Oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible. Briefly about the policy of terror

Years oprichnina Ivan the Terrible played a significant role in the history of the formation of the Russian state. The king was put on the throne in 1547. But in the first years of his rule, the main political course of the state was not the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible.

Briefly about the reforms of the Elected Council

The elected Rada became an actual government, assembled from noble boyars, nobles, some government officials and representatives of the clergy. This government operated from 1547 to 1560. In essence, all of its reforms were aimed at state centralization and the absoluteization of power, the creation of unified state bodies and orders throughout the country. Actually, such trends required time itself. Absolutization of monarchical governance was exactly the same in Western Europe.

Oprichnina Ivan the Terrible: briefly about the reasons

However, the activities and very existence of the Elected Council for a variety of reasons over time begins to contradict the aspirations of Ivan the Terrible. In 1560 there is a gap between the tsar and his associates, which resulted in the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible. To put it briefly about the reasons for the breakdown of this union, it should be noted that the progressive character of the reforms of the Elected Rada eventually tired the tsar. The latter began to seem that the centralization of the state was intentionally delayed by the boyars, moreover, in 1560 he accused two members of the Elected Rada - Sylvester and Adasheva - in that they want to concentrate real levers of power in their own hands. An important reason for the gap is the conflict between the figures of the informal government and the tsar's wife Anastasia Yurieva. After her death, the tsar repeatedly accused the boyars that they "lived from the light of her." The last spark that completely disliked Ivan IV's dislike of the boyar elite was the transition of one of the members of the former Elected Council, Andrei Kurbsky, to the side of the Poles during the Livonian War. The reason that prompted the latter to do this was discontent with the fact that the tsar was trampling upon the ever-free liberties and rights of the boyars. In response, the tsar forms an obedient corps of oprichniks, who begins a massive terror against the aristocracy in the country.

Oprichnina Ivan the Terrible: briefly about holding

Since 1565 in the Moscow kingdom begins a fierce struggle to eliminate, or rather, the physical destruction of the boyar stratum. The country was divided into two parts: one part became the personal destiny of the tsar and was called the oprichnina. Another was ruled by a boyar Duma and was called zemshchina. The territory of the oprichnina continuously increased and covered most of the land in the country. The political essence of the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible was that the tsar achieved for himself the right and consent of the boyars that he could arbitrarily expose opals and execute all those whom he himself considered traitors. Needless to say, after the flight of the Kurbsky Tsar, traitors and conspirators were seen everywhere among the boyar elite? Over the following years, hundreds of families of aristocrats were evicted from their lands, who had departed oprichniki. Its apogee reached the terror by 1570, when the last prince Vladimir Staritsky was killed in Russia. Punitive expeditions to Novgorod, Klin, Torzhok, Tver were carried out. Hundreds of villages were burned, and mass executions took place in Moscow.

Results oprichnina

The result of this policy was the weakening of the political role of the boyars in the country. As a result, the tsar achieved autocracy. On the one hand, despotism and the very fact of mass ruin and murder are negative trends. However, autocracy allowed to create a strong army and an effective state apparatus for its time , which resulted in the progressive expansion of state territories.