The oprichnina was established during the reign. The police in medieval Rus' are the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible: briefly about the oprichnina and the purposes of their action. The abolition of the oprichnina and its consequences

Oprichnina is a state policy of terror that reigned in Rus' at the end of the 16th century under the reign of Ivan 4.

The essence of the oprichnina was the seizure of property from citizens in favor of the state. By order of the sovereign, special lands were allocated, which were used exclusively for the royal needs and the needs of the royal court. These territories had their own government and were closed to ordinary citizens. All territories were taken from the landowners with the help of threats and force.

The word "oprichnina" comes from the Old Russian word "oprich", which means "special". Also called oprichnina was that part of the state that had already been transferred to the sole use of the tsar and his subjects, as well as oprichniki (members of the sovereign's secret police).

The number of oprichnina (royal retinue) was about a thousand people.

Reasons for introducing the oprichnina

Tsar Ivan the Terrible was famous for his stern disposition and military campaigns. The emergence of the oprichnina is largely associated with the Livonian War.

In 1558, he started the Livonian War for the right to seize the Baltic coast, but the course of the war did not go as the sovereign would have liked. Ivan repeatedly reproached his commanders for not acting decisively enough, and the boyars did not at all respect the tsar as an authority in military matters. The situation is aggravated by the fact that in 1563 one of Ivan’s military leaders betrays him, thereby increasingly undermining the tsar’s trust in his retinue.

Ivan 4 begins to suspect the existence of a conspiracy between the governor and the boyars against his royal power. He believes that his entourage dreams of ending the war, overthrowing the sovereign and installing Prince Vladimir Staritsky in his place. All this forces Ivan to create a new environment for himself that would be able to protect him and punish everyone who goes against the king. This is how oprichniki were created - special warriors of the sovereign - and the policy of oprichnina (terror) was established.

The beginning and development of the oprichnina. Main events.

The guardsmen followed the tsar everywhere and were supposed to protect him, but it happened that these guards abused their powers and committed terror, punishing the innocent. The Tsar turned a blind eye to all this and always justified his guardsmen in any disputes. As a result of the outrages of the guardsmen, very soon they began to be hated not only by ordinary people, but also by the boyars. All the most terrible executions and acts committed during the reign of Ivan the Terrible were committed by his guardsmen.

Ivan 4 leaves for Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda, where he creates a secluded settlement together with his guardsmen. From there, the tsar regularly makes raids on Moscow in order to punish and execute those whom he considers traitors. Almost everyone who tried to stop Ivan in his lawlessness soon died.

In 1569, Ivan begins to suspect that intrigues are being woven in Novgorod and that there is a conspiracy against him. Having gathered a huge army, Ivan moves into the city and in 1570 reaches Novgorod. After the tsar finds himself in the lair of what he believes are traitors, his guardsmen begin their terror - they rob residents, kill innocent people, and burn houses. According to the data, mass beatings of people took place every day, 500-600 people.

The next stop of the cruel tsar and his guardsmen was Pskov. Despite the fact that the tsar initially planned to also carry out reprisals against the residents, in the end only some of the Pskovites were executed, and their property was confiscated.

After Pskov, Grozny again goes to Moscow to find accomplices of the Novgorod treason there and commit reprisals against them.

In 1570-1571, a huge number of people died in Moscow at the hands of the Tsar and his guardsmen. The king did not spare anyone, not even his own close associates; as a result, about 200 people were executed, including the most noble people. A large number of people survived, but suffered greatly. The Moscow executions are considered the apogee of oprichnina terror.

The end of the oprichnina

The system began to fall apart in 1571, when Rus' was attacked by the Crimean Khan Devlet-Girey. The guardsmen, accustomed to living by robbing their own citizens, turned out to be useless warriors and, according to some reports, simply did not show up on the battlefield. This is what forced the tsar to abolish the oprichnina and introduce the zemshchina, which was not much different. There is information that the tsar’s retinue continued to exist almost unchanged until his death, changing only the name from “oprichniki” to “court”.

Results of the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible

The results of the oprichnina of 1565-1572 were disastrous. Despite the fact that the oprichnina was conceived as a means of unifying the state and the purpose of the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible was to protect and destroy feudal fragmentation, it ultimately led only to chaos and complete anarchy.

In addition, the terror and devastation carried out by the guardsmen led to an economic crisis in the country. The feudal lords lost their lands, the peasants did not want to work, the people were left without money and did not believe in the justice of their sovereign. The country was mired in chaos, the oprichnina divided the country into several disparate parts.

The content of the article

OPRICHNINA- a system of emergency measures used by the Russian Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible in 1565–1572 in domestic politics to defeat the boyar-princely opposition and strengthen the Russian centralized state. (The very word “oprichnina” (“oprishnina”) comes from the ancient Russian - “special”. In the 14th–15th centuries, “Oprishnina” was the name given to the members of the grand ducal dynasty of the state appanage with territory, troops and institution).

Introduction of the oprichnina in the 16th century. Ivan the Terrible was caused by the complexities of the internal situation in the country, including the contradiction between the political consciousness of the boyars, certain circles of the highest bureaucracy (secretaries), the highest clergy who wanted independence, on the one hand, and, on the other, Ivan the Terrible’s desire for unlimited autocracy based on the latter’s firm belief in personal godlikeness and God’s chosenness and who set the goal of bringing reality into line with his own beliefs. Ivan the Terrible’s persistence in achieving absolute power, unhampered by either law, custom, or even common sense and considerations of state benefit, was strengthened by his tough temperament. The appearance of the oprichnina was associated with the Livonian War that bled the country, which began in 1558, and the worsening situation of the people due to crop failures, famine, and fires caused for many years by exceptionally hot summers. The people perceived adversity as God's punishment for the sins of the rich boyars and expected the tsar to create an ideal state structure (“Holy Rus'”).

The internal political crisis was aggravated by Ivan the Terrible’s resignation of the Elected Rada (1560), the death of Metropolitan Macarius (1563), who kept the tsar within the bounds of prudence, and the betrayal and flight abroad of Prince A.M. Kurbsky (April 1564). Having decided to break the brewing opposition, on December 3, 1564 Ivan the Terrible, taking with him the state treasury, personal library, revered icons and symbols of power, together with his wife Maria Temryukovna and children, suddenly left Moscow, going on a pilgrimage to the village of Kolomenskoye. He did not return to Moscow; he wandered around for several weeks until he settled 65 miles from the capital in Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda. On January 3, 1565, Ivan the Terrible announced his abdication of the throne due to “anger” at the boyars, governors and officials, accusing them of treason, embezzlement, and unwillingness to “fight against enemies.” He declared to the Posadskys that he had no anger or disgrace against them.

Fearing “turmoil” in Moscow, on January 5, a deputation from the boyars, clergy and townspeople, led by Archbishop Pimen, arrived in Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda with a request to the Tsar to return and “do the sovereign’s work.” Having wrested consent from the Boyar Duma to introduce a state of emergency in the state, the tsar put forward the conditions that henceforth he would be free to execute and pardon at his discretion and demanded the establishment of an oprichnina. In February 1565 Grozny returned to Moscow. Those close to him did not recognize him: his burning gaze faded, his hair turned grey, his gaze moved, his hands were shaking, his voice was hoarse (Having read about this from V.O. Klyuchevsky, the psychiatrist academician V.M. Bekhterev four centuries later diagnosed: “paranoia” )

A significant part of the territory of the Moscow state was allocated by Ivan the Terrible as a special sovereign inheritance (“oprich”); here traditional law was replaced by the “word” (arbitrariness) of the monarch. In the sovereign's inheritance, “their own” were created: the Duma, orders (“cells”), the tsar’s personal guard (up to 1 thousand guardsmen at the beginning and by the end of the oprichnina - up to 6 thousand). The best lands and more than 20 large cities (Moscow, Vyazma, Suzdal, Kozelsk, Medyn, Veliky Ustyug, etc.) went to the oprichnina; by the end of the oprichnina, its territory accounted for 60% of the Moscow state. The territory that was not included in the oprichnina was called zemshchina; she retained the Boyar Duma and “her” orders. The tsar demanded a huge sum from the zemshchina for the establishment of the oprichnina - 100 thousand rubles. However, the tsar did not limit his power to the territory of the oprichnina. During negotiations with a deputation from the zemshchina, he negotiated for himself the right to uncontrollably dispose of the lives and property of all subjects of the Moscow state.

The composition of the oprichnina court was heterogeneous: among the oprichniki there were princes (Odoevsky, Khovansky, Trubetskoy, etc.), and boyars, foreign mercenaries, and simply service people. By joining the oprichnina, they renounced their family and generally accepted norms of behavior, took an oath of allegiance to the tsar, including not communicating with “zemstvo” people. Their goal was to get closer to the throne, power and wealth.

Promising the people to “establish the Kingdom of God on earth” headed by him, “God’s anointed,” Ivan the Terrible began with a bloody assertion of the autocrat’s power. He called himself “abbot”; oprichniks - “monastic brothers”, who in churches at night, dressed in black, performed blasphemous rituals. The symbol of the guardsmen's service to the tsar became a dog's head and a broom, which meant “gnaw out and sweep away treason.” Being a suspicious person, the king began to see this betrayal everywhere and especially did not tolerate honest and independent people who stood up for the persecuted.

