ONCE PSKOV WAS the capital of an independent republic where the people elected their rulers and stoutly maintained their independence with the help of a prince chosen by the Popular Assembly. The prince, who was charged with the defense of the city, was usually a descendant of Rurik or one of the princes of the Lithuanian royal family, and he was not permitted to interfere in the affairs of the city. The government with its Boyar Council and Popular Assembly and with its elected mayor and commander of the citizen militia was overthrown when Pskov was annexed to Muscovy in 1510. Thereafter it was ruled by a governor sent from Moscow, whose word was law.
What was chiefly remarkable about Pskov was its beauty and strangeness, for unlike any other city in Russia it was built of stone from the local limestone quarries; and this stone, of a soft yellow or pinkish white, gave it an extraordinary glow. Moscow had stone walls, but only around the Kremlin and Kitay Gorod. Pskov had stone walls everywhere. The sunlight lingered and flashed on them, and the shadows melted on them. All the other Russian cities were built of wood and had a somber look about them; they were heavy and dark, while Pskov was all lightness and grace. The people were aware of the beauty of the city and took great care of it.
They were a mercantile people trading in flax, stone, corn, tallow, smoked fish, skins, tar, pitch, honey, and timber for shipbuilding. The flax, used chiefly for the making of sails, was noted for its quality and in great demand. So, too, were the ceramic tiles with an apple-green glaze, which were exported all over Russia. When Ivan decided to rebuild Kazan, he sent for stone masons from Pskov. Thus the city had many sources of revenue and there was little poverty. They were a practical people, deeply religious, eminently law-abiding, possessing a system of laws so elaborate that other cities marveled. They were a people who cherished their freedoms and guarded them even when they were being ruled by princely governors sent from Moscow.
Since it was a mercantile community the merchant guilds, housed in the great halls of Dovmont Castle, acquired enormous powers. The castle was named after Prince Timotheus Dovmont, a Lithuanian warrior who fortified the city against the army of Novgorod and secured its independence. A German traveler who visited Pskov in the sixteenth century wrote approvingly of the people’s pride in their city, their friendliness and open-mindedness. They were the most civilized Russians he had ever encountered.
Partly, of course, this was because Pskov was the most westernized of all Russian cities and because ancient Russian civilization had developed here unhindered by the Tatars. By way of Lake Chud the people of Pskov had direct access to the Gulf of Finland and thus to the Baltic. They were accustomed to seeing foreign merchants and were not suspicious of them. Nor did they suffer from any feeling of inferiority in the presence of foreigners. They possessed their own traditions, their own way of life, their own schools of architecture and painting. They remembered, too, that Pskov was the home of the first Christian Princess of Russia, St. Olga, who was baptized by the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople.
Suddenly the people of Pskov were confronted with something completely outside their experience. For many days they had known about the events taking place in Novgorod. Survivors who fled to Pskov had recounted in great detail the mass executions on the river, the murders in the streets, the incessant looting, the reign of terror which Ivan organized so coldly, so dispassionately, that he seemed to be not a man but an incarnate devil. They knew, too, that when Ivan had finished with Novgorod, he would turn immediately on Pskov. They debated among themselves and came to no conclusions except that they must throw themselves on the mercy of the Tsar. They did not arm themselves and they made no special arrangements for the coming of the Tsar and his army of oprichniki. They waited in fear and trembling, knowing that only a miracle could save them.
The Tsar was elated by the prospect of new massacres and vast booty; so were the oprichniki who formed their own private armies and raped, murdered, and looted as they pleased. The Tsar had promised that large shares of booty would be divided among them, but so far he had not kept his promise. They therefore took the law in their own hands and organized their own expeditions. No one knows how many of them embarked on these murderous adventures, but it would appear that all those who felt they were in the Tsar’s good graces murdered and robbed at their pleasure. Heinrich Staden, who had every reason to believe that he was well-favored by the Tsar, has recounted his own exploits after leaving Novgorod. He wrote:
I began to assemble an army of retainers from the poor, naked wretches around me, and I gave them clothes, which was much to their liking. I then undertook my own expeditions and found they were loyal to me. So when we came to a monastery or a church, they would go in and capture someone and ask him politely where the money was hidden and where we could find good horses. And if the man who was captured did not want to respond agreeably, they held him and tortured him until he spoke. In this way they got money and valuables for me.
