Ivan the Terrible

NAME Ivan IV Vasilyevich, commonly known in English as Ivan the Terrible. The epithet Grozny actually translates more accurately to "Formidable," "Inspiring Fear," or "Awe-inspiring," though "Terrible" has remained the standard historical label. 

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Ivan was the first ruler to be formally crowned as Tsar of All the Russias. He transformed Russia from a medieval state into an empire and a regional power, but he is equally famous for his psychological instability and a reign of terror characterized by mass executions, the creation of a secret police (the Oprichniki), and the killing of his own son.

FAMILY BACKGROUND Ivan was the son of Vasili III, Grand Prince of Moscow, and his second wife, Elena Glinskaya. 

Through his grandmother Sophia Palaiologina — a Byzantine princess and niece of the last Byzantine Emperor, Constantine XI — Ivan claimed descent from the imperial house of Byzantium. Elena's mother was a Serbian princess, and her father's family, the Tatar Glinski clan, claimed descent from Orthodox Hungarian nobles and the Mongol ruler Mamai. 

The Rurik dynasty — to which Ivan belonged — traced its lineage all the way back to Rurik, the first Prince of Novgorod in the 9th century, and Ivan himself claimed kinship with the Roman Emperor Augustus. (1)

CHILDHOOD   When Ivan was three years old, his father died from an abscess on his leg that became infected and turned gangrenous. 

Ivan was proclaimed Grand Prince, but the country was first ruled by his mother as regent. Elena Glinskaya died in 1538 when Ivan was eight years old; it is widely believed she was poisoned. Ivan's governess, Agrippina Fedorovna Chelyadnina, was arrested in connection with her death, and suspicion fell upon the powerful Shuisky boyar family, who seized power after Elena's passing. (2) 

After his mother's death, Ivan and his younger brother Yuri were largely neglected by the rival boyar factions fighting for control of the state. In a letter written years later, Ivan recalled: "What have I suffered for want of garments and food!" 

As a child, Ivan took a grim pleasure in throwing live animals to their deaths, and reportedly spent time torturing small animals and hurling pets from the upper windows of the Kremlin. 

He ordered his first murder at the age of 13, effectively ending the political struggles that had plagued his childhood, and had a man's tongue cut out at 15 for swearing. (3) 

EDUCATION Ivan was largely self-educated, reading voraciously from the vast library of the Kremlin. His letters — particularly his famous exchange with the defector Prince Andrey Kurbsky — display a formidable, if erratic, intelligence. He became deeply versed in Orthodox theology and Russian history, and this learning informed both his religious devotion and his political ideology of absolute tsarist power. 

CAREER RECORD 1533 Proclaimed Grand Prince of Moscow at age three following his father's death; ruled under the regency of his mother and later a council of boyars.

1547 Formally crowned as the first "Tsar" of Russia on January 16.

1552 Led the successful siege and conquest of the Kazan Khanate.

1556 Annexed the Astrakhan Khanate, gaining control of the Volga River and access to the Caspian Sea.

1558–1583 Conducted the Livonian War in an attempt to gain access to the Baltic Sea; the 24-year conflict eventually ended in failure.

1565–1572 Established the Oprichnina, a territory under his direct rule policed by a private army, marking the height of his domestic terror.

1581 Oversaw the beginning of the Russian conquest of Siberia.

APPEARANCE Contemporary accounts and portraits describe Ivan as tall, physically powerful, and commanding in presence, with high cheekbones and sharp, intense eyes. (4) 

In his later years, the mercury he consumed to treat his chronic arthritis caused severe physical deterioration — he foamed at the mouth, tore out clumps of his own hair until his scalp bled, and aged prematurely and visibly. (2) 

Ivan IV of Russia. Forensic facial reconstruction by M.Gerasimov. Shakko - Own work

FASHION As Tsar, Ivan dressed in robes of immense opulence befitting the wealthiest monarch in Europe. He wore the traditional ceremonial regalia of Russian tsardom, including the Cap of Monomakh — a jewelled gold filigree cap that served as the Russian imperial crown — and the barmas (jewelled shoulder pieces). 