Bound by harsh discipline and common crimes, the guardsmen operated in the zemshchina as if in enemy territory, zealously carrying out the orders of Ivan the Terrible to eradicate “sedition,” limitlessly abusing the power granted to them. Their actions were aimed at paralyzing the people's will to resist, instilling terror, and achieving unquestioning submission to the will of the monarch. Cruelty and atrocities in reprisals against people became the norm for the guardsmen. Often they were not satisfied with simple execution: they cut off heads, cut people into pieces, and burned them alive. Disgraces and executions became a daily occurrence. Provincial nobleman Malyuta Skuratov (M.L. Skuratov - Belsky), boyar A.D. Basmanov, and Prince A.I. Vyazemsky stood out for their special zeal and implementation of the royal whims and decrees. In the eyes of the people, the guardsmen became worse than the Tatars.

Ivan the Terrible's task was to weaken the Boyar Duma. The first victims of the guardsmen were representatives of a number of noble noble families; the tsar persecuted his distant relatives, the descendants of the Suzdal princes, especially harshly. Local feudal landowners were evicted from the territory of the oprichnina by the hundreds. Their lands and the lands of their peasants were transferred to the oprichniki nobles, and the peasants were often simply killed. The nobles taken into the oprichnina, better than other landowners, were allocated land and serfs, and received generous benefits. Such land redistribution, indeed, greatly undermined the economic and political influence of the landed aristocracy.

The establishment of the oprichnina and its use by the tsar as a weapon for the physical destruction of political opponents, the confiscation of land holdings, caused a growing protest from part of the nobility and clergy. In 1566, a group of nobles filed a petition for the abolition of the oprichnina. All petitioners were executed by Ivan the Terrible. In 1567, opposite the Trinity Gate of the Kremlin (on the site of the Russian State Library), an oprichnina courtyard was built, surrounded by a powerful stone wall, where the unjust trial was carried out. In 1568, the “case” of boyar I.P. Fedorov began a large wave of repressions, as a result of which from 300 to 400 people were executed, mostly people from noble boyar families. Even Metropolitan Philip Kolychev, who opposed the oprichnina, was imprisoned in a monastery by order of the tsar, and was soon strangled by Malyuta Skuratov.

In 1570, all the forces of the oprichniki were directed towards the rebellious Novgorod. As the tsar's oprichnina army advanced towards Novgorod, in Tver, Torzhok, and in all populated areas, the oprichnina killed and robbed the population. After the defeat of Novgorod, which lasted six weeks, hundreds of corpses remained; as a result of this campaign, their number was at least 10 thousand; in Novgorod itself, most of the dead were townspeople. All repressions were accompanied by robberies of the property of churches, monasteries and merchants, after which the population was subject to unaffordable taxes, for the collection of which the same tortures and executions were used. The number of victims of the oprichnina during the 7 years of its “official” existence alone amounted to a total of up to 20 thousand (with the total population of the Moscow state by the end of the 16th century about 6 million).

Grozny managed to achieve a sharp strengthening of autocratic power and give it the features of oriental despotism. The zemstvo opposition was broken. The economic independence of large cities (Novgorod, Pskov, etc.) was undermined and they never rose to their previous level. In an atmosphere of general mistrust, the economy could not develop. Of course, the oprichnina ultimately could not change the structure of large land ownership, but after Grozny, time was needed to revive boyar and princely land ownership, which was necessary in those days for the economic development of the country. The division of troops into oprichnina and zemstvo became the reason for the decline in the combat effectiveness of the Russian state. Oprichnina weakened the Moscow state and corrupted the upper layer of society. When in 1571 the Crimean Khan Devlet-Girey attacked Moscow, the guardsmen, who had become robbers and murderers, did not want to go on a campaign to defend Moscow. Devlet-Girey reached Moscow and burned it, and the frightened king rushed to flee the capital. The campaign of Devlet-Girey “sobered up” Grozny and caused a very quick official abolition of the oprichnina: in 1572 Grozny forbade even mentioning the oprichnina under pain of punishment with a whip.

However, only the name of the oprichnina itself disappeared, and under the name of the “sovereign court”, Grozny’s arbitrariness and repression continued, but they were now directed against the oprichnina. In 1575, the tsar, hoping to gain allies in foreign policy, even declared the Tatar service khan Simeon Bekbulatovich “sovereign of all Rus'”, and called himself the appanage prince “Ivan of Moscow,” but already in 1576 he regained the royal throne, simultaneously changing almost the entire composition of the oprichnina.

The essence of the oprichnina and its methods contributed to the enslavement of the peasants. During the oprichnina years, “black” and palace lands were generously distributed to landowners, and peasant duties increased sharply. The guardsmen took the peasants out of the zemshchina “by force and without delay.” This affected almost all lands and led to the ruin of land farms. The area of ​​arable land was rapidly declining. (in the Moscow district by 84%, in the Novgorod and Pskov lands - by 92%, etc.) The devastation of the country played a negative role in the establishment of serfdom in Russia. Peasants fled to the Urals and the Volga region. In response, “reserved summers” were introduced in 1581, when “temporarily” peasants were forbidden to leave the landowners at all, even on St. George’s Day.

Due to government taxes, pestilence, and famine, the cities were depopulated. The weakened country suffered one after another serious defeats in the Livonian War. According to the truce of 1582, she ceded all of Livonia to the Poles; under an agreement with the Swedes, she lost the cities of Yam, Ivan-Gorod, and others.

Historians are still arguing whether the oprichnina was aimed at the remnants of the appanage princely antiquity or was directed against the forces that interfered with the strengthening of the autocracy of Ivan the Terrible, and the defeat of the boyar opposition was only a side effect. The question of whether the oprichnina was abolished by the tsar at all and whether there was a second “surge” of it in the 1570s and on other issues has not been resolved. One thing is absolutely clear: 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 destroyed it, as evidenced by its consequences, including the onset of the “Troubles” at the beginning of the 17th century. The dreams of the people, and above all the nobility, about a strong monarch “standing for the great truth” were embodied in unbridled despotism.

Lev Pushkarev, Irina Pushkareva

APPLICATION. ESTABLISHMENT OF THE OPRICHNINA

(according to the Nikon Chronicle)

(...) That same winter, on the 3rd day of December, a week, the Tsar and Grand Duke Ivan Vasilyevich of All Russia with his Tsarina and Grand Duchess Marya and with their children (...) went from Moscow to the village of Kolomenskoye. (...) His rise was not like before, as before he went to monasteries to pray, or to which he went on detours for his fun: he took with him holiness, icons and crosses, decorated with gold and stone drags, and gold and silver judgments , and the suppliers of all kinds of ships, gold and silver, and clothing and money, and all their treasury, were taken with them. Which boyars and noblemen, neighbors and clerks, he ordered to go with him, and many of them he ordered to go with them with their wives and children, and the nobles and children of the boyars' choice from all the cities that the sovereign took with him, he ordered all of them to go with him. with people and with whom, with all the official attire. And he lived in a village in Kolomenskoye for two weeks due to bad weather and confusion, that there were rains and the reins in the rivers were high... And as the rivers became, both the king and sovereign from Kolomenskoye went to the village of Taninskoye on the 17th day, a week, and from Taninskoye to the Trinity, and to the miracle worker the memory of Metropolitan Peter. December 21st day, I celebrated at the Trinity in the Sergius Monastery, and from the Trinity from the Sergius Monastery I went to Sloboda. In Moscow at that time there was Afanasy, Metropolitan of All Russia, Pimin, Archbishop of the Great Novagrad and Paskova, Nikandr, Archbishop of Rostov and Yaroslavl and other bishops and archimandrites and abbots, and princes and the Grand Duke, boyars and okolnichy and all the clerks; yet I was in bewilderment and despondency about such a sovereign great unusual upsurge, and I don’t know where it will go further. And on the 3rd day the tsar and the grand duke sent from Sloboda to his father and the pilgrim to Ofonasiy, Metropolitan of All Russia, with Kostyantin Dmitreev, Polivanov’s son, with his comrades and a list, and in it were written the treasons of the boyars and governors and all the treasons of the orderly people that they committed and losses to his state before his sovereign age after his father, blessed in memory of the Great Sovereign Tsar and Grand Duke Vasily Ivanovich of All Russia. And the Tsar and the Grand Duke laid their anger on their pilgrims, on the archbishops and bishops and on the archimandrites and on the abbots, and on their boyars and on the butler and the equerry and on the guards and on the treasurers and on the clerks and on the boyars’ children and on all the clerks He laid his disgrace in the fact that after his father... the great sovereign Vasily... in his unfulfilled years as a sovereign, the boyars and all the commanding people of his state made many losses to the people and drained his sovereign's treasury, but did not add any profit to his sovereign's treasury , also his boyars and governors took the sovereign's lands for themselves, and distributed the sovereign's lands to their friends and his tribe; and the boyars and governors holding great estates and votchinas behind them, and feeding the sovereign's salaries, and collecting great riches for themselves, and did not care about the sovereign and about his state and about all Orthodox Christianity, and from his enemies from the Crimean and from Lithuanian and The Germans did not even want to defend the peasantry, but especially to inflict violence on the peasants, and they themselves were taught to withdraw from the service, and they did not want to stand up for the Orthodox peasants in bloodshed against the Bezzermen and against the Latins and Germans; and in what way does he, the sovereign, his boyars and all the clerks, as well as the serving princes and boyars’ children, want to punish them for their faults and look at the archbishops and bishops and archimandrites and abbots, standing with the boyars and the nobles and the clerks and with everyone officials, they began to cover the sovereign tsar and the grand duke; and the Tsar and the Sovereign and the Grand Duke, out of great pity of heart, not even having to endure their many treacherous deeds, left his state and went where to settle, where God would guide him, the Sovereign.

