation of Pskov, as a result of which a quarrel occurred, and the tsar hit his son on the head with a rod. But, for example, M. Ivanov, commenting on this version, says that everything was not so. Ivanov assumed that the murder was due to the prince's wife. Once, when Grozny entered his son's chambers and saw a pregnant daughter-in-law, dressed not according to the regulations, he began to beat her, the son stood up for his wife. It was then that the fatal blow was dealt. A similar version was put forward by Walishevsky. Kobrin noted that this version is the most plausible, but it is impossible to verify it or refute it. But then, on what basis was Ivan the Terrible accused of murder, which cannot be proved or verified? Just because it looks like the truth?
Such a household version is "lame on both legs." Ivan the Terrible could not meet his daughter-in-law in the chambers of his son. The point is that each member royal family lived in separate mansions, which were connected to the palace by passages. Princess Elena led the same way of life as all the ladies of the court: after the morning divine service, she and her servants were engaged in needlework in their chambers. The laws of that time were very strict in relation to women, without the permission of her husband, none of them dared to appear in public, even went to church only with permission, and even then under the supervision of servants. The rooms of noble women were usually located in the back of the house, and they were constantly closed, and the key was with the husbands. Not a single man could enter the female part of the house. How, then, did the tsar manage to see Princess Helena, and even dressed not according to the rules? Did he break down the door and then dispersed all the servants? But history has not recorded a single similar incident in the eventful life of John. Therefore, it is quite possible to agree with Metropolitan John of Ladoga that this version was so absurd from the very beginning that it became necessary to somehow refine the story and find a worthy reason for the murder.
A little later, another tale appeared - a version of a political murder, but it turned out to be even more unsubstantiated than the previous one. According to historians, Ivan the Terrible was very distrustful of his son's desire to lead an army in the struggle against the Commonwealth, envied his youthful energy, but this is only speculation and there is no evidence of the veracity of this version. There are no less contradictions in it than in everyday life. If you believe Karamzin, the tsarevich expresses dissatisfaction with some strata of the population with the negotiations between Russia and Poland, that is, he opposes the tsar regarding the conditions for signing a peace treaty. But according to all sources, the death of the prince falls on November 15, 1581, while negotiations between the two states began only in mid-December, a month after his death. How one can be dissatisfied with the course of negotiations that have not even begun yet, historians do not specify.
There is another version of the murder - "moral". Recall that in 1580, and according to some sources - in 1578, an action was held in the German settlement to stop speculation in alcohol. This became the basis for new version... Its essence was that the prince showed compassion to the Livonians, so he gave one of the nobles, without the knowledge of the sovereign, a road trip for 5 post horses. In addition, Ivan the Terrible feared for his power, since the people loved and supported the young prince in every possible way. Therefore, he struck his son with a rod, which is why he died on the third day. Note that in another interpretation of the same version, the blow to the ear turned into an ordinary slap in the face, but also with a sad ending. But this version turned out to be untenable. First of all, because the cause of the quarrel could not have been the named event, since it happened several years before the murder. Some historians are of the opinion that the reason for the quarrel could be that the prince stood up for the Livonian captives, whom the guardsmen treated badly.
This version is full of contradictions in assessing the character of the young prince. At first, historians argued that the son was an exact copy of his father, and the similarity was not only physical, but also moral. After death, other pictures appear - the prince, it turns out, is wise, not like his father, everyone loves him, so his death became a nationwide grief. Thus, it is clear that such a transformation from a monster into a "public favorite" means only one thing - a lie.
But how then did the prince die if there was no murder? Metropolitan John of Ladoga was convinced that the son of Ivan the Terrible died a natural death, for which there is documentary evidence. Back in 1570, he came to the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery and, donating a thousand rubles, set a condition that at any time he could take monastic vows at the monastery, and in case of death he would be commemorated.
But was the death of the prince so natural? In 1963, 4 tombs were opened in the Archangel Cathedral: Ivan the Terrible himself, his son, Tsar Fyodor and Colonel Skopin-Shuisky. It was decided to conduct research on the subject of poisoning. In the course of their implementation, it was found that the content of arsenic in all skeletons is approximately equal. But in the skeletons of the king and his son, traces of mercury were also found, its content in the remains many times exceeded the norm.
Could such a coincidence have been accidental? Unfortunately, only one thing is known: the Tsarevich's illness lasted for about a week, and he died in Alexandrova Sloboda. Historians suggest that the prince felt unwell, so he decided to go to a monastery and take monastic vows. Of course, there can be no talk of any head wound, otherwise he would have been lying unconscious with a traumatic brain injury. On the way, his condition worsened, and the prince finally took to his bed, and soon died.
Little more is known about the death of Ivan the Terrible himself. Back in 1582, Possevin expressed the idea that the tsar did not have long to live. Similar statements seem very strange if, according to the same Karamzin, in 1584 no deterioration in the autocrat's health was observed. Thus, such confidence in the imminent death of the tsar cannot be explained by anything other than the fact that the papal legate himself was guilty of the death of Ivan the Terrible. Moreover, despite the statements of historians that it was in 1584 he fell ill, this is also not entirely true. The fact is that this year the ruler only saw a comet in the sky and said that it portends his death. The first mention of the disease appeared on March 10, 1584, on March 16 there was a deterioration, then - relief, and on March 18 - sudden death. His body was swollen and smelled bad. Thus, it can be argued that Ivan the Terrible died precisely from mercury poisoning, since all 10 days of illness and before death he had all the symptoms: a swollen body and bad smell indicate that the kidneys have failed (which is characteristic of mercury poisoning). Taking baths contributed to the partial elimination of the poison from the body (because of this, the king felt relief).