His court at the Kremlin was noted for its Byzantine-influenced grandeur. In his very last days, he adopted the simple black habit of an Orthodox monk, taking monastic vows on his deathbed under the name Jonah. 

CHARACTER Ivan's character was one of the most paradoxical in history: brilliant, well-read, and genuinely devout, yet capable of catastrophic eruptions of paranoid rage. Contemporary sources describe him as intelligent and deeply religious but increasingly unstable, especially after the death of his first wife Anastasia, which appeared to unhinge him permanently. 

He could be charming and diplomatically astute when dealing with foreign powers, yet would nail an ambassador's hat to his head for failing to remove it in his presence. (2) 

In his final years, he compiled lists of the thousands he had executed and sent them to monasteries, requesting prayers be said for each victim by name — a sign of genuine religious remorse. He regularly flogged himself before the altar during Mass, fearing divine retribution.

SPEAKING VOICE His letters and proclamations are written in a commanding, ornate, and often savage rhetorical style. 

SENSE OF HUMOUR Ivan possessed a cruel and sardonic sense of humour. He reportedly enjoyed elaborate and macabre practical jokes on his victims before executing them. During the famine of 1575, he invited starving beggars to his palace ostensibly to feed them, then killed them and threw them into the river for his own amusement. 

He once nailed an ambassador's hat to the man's head for refusing to remove it in the royal presence. (2)

RELATIONSHIPS Ivan had at least six wives, although the Russian Orthodox Church only recognised four of his marriages. Three of them were allegedly poisoned by rival aristocratic families competing to place their daughters on the throne. 

Anastasia Romanovna (married February 3, 1547) was the great love of his life, chosen from over 1,500 maidens summoned from across the realm — those whose fathers refused to send their daughters facing execution. She was the daughter of Boyar Roman Yurievich Zakharyin-Yuriev, whose family gave their name to the Romanov dynasty. 

Anastasia bore Ivan six children, of whom only two survived: his heir Ivan Ivanovich and the intellectually limited Feodor, who would inherit the throne. 

She died on August 7, 1560, aged about 30, from a lingering illness, and analysis of her remains has since raised the possibility she was poisoned. Her death devastated the Tsar and appeared to trigger the spiral of cruelty and instability that defined the second half of his reign. 

Anastasia Romanovna on the Monument «Millennium of Russia» in Veliky Novgorod  by Дар Ветер

Maria Temryukovna, his second wife, died in 1569, also suspected of poisoning. 

Marfa Sobakina, his third wife, was chosen in the same manner as Anastasia. She became mortally ill after her selection and died before the marriage was consummated. 

Anna Koltovskaya was his fourth wife, recognised by the Church. She was later sent to a convent and eventually canonized as Saint Daria. 

Vasilisa Melentyeva, his disputed sixth consort, was packed off to a convent after taking a lover; Ivan allegedly had the boyfriend impaled on a stake beneath her bedroom window. (2)

Maria Nagaya, his last wife, bore him his youngest son, Tsarevich Dmitry of Uglich, who died in mysterious circumstances in 1591, setting off a dynastic crisis. 

In November 1581, Ivan struck his eldest son and heir, Ivan Ivanovich, in the head with his pointed iron staff during a furious altercation — historians generally believe the blow killed him. The moment is immortalised in Ilya Repin's famous 1885 painting Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan. (see below) 

MONEY AND FAME During his lifetime, Ivan IV was reputed to be the wealthiest monarch in all of Europe, presiding over the vast natural resources of an expanding empire. (2) 

His court at the Kremlin was of extraordinary opulence, and foreign ambassadors noted the profusion of gold and jewels on display. He expanded Russian trade significantly by opening up the White Sea route to English merchants of the Muscovy Company and granting them the right to trade throughout his realm free of customs fees. 