The Tsar and Grand Duke sent a letter with Kostyantin Polivanov to the guests and to the merchant and to the entire Orthodox peasantry of the city of Moscow, and ordered that letter to be carried before the guests and in front of all the people by clerk Pugal Mikhailov and Ovdrey Vasilyev; and in his letter he wrote to them so that they should not hold any doubts for themselves, there would be no anger at them and no disgrace. Having heard this, the Most Reverend Athos, Metropolitan of All Russia and the archbishops and bishops and the entire consecrated council, that they had suffered this for their sins, the sovereign left the state, greatly offended by this and in great bewilderment of life. The boyars and the okolniki, and the boyar’s children and all the clerks, and the priestly and monastic rank, and the multitude of people, hearing that the sovereign put his anger and disgrace on them and left his state, they, from many sobs of tears in front of Ofonasiy, the metropolitan of all Russia and before the archbishops and bishops and before the entire consecrated cathedral with tears saying: “alas! woe! How many sins have we sinned against God and the wrath of our sovereign against him, and his great mercy has turned into anger and rage! Now let us resort to this and who will have mercy on us and who will deliver us from the presence of foreigners? How can there be sheep without a shepherd? When wolves see a sheep without a shepherd, and the wolves snatch up the sheep, who will escape from them? How can we live without a sovereign?” And many other words similar to these were uttered to Athos, Metropolitan of All Russia and the entire consecrated cathedral, and not only this saying, especially in a great voice, begging him with many tears, so that Athos, Metropolitan of All Russia, with the archbishops and bishops and with the consecrated cathedral, would perform his feat and cry He quenched their cry and begged the pious sovereign and the king for mercy, so that the sovereign, the king and the great prince would turn away his anger, show mercy and give up his disgrace, and would not leave his state and would rule and rule his own states, as was fitting for him, the sovereign; and who will be the sovereign’s villains who did treasonous deeds, and in them God knows, and he, the sovereign, and in his life and in his execution is the sovereign’s will: “and we all with our heads go after you, the sovereign saint, to our sovereign Tsar and the Grand Duke about beat His Majesty with your forehead and cry.”

Also, the guests and merchants and all the citizens of the city of Moscow, according to the same brow, beat Afonasiy, Metropolitan of All Russia and the entire consecrated cathedral, to beat the sovereign tsar and the grand duke with their brows, so that he would show mercy on them, would not leave the state and would not let them be plundered by a wolf especially He delivered him from the hands of the mighty; and who will be the sovereign's villains and traitors, and they do not stand for them and will consume them themselves. Metropolitan Afonasy, having heard from them the crying and unquenchable lamentation, did not deign to go to the sovereign for the sake of the city, that all the officials had abandoned the sovereign’s orders and the city had left behind no one, and sent them to the pious Tsar and Grand Duke in the Oleksandrovskaya Sloboda from himself the same days, on the 3rd day of January, Pimin, Archbishop of Veliky Novgorod and Paskova and Mikhailov Chud, prayed to Archimandrite Levkiy and beat with his forehead, so that the Tsar and the Grand Duke would be over him, his father and pilgrim, and over his pilgrims, over archbishops and bishops, and on everything in the consecrated cathedral he showed mercy and put aside his anger, he would also have shown his mercy over his boyars and over the okolnichy and over the treasurers and over the governors and over all the clerks and over all the Christian people, he would have put aside his anger and disgrace from them, and on the state would have ruled and ruled his own states, as it suited him, the sovereign: and whoever would be traitors and villains to him, the sovereign, and his state, and over those the sovereign’s will would be in his life and in execution. And the archbishops and bishops beat themselves up and went to Sloboda to the Tsar and Sovereign and the Grand Duke for his royal favor. (...) Boyars Prince Ivan Dmitreevich Belskoy, Prince Ivan Fedorovich Mstislavskaya and all the boyars and okolnichy, and treasurers and nobles and many clerks, without going to their homes, went from the metropolitan court from the city for the archbishop and the rulers to the Oleksandrovskaya Sloboda; Also, guests and merchants and many black people, with much crying and tears from the city of Moscow, went to the archbishops and bishops to beat their foreheads and cry to the tsar and the grand duke about his royal mercy. Pimin (...) and Chudovsky Archimandrite Levkia arrived in Slotino and went to Sloboda, as the sovereign commanded them to see with their eyes.

The Emperor ordered them to go to his place from the bailiff; I arrived in Sloboda on the 5th day of January... And I prayed to him with many prayers with tears for all the peasant people, as I had spoken before. The pious Sovereign Tsar and Grand Duke Ivan Vasilyevich of All Russia, having mercy on all Orthodox Christians, for his father and pilgrim Afanasy, Metropolitan of All Russia and for his pilgrims archbishops and bishops, his boyars and clerks ordered the archbishop and the bishop to see their eyes and all to the consecrated cathedral, his merciful words of praise were spoken: “for our father and pilgrim Athos, Metropolitan of Russia, prayers and for you, our pilgrims, we want to take our states with petitions, but how can we take our states and rule our states, we will order everything to our father to his own and to the pilgrim to Ophonasiy, Metropolitan of all Russia with his pilgrims”... and released them to Moscow... And leave with you the boyars Prince Ivan Dmitreevich Belsky and Prince Pyotr Mikhailovich Shchetanev and other boyars, and to Moscow on the same day in January 5 day, he released the boyars Prince Ivan Fedorovich Mstislavsky, Prince Ivan Ivanovich Pronsky and other boyars and officials, so that they would follow their orders and rule his state according to the previous custom. The Sovereign Tsar and Grand Duke accepted the petition of the archbishops and bishops to the effect that his traitors, who committed treason against him, the Sovereign, and in which they were disobedient to him, the Sovereign, should be laid down on those, and others should be executed with their bellies and statures imati; and to create a special one for himself in his state, for a courtyard for himself and for his entire daily life, to create a special one for himself, and for the boyars and okolnichy and the butler and the treasurers and clerks and all sorts of clerks, and for the nobles and the children of the boyars and the steward and the solicitors and the tenants, to create a special one for himself ; and at the palaces, on Sytny and on Kormovoy and on Khlebenny, to inflict inflicts on klyushniks and podklushniks and sytniks and cooks and bakers, and all kinds of masters and grooms and hounds and all kinds of courtyard people for every purpose, and he sentenced the archers to inflict especially on themselves.

And the sovereign, the Tsar and the Grand Duke, ordered the use of cities and volosts for his children, the Tsarevich Ivanov and the Tsarevich Fedorov: the city of Iozhaesk, the city of Vyazma, the city of Kozelesk, the city of Przemysl, two lots, the city of Belev, the city of Likhvin, both halves, the city Yaroslavets and with Sukhodrovye, the city of Medyn and with Tovarkova, the city of Suzdal and with Shuya, the city of Galich with all its suburbs, with Chukhloma and with Unzheya and with Koryakov and with Belogorodye, the city of Vologda, the city of Yuryevets Povolskaya, Balakhna and with Uzoloya, Staraya Rusa, the city of Vyshegorod on Porotva, the city of Ustyug with all the volosts, the city of Dvina, Kargopol, Vagu; and the volosts: Oleshnya, Khotun, Gus, Murom village, Argunovo, Gvozdna, Opakov on Ugra, Klinskaya Circle, Chislyaki, Orda villages and the Pakhryanskaya camp in the Moscow district, Belgorod in Kashin, and the volosts of Vselun, Oshtu. The threshold of Ladoshskaya, Totma, Pribuzh. And the sovereign received other volosts with a fed payback from which the volosts would receive all sorts of income for his sovereign's daily life, the salaries of the boyars and nobles and all of his sovereign's servants who would be in his oprichnina; and from which cities and volosts the income is not sufficient for his sovereign's daily life, and take other cities and volosts.

