THE REIGN OF IVAN IV, which had begun so inauspiciously, now seemed to be full of promise. The Glinskys were no longer in power, the government was once more in the hands of experienced boyars and court nobles, and there was no reason why Russia should not become a powerful and contented state. Ivan, intelligent, God-fearing, and remorseful, presented himself as a man who had only one purpose in life—to be a good ruler.
Contemporary miniatures show him round-faced, with thick curly hair, beardless, carrying himself well under the weight of his heavy vestments. He wears a heavy crown with curling leaf-shaped plaques of gold set with jewels. Since the miniaturists drew and painted in order to illustrate chronicles written by monkish scribes, we often see Ivan in the presence of monks and priests, and indeed he appears to have spent a good deal of time among them. They were teaching him to be good and at the same time they were advancing the interests of the Church.
Sylvester was the acknowledged chief adviser, a man of remarkable persuasiveness, energy, charm, and something that could be called fanaticism if it was not so severely controlled. His qualities were those particularly associated with Novgorod, where clarity and compassion and a certain generosity of spirit were regarded as eminently desirable. He was not a simple priest; he was an administrator, a scholar, a man with an intricate and systematic mind, which he proved when some years later he wrote theDomostroy(The House-Order), a manual of Christian conduct which set out to show the precise duties of everyone in every Christian household. To the surprised Muscovites Sylvester seemed to have emerged like a clap of thunder or like Elijah the Tishbite who solemnly proclaimed the wrath of God upon the evil King Ahab. But in fact Sylvester, who was close to Makary and had assisted him in compiling lives of the saints, had known Ivan for some time and already possessed considerable influence over him.
Another figure soon emerged among the Tsar’s principal advisers. This was Alexey Adashev, who had formerly served at court as a batozhnik, or wielder of the baton, a post of some trust, for he not only cleared the way for the Tsar but was also one of the many who guarded over the Tsar’s security. At the time of the fire of Moscow he was a gentleman of the bedchamber. He now presided over the Chosen Council, a small and rather informal group of advisers who effectively ruled Russia in the name of the Tsar during the following years. Adashev was known for his fairness and straight-dealing, and Kurbsky records that during the Livonian war enemy towns under siege would surrender to Adashev “on account of his goodness.” A quarter of a century after his death Adashev’s memory was still alive. A Polish archbishop was heard asking what manner of man Boris Godunov was, only to be told “he was like Adashev in his goodness.”
Not that Adashev was entirely virtuous. He was a man of affairs with a penetrating intelligence and he could act very firmly when he chose. But he was scrupulous and incorruptible, acting always in the best interests of Russia. One of the chroniclers says that Adashev and Sylvester “governed the Russian land together,” but Sylvester, who rarely attended the meetings of the Chosen Council, preferred to rule behind the scenes. Later Ivan or one of his secretaries wrote in the margin of the Tsarstvennaya Kniga, “Sylvester was all powerful, and all obeyed him, and none dared oppose him in anything.”
The Chosen Council, chosen by Adashev and Sylvester, included among its early members Prince Andrey Kurbsky, Prince Ivan Mstislavsky, Ivan Sheremetev the Elder, Ivan Cheliadnin, Ivan Viskovaty, and Mikhail Morozov, who was married to the daughter of Prince Dmitry Belsky. With a few exceptions they were comparatively young men in their early thirties. The Boyar Council still met regularly and there appears to have been a good deal of overlapping of powers, with the same people sometimes appearing on the Chosen Council and the Boyar Council.