Ivan's fame — or notoriety — spread throughout Europe, and Western powers simultaneously courted and feared him; the anti-Russian propaganda produced during the Livonian War helped cement his "terrible" image for posterity. (5)

FOOD AND DRINK His court feasts were known for their extravagance, reflecting the wealth of the tsardom. 

It is recorded that during his periods of religious retreat and fasting — which became increasingly frequent in his later years — he subjected himself to severe monastic austerity. 

MUSIC AND ARTS Ivan had a genuine passion for music and was a composer of considerable talent. He composed the Orthodox liturgical hymn Stichiron No. 1 in Honor of St. Peter, fragments of which were later set to music by the Soviet composer Rodion Shchedrin; the resulting recording was the first Soviet-produced CD, released in 1988 to mark the millennium of Christianity in Russia. 

Ivan was a devoted patron of religious architecture, most famously commissioning St. Basil's Cathedral (completed c.1561), whose colourful onion domes remain the most iconic image of Moscow. (4) 

He also introduced the first printing press to Russia and established the Moscow Print Yard in 1553. 

LITERATURE Ivan left behind a formidable body of writing, most notably his correspondence with Prince Andrey Kurbsky, his former military commander who defected to Lithuania in 1564.  The letters attributed to Ivan are ferocious and rhetorically brilliant, combining theological argument with savage personal invective. Whether the letters are genuinely his own work has been disputed — Harvard professor Edward L. Keenan argued in 1971 that they are 17th-century forgeries — though the majority of scholars continue to accept their authenticity. (

Ivan was an avid reader from childhood, educating himself largely from the Kremlin's library. (3)

NATURE His reign saw an enormous expansion of Russian territory into the steppes, the Volga basin, and eventually Siberia, though this was motivated by imperial and economic ambition rather than any apparent love of nature. 

Ivan viewed nature through a utilitarian and often cruel lens. He famously used the icy waters of the Volkhov River as a mass execution site during the Massacre of Novgorod.

PETS  From an early age Ivan displayed a violent indifference to animal life, reportedly throwing live animals off the upper windows of the Kremlin for entertainment as a child. (3)

The oprichniki, his terror force, used dogs as symbols — they attached a dog's head to their saddles, symbolising their role as the Tsar's hounds hunting his enemies. (5) 

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Ivan was a keen chess player; he was playing a game of chess with his adviser Bogdan Belsky when he collapsed and died. (2) 

Death of Ivan the Terrible by Ivan Bilibin (1935)

Ivan played the trombone and composed liturgical music. 

SCIENCE AND MATHS Ivan demonstrated a pragmatic interest in technology when it served his military aims. Most notably, he employed Dutch and foreign military engineers to dig the tunnels beneath the walls of Kazan in 1552, then packed them with gunpowder to blow open the city's defences — a highly sophisticated military engineering operation for the era. (2) 

He also engaged extensively with English merchant adventurers and entrepreneurs, inviting Western expertise and trade into Russia. (1)

REIGN Ivan IV of Russia ruled Russia for 51 years, which sounds impressive until you remember that a good portion of it was spent behaving like a man who had swallowed a wasp and decided the rest of the country ought to suffer for it. His reign falls rather neatly into two halves: first, the energetic young reformer busily dragging Muscovy toward modern statehood; second, the increasingly unhinged autocrat terrorising his own population with the enthusiasm of a medieval tax inspector discovering overtime pay.

The early years were, by almost any measure, a remarkable success. Crowned the first Tsar of All Russia in 1547 — thereby giving himself a title grand enough to require several additional acres of parchment — Ivan worked with a group of advisers called the Chosen Council, who sound less like statesmen and more like finalists on an Orthodox talent show. Together they introduced reforms at a rate that must have left Russia’s bureaucrats faint with exhaustion.