And the sovereign made 1000 heads of princes and nobles and children of boyar courtyards and policemen in his oprichnina, and gave them estates in those cities from Odnovo, which the cities captured in oprishnina; and he ordered the votchinniki and landowners, who did not live in the oprichnina, to be taken out of those cities and ordered the land to be transferred to that place in other cities, since he ordered the oprichnina to be created for themselves especially... He commanded and at the posad the streets were taken into oprichnina from the Moscow River: Chertolskaya street and from Semchinsky village and to the full, and Arbatskaya street on both sides and with Sivtsov Enemy and to Dorogomilovsky to the full, and to Nikitskaya street half the street, from the city driving on the left side and to the full, beside the Novinsky Monastery and the Savinsky Monastery of settlements and along Dorogomilovsky settlements, and to the New Devich Monastery and Alekseevsky Monastery settlements; and the settlements will be in oprichnina: Ilyinskaya, near Sosenki, Vorontsovskaya, Lyshchikovskaya. And which streets and settlements the sovereign caught in the oprichnina, and in those streets he ordered the boyars and nobles and all the clerks to live, whom the sovereign caught in the oprichnina, but whom he did not order to be in the oprichnina, and those from all the streets he ordered to be transferred to the new streets on Posad

He ordered his Moscow state, the army and the court and the council and all sorts of zemstvo affairs to be supervised and carried out by his boyars, whom he ordered to live in the zemstvo: Prince Ivan Dmitreevich Belsky, Prince Ivan Fedorovich Mstislavsky and all the boyars; and he ordered the stablemaster and the butler and the treasurer and the clerk and all the clerks to follow their orders and rule according to the old times, and to come to the boyars about important matters; and the military men will conduct or great zemstvo affairs, and the boyars will come to the sovereign about those matters, and the sovereign and the boyars will order the administration of that matter.

For his rise, the tsar and the grand duke sentenced him to take one hundred thousand rubles from the zemstvo; and some boyars and governors and clerks went to the death penalty for great treason against the sovereign, and others came to disgrace, and the sovereign should take their bellies and fortunes upon himself. The archbishops and bishops and archimandrites and abbots and the entire consecrated cathedral, and the boyars and clerks, decided everything on the sovereign's will.

That same winter, February, the Tsar and the Grand Duke ordered the death penalty for their great treasonous deeds of the boyar Prince Oleksandr Borisovich Gorbatovo and his son Prince Peter, and Okolnichevo Peter Petrov's son Golovin, and Prince Ivan, Prince Ivanov's son Sukhovo-Kashin, and Prince Dmitry to Prince Ondreev, son of Shevyrev. The boyar Prince Ivan Kurakin and Prince Dmitry Nemovo ordered to be tonsured into monks. And the nobles and boyar children who fell into disgrace with the sovereign, he laid his disgrace on them and took their bellies upon himself; and others he sent to his estate in Kazan to live with their wives and children.

The role of the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible in the history of the Russian state

Hundreds, if not thousands of historical studies, monographs, articles, reviews have been written about such a phenomenon as the oprichnina of I. the Terrible (1565-1572), dissertations have been defended, the main causes have long been identified, the course of events has been reconstructed, and the consequences have been explained.

However, to this day, neither in domestic nor in foreign historiography there is a consensus on the importance of the oprichnina in the history of the Russian state. For centuries, historians have been debating: how should we perceive the events of 1565-1572? Was the oprichnina simply the cruel terror of a half-mad despot king against his subjects? Or was it based on a sound and necessary policy in those conditions, aimed at strengthening the foundations of statehood, increasing the authority of the central government, improving the country’s defense capability, etc.?

In general, all the diverse opinions of historians can be reduced to two mutually exclusive statements: 1) the oprichnina was determined by the personal qualities of Tsar Ivan and had no political meaning (N.I. Kostomarov, V.O. Klyuchevsky, S.B. Veselovsky, I. Y. Froyanov); 2) the oprichnina was a well-thought-out political step of Ivan the Terrible and was directed against those social forces that opposed his “autocracy.”

There is also no unanimity of opinion among supporters of the latter point of view. Some researchers believe that the purpose of the oprichnina was to crush the boyar-princely economic and political power associated with the destruction of large patrimonial land ownership (S.M. Solovyov, S.F. Platonov, R.G. Skrynnikov). Others (A.A. Zimin and V.B. Kobrin) believe that the oprichnina “aimed” exclusively at the remnants of the appanage princely aristocracy (Staritsky Prince Vladimir), and was also directed against the separatist aspirations of Novgorod and the resistance of the church as a powerful one opposing the state organizations. None of these provisions are indisputable, so the scientific discussion about the meaning of the oprichnina continues.

What is oprichnina?

Anyone who is at least somehow interested in the history of Russia knows very well that there was a time when guardsmen existed in Rus'. In the minds of most modern people, this word has become the definition of a terrorist, a criminal, a person who deliberately commits lawlessness with the connivance of the supreme power, and often with its direct support.

Meanwhile, the very word “oprich” in relation to any property or land ownership began to be used long before the reign of Ivan the Terrible. Already in the 14th century, “oprichnina” was the name given to the part of the inheritance that goes to the prince’s widow after his death (“widow’s share”). The widow had the right to receive income from a certain part of the land, but after her death the estate was returned to the eldest son, another eldest heir, or, in the absence of one, was assigned to the state treasury. Thus, oprichnina in the XIV-XVI centuries was a specially allocated inheritance for life.

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, and “oprichnik” - “pitch”. But this synonym was introduced into use, as some scientists believe, by the first “political emigrant” and opponent of Ivan the Terrible, Andrei Kurbsky. In his messages to the Tsar, the words “pitch people” and “utter darkness” are used for the first time in relation to the oprichnina of Ivan IV.

In addition, it should be noted that the Old Russian word “oprich” (adverb and preposition), according to Dahl’s dictionary, means: “Outside, around, outside, beyond what.” Hence “oprichnina” - “separate, allocated, special.”

Thus, it is symbolic that the name of the Soviet employee of the “special department” - “special officer” - is actually a semantic tracing of the word “oprichnik”.

In January 1558, Ivan the Terrible began the Livonian War to seize the Baltic Sea coast in order to gain access to sea communications and simplify trade with Western European countries. Soon the Grand Duchy of Moscow faces a broad coalition of enemies, which include Poland, Lithuania, and Sweden. In fact, the Crimean Khanate also participates in the anti-Moscow coalition, which ravages the southern regions of the Moscow principality with regular military campaigns. The war is becoming protracted and exhausting. Drought, famine, plague epidemics, Crimean Tatar campaigns, Polish-Lithuanian raids and a naval blockade carried out by Poland and Sweden devastate the country. The sovereign himself continually faces manifestations of boyar separatism, the reluctance of the boyar oligarchy to continue the Livonian War, which was important for the Moscow kingdom. In 1564, the commander of the Western army, Prince Kurbsky - in the past one of the tsar’s closest personal friends, a member of the “Elected Rada” - goes over to the enemy’s side, betrays Russian agents in Livonia and participates in the offensive actions of the Poles and Lithuanians.

Ivan IV's position becomes critical. It was possible to get out of it only with the help of the toughest, most decisive measures.

On December 3, 1564, Ivan the Terrible and his family suddenly left the capital on a pilgrimage. The king took with him the treasury, personal library, icons and symbols of power. Having visited the village of Kolomenskoye, he did not return to Moscow and, after wandering for several weeks, stopped in Alexandrovskaya Sloboda. On January 3, 1565, he announced his abdication of the throne, due to “anger” at the boyars, church, voivode and government officials. Two days later, a deputation headed by Archbishop Pimen arrived in Alexandrovskaya Sloboda, which persuaded the tsar to return to his kingdom. From Sloboda, Ivan IV sent two letters to Moscow: one to the boyars and clergy, and the other to the townspeople, explaining in detail why and with whom the sovereign was angry, and against whom he “bears no grudge.” Thus, he immediately divided society, sowing the seeds of mutual distrust and hatred of the boyar elite among ordinary townspeople and the minor serving nobility.

At the beginning of February 1565, Ivan the Terrible returned to Moscow. The Tsar announced that he was again taking over the reigns, but on the condition that he was free to execute traitors, put them in disgrace, deprive them of their property, etc., and that neither the boyar Duma nor the clergy would interfere in his affairs. Those. The sovereign introduced the “oprichnina” for himself.

This word was used at first in the sense of special property or possession; now it has acquired a different meaning. In the oprichnina, the tsar separated part of the boyars, servants and clerks, and in general made his entire “everyday life” special: in the Sytny, Kormovy and Khlebenny palaces a special staff of housekeepers, cooks, clerks, etc. was appointed; special detachments of archers were recruited. Special cities (about 20, including Moscow, Vologda, Vyazma, Suzdal, Kozelsk, Medyn, Veliky Ustyug) with volosts were assigned to maintain the oprichnina. In Moscow itself, some streets were given over to the oprichnina (Chertolskaya, Arbat, Sivtsev Vrazhek, part of Nikitskaya, etc.); the former residents were relocated to other streets. Up to 1,000 princes, nobles, and children of boyars, both Moscow and city, were also recruited into the oprichnina. They were given estates in the volosts assigned to maintain the oprichnina. Former landowners and patrimonial owners were evicted from those volosts to others.