At the same time, according to some historians, Ivan the Terrible was strangled.
The great autocrat died "just in time": at the beginning of 1584, Stephen Batory, having enlisted the support of the Roman throne, began active preparations for a new war with Russia. Thus, it becomes clear who could and who did it, and who benefited from the death of the king and his heir.
On November 19, 1582, the son of Ivan the Terrible, Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich, died. This event became fatal for Russian history. And one of the most confusing.
Fatal intercession
One of the main versions of the murder of his son by Ivan the Terrible is known to us from the words of Antonio Possevino, the papal legate. According to this version, Ivan the Terrible found his son's wife, Elena, in an inappropriate state. Terrible's daughter-in-law was pregnant and lay in one underwear. Ivan IV got angry and began to "teach" Elena, hit her in the face and beat her with a staff. Then, according to the same Possevino, Ivan the Terrible's son ran into the wards and began to reproach his father with these words: “You imprisoned my first wife in a monastery for no reason, you did the same with your second wife, and now you are beating the third in order to destroy your son, which she carries in her womb. " The finale is known. The father's staff also took out his son, breaking his skull.
This version, which has become a textbook, is being criticized today. It was beneficial to make Ivan IV a ruthless sonicide for at least two reasons: firstly, the Russian tsar appeared in an unseemly light, and secondly, such horrors that were happening on the assurances of the same Possevino in Russia legitimized the European Inquisition.
Political strife
According to another version, politics became the "stumbling block" between the son and the father. This version was voiced by Nikolai Karamzin in his "History": “The Tsarevich, filled with noble jealousy, came to his father and demanded that he send him with an army to expel the enemy, free Pskov, restore the honor of Russia. John shouted in the excitement of anger: “Rebel! You and the boyars want to overthrow me from the throne, ”and raised his hand. Boris Godunov wanted to keep her. The king gave him several wounds with his sharp rod and hit the prince in the head with them. This unfortunate man fell bleeding! " It is significant that this version, accepted by Karamzin as reliable, belonged to the same Antonio Possevino. The reliability of this completely literary presentation is even more doubtful than the first version, it has not been confirmed by any other evidence. A grain of truth, however, is present in this version. It is that the situation in the last years of the reign of Ivan the Terrible at court was, to put it mildly, tense. It was extremely difficult to survive in such an environment.
Who wrote history
It is amazing how surprisingly trustful Russian historians, and first of all Karamzin, "wrote history", focusing on the testimonies of Antonio Possevino, the legate of Pope Gregory XIII, the German Heinrich Staden and the Frenchman Jacques Marjarette. In all sorts of historical interpretations, especially foreign ones, one should look for who benefits from it. The same Staden, returning to Germany, outlined a project for the conquest of Muscovy, proposing to destroy churches and monasteries, abolish the Orthodox faith, and then turn the inhabitants into slaves. With regret, it is worth recognizing the correctness of the historian Zabelin, who wrote: “As you know, we very zealously only deny and denounce our history and dare not even think about any characters and ideals. We do not admit the ideal in our history ... Our whole history is a dark kingdom of ignorance, barbarism, hypocrisy, slavery and so on ... ”.
Poisoning?
In 1963, the tombs of Tsar John Vasilyevich and Tsarevich John Ioannovich were opened in the Archangel Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. The subsequent reliable studies, medico-chemical and medico-forensic examinations of the honest remains of the prince showed that the permissible content of mercury was 32 times exceeded, and several times the amount of arsenic and lead. Due to the poor preservation of the bone tissue, it was impossible to reliably establish whether Ivan Ivanovich's skull was fractured. Taking into account the fact that Ivan the Terrible's mother and his first wife also died from poisoning with selma, the version with the poisoning of Ivan the Terrible's son seems to be the most probable. Another question: who was the poisoner?
Did not kill
Ivan the Terrible did not kill his son. This is the version that Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod, adhered to, for example. Seeing the famous painting by Repin at the exhibition, he was outraged and wrote to Emperor Alexander III: "The painting cannot be called historical, since this moment ... is purely fantastic." An analysis of what happened in 1582 confirms Pobedonostsev's idea, it is precisely that "fantastic". Since the time of Repin's painting, the version "Ivan the Terrible killed his son" has become a kind of historical meme. She is so deeply rooted in the mind that the thought of Grozny's innocence in the death of his son is often simply not considered. By the way, the picture has a difficult fate. In February 1913, she suffered greatly from the knife of the Old Believer Abram Baloshov, and more recently Orthodox activists turned to the Minister of Culture with a request to remove the painting from the Tretyakov Gallery.
Son's rest
The death of his son seriously affected Ivan IV. The untimely death of his son made him a "mortgaged dead", he could not be buried, he was doomed to eternal suffering. In 1583, Ivan the Terrible 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.