They were living in difficult times, for there was a succession of bad harvests and Russia was at war with the Tatars, who were continually sending armed raiders into Russian territory. It was thought that an attack on Kazan would put an end to these raids or at the very least inflict a suitable punishment on them. Accordingly Prince Dmitry Belsky set out at the head of an army against Kazan early in December to be followed a few days later by an army commanded by Ivan, who left Moscow on December 11 and arrived at Vladimir nine days later. He was forced to stop at Vladimir for more than two weeks because the heavy artillery had become bogged down in torrential rains. He reached Nizhni-Novgorod on January 26 with his artillery. Usually at this time of the year the Volga River was thickly covered with ice and the heavy cannon could be dragged over the ice without any difficulty. But the weather turned unseasonably warm, the ice began to melt, and many cannon were lost. Ivan took this as a bad omen and returned to Moscow.
It was not the intention of the Russians to capture Kazan and no serious effort was made to do so. It was enough if they could challenge the Tatar’s army under the city walls and maul it. This was done. Khan Safa Guirey met the Russian vanguard on the Plain of Arsk to the east of the city and was defeated. Prince Dmitry Belsky immediately sent couriers to Moscow to announce the victory. This was the first significant battle to be won during Ivan’s reign and the Russians took heart, seeing themselves as a people with a mission to destroy the vast empire of the Tatars.
Meanwhile they rested on their laurels, for they had nothing to lose by waiting. The Tatar Khanates were at odds with one another. In the following year the Khan of the Crimea sent an expedition against the Khan of Astrakhan, whose army and defense works were pathetically weak. He conquered the city, tore down the walls, and led a large number of prisoners to the Crimea. Thereafter he considered himself the overlord of a vast area stretching between Kazan and the northern slopes of the Caucasus.
The Khan of the Crimea wrote to Ivan, “You were young, but now you are grown up. Let me know what you want: my affection, or bloodshed? If you want my affection, do not send us trifles. Instead, like the King of Poland, who sends us 15,000 gold pieces annually, you should send us substantial gifts. If you desire war, I am prepared to march on Moscow and your land will lie under the hooves of my horses.”
These were serious threats and they were taken seriously. At the Chosen Council it was decided to act firmly. When it was learned that the Crimean Khan was employing captured Russian merchants as domestic servants and ill-using the Russian envoy at his court, they ordered the summary arrest of the Crimean ambassador in Moscow. And when Safa Guirey, Khan of Kazan, died during a drunken quarrel in the spring of 1549, leaving a two-year-old son Utemish Guirey, and the nobles of Kazan sent a delegation to the Khan of the Crimea to ask for military assistance, the Russians succeeded in intercepting the delegation and bringing it in chains to Moscow. Accident and circumstance were gradually bringing Russia into full-scale confrontation with the Tatars.
Another and even more important confrontation was taking place: Ivan was confronting the people and attempting to wrestle with their problems. He was holding long conferences on the necessity of reforms and discussing plans for the complete reorganization of the state. Adashev had appointed himself Examiner of Petitions, which included both personal petitions concerning grievances and various petitions concerning the welfare of the state, and he had come to the conclusion that a great deal was wrong and there was much that needed to be remedied.
During this period we hear very little about Ivan’s personal life or the private affairs of the court. We learn that his deaf-mute brother Yury married the daughter of Prince Dmitry Paletsky on November 3, 1547. The bridegroom’s grandmother, Princess Anna Glinskaya, and his uncle, Prince Mikhail Glinsky, who were living obscurely on their estate in Rzhev, did not appear at the wedding. Believing that Ivan would be very busy superintending the wedding, it occurred to them that this was the time to flee to Lithuania. Ivan possessed a quick and dependable intelligence service, and the news of the escape of the Glinskys reached Moscow two days later. The intelligence service learned that Prince Turantay-Pronsky was also making his way to the Lithuanian frontier. The Tsar’s frontier troops, led by Prince Peter Shuisky, began closing in on the fugitives in the thick forests near the border, and the Glinskys and Prince Turantay-Pronsky did a quick turnabout and raced to Moscow to place themselves under the protection of the Tsar. If asked, they would say that they had been on a pilgrimage to a monastery that happened to be near the Lithuanian border. They thought they would be able to shake off the agents of Prince Shuisky, but almost as soon as they reached Moscow they were arrested. Nothing more is heard about Princess Anna Glinskaya, who was presumably pardoned because she was Ivan’s grandmother, but Prince Glinsky and Prince Turantay-Pronsky were put on trial and would have been condemned to death but for the intervention of Makary. Their lands and property were confiscated, and nobles related to them were compelled to guarantee against heavy fines that they would make no more attempts to escape from Moscow.