The rest of the state was supposed to constitute the “zemshchina”: the tsar entrusted it to the zemstvo boyars, that is, the boyar duma itself, and put Prince Ivan Dmitrievich Belsky and Prince Ivan Fedorovich Mstislavsky at the head of its administration. All matters had to be resolved in the old way, and with big matters one should turn to the boyars, but if military or important zemstvo matters happened, then to the sovereign. For his rise, that is, for his trip to Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda, the tsar exacted a fine of 100 thousand rubles from the Zemsky Prikaz.

The "oprichniki" - the sovereign's people - were supposed to "root out treason" and act exclusively in the interests of the tsarist power, supporting the authority of the supreme ruler in wartime conditions. No one limited them in the methods or methods of “eradicating” treason, and all the innovations of Ivan the Terrible turned into cruel, unjustified terror of the ruling minority against the majority of the country’s population.

In December 1569, an army of guardsmen, personally led by Ivan the Terrible, set out on a campaign against Novgorod, who allegedly wanted to betray him. The king walked as if through enemy country. The guardsmen destroyed cities (Tver, Torzhok), villages and villages, killed and robbed the population. In Novgorod itself, the defeat lasted 6 weeks. Thousands of suspects were tortured and drowned in Volkhov. The city was plundered. The property of churches, monasteries and merchants was confiscated. The beating continued in Novgorod Pyatina. Then Grozny moved towards Pskov, and only the superstition of the formidable king allowed this ancient city to avoid a pogrom.

In 1572, when a real threat was created to the very existence of the Moscow state from the Krymchaks, the oprichnina troops actually sabotaged the order of their king to oppose the enemy. The battle of Molodin with the army of Devlet-Girey was won by regiments under the leadership of the “Zemstvo” governors. After this, Ivan IV himself abolished the oprichnina, disgraced and executed many of its leaders.

Historiography of the oprichnina in the first half of the 19th century

Historians were the first to talk about the oprichnina already in the 18th and early 19th centuries: Shcherbatov, Bolotov, Karamzin. Even then, a tradition had developed to “divide” the reign of Ivan IV into two halves, which subsequently formed the basis of the theory of the “two Ivans,” introduced into historiography by N.M. Karamzin based on the study of the works of Prince A. Kurbsky. According to Kurbsky, Ivan the Terrible was a virtuous hero and a wise statesman in the first half of his reign and a crazy tyrant-despot in the second. Many historians, following Karamzin, associated the sharp change in the sovereign’s policy with his mental illness caused by the death of his first wife, Anastasia Romanovna. Even versions of “replacing” the king with another person arose and were seriously considered.

The watershed between the “good” Ivan and the “bad”, according to Karamzin, was the introduction of the oprichnina in 1565. But N.M. Karamzin was still more of a writer and moralist than a scientist. Painting the oprichnina, he created an artistically expressive picture that was supposed to impress the reader, but in no way answer the question about the causes, consequences and the very nature of this historical phenomenon.

Subsequent historians (N.I. Kostomarov) also saw the main reason for the oprichnina solely in the personal qualities of Ivan the Terrible, who did not want to listen to people who disagreed with the methods of carrying out his generally justified policy of strengthening the central government.

Solovyov and Klyuchevsky about the oprichnina

S. M. Solovyov and the “state school” of Russian historiography he created took a different path. Abstracting from the personal characteristics of the tyrant king, they saw in the activities of Ivan the Terrible, first of all, a transition from old “tribal” relations to modern “state” ones, which were completed by the oprichnina - state power in the form as the great “reformer” himself understood it. . Solovyov was the first to separate the cruelties of Tsar Ivan and the internal terror he organized from the political, social and economic processes of that time. From the point of view of historical science, this was undoubtedly a step forward.

V.O. Klyuchevsky, unlike Solovyov, considered the internal policy of Ivan the Terrible to be completely aimless, moreover, dictated exclusively by the personal qualities of the sovereign’s character. In his opinion, the oprichnina did not answer pressing political issues, and also did not eliminate the difficulties that it caused. By “difficulty,” the historian means the clashes between Ivan IV and the boyars: “The boyars imagined themselves to be powerful advisers to the sovereign of all Rus' at the very time when this sovereign, remaining faithful to the view of the appanage patrimonial landowner, in accordance with ancient Russian law, granted them as his courtyard servants the title of the sovereign's slaves. Both sides found themselves in such an unnatural relationship to each other, which they did not seem to notice while it was developing, and which they did not know what to do with when they noticed it.”

The way out of this situation was the oprichnina, which Klyuchevsky calls an attempt to “live side by side, but not together.”

According to the historian, Ivan IV had only two options:

Eliminate the boyars as a government class and replace them with other, more flexible and obedient instruments of government;

Disunite the boyars, bring to the throne the most reliable people from the boyars and rule with them, as Ivan ruled at the beginning of his reign.

It was not possible to implement any of the outputs.

Klyuchevsky points out that Ivan the Terrible should have acted against the political situation of the entire boyars, and not against individuals. The tsar does the opposite: unable to change the political system that is inconvenient for him, he persecutes and executes individuals (and not only the boyars), but at the same time leaves the boyars at the head of the zemstvo administration.

This course of action of the tsar is by no means a consequence of political calculation. It is, rather, a consequence of a distorted political understanding caused by personal emotions and fear for one’s personal position:

Klyuchevsky saw in the oprichnina not a state institution, but a manifestation of lawless anarchy aimed at shaking the foundations of the state and undermining the authority of the monarch himself. Klyuchevsky considered the oprichnina one of the most effective factors that prepared the Time of Troubles.

Concept by S.F. Platonov

The developments of the “state school” were further developed in the works of S. F. Platonov, who created the most comprehensive concept of the oprichnina, which was included in all pre-revolutionary, Soviet and some post-Soviet university textbooks.

S.F. Platonov believed that the main reasons for the oprichnina lay in Ivan the Terrible’s awareness of the danger of the appanage princely and boyar opposition. S.F. Platonov wrote: “Dissatisfied with the nobility that surrounded him, he (Ivan the Terrible) applied to her the same measure that Moscow applied to its enemies, namely, “conclusion”... What succeeded so well with the external enemy, the Terrible planned to try with the internal enemy, those. with those people who seemed hostile and dangerous to him.”

In modern language, the oprichnina of Ivan IV formed the basis for a grandiose personnel reshuffle, as a result of which large landowner boyars and appanage princes were resettled from appanage hereditary lands to places remote from the former settlement. The estates were divided into plots and complaints were made to those boyar children who were in the service of the tsar (oprichniki). According to Platonov, the oprichnina was not the “whim” of a crazy tyrant. On the contrary, Ivan the Terrible waged a focused and well-thought-out struggle against large boyar hereditary land ownership, thus wanting to eliminate separatist tendencies and suppress opposition to the central government:

Grozny sent the old owners to the outskirts, where they could be useful for the defense of the state.

Oprichnina terror, according to Platonov, was only an inevitable consequence of such a policy: the forest is cut down - the chips fly! Over time, the monarch himself becomes a hostage to the current situation. In order to stay in power and complete the measures he had planned, Ivan the Terrible was forced to pursue a policy of total terror. There was simply no other way out.

“The entire operation of reviewing and changing landowners in the eyes of the population bore the character of disaster and political terror,” the historian wrote. - With extraordinary cruelty, he (Ivan the Terrible), without any investigation or trial, executed and tortured people he disliked, exiled their families, ruined their farms. His guardsmen did not hesitate to kill defenseless people, rob and rape them “for a laugh.”

One of the main negative consequences of the oprichnina Platonov recognizes is the disruption of the economic life of the country - the state of stability of the population achieved by the state was lost. In addition, the population’s hatred of the cruel authorities brought discord into society itself, giving rise to general uprisings and peasant wars after the death of Ivan the Terrible - the harbingers of the Troubles of the early 17th century.

In his general assessment of the oprichnina, S.F. Platonov puts much more “pluses” than all his predecessors. According to his concept, Ivan the Terrible was able to achieve indisputable results in the policy of centralization of the Russian state: large landowners (the boyar elite) were ruined and partly destroyed, a large mass of relatively small landowners and service people (nobles) gained dominance, which, of course, contributed to increasing the country's defense capability . Hence the progressive nature of the oprichnina policy.

It was this concept that was established in Russian historiography for many years.

“Apologetic” historiography of the oprichnina (1920-1956)

Despite the abundance of contradictory facts that came to light already in the 1910-20s, S.F. Platonov’s “apologetic” concept regarding the oprichnina and Ivan IV the Terrible was not at all disgraced. On the contrary, it gave birth to a number of successors and sincere supporters.

In 1922, the book “Ivan the Terrible” by former Moscow University professor R. Vipper was published. Having witnessed the collapse of the Russian Empire, having tasted the full extent of Soviet anarchy and tyranny, political emigrant and quite serious historian R. Vipper created not a historical study, but a very passionate panegyric to the oprichnina and Ivan the Terrible himself - a politician who managed to “restore order with a firm hand.” The author for the first time examines the internal politics of Grozny (oprichnina) in direct connection with the foreign policy situation. However, Vipper's interpretation of many foreign policy events is largely fantastic and far-fetched. Ivan the Terrible appears in his work as a wise and far-sighted ruler who cared, first of all, about the interests of his great power. The executions and terror of Grozny are justified and can be explained by completely objective reasons: the oprichnina was necessary due to the extremely difficult military situation in the country, the ruin of Novgorod - for the sake of improving the situation at the front, etc.