There was the Zemsky Sobor in 1549, Russia’s first tentative stab at a national assembly, followed by a new legal code, tax reforms, local government reforms, church reforms and, perhaps most ominously for future Russian literature students, the arrival of the country’s first printing press. He also created the streltsy, Russia’s first standing army equipped with firearms — proving once again that if humans invent a new technology, someone will immediately ask whether it can be used more efficiently to shoot at neighbours.

Militarily, Ivan was on excellent form. He conquered the Kazan Khanate in 1552 by blowing holes in its supposedly impregnable walls with gunpowder, which was rather like discovering your medieval castle could be defeated by an enthusiastic mining surveyor. Four years later he annexed Astrakhan, giving Russia control of the Volga and access to the Caspian Sea. Muscovy, which had previously resembled a nervous woodland principality forever glancing over its shoulder, suddenly looked much more like an empire.

Then came 1560, and everything went spectacularly wrong.

The death of Ivan’s beloved wife, Anastasia Romanovna, seems to have snapped something in him. He became convinced the boyars had poisoned her — a suspicion not entirely impossible given later tests found high levels of mercury in her remains, though in the 16th century mercury turned up in medicines with the frequency modern wellness culture reserves for turmeric. Whatever the truth, Ivan emerged from the tragedy angrier, more paranoid and considerably less interested in balanced governance.

By 1565 he had established the oprichnina, which was essentially a state-sponsored nightmare. He carved out a personal domain within Russia and staffed it with the oprichniki: black-clad enforcers riding black horses and behaving with the sort of theatrical menace usually associated with amateur heavy metal bands. They confiscated estates, executed noble families and spread terror across the country with a zeal suggesting they genuinely enjoyed the paperwork.

The low point — admittedly a crowded category — was the Massacre of Novgorod in 1570. Convinced the city planned to defect to Poland-Lithuania, Ivan unleashed the oprichniki upon it in a frenzy of torture and execution. Thousands were killed. People were tied to sleighs and thrown into the freezing Volkhov River. Archbishop Pimen was reportedly sewn into a bearskin and hunted down by dogs, which even by the standards of the 16th century was considered a touch excessive.

Meanwhile, Ivan had embarked on the Livonian War in 1558 in hopes of securing access to the Baltic Sea. This turned into a 24-year catastrophe involving Sweden, Lithuania, Poland and assorted other neighbours who collectively decided they preferred Russia nowhere near the Baltic. The war drained the treasury, wrecked the economy and ended with Russia losing territory anyway — the geopolitical equivalent of setting fire to your own house during an argument and still losing.

Then came the family tragedy that has haunted Ivan’s reputation ever since. In 1581, during an argument that may have begun over the treatment of his pregnant daughter-in-law, Ivan struck his eldest son and heir, Ivan Ivanovich, with his iron-tipped staff. The younger Ivan died days later. It is one of history’s bleakest examples of losing one’s temper at home. Ilya Repin later immortalised the moment in his painting Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan, in which the Tsar looks less like a mighty ruler than a man who has suddenly realised he has made the worst mistake imaginable.

When Ivan died in 1584, he left Russia vastly larger, considerably more centralised, and psychologically exhausted. He had expanded the empire enormously and strengthened the machinery of autocratic rule, but he had also devastated the economy, shattered much of the nobility and left the succession in the hands of his frail son Feodor. The result was the Time of Troubles, a prolonged national collapse featuring famine, impostors, invasions and enough chaos to make one nostalgic for the Mongols.

It is difficult not to conclude that Ivan the Terrible was both one of Russia’s greatest state-builders and one of its most efficient wrecking balls — a man capable of founding institutions in the morning and dismantling society by teatime.

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Ivan was deeply and sincerely Orthodox in his Christian faith, and theology was central to his worldview. He saw himself as a divine instrument — God's appointed ruler on earth — and the title of Tsar carried explicitly religious connotations, connecting him to Old Testament kings and to Christ as "the Heavenly Tsar." 

