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

Years oprichnina Ivan the Terrible playedsignificant 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 the de facto government,collected 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 absolutization of power, the creation of uniform state agencies and orders throughout the country. Actually, such tendencies required time itself. Absolutization of monarchical government was exactly the same in Western Europe.

Oprichnina Ivan the Terrible: briefly about the reasons

However, activity and existence itselfFor a variety of reasons, the elected Rada 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 nature of the reforms of the Elected Rada has, over time, fed up with 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 wantto 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 imminent 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 for 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 on the eternal 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 beginsfierce struggle to eliminate, or rather, the physical destruction of the boyar stratum. The country was divided into two parts: one of the parts became the personal lot of the king and was called the oprichnina. The other 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 has been a weakeningpolitical role in the country of the boyars. As a result, the tsar achieved autocracy. On the one hand, despotism and the very fact of massive devastation 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.