The oprichnina itself, according to Vipper, is an expression of democratic (!) tendencies of the 16th century. Thus, the Zemsky Sobor of 1566 is artificially connected by the author with the creation of the oprichnina in 1565, the transformation of the oprichnina into a courtyard (1572) is interpreted by Vipper as an expansion of the system caused by the betrayal of the Novgorodians and the ruinous raid of the Crimean Tatars. He refuses to admit that the reform of 1572 was in fact the destruction of the oprichnina. The reasons for the catastrophic consequences for Rus' of the end of the Livonian War are equally unobvious to Vipper.

The chief official historiographer of the revolution, M.N., went even further in his apologetics for Grozny and the oprichnina. Pokrovsky. In his “Russian History from Ancient Times,” the convinced revolutionary turns Ivan the Terrible into the leader of a democratic revolution, a more successful forerunner of Emperor Paul I, who is also portrayed by Pokrovsky as a “democrat on the throne.” Justification of tyrants is one of Pokrovsky's favorite themes. He saw the aristocracy as such as the main object of his hatred, because its power is, by definition, harmful.

However, to faithful Marxist historians, Pokrovsky’s views undoubtedly seemed overly infected with an idealistic spirit. No individual can play any significant role in history - after all, history is governed by the class struggle. This is what Marxism teaches. And Pokrovsky, having listened enough to the seminaries of Vinogradov, Klyuchevsky and other “bourgeois specialists,” was never able to get rid of the burp of idealism in himself, attaching too much importance to individuals, as if they did not obey the laws of historical materialism common to all...

The most typical of the orthodox Marxist approach to the problem of Ivan the Terrible and the oprichnina is M. Nechkina’s article about Ivan IV in the First Soviet Encyclopedia (1933). In her interpretation, the personality of the king does not matter at all:

The social meaning of the oprichnina was the elimination of the boyars as a class and its dissolution into the mass of small land feudal lords. Ivan worked to realize this goal with “the greatest consistency and indestructible perseverance” and was completely successful in his work.

This was the only correct and only possible interpretation of the policies of Ivan the Terrible.

Moreover, this interpretation was so liked by the “collectors” and “revivers” of the new Russian Empire, namely the USSR, that it was immediately adopted by the Stalinist leadership. The new great-power ideology needed historical roots, especially on the eve of the upcoming war. Stories about Russian military leaders and generals of the past who fought with the Germans or with anyone remotely similar to the Germans were urgently created and replicated. The victories of Alexander Nevsky, Peter I (true, he fought with the Swedes, but why go into details?..), Alexander Suvorov were recalled and extolled. Dmitry Donskoy, Minin with Pozharsky and Mikhail Kutuzov, who fought against foreign aggressors, also after 20 years of oblivion, were declared national heroes and glorious sons of the Fatherland.

Of course, under all these circumstances, Ivan the Terrible could not remain forgotten. True, he did not repel foreign aggression and did not win a military victory over the Germans, but he was the creator of a centralized Russian state, a fighter against disorder and anarchy created by malicious aristocrats - the boyars. He began to introduce revolutionary reforms with the aim of creating a new order. But even an autocratic king can play a positive role if the monarchy is a progressive system at this point in history...

Despite the very sad fate of Academician Platonov himself, who was convicted in an “academic case” (1929-1930), the “apologization” of the oprichnina that he began gained more and more momentum in the late 1930s.

Whether by chance or not, in 1937 – the very “peak” of Stalin’s repressions – Plato’s “Essays on the History of the Time of Troubles in the Moscow State of the 16th–17th centuries” were republished for the fourth time, and the Higher School of Propagandists under the Central Committee of the Party published (though “for internal use”) fragments of Platonov’s pre-revolutionary textbook for universities.

In 1941, director S. Eisenstein received an “order” from the Kremlin to shoot a film about Ivan the Terrible. Naturally, Comrade Stalin wanted to see a Terrible Tsar who would fully fit into the concept of the Soviet “apologists.” Therefore, all the events included in Eisenstein’s script are subordinated to the main conflict - the struggle for autocracy against the rebellious boyars and against everyone who interferes with him in unifying the lands and strengthening the state. The film Ivan the Terrible (1944) exalts Tsar Ivan as a wise and fair ruler who had a great goal. Oprichnina and terror are presented as inevitable “costs” in achieving it. But even these “costs” (the second episode of the film) Comrade Stalin chose not to allow on screens.

In 1946, a Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was issued, which spoke of the “progressive army of the guardsmen.” The progressive significance in the then historiography of the Oprichnina Army was that its formation was a necessary stage in the struggle to strengthen the centralized state and represented a struggle of the central government, based on the serving nobility, against the feudal aristocracy and appanage remnants.

Thus, a positive assessment of the activities of Ivan IV in Soviet historiography was supported at the highest state level. Until 1956, the most cruel tyrant in the history of Russia appeared on the pages of textbooks, works of art and in cinema as a national hero, a true patriot, and a wise politician.

Revision of the concept of oprichnina during the years of Khrushchev’s “thaw”

As soon as Khrushchev read his famous report at the 20th Congress, all panegyric odes to Grozny came to an end. The “plus” sign abruptly changed to a “minus”, and historians no longer hesitated to draw completely obvious parallels between the reign of Ivan the Terrible and the reign of the only recently deceased Soviet tyrant.

A number of articles by domestic researchers immediately appear in which the “cult of personality” of Stalin and the “cult of personality” of Grozny are debunked in approximately the same terms and using real examples similar to each other.

One of the first articles published by V.N. Shevyakova “On the issue of the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible”, explaining the causes and consequences of the oprichnina in the spirit of N.I. Kostomarov and V.O. Klyuchevsky – i.e. extremely negative:

The tsar himself, contrary to all previous apologetics, was called what he really was - the executioner of his subjects exposed to power.

Following Shevyakov’s article comes an even more radical article by S.N. Dubrovsky, “On the cult of personality in some works on historical issues (on the assessment of Ivan IV, etc.).” The author views the oprichnina not as a war of the king against the appanage aristocracy. On the contrary, he believes that Ivan the Terrible was at one with the landowner boyars. With their help, the king waged a war against his people with the sole purpose of clearing the ground for the subsequent enslavement of the peasants. According to Dubrovsky, Ivan IV was not at all as talented and smart as historians of the Stalin era tried to present him. The author accuses them of deliberately juggling and distorting historical facts indicating the personal qualities of the king.

In 1964, A.A. Zimin’s book “The Oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible” was published. Zimin processed a huge number of sources, raised a lot of factual material related to the oprichnina. But his own opinion was literally drowned in the abundance of names, graphs, numbers and solid facts. The unambiguous conclusions so characteristic of his predecessors are practically absent in the historian’s work. With many reservations, Zimin agrees that most of the bloodshed and crimes of the guardsmen were useless. However, “objectively” the content of the oprichnina in his eyes still looks progressive: Grozny’s initial thought was correct, and then everything was ruined by the oprichnina themselves, who degenerated into bandits and robbers.

Zimin's book was written during the reign of Khrushchev, and therefore the author tries to satisfy both sides of the argument. However, at the end of his life A. A. Zimin revised his views towards a purely negative assessment of the oprichnina, seeing "the bloody glow of the oprichnina" an extreme manifestation of serfdom and despotic tendencies as opposed to pre-bourgeois ones.

These positions were developed by his student V.B. Kobrin and the latter’s student A.L. Yurganov. Based on specific research that began before the war and carried out by S. B. Veselovsky and A. A. Zimin (and continued by V. B. Kobrin), they showed that S. F. Platonov’s theory about the defeat as a result of the oprichnina of patrimonial land ownership - nothing more than a historical myth.

Criticism of Platonov's concept

Back in the 1910-1920s, research began on a colossal complex of materials, formally, it would seem, far from the problems of the oprichnina. Historians have studied a huge number of scribe books where land plots of both large landowners and service people were recorded. These were, in the full sense of the word, accounting records of that time.

And the more materials related to land ownership were introduced into scientific circulation in the 1930s-60s, the more interesting the picture became. It turned out that large landholdings did not suffer in any way as a result of the oprichnina. In fact, at the end of the 16th century it remained almost the same as it was before the oprichnina. It also turned out that those lands that went specifically to the oprichnina often included territories inhabited by service people who did not have large plots. For example, the territory of the Suzdal principality was almost entirely populated by service people; there were very few rich landowners there. Moreover, according to scribe books, it often turned out that many guardsmen who allegedly received their estates in the Moscow region for serving the tsar were their owners before. It’s just that in 1565-72, small landowners automatically fell into the ranks of the guardsmen, because The sovereign declared these lands oprichnina.

All these data were completely at odds with what was expressed by S. F. Platonov, who did not process scribal books, did not know statistics and practically did not use sources of a mass nature.