He convened the Council of the Hundred Chapters in 1551 to standardise Orthodox ritual and law across Russia. 

As Ivan aged, the contradiction between his faith and his atrocities produced extreme behaviour: he flogged himself during Mass in fits of mystical guilt, and compiled lists of the thousands he had murdered so that monks could pray for their souls. (2) 

He took monastic vows on his deathbed. 

POLITICS Ivan was the architect of Russian autocracy. He systematically destroyed the power of the hereditary nobility (the boyars) by executing, exiling or forcibly tonsuring their leading figures, confiscating their estates, and replacing them with a new service gentry who owed everything to the Tsar. 

He established the Zemsky Sobor (1549), Russia's first national representative assembly, and introduced local self-government in rural areas. Ivan also set the legal foundations for serfdom by introducing the first restrictions on peasant mobility. 

In 1564, after threatening abdication, Ivan extracted from the boyars the right to govern by absolute decree without interference from the council or church — a watershed moment in Russian autocracy. 

 He is seen by some historians as a champion of the poor, as he curtailed the worst abuses of the nobility, and this dimension of his legacy was exploited by Stalin, who celebrated him as a strong state-builder. (3)

SCANDAL Ivan's reign was one long accumulation of scandal and atrocity. He ordered the Massacre of Novgorod in 1570 on the basis of what modern historians believe was a fabricated conspiracy, resulting in the mass drowning and slaughter of thousands of men, women, and children.

Ivan killed his own son and heir with his own hands in November 1581.  

He had the Archbishop of Novgorod sewn into a bearskin and hunted to death by dogs. 

He had a foreign ambassador's hat nailed to his head. 

During the famine of 1575, he lured starving beggars to the palace and killed them for amusement. 

In his old age, paranoid and maddened by mercury poisoning, he foamed at the mouth and tore out his own hair. (2) 

MILITARY RECORD Ivan was, in his prime, a capable and innovative military commander. His greatest triumph was the siege and conquest of Kazan in 1552 — a Tatar fortress considered impregnable — achieved through the use of foreign military engineers who mined and blew open the city walls. 

Ivan IV under the walls of Kazan by Pyotr Korovin (1890)

1552 Conquest of Kazan Khanate

1556  Annexation of the Astrakhan Khanate, bringing the full length of the Volga under Russian control. 

January 1558  Launched the Livonian War against Sweden, Lithuania, Poland, and the Teutonic Knights, in a bid for Baltic access. Despite initial successes, the 24-year war ended in failure, with Russia ceding Ingria and losing Baltic access entirely. (2)

1571 Moscow was burned by a Crimean Tatar raid of around 40,000 men; with most Russian forces committed to the Livonian War, the city was barely defended. 

1572  Russian forces under Prince Vorotynsky defeated the Tatar army at the Battle of Molodi. Ivan, characteristically, had sat out the battle in distant Novgorod, and then executed Vorotynsky the following year. 

1581 Cossack leader Yermak Timofeyevich began the conquest of Siberia for Russia.

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS In his youth Ivan was physically imposing and energetic. In later life he suffered severely from chronic arthritis, for which he consumed large quantities of mercury — then a common remedy — which ultimately made his condition catastrophically worse.  His behaviour deteriorated markedly in old age: he foamed at the mouth, tore clumps of his own hair out until his scalp bled, and suffered increasingly extreme mood swings and paranoid episodes. 

When his remains were examined during Soviet-era renovations in the 1960s, they showed dangerously elevated mercury levels — high enough that modern researchers have concluded he was very likely poisoned, with suspicion falling on his advisers Bogdan Belsky and Boris Godunov (who himself became Tsar in 1598). (2)

His skeleton also showed severe spinal osteophytes, indicating he was in considerable chronic pain in his final years. 