It was laughably simple, and Staden enjoyed these easy triumphs and collected a considerable amount of booty, which was carted away to his own estate. But sometimes people grew weary of being robbed and murdered, and fought back. There were places between Novgorod and Pskov where an officer of the Oprichnina was advised to tread delicately. Here Staden recounts what happened when he blundered into a small town which refused to submit to the exactions of freebooters:
We came to a town where there was a church, and my retainers entered it and took away the icons and other frivolous things, while I remained mounted outside. Suddenly I saw six horsemen who were being chased by three hundred Zemskie people, and I did not know who the six horsemen were, whether they were from the Zemshchinaor the Oprichnina, and so I summoned my retainers to mount their horses. By this time I realized what was happening—the six horsemen were oprichniki and they were being pursued by all those people. They cried out for help and so I attacked. And when the Zemskiye saw so many of my people emerging from the church they fled to the Prince’s estate. I shot one of them, broke through the crowd, rode quickly through the gates. From the upper floor of the house stones were hurled at me. With one of my retainers called Teshata, I ran up the stairs, an ax in my hands. I was met by a Princess whose sole desire was to throw herself at my feet, but when she observed the anger written on my face she turned back to enter her own room. I struck her in the back with an ax and she fell through the doorway. Then I sprang over her and greeted the ladies who attended her.
Later, when I hurried from the women’s room into the courtyard, the six oprichniki fell at my feet, saying, “We will inform our master about this and he will tell the Grand Prince how nobly you have borne yourself against the Zemskiye people. We observed your courage and cautiousness with our own eyes.” I said to my retainers, “Take what you can, and get out quickly.”
We rode through the entire night and came at last to an unfortified settlement. I did no harm to anyone there. I was resting. After two days of lying low I learned that five hundred musketeers of the Oprichnina had been killed by the Zemskiye people in that place.
Staden had no moral sense whatsoever and he told the story as though he was the hero of an absorbing adventure. What he remembered most vividly was the Princess falling through the doorway with an ax in her back, but he also remembered other things—that he had to ride throughout the night to escape the Zemskiye people and that he had to lie very low when he came to the unfortified settlement. Nevertheless he was able to accumulate forty-nine horses and twenty-two of them were used to pull the sleighs heaped with the valuables he had stolen from churches and private houses.
When Ivan reached the Monastery of St. Nicholas on the outskirts of Pskov, he had the firm intention of drowning the city in blood. The people of Pskov were, in his eyes, just as guilty of treachery as the people of Novgorod and deserved a similar fate. It cost him nothing to destroy a city. Indeed, the destruction of a city was always highly profitable, for the booty became his private property.
The people of Pskov were too terrified to sleep that night. They comforted and bade farewell to one another, for they expected to die. Children were told that the wrathful Tsar had arrived at their gates and that strange things would soon be happening; meanwhile they must be brave. Husbands solemnly bade farewell to their wives and to their children, and then the whole family proceeded to church. That night the churches were crowded. It was a Saturday in the second week of Lent, and on the Sunday it was expected that the Tsar and the oprichniki would enter the city.
All that night the church bells tolled and the people prayed before the icons with tears streaming down their cheeks. The sound of the church bells reached the Monastery of St. Nicholas, and it was said that the Tsar’s heart was softened by the distant bells in the clear winter night. This, however, was unlikely, for he was not a man whose heart was often softened. Meanwhile Prince Yury Tokmakov, the governor of Pskov, addressed the people and told them to set up outside their houses tables full of meats. When the Tsar entered the city, he must find them all kneeling, holding out to him the traditional welcoming gifts of bread, salt, and good food. Men, women, and children would be kneeling side by side.
For some reason the Tsar decided to enter Pskov through the Varlaamsky Gate, which stood on the north of the city. This meant a long ride under the northern walls of the city and in order to reach the Krom or Kremlin he would have to pass through the poorer part of the city. Perhaps he took this circuitous route to give himself a longer time to relish the prospect of destroying the city. Messengers had been sent ahead to announce the route he would take, and there were priests to welcome him at the Church of St. Varlaam near the Varlaamsky Gate. Among these priests was Abbot Kornely of the Pechersky Monastery and a monk called Vassian Muromtsev. Both the monk and the abbot had incurred the displeasure of the Tsar and were likely to be punished. They had been friends of Prince Andrey Kurbsky. They had been in correspondence with him, and they still possessed some influence. He ordered their arrest.
As he drove through the city on a sleigh, he observed that the people were all kneeling outside their houses with bread and salt in their hands. They were chanting words of prayer and submissiveness. “Our Lord and Tsar, we are all your loyal subjects,” they chanted. “With love and fervor we offer you this bread and salt. Do as you wish with our lives and possessions, for both our lives and our possessions belong wholly to you, O Great Autocrat.” It was said that the Tsar was pleased by this unexpected expression of humility, but it is more likely that he regarded it as perfectly normal behavior and was surprised only because the humility was so well organized. Prince Yury Tokmakov had done his work well.
In the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, within the walls of the Krom, the Tsar and his entourage attended the morning service. For a while Ivan prayed at the tomb of St. Vsevolod, the first prince of Pskov, who died in 1138. Near the prince’s tomb hung the great sword he had used in many battles, inscribed with the words, Honorem meum nemino dabo, meaning “I shall surrender my honor to no one.” It was observed that Ivan gazed at the sword for a long time.
Once the service was over the real work of the oprichniki began. Some thirty or forty members of the petty nobility who had earned Ivan’s displeasure were arrested and executed. Abbot Kornely and the monk Vassian Muromtsev were also executed. The order went out to the oprichniki to despoil all the churches and monasteries, and Ivan especially asked them to remove the finest bells.
The blood bath was about to begin when it occurred to Ivan to visit the yurodivy Nikolay Salos, known as Mikula, a holy man famous throughout the region. Ivan approached the house where Mikula was living and suddenly there came a voice like thunder through the window, saying, “Ivashka! Ivashka! How much longer will you continue to shed innocent Christian blood? Take care! Leave at once, or a great misfortune will befall you!” Instead of leaving at once, Ivan entered the house and confronted the holy man, who thrust in his hands a slab of raw meat. Ivan refused to accept the meat, saying, “I am a Christian. I do not eat meat during Lent.”
“You do much worse!” the holy man replied sternly. “You feed upon human flesh and blood, forgetting not only Lent but God Himself!”
While Mikula was speaking, the sky suddenly grew overcast, thunder rumbled and lightning flashed. Mikula raised his hands toward the lightning and exclaimed, “A thunderbolt will strike you dead if you or any of your oprichniki touch a hair of the head of thesmallest child in Pskov! Know that we are being protected by an angel of God for a better fate than murder! Leave Pskov at once, or face the wrath of God!”
The story goes on to relate how Ivan begged Mikula for forgiveness and for his prayers, and was answered with more curses. About this time Ivan’s favorite horse fell dead. This story was told by the chroniclers and also by the three foreign mercenaries, Staden, Taube, and Kruse, who joined the oprichniki and therefore had no reason to portray the Tsar in an unfavorable light. Sir Jerome Horsey also told the story, adding that he had himself seen the holy man: “I saw this impostor or magician, a foul creature, [who] went naked both in winter and summer. He endured both extreme frost and heat, did many strange things through the magical illusions of the devil, much followed, feared, and reverenced, both of prince and people.”
Something very strange had happened: a naked holy man had said “No” to Ivan, and the Tsar, deeply aware of his guilt and the powers of holy men to bring down curses from Heaven, obeyed and left the city with all his oprichniki a few hours later, taking with him such spoils as had already been removed from the churches but otherwise leaving the city untouched. One man had stood between Ivan and innumerable murders.
Pskov was saved by the miracle of holiness. Ivan’s determination to fill the deep and swift-flowing Velikaya River with corpses was abandoned hurriedly in the face of threats uttered by a holy man. But if Pskov was saved, it was not entirely saved. Orders went out to the people to serve the Tsar by dragging heavy guns up to the Livonian frontier, to construct bridges, and to mine saltpeter and sulphur for the making of gunpowder. In effect, a heavy war tax was levied on them. Some who were ordered to drag guns simply vanished in the forests and others died miserably of cold and famine. Even this was better than dying at the hands of Ivan’s executioners, and the vast majority of the people of Pskov remained alive to sing the praises of Nikolay Salos, who had stood between them and Ivan’s vengeance.
The expedition against Novgorod and Pskov was now over, and the army rode south to Staritsa where, as Staden says, “the Tsar had decided to muster his forces to see how they had borne up and how many remained with him.” Ivan was well pleased with what he saw and in good humor. Staden, who had excelled himself as a private freebooter, found himself, as he expected, in the Tsar’s good graces. Henceforth the German who struck an ax in the back of a Russian princess was permitted to call himself Heinrich von Staden. Having distributed other awards to his faithful followers, Ivan hurried on to Alexandrova Sloboda to survey the treasures plundered from Novgorod and to build the two churches which celebrated his two victories.
In an age of religious fervor Ivan was one of the most deeply religious men. He was exuberant in his prayers and utterly devoted to Christ, the Virgin, and his favorite saints. He spent long hours in contemplation of the holy icons, attended all the services of the Orthodox Church, and was continually engaging in theological arguments with the priests attached to his court. When he removed the church bells, icons, and carved doorways from Pskov and Novgorod, and took them into his private keeping in Alexandrova Sloboda, he appears to have genuinely believed that he had increased his store of divinity. They belonged to him by right of conquest; the question of his right of possession was never raised. Was he not God’s annointed, the sole possessor of the Russian land?
Although Ivan was firm in the Orthodox faith, he was perfectly prepared to listen to the arguments of theologians belonging to other persuasions. He believed they were heretics and were damned, but this belief did not prevent him from inquiring very seriously into their arguments. He listened to them courteously even when they aroused only horror in his breast. He did not punish them, though he sometimes called them “dogs.” He knew a great deal about Islam and the Catholic Church, but he appears to have known very little about Protestantism until the arrival in Moscow in May 1570 of a Polish-Lithuanian embassy led by Jan Krotowski, a Hussite who hoped that the doctrines of Jan Huss, “the pale thin man in mean attire,” would be received with approval in Russia. Huss had been burned at the stake by the Catholic Church. Krotowski was a man of substance who admired Ivan and wanted him to become King of Poland and Grand Prince of Lithuania on the death of King Sigismund Augustus, who was known to be ailing. Huss had a large following among the Polish and Lithuanian nobility and gentry, and Krotowski believed that Ivan’s candidacy would be more palatable to them if he permitted the dissemination of the new faith and gave it his blessing. The ambassador even hoped that Ivan would be converted.
The embassy, of course, dealt with many matters unconnected with Hussite beliefs, but in the eyes of Krotowski it was abundantly necessary that Ivan should be well-informed about them. He therefore brought with him a famous Hussite preacher called Jan Rakita. Ivan agreed to listen to one of Rakita’s sermons, promised the preacher immunity from any punishment that might arise from the expression of heretical doctrines, and promised that if Rakita provided him with a written copy of his sermon, he would answer it in detail. This was done. Rakita’s sermon is lost, but a copy of Ivan’s answer, written on eighty-four parchment sheets, placed in a jewel-studded box and solemnly handed to Rakita before his departure, has survived. With some difficulty Rakita’s ideas can be guessed by studying Ivan’s vehement denunciations. For example, we know that Rakita upheld the Ten Commandments because Ivan replied: “You believe in the Ten Commandments as set down in the second book of Moses. Know that the Apostles changed all these commandments except two: Thou shalt love thy God with all thy soul and thy neighbor as thyself. These two you do not observe.”1 Rakita declared that all men are delivered unto death because of Adam’s sin and therefore the Word of God took flesh and dwelt among us. Ivan replied that this was an error. “Until the birth of Christ the just also were delivered unto death and descended into hell,” he wrote. “But when Christ was brought forth into the light, then the power of death was broken.” Again, when Rakita charged that in the Orthodox Church the Apostles are considered to be divinities, Ivan, quoting from Corinthians, answered brusquely: “Know this concerning the Apostles: we are far from considering them as divinities. One of them said: ‘I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.’ ” Ivan knew the Pauline texts by heart and used them to advantage. He could always bend the difficult texts for his own purposes and on occasion he could write paragraphs which have the effect of precise sermons. Here he attacks Rakita for misunderstanding faith and works:
You wrote that we are forgiven and our sins are blotted out freely not because of any human works, and our errors are expunged by grace. But if works do not come first, why should Christ say in the Gospel: “If any man does not leave his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, and his possessions, and deny himself, he is not my disciple, and he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.”2
By the cross he means to be crucified to all the things of this world, that is, to hold of little account all earthly desires, to abstain from acquiring wealth, possessions, food, drink, to desire nothing and to be content with whatever befalls us, joyfully and prayerfully. The cross means to love your enemies, those by whom you are oppressed, to pray to God for those who torment us, to treat your possessions as if you did not possess them, and to have no care for them.
The cross means to be unremitting in prayer, fasting, observing the divine commandment as it befits the lives of pilgrims, or as Paul says, to seek after possessions to come and to desire to live in that eternal paradise.
This is what it means to carry one’s cross, to be crucified to the world, to follow Christ.
Ivan’s attitude toward Rakita is one of contempt and derision. How amazing, how stupid, that someone should exist who does not understand the simple truths of the Orthodox faith! From time to time he rounds on Rakita with an ill-tempered rebuke: “Since you are a dog and an enemy of Christ’s cross, I don’t want to have anything to do with you!” Nevertheless he continues to argue with him, to confound his arguments, and to press home with his own triumphant conclusions. Since he was accustomed to having priests around him and was well versed in theological hair-splitting he had no difficulty in reducing Rakita’s arguments to absurdities. He was a man who prided himself on his cleverness. He appears not to have realized that if he had simply kept quiet, accepting Rakita’s arguments for what they were worth, he might have earned the respect of the Polish and Lithuanian nobility and gentry, and acquired the crown of Poland and the Grand Principality of Lithuania. The sermons of Rakita and Ivan were political events of the first magnitude, but it is unlikely that Ivan realized how many political advantages he threw away in his trouncing of Rakita’s beliefs.
We know Ivan’s writings best through his letters to Prince Kurbsky, full of fire and sudden explosive violence. They are passionate letters written in an extremity of passion, and yet half-concealed behind the frenzy there can be observed a cool and calculating mind. It is as though down below the smooth-running destructive engines were at work belching out so much smoke and steam and flames that it is almost impossible to see the shape of the machinery. We expect him to be fierce in every utterance and he does not disappoint us. So it comes as a surprise to discover that he could on occasion tell stories from the apocryphal gospels and the writings of the Church Fathers with a kind of carefree grace. He believed devoutly in miracle-working images and especially in the Icon of the Virgin of Vladimir which he believed had been painted by St. Luke; and so, very calmly, as though he was telling a friend how it had happened, he tells Rakita this story about holy statues and icons:
Consider the woman having an issue of blood. Christ healed her, and she made a life-size bronze statue of Him. This statue, up until the time of Julian, King of the Greeks, accursed apostate and devil-worshipper, cured many people of their illnesses. It is the same with the temple in Lydia founded by the Apostles. On top of a column at the north gate, there was an image of the Mother of God and her eternal Son. This image was not the work of human hands, but divinely made. It was revealed in order to show who were Christians and who were pagans. It was proper that there be a church where this miracle occurred. When the Apostles invited the Mother of God to the dedication of the church, she replied, “You go, my children, for I shall be there with you.” When the Apostles arrived at the church and saw the image, they wept and were filled with joy and they offered thanks to God the Creator of all.
After a while the Mother of God herself came to the place. When she saw that the image was most faithful, she said, “My help and my grace will remain there.” The filthy Julian later tried to destroy this place. When the masons were trying to break down the walls and tear down the painting, the image was strengthened by God and remained more firmly embedded in the wall, and so the violators abandoned the task of destroying it. Although they struck it with hammers, it remained unblemished and in no way were they able to destroy it: they had merely dusted it. After these affronts certain upright men came and cleansed it, and in this way it remained unharmed with all its colors preserved.
There is also the story of the famous Jenaeus, who was restored to health by Peter and John, and erected a beautiful temple. In this also there was an image of the Virgin Mary, which was made by him in accordance with her own desire and which worked great miracles. Blessed Luke painted it and brought it to the Mother of God. When she saw it, she said, “May my power and favor be with this image.” As long as this image is preserved in Moscow in our realm, so long shall the Christian faith remain whole.
There is no reason to think that Ivan regarded any of these statements as fantasies. Stories about icons “not made by hands” were believed implicitly in his time, and since some of the most famous wonder-working images were in his possession and had abundantly demonstrated their power over the Tatars, and other enemies, he had no reason to doubt their efficacy. Icons were sources of immense spiritual and earthly power, like the bones of the saints. The prayers of the faithful also generated power, and he found in himself, as the successor of St. Vladimir, Grand Prince of Kiev, who had brought the Christian faith to Russia, still another source of power. Rakita was left in no doubt that Ivan regarded himself as a spiritual and earthly ruler. Thus power resided in him and around him, and belonged to him by right of succession, and was everywhere at his command: he was speaking as a theologian, but also as a man who knew himself to be if not at the right hand of God so close to divinity that it made very little difference. In his lifetime, in spite of all his crimes, Ivan regarded himself as the shepherd of the Orthodox faith.
When he spoke to Rakita in the Great Palace of the Kremlin, sitting on his high throne and confronting the Hussite preacher who stood on a dais covered with carpets, he was speaking from the heights of infallible wisdom. As spiritual ruler, he consigned Rakita to damnation, saying, “I regard you as a heretic, because your teaching is depraved and clearly contrary to the teaching of Christ and the Church. Not only are you a heretic, but a servant of Antichrist raised up by the devil!” But Ivan had not the slightest interest in persecuting the heretic. He was familiar with many Protestants, found them more congenial than Catholics, permitted them to practice their religion freely, and once fined the Metropolitan of Moscow a stupendous sum for insulting a German Protestant. Ivan kept his promise of letting Rakita go free. He appears to have regarded the debate as a pleasant interlude in the hard task of governing Russia.
The Polish and Lithuanian ambassadors left Moscow on July 3, 1570, and almost immediately the hard work of governing took the form of secret trials followed by public executions.
Ivan’s well-mannered behavior toward the ambassadors was the expression of deliberate policy; he enjoyed entertaining foreigners, learning about their countries, debating with them and seeking from them those assurances of friendship which were the necessary fruits of his foreign policy. But the main, all-consuming passion of the Tsar had little enough to do with foreign policy. What chiefly concerned him was the rooting out of traitors among the ranks of the boyars, the princes, and the nobility.
Since those who were condemned to death for treachery were brought to trial in secret, we do not always know why they were condemned. Many, perhaps most of them, were the innocent victims of agents provocateurs or of private malice. Thus we have no information whatsoever about the reasons that brought about the execution of Prince Peter Serebriany on July 20. He had been one of the heroes of the battle for Kazan and was highly respected in the Boyar Council. It was known that for some weeks he had been in disfavor. Quite possibly in an unguarded moment he had protested against the crimes committed in Novgorod and Pskov. Ivan’s method of execution was unusual. He ordered Maliuta Skuratov to go to the prince’s residence, hack off his head, and bring it back to the Oprichnina Palace in Moscow, where he was then staying. Maliuta Skuratov did as he was told. The prince’s head was cut off in his own courtyard. Maliuta Skuratov ran to the palace and laid the head at Ivan’s feet, saying, “Tsar, the work you commanded me to do has been done!” The Tsar exclaimed, “Goida!” and all the oprichnikiHe urged the around him shouted in chorus.
A day or two later Ivan ordered the execution of a hundred and sixty-five Polish and Lithuanian prisoners. They were being held in three towers, apparently within the confines of the Oprichnina Palace. According to the chroniclers there were fifty-five prisoners in each tower and Ivan himself superintended the executions and killed the first two prisoners by thrusting a long spear through the bars. He was attempting to kill a third, bungled it and gave the job to his son, the Tsarevich Ivan, who had no difficulty killing adefenseless prisoner. These killings were acts of imbecile brutality and ferocity, all the more inexplicable because only a few days before Ivan had signed a three-year truce with the Polish and Lithuanian ambassadors.
Ivan’s attitude toward prisoners was one of contempt. They deserved to die because they were prisoners. During his campaign against Novgorod and Pskov, he ordered the execution of prisoners wherever he found them. It is related that among the hundred and sixty-five prisoners were many notables whose lives could have been usefully exchanged with the lives of Russian prisoners, but Ivan was rarely interested in such transactions. It is related, too, that after all the prisoners were dead, he returned to the palace and gave himself up to musical entertainments. At sunset he remembered the dead and ordered that they should be piled onto carts and taken to the cemetery reserved for foreigners.
Early on the morning of July 25, 1570, a troop of oprichniki arrived on the Red Square and began to hammer twenty heavy stakes into the ground. Then logs were roped to the stakes in such a way that they formed a continuous horizontal line, each log touching the next. Then they lit fires and over each fire they set a caldron of water, which was soon boiling. The people who had been walking about the Red Square grew alarmed, for it was obvious that these strange preparations could have only one purpose—more executions. The news from Novgorod and Pskov had terrified the people of Moscow, who reasoned that Ivan was perfectly capable of doing to them what he had already done in the north; and suddenly there were no more people left on the square.
The news that the people had vanished was brought to Ivan, who decided to investigate. He arrived on the square in full armor, with a helmet, sword, bow and quiver full of arrows, and a bodyguard of similarly armed oprichniki. About the same time fifteen hundred mounted musketeers rode onto the square and took up their places round the scene of execution. Seeing that the square was deserted, Ivan with an escort rode up and down the side streets exhorting the people to be of good heart and to come to the square, where no harm would befall them. Previously he had arranged that there should be food prepared for the citizens in some of the houses overlooking the Red Square.
These attempts to lure the people into the square failed at first; they were all hiding from Ivan in fear and trembling. Finally it was decided to send several old men, who did not care very much what happened to them because they were close to death, to find out Ivan’s intentions. Ivan received them kindly, and they reported on their return that there was nothing to fear from him.
Meanwhile, three hundred of his victims, many weakened by torture and hunger, and some with broken legs and arms, were led out onto the square and tied with ropes to the logs, to await their fate. The common people who began to emerge from the side streets saw them and went hurrying back to their houses to report that a mass execution was about to take place. It was observed that not many people had appeared on the square, that they moved hesitantly, and that they turned away as soon as they saw the prisoners. Ivan was enraged, for he wanted them all to attend, and as he rode up and down the square, he shouted that they were all beholden to him, they had a duty to attend the executions and to come as close as possible to the prisoners, and although he had intended to destroy the people of Moscow, as he had destroyed the people of Novgorod, nevertheless he felt no anger toward them and they had nothing to fear.
So between threats and blandishments, and appeals for more and more people to present themselves, Ivan and his attendants managed to bring a large crowd onto the Red Square and those who came late watched from the roofs. The proceedings began with Ivan appealing to the people.
“Is it right for me to punish traitors?” he shouted, and there came the answering shout, “Long live the good Tsar! It is right for you to punish traitors according to their crimes!”
Ivan then moved to a place reserved for him near a boiling caldron and did something totally unexpected. He ordered the release of a hundred and eighty-four prisoners, who had been judged the least guilty. Addressing himself to the boyars, he said, “I give them to you, accept them, and take them away,” according to the formula which meant that the boyars were now made responsible for them. These prisoners were allowed to make their way through the ranks of mounted musketeers guarding the place of execution.
Vasily Shchelkalov, the Tsar’s secretary, then began to read out the names of those who had been condemned to death. When this was completed, Ivan Viskovaty was brought forward. He was a man of humble origin who for more than twenty years had been the Secretary for Foreign affairs when he was not actively pursuing diplomatic affairs abroad. He was Russia’s chief diplomat, the architect of Russian foreign policy, known for his resourcefulness and courage. In 1561 he was promoted to Keeper of the Privy Seal, and in the following year he was sent on an embassy to Denmark. Whatever his title, he remained Ivan’s chief adviser on foreign affairs.
When Ivan returned from his campaigns against Novgorod and Pskov, Viskovaty took his life in his hands by presenting a petition demanding an end to all the bloodshed. He urged Ivan to think about his responsibility toward God and the people. There were rumors that Ivan proposed to murder all the boyars: this, too, must not be allowed to take place. He urged the Tsar to consider two points especially: Who will be left to help him defend the country? Who will he live with after executing so many brave people?
Ivan was stunned by the petition and what particularly seems to have disturbed him was that Viskovaty knew of his intention to murder the boyars.
“I have only just begun to rid myself of you people!” Ivan shouted. “I shall make it my business to destroy all of you root and branch, so that not even a memory of you remains! I truly hope to do this, but if the worst comes to the worst and God punishes me and I am forced to surrender to a foreign enemy, then I would rather surrender something of great importance than become the laughingstock of you, who are my servants!”
The Tsar’s unreasoning hatred of the boyars, his fear of intrigues against him, his suspicions about the growing influence of the seventeen-year-old Tsarevich, all these had led him on his return to Moscow to contemplate desperate actions. He had shown that he was perfectly capable of ordering bloodbaths on a hitherto unprecedented scale, and the extermination of the boyars was only part of a plan which involved his own possible abdication. But first he was determined to administer such ferocious punishment on the Russian people that they would remember him for ever afterward. He was a man who found it almost impossible to conceal his intentions and he had publicly proclaimed his plans for a violent theatrical coup which would shake Russia to her foundations. He was planning another and more extensive bloodbath which might or might not be followed by his abdication and the installation of a foreign prince on the throne of Russia.
It was at a reception given to Prince Magnus of Denmark that Ivan made his intentions known. The Boyar Council and the foreign ambassadors were present; so was the Tsarevich Ivan and the entire court. Suddenly Ivan turned to Prince Magnus and said, “Your Illustrious Highness, after I am dead, you shall be my heir and the ruler of my country—and I shall tear up my unworthy subjects by the roots and humble them and trample them underfoot!” The reception, which was given in the Great Kremlin Palace in June 1570, was luxurious and sumptuous to the highest degree. Ivan was fond of the handsome thirty-year-old prince, to whom he had just given the crown of Livonia and the hand of Princess Evdokia, the daughter of Prince Vladimir of Staritsa. The crown of Livonia was not in his keeping, but that was a small matter. Princess Evdokia died and Prince Magnus was later given Maria, another of the daughters of Prince Vladimir of Staritsa, and this too was a small matter. But Ivan was well aware of the solemnity of the occasion: a crown was being offered, a prince was being betrothed. He chose this occasion to announce that Prince Magnus would inherit the throne and that he would wreak a terrible vengeance on the Russian people. There was a threefold curse on them: they would be uprooted, humbled, and trampled underfoot.
The mind of the psychopath in power moves in predictable ways. Once he has tasted the joys of destruction he cannot stop, for there is nothing to prevent him. He publicly proclaims his intentions, and the proclamation of the coming terror is almost as satisfying as the terror itself. He kills those who are closest to him and those who are indifferent to him, and those who resist him must die many times over.
Ivan Viskovaty, the man who resisted the Tsar, was about to die many times over.
Vasily Shchelkalov read out the crimes committed by the prisoner from a long scroll. He said:
This man Ivan, an officer of the Tsar and Grand Prince, has been unfaithful and has acted without loyalty. He has been in communication with the King of Poland and has promised to hand over to him the fortresses of Novgorod and Pskov. That was his first act of treason.
At this point Shchelkalov struck Viskovaty with a whip, thus indicating that he was enraged by the prisoner’s crimes. He went on:
Your second act of treason and duplicity took place when you wrote to the Sultan of Turkey urging him to send armies against Kazan and Astrakhan. Your third act of treason took place when you wrote to the Khan of the Crimea, commanding him to devastate the land of the Tsar and the Grand Prince with fire and sword. And so it happened that the Khan raided the land of Muscovy and caused great harm to the people and the country. You are the cause of this great calamity and thus you have committed treason against your sovereign.
Bleeding from several cuts from the whip, Viskovaty turned to Ivan and replied with words as courageous as any spoken in Russia: “Great Tsar, God is my witness that I am innocent. I deny that I have committed any of the crimes attributed to me. As befitted a loyal subject, I have always served you loyally. I entrust my affairs to God, before whom I am a sinner, and I leave the judgment to Him. In time to come He will be the judge of your acts and mine. Since you thirst for my blood, then take it and spill it, innocent though it is. Drink and eat my blood until you are sated with it!”
Viskovaty had not quite finished with Ivan. He admonished Ivan for secretly murdering so many boyars in the mistaken belief that they were attempting to usurp his power, and then he went on to reproach him for massacring so many innocent people. How many women and girls had been violated at his orders and then killed! And when some oprichniki went up to him and bade him confess his guilt and to beg the Tsar for mercy, Viskovaty answered: “Damnation upon your tyrant! What are you all but destroyers of the people and drinkers of human blood? You have your task—it is to utter falsehoods and to slander the innocent! But God will judge you, and in the next world you will be punished for your sins!”