Soon another source was discovered, which Platonov also did not analyze in detail - the famous synodics. They contain lists of people killed and tortured by order of Tsar Ivan. Basically, they died or were executed and tortured without repentance and communion, therefore, the king was sinful in that they did not die in a Christian way. These synodics were sent to monasteries for commemoration.

S. B. Veselovsky analyzed the synodics in detail and came to an unequivocal conclusion: it is impossible to say that during the period of oprichnina terror it was mainly large landowners who died. Yes, undoubtedly, the boyars and members of their families were executed, but besides them, an incredible number of service people died. Persons of the clergy of absolutely all ranks died, people who were in the sovereign's service in the orders, military leaders, minor officials, and simple warriors. Finally, an incredible number of ordinary people died - urban, townspeople, those who inhabited villages and hamlets on the territory of certain estates and estates. According to S. B. Veselovsky’s calculations, for one boyar or person from the Sovereign’s court there were three or four ordinary landowners, and for one service person there were a dozen commoners. Consequently, the assertion that the terror was selective in nature and was directed only against the boyar elite is fundamentally incorrect.

In the 1940s, S.B. Veselovsky wrote his book “Essays on the History of the Oprichnina” “on the table”, because it was completely impossible to publish it under a modern tyrant. The historian died in 1952, but his conclusions and developments on the problem of oprichnina were not forgotten and were actively used in criticism of the concept of S.F. Platonov and his followers.

Another serious mistake of S.F. Platonov was that he believed that the boyars had colossal estates, which included parts of the former principalities. Thus, the danger of separatism remained – i.e. restoration of one or another reign. As confirmation, Platonov cites the fact that during the illness of Ivan IV in 1553, the appanage prince Vladimir Staritsky, a large landowner and close relative of the tsar, was a possible contender for the throne.

An appeal to the materials of the scribe books showed that the boyars had their own lands in different, as they would say now, regions, and then appanages. The boyars had to serve in different places, and therefore, on occasion, they bought land (or it was given to them) where they served. The same person often owned land in Nizhny Novgorod, Suzdal, and Moscow, i.e. was not tied specifically to any particular place. There was no talk of somehow separating, of avoiding the process of centralization, because even the largest landowners could not gather their lands together and oppose their power to the power of the great sovereign. The process of centralization of the state was completely objective, and there is no reason to say that the boyar aristocracy actively prevented it.

Thanks to the study of sources, it turned out that the very postulate about the resistance of the boyars and the descendants of appanage princes to centralization is a purely speculative construction, derived from theoretical analogies between the social system of Russia and Western Europe in the era of feudalism and absolutism. The sources do not provide any direct basis for such statements. The postulation of large-scale “boyar conspiracies” in the era of Ivan the Terrible is based on statements emanating only from Ivan the Terrible himself.

The only lands that could lay claim to a “departure” from a single state in the 16th century were Novgorod and Pskov. In the event of separation from Moscow in the conditions of the Livonian War, they would not have been able to maintain independence, and would inevitably have been captured by opponents of the Moscow sovereign. Therefore, Zimin and Kobrin consider Ivan IV’s campaign against Novgorod historically justified and condemn only the tsar’s methods of struggle with potential separatists.

The new concept of understanding such a phenomenon as the oprichnina, created by Zimin, Kobrin and their followers, is built on the proof that the oprichnina objectively resolved (albeit by barbaric methods) some pressing problems, namely: strengthening centralization, destroying the remnants of the appanage system and the independence of the church. But the oprichnina was, first of all, a tool for establishing the personal despotic power of Ivan the Terrible. The terror he unleashed was of a national nature, was caused solely by the tsar’s fear for his position (“beat your own so that strangers will be afraid”) and did not have any “high” political goal or social background.

The point of view of the Soviet historian D. Al (Alshits), already in the 2000s, expressed the opinion that the terror of Ivan the Terrible was aimed at the total subjugation of everyone and everything to the unified power of the autocratic monarch. Everyone who did not personally prove their loyalty to the sovereign was destroyed; the independence of the church was destroyed; The economically independent trading Novgorod was destroyed, the merchant class was subjugated, etc. Thus, Ivan the Terrible did not want to say, like Louis XIV, but to prove to all his contemporaries through effective measures that “I am the state.” The oprichnina acted as a state institution for the protection of the monarch, his personal guard.

This concept suited the scientific community for some time. However, trends towards a new rehabilitation of Ivan the Terrible and even towards the creation of his new cult were fully developed in subsequent historiography. For example, in an article in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1972), while there is a certain duality in the assessment, the positive qualities of Ivan the Terrible are clearly exaggerated, and the negative ones are downplayed.

With the beginning of “perestroika” and a new anti-Stalinist campaign in the media, Grozny and the oprichnina were again condemned and compared with the period of Stalinist repressions. During this period, the reassessment of historical events, including the cause, resulted mainly not in scientific research, but in populist reasoning on the pages of central newspapers and magazines.

Employees of the NKVD and other law enforcement agencies (the so-called “special officers”) in newspaper publications were no longer referred to as “oprichniki”; the terror of the 16th century was directly associated with the “Yezhovshchina” of the 1930s, as if all this had happened just yesterday. “History repeats itself” - this strange, unconfirmed truth was repeated by politicians, parliamentarians, writers, and even highly respected scientists who were inclined again and again to draw historical parallels between Grozny and Stalin, Malyuta Skuratov and Beria, etc. and so on.

The attitude towards the oprichnina and the personality of Ivan the Terrible himself today can be called a “litmus test” of the political situation in our country. During periods of liberalization of public and state life in Russia, which, as a rule, are followed by a separatist “parade of sovereignties,” anarchy, and a change in the value system, Ivan the Terrible is perceived as a bloody tyrant and tyrant. Tired of anarchy and permissiveness, society is again ready to dream of a “strong hand,” the revival of statehood, and even stable tyranny in the spirit of Ivan the Terrible, Stalin, or anyone else...

Today, not only in society, but also in scientific circles, the tendency to “apologize” Stalin as a great statesman is again clearly visible. From television screens and the pages of the press they are again persistently trying to prove to us that Joseph Dzhugashvili created a great power that won the war, built rockets, blocked the Yenisei and was even ahead of the rest in the field of ballet. And in the 1930s-50s they imprisoned and shot only those who needed to be imprisoned and shot - former tsarist officials and officers, spies and dissidents of all stripes. Let us remember that Academician S.F. Platonov held approximately the same opinion regarding the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible and the “selectivity” of his terror. However, already in 1929, the academician himself became one of the victims of the oprichnina contemporary to him - the OGPU, died in exile, and his name was erased from the history of Russian historical science for a long time.

Based on materials:

Veselovsky S.B. Tsar Ivan the Terrible in the works of writers and historians. Three articles. – M., 1999

Platonov S.F. Ivan groznyj. – Petersburg: Brockhaus and Efron, 1923

Back in the 14th century, oprichnina began to be called an allotment allocated for life to the dowager princess; after her death, all her possessions passed to her eldest son. That is, the direct meaning of this word is “an inheritance issued for lifelong possession.” However, over time, this word acquired several other meanings. All of them are associated with the name of the first Tsar of All Rus', Ivan the Terrible.

The appearance of the word “oprichnina” dates back to the 16th century, going back to its root “oprich”, “except”. We are talking about the phrase “pitch darkness”, which was used to call the oprichnina, and the oprichniki themselves as “pitch people”. Now the meaning of these synonyms is divorced. The first became the personification of permissiveness, the second - complete darkness.

The tsar’s need to create an oprichnina, that is, his own inheritance, arose for several reasons, but the main one was the need to centralize power - the country was fighting the Livonian War, and there were endless strife among the ruling class. In 1565, the tsar issued a decree on the establishment of the oprichnina and divided the state into two unequal parts - the oprichnina (own inheritance) and the zemshchina - the rest of Rus'. In essence, John forced the boyars to give him the absolute right to execute and pardon all disobedient people. The zemshchina was immediately subject to an exorbitant tax for the maintenance of the royal estate. Since not everyone agreed to say goodbye to their money, they were subject to repression carried out by servicemen from the oprichnina army. For their service, the guardsmen received the lands of disgraced statesmen and unwanted boyars. However, they could have been included in the guardsmen simply from the lists. Many did not even know that by the will of fate they had become the king’s “favorites.”

The rampant royal lawlessness reached its apogee in 1569, when the oprichnina army led by Malyuta Skuratov carried out massacres in many cities on the way from Moscow to Novgorod. Lawlessness was committed with the “noble” goal of finding the instigators of the conspiracy in Novgorod.

In 1571, the oprichnina army was already completely degenerate; Devlet-Girey (Crimean Khan) who invaded Moscow burned the capital and defeated the pitiful remnants of the tsar’s army. The end of the oprichnina came in 1572, when the tsar's army and the zemstvo army were united to repel the Crimeans. The very word “oprichnina” was forbidden to be mentioned under penalty of death. The atrocities returned like a boomerang to those who committed them - Ivan the Terrible executed the most important guardsmen.