HOMES Ivan spent the majority of his life in the candlelit rooms and chambers of the Kremlin in Moscow. (2) 

For several years during the oprichnina period, he relocated his personal court to Aleksandrova Sloboda, a fortified residence some 60 miles from Moscow, where he conducted his reign of terror with monastic austerity combined with frenzied violence — alternating prayer and self-flagellation with torture and execution. In 1564, it was from Aleksandrova Sloboda that he wrote to the boyars announcing his "abdication" — a calculated political move to extract absolute power. 

TRAVEL Ivan's travels were largely confined to his own vast domains, which he expanded enormously over the course of his reign. He personally led military campaigns to Kazan and along the Volga. 

He never visited Western Europe, though he maintained an intense interest in it, corresponding extensively with Queen Elizabeth I of England. He even asked her to guarantee him asylum in England should his rule be threatened. The first Russian Embassy opened in London on February 27, 1557. (2) 

Ivan corresponding with Queen Elizabeth I of England Gemini. 

Ivan also sent delegations to Egypt and the Orthodox patriarchs of the Near East. (1)

DEATH A few weeks before his death, Ivan drew up a will naming his second son Feodor as heir, urging him to rule with kindness and give thought to tax relief. In his last years he also issued posthumous pardons to the thousands he had executed. 

Ivan died on March 28, 1584 (Old Style: March 18), after sitting down to play a game of chess with his adviser Bogdan Belsky. He collapsed and died in Belsky's arms. The date of his death had reportedly been prophesied in advance: Belsky was in charge of the fortune-tellers gathered from across Russia following the appearance of a comet, and they had foretold the Tsar's passing for that exact date. (2)

On his deathbed, Ivan took monastic vows under the name Jonah. He was buried in the Cathedral of the Archangel in the Moscow Kremlin.

The very high levels of mercury found in his remains when his tomb was examined in the 1960s have led many modern researchers to conclude he was probably poisoned, with Bogdan Belsky and Boris Godunov the chief suspects.

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA The greatest screen treatment of Ivan's life was by the Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, who made two epic films — Ivan the Terrible, Part I (1944) and Ivan the Terrible, Part II (1946), with the Tsar played by Nikolai Cherkasov. Made on the orders of Stalin to boost wartime morale and celebrate strong Russian leadership, they are widely regarded as two of the greatest historical biopics ever made. Part II was suppressed by Stalin after he felt its portrayal of the oprichniki was too critical. (2) 

Ivan has also featured in Russian opera: Rimsky-Korsakov's The Maid of Pskov (1873) portrays him as a central character. 

He appears in numerous novels, plays and television productions. 

The iconic image of Ivan by the 19th-century artist Ilya Repin — Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan (1885) — is one of the most famous Russian paintings ever made. 

ACHIEVEMENTS  First crowned Tsar of All Russia (1547), establishing the institution of the Russian tsardom. 

Conquest of the Kazan and Astrakhan Khanates (1552–56), transforming Muscovy into a multi-ethnic empire and securing the full length of the Volga. 

Commissioned St. Basil's Cathedral (c.1555–61), still the most recognisable building in Russia. 

Established the Zemsky Sobor (1549), Russia's first proto-parliamentary assembly. 

Introduced Russia's first standing army (the streltsy) and its first printing press (1553). 

Initiated and expanded Russian trade and diplomatic relations with England and Western Europe. 

Began the eastward expansion into Siberia that would ultimately produce the world's largest nation. 

Left Russia far more centrally administered, culturally unified, and territorially vast than he found it — despite the immense human cost of his reign.

Sources: (1) Wikipedia — Ivan the Terrible (2) Encyclopaedia of Trivia — Ivan the Terrible (3) LinguaLift — 10 Things You Never Knew About Ivan the Terrible (4) Encyclopaedia Britannica — Ivan the Terrible (5) History.co.uk — Why Was Ivan So Terrible?