IVAN IV, il TERRIBILE. — Born in 1533, died in 1584, he was VACARIO (v.) in 1547 without the prior permission of the Byzantine patriarch, who only in 1562 recognized his coronation as valid. The reign of I. signifies the acme of the Russian Middle Ages under the influence of the school of Giuseppe di Volokalamsk. The «Domostroj» (a code regulating the daily life of the laity) and the «Stoglav» (which does so for the clergy), published under I., constituted an undisputed norm of life.
I. also gathered the State laws then in force into a new codification which took the name of sudebnik carskij (1549). Under I.’s reign, a new kind of chronicle was also published, namely the Book of the Steps by which the reigning family advanced through the centuries in Russia. I. introduced the art of printing into Russia, but owing to the people’s resistance he later had to dismiss the printer, who emigrated to Poland.
I. unconditionally supported the work of his metropolitan in the religious sphere. He successfully debated with a well-known Polish Protestant, Rokita.
In the field of sacred art, I. had the two Russian architects Barmat and Postnik build the church of Maria protettrice, later Basilio Blazenij, on Red Square before the Kremlin of Moscow, another similar one at Svjask near Kazan', and a third at Vologda. To embellish his palace and these churches, he employed
painters who, in a new style no longer directed by Platonic conceptions, painted frescoes and icons.
I. did not lose his religious sense even amid his terrible ferocity; he knew that he was doing wrong and, before dying, attempted in some way to make amends for his misdeeds.
From his youth he felt the «grandeur of power»: even his cruelties and crimes, rather than corresponding to the whims of an autocrat, belong to the harshness of a leader determined to reach his goal at any cost. His ruthless repression of the boyars (a social class from which he feared intrigues and conspiracies) is famous: entire families were destroyed, without regard for age or sex. Several nobles managed to flee, and some of them went over to the Polish-Lithuanian side: among these was Prince Kurbskij, who subsequently carried on with his former sovereign an interesting polemical correspondence, important in the development of Russian literature and highly significant politically, since it already hinted at some fundamental elements of the ideological struggle between autocracy and a vague «liberalism» with a noble background. On the military level, I. IV achieved great victories against the Tatars, conquering Kazan' and Astrachan'. He in a certain sense anticipated the policy of Pietro il Grande through his struggle to conquer the Baltic lands (against the Swedes and Poles): notable initial successes in Livonia were nevertheless followed by reverses. The wars and the struggle against the boyars inevitably shook the State organism severely. Not long after his death, the so-called «times of troubles» began for Russia. I. has greatly interested historians, novelists, and poets. In the U.S.S.R. his figure has been considerably «revalued»: there has been a tendency to exalt in him the adversary of the boyars in the name of the power of the State, and the fighter against the Baltic Germans and the Swedes, in the name of Russia’s greatness.