Damnation upon your tyrant! Budte prokliaty s vashem tirannom! Never before had such words been uttered in the presence of Ivan, who immediately shouted, “Begin!” The oprichniki stripped off Viskovaty’s clothes, and hung him by the armpits to one of the horizontal logs. Maliuta Skuratov ran up to the Tsar and said, “Who will be the executioner?”
“Those who are most loyal to me!” the Tsar answered.
To prove his loyalty Maliuta Skuratov cut off Viskovaty’s nose, another cut off an ear, and soon all the oprichniki were cutting off pieces of his flesh, as though he were butcher’s meat. In his book On the Russe Commonwealth Giles Fletcher says that Ivan ordered him to be cut up as though he were a goose, cutting the lower parts of his legs and arms and finally cutting off his head, and all the time Ivan was taunting him, saying, “That’s goose flesh—is it good meat?”
Viskovaty died, and then it was the turn of the treasurer, Nikita Funikov, who had loyally served the Tsar for a quarter of a century or more. Shchelkalov read out the list of his crimes and he answered that he was completely innocent but acknowledged the Tsar’s right to execute him even though he was innocent.
“You will die!” the Tsar said, “but you will not die at my hands or at my instigation, and not by any fault of mine! You will die because you listened to your companion [Viskovaty] and were wholly dependent on him! Even if you committed no crimes, you must perish because you served him!”
The Tsar then gave the signal to the oprichniki to do their work. Funikov was stripped naked, and buckets of ice-cold water and boiling hot water were poured on him until his skin came off like an eel’s.
The third to be executed was the cook who at the Tsar’s orders had given poison to Prince Vladimir of Staritsa. There followed a hundred and thirteen executions, with the Tsar and the Tsarevich joining the executioners, stabbing the victims with spears or hacking at them with swords. There was, of course, no danger, for the victims were trussed to great balks of timber, and the Tsar and the Tsarevich could therefore move along the line with impunity. The killing went on for four hours, and then the ropes were cut and the dead were thrown into a heap. In the evening Ivan ordered them to be carted off and buried in a mass grave.
When they were all killed, the Tsar still had much to do. He first called at the house of Nikita Funikov, and ordered his bodyguard to seize the widow and torture her until she revealed the hiding place of her valuables. She died under torture and the valuables were given to the Tsar. Her daughter stood by, weeping and trembling. She was about fifteen, and very beautiful, but the Tsar was exasperated by her weeping and ordered his guards to kill her. As the oprichniki were about to seize her, the Tsarevich Ivan held her by the skirt and cried out, “Dear father, let me have her! I will keep her locked up!” Ivan ordered the oprichniki to let the girl remain in his son’s keeping.
Even after the orgy of killing on the Red Square Ivan’s thirst for blood was not satisfied. Three days later the wives and daughters of the dead men were clubbed to death and their bodies thrown into the river.
Among those who perished were most of the administrative heads of the government. Some of the leaders of the oprichniki were also under arrest. The Basmanovs, father and son, had been under arrest in Moscow during the expedition to Novgorod—they had shown insufficient enthusiasm for the project—and they too were killed. How and where they were killed remains unknown. Since they were high officers of the Oprichnina and the manner of their deaths would normally be reported in the chronicles, it must be assumed that they were killed secretly. In the following month the Tsar sent some money to the Troitsa-Sergeyevsky Monastery for the repose of their souls.
Some weeks later Afanasy Viazemsky, who had also incurred the Tsar’s displeasure before the campaign against Novgorod, was placed under arrest and given daily beatings. As each day passed a new fine was imposed on him. One day the Tsar would demand a fine of three hundred rubles, on another day it would be five hundred or a thousand, according to the Tsar’s pleasure. Viazemsky’s body was bruised and swollen, but the fines continued. When he had no more money, he pretended that various rich merchants owed him money, and the oprichniki were sent to collect the debts. The beatings continued into the following year. The Tsar’s vengeance reached out to Viazemsky’s wife, who was the Mistress of the Seamstresses, an official post which gave her the supervision of forty young seamstresses who embroidered and sewed the robes of gold cloth worn at court. Finally the Tsar wearied of Viazemsky and sent him to prison at Gorodets where he was kept in chains.
What had long been predicted was now at last coming to pass. The oprichniki, those anarchic and self-serving executioners who had been let loose upon the country, were about to be destroyed. In the past it seems never to have occurred to Ivan that they resembled a vast swarm of maggots eating away at his throne. When he finally turned against them it was because they proved to be totally inefficient. They were skilfull at butchering Russians but they showed no skill at butchering Tatars. They were a gang of murderers, and like all such gangs they were composed of cowards who ran away at the first sign of danger. Suddenly the Tatars invaded Muscovy, put Moscow to the flames, and carried off an immense treasure. The Zemshchina princes and the common people fought the Tatars, and the oprichniki ran for their lives.
1 I Corinthians, III, 6.
2 Matthew, 10:37–8, Luke, XIV, 26.