Experts call oprichnina not only the royal inheritance that existed during these 8 years from 1565 to 1572, but also the period of state terror itself. Many historians draw analogies with this period in the modern history of our state. This is the so-called Yezhovshchina - the great terror of 1937-1938, whose task was to get rid of unwanted persons of the young Soviet state. The Yezhovshchina ended in the same way as the oprichnina - with the purge of the ranks of the NKVD (the main punitive body), including the execution of Yezhov himself.

The consequences of the oprichnina were disastrous. The Russian people, about whom the tsar cared so much, fled from the central lands to the outskirts, abandoning fertile lands. The country was unable to recover from this shock. Neither Fyodor Ioannovich, whose reign was relatively peaceful, nor Boris Godunov, in whose reign there was a lot of wisdom, were able to lead Rus' out of the crisis into which Ivan the Terrible threw it. A direct consequence of the oprichnina was the Time of Troubles.

The reign of Ivan IV the Terrible is one of the most discussed stages in the history of Russia, since the personality of the sovereign itself is unusual. Oprichnina is the most famous phenomenon associated with his reign, which still worries historians to this day. Oprichnina can be briefly defined as internal terror aimed at suppressing the resistance of the boyars.

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Definition of oprichnina

Oprichnina is part of the policy on the territory of Russia, which consisted of the use of punitive measures, the seizure of lands and feudal property by the state, the fight against imaginary boyar-princely traitors and the strengthening of centralized power .

System of internal political measures of Ivan the Terrible briefly described by the term “politics of terror.” Years of the oprichnina – 1565–1572.

Also, the question “what is oprichnina” can be answered: this is the inheritance of Ivan IV, a territory with an army and administrative apparatus, the proceeds from which replenished the state treasury.

All plots necessary for the tsar's needs were forcibly taken from the landowners. Who are the actual guardsmen? These are the people in the guard of Ivan IV who used such measures against citizens. Their number is about a thousand.

Reasons for introducing the oprichnina

Ivan IV was famous for his harsh nature and numerous campaigns of conquest. The reasons for the oprichnina were associated with the Livonian War, during which the ruler began to doubt the determination of his commanders. Who are the governors, according to the sovereign? These are those who do not carry out his will completely and do not punish people as they should. The boyars, it seemed to him, had completely ceased to recognize his authority.

After Ivan's betrayal One military leader intensifies anxiety in his retinue, Ivan the Terrible begins to suspect the governor and boyars of a conspiracy. It seems to him that the royal entourage wants to overthrow the king and place another prince on the throne - Vladimir Staritsky. Therefore, he set out to gather a military entourage, minions capable of punishing anyone who would contradict the royal will. Who are the henchmen? The same guardsmen who unquestioningly carried out the will of the sovereign.

Tasks of the oprichnina

The main purpose of the oprichnina- eliminate unrest among those close to the ruler. It included the following tasks:

• suppress boyar-princely resistance;
• destroy the specific system;
• get rid of opposition centers in Pskov, Novgorod, Tver;
• conduct purge of the Boyar Duma and the order system;
• force the church to obey the monarch;
• resolve boyar-noble disputes in favor of the latter.

Main events

The oprichnina policy took place in 3 stages:

1. 1565–1566 The beginning of the oprichnina, which has not yet spread to the bulk of the population.
2. 1567–1572 The time of large-scale terror, apogee - summer 1569 - summer 1570.
3. 1572–1584 Violence occurs in a hidden form.

Important! The oprichnina began on February 5, 1565. During that period, crop failures occurred in the northern part of Russia, which would later lead to severe famine.

Stage 1

In January 1565 the king announced his abdication, nominating the young Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich in his place. This idea arose out of the anger that he allegedly experienced from the boyars, clerks, governors and clergy.

With his statement, he caused unrest among thousands of Muscovites, they went to complain to the Kremlin about the “traitor boyars.” In such a nervous situation, the Boyar Duma was forced to ask Ivan IV to return to the kingdom. He agrees, and already then, in January, he decides to establish a special political system.

At first it was expressed in individual executions (Kurakins, Obolenskys, Repnins, Gorbaty-Shuisky) or exile (Yaroslavsky, Rostov, Starodubsky princes). Who are these individuals? The main oppositionists of that time. In the spring of 1566, Athanasius relieved himself of the metropolitan rank because he did not like the turbulent situation in Russia. Then the tsar nominated a new candidate for the position of metropolitan - Fyodor Kolychev (Philip). He agreed to be ordained on the condition that violence ceased. Ivan the Terrible gave apparent consent, temporarily stopping terrorist attacks.

Stage 2

However, in July 1566, he prepared a signature letter for Philip, according to which he was not to leave the metropolis even during the period of the oprichnina. In March 1568 Philip refused to bless the ruler and again demanded the abolition of the oprichnina policy. In response to this, his servants were beaten, and the king opened a case against Philip himself in the church court. Later, he was sent to the Tver Monastery and killed in 1569 for yet another disobedience to the Tsar to give his blessing to the Novgorod campaign.

Ivan initiated a case against the leader of the Boyar Duma, Ivan Fedorov, famous for his honesty. This did not play into the hands of the Tsar, so he killed Fedorov along with 30 accused accomplices.

In 1569, there was a rumor throughout the Russian land that Novgorod wanted to make the ruler Ivan's cousin - Vladimir Staritsky, and the Novgorodians want to submit to Lithuania. In order to dispel the rumors, the tsar had to kill Staritsky and his family and make a campaign against Novgorod in order to punish those spreading the rumors.

Klin, Torzhok, Tver, Pskov and Novgorod itself were burned. Half of all its inhabitants were slaughtered, 27 monasteries and temples were destroyed.

On July 25, 1570, the Tsar arranged large executions at Poganaya Luzha in Moscow. Such guardsmen as Viskovaty, Vyazemsky and others were sentenced to death . Massacres in Moscow 1570-71. appeared the apogee of the doctrine of internal political measures of Ivan the Terrible. People were hung up, cut, stabbed, and doused with boiling water. The ruler personally participated in these procedures in order to demonstrate to everyone what would happen to them if they doubted the actions of the ruler.

In 1572 the militia of Khan Devlet-Girey was defeated, who went to Moscow. However, this victory was very difficult, since the guardsmen, accustomed to robbing civilians, did not show up for battle, so there were only one regiment of people. After a series of such events, the tsar ordered to stop using the words “oprichnina, oprichnik” in the language. However, the abolition of the oprichnina was not implied here, because no public order was issued, and violence continued to be carried out.

Stage 3

The ruler ordered the oprichnina system to be renamed the State Court. Appeared terror against its main supporters, a surge of which occurred in 1575. Who are the “ardent guardsmen”? Those who at one time stood closest to the royal power.

A death sentence was imposed on many of Ivan's associates. In 1574, the throne in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was vacated, Ivan the Terrible proposed his candidacy, since he had a prediction from the Magi - death if he remained at the head of the country.

Therefore, the sovereign took off the title of king and accepted the title of Moscow Prince. The Tatar prince Simeon Bekbulatovich was made ruler, but he reigned only formally. From 1578 to 1579 murders stop happening, in 1581 the tsar kills his son, and in 1584 he dies (unofficial abolition of the oprichnina).

Important! Although the official abolition of the oprichnina occurred in 1572, its policy was partially carried out until the death of the tsar.

Consequences of the introduction of oprichnina and its results

The consequences of oprichnina can be formulated as follows:

• neutralization of the princely-boyar aristocracy;
• establishment of the Moscow state as a powerful, centralized, with the strict power of the monarch;
• solving the problem of social relations in favor of the state;
• elimination of sovereign landowners(possible basis for civil society);
• economic devastation in Russia, residents moved to the outskirts of the country;
• the decline of foreign policy positions and the undermining of the country's military power;
• turmoil as a distant consequence of the oprichnina.

At the origins of the oprichnina policy was its a pronounced anti-princely orientation. At first, the Suzdal nobility suffered so many executions and confiscations that it undermined the influence of the aristocracy in the political sphere and contributed to the strengthening of autocracy.

This was necessary to counteract costs, the basis for which was still the landholdings of the princely nobles.

But the policy of the oprichnina during the 7 years of its existence was never systematic and was not subject to any given pattern. During the short period of compromise, large-scale terror occurred again and again, frightening people. The results of the oprichnina are due to its spontaneous nature.

The death of Staritsky and the defeat of the Novgorodians were a great price for maintaining power. But the idea of ​​​​creating an apparatus of violence significantly influenced the governing structure of politics. Ultimately, the results of the oprichnina are that The guardsmen themselves became victims of their machine of violence. The terror damaged all social forces that originally supported the monarchy (nobility, church, bureaucracy). The nobility's dreams of a sovereign monarch were realized in bloody tyranny.

Oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible (narrated by historian Andrei Fursov)

Oprichnina in colors. Andrey Fursov.

Conclusion

The ruler rebelled against everyone, but could not get support from anyone, so his idea would not have been successful from the very beginning. Researchers of the oprichnina call it an era of violence, which cost the country dearly and left a deep mark on its history. The abolition of the oprichnina was informal for a long time, and murders continued to be carried out, so it had a hidden form until the death of Ivan the Terrible.