The adventures of Prince Glinsky demonstrated the power of Ivan’s intelligence service which could reach out to the farthest limits of the kingdom, acting with extraordinary speed and efficiency. But the Glinskys were a spent force and it scarcely mattered what happened to them. Far more important tasks awaited Ivan and the Chosen Council.
The reformers were at work, seeking new methods, new formulas, new conceptions of the nature of the state. Inevitably many of the reformers came from the priesthood, for they were the best educated. They were often well-traveled, they felt a sense of responsibility to their flocks, and while Sylvester was in a position of authority they had easy access to the Kremlin. Among those who took advantage of the new dispensation were two priests from Pskov, Ermolay Erazm, who was attached to the Church of the Savior by the Pine Forest inside the Kremlin wall, and another who was known simply as Artemy of Pskov. Artemy’s proposals were sweeping. He wanted the great monastic estates broken up and given to the poor, for he was opposed to ownership of land by the monastic foundations. He said the root of all evil was money and great wealth was the devil’s work. The problems of Russia could only be solved if the Tsar displayed the utmost humility toward the people and obeyed God’s commandments. Artemy was close to Sylvester, and we learn that “he was invited to the Tsar’s table.”
Ermolay Erazm approached the problem of government with somewhat more discretion in a pamphlet called “Concerning the government and the economy as seen by the benevolently disposed rulers.” Erazm believed that he had discovered the key to perfect government. He wrote that the Tsar should give primacy to the peasantry, not to the nobility, and submit himself to the higher power of the Church, which represented the will of God and was not bound to earthly interests. Since the peasantry produced food and clothing, and were ultimately responsible for the wealth of the country, they should be taxed lightly. He believed that the petty nobility should live in the towns, thus making it easier for them to mobilize for war, and that the peasants should be permitted to pay their taxes in grain, not in coin or in cattle. Peasants working for landlords should be exempt from all state obligations, by which he seems to have meant that the landlords should pay the peasants’ taxes. With regard to the great monastic foundations Erazm felt that since the monasteries served the purposes of God they should be permitted to keep their lands, but he later changed his view, saying that the ownership of land by monasteries was reprehensible because it prevented the monks from living lives of perfect asceticism. “The monks,” he wrote, “should be as humble as angels.”
Erazm’s blueprint for reform was aimed at improving the material well-being of the peasants and at undermining the powers of the hereditary nobility. He wanted to stop the sale of alcoholic beverages and demanded that all wineshops should be closed. “In this way,” he wrote, “we shall put an end to drunkenness in the land and there will be no murder.” The fact that people murdered one another obviously weighed heavily on him, for he suggested that the manufacture of knives with sharp points should be forbidden by law.
The fact that these sweeping reforms were discussed at the Tsar’s table and in the Chosen Council speaks well for the liberality of the new rulers of Russia. However impractical they were, the reforms were eagerly debated by the people who had the most to lose if they were put into effect. None of those who made suggestions for reforms were punished. By the beginning of 1549 it was becoming clear that some elementary reforms would soon be put into the law books.
Ivan prepared himself for some momentous announcements on the subject of reform by going into a retreat, giving himself up to fasting and prayer. This lasted for several days. The idea was that he should cleanse himself of all sin before inaugurating a new era of reform. The reforms would be introduced first at a great convocation of Church dignitaries and the nobility in the Kremlin Palace and this would be followed a few days later with a convocation of the people on the Red Square. Because so many interests were at stake, the reforms were relatively minor but at least a beginning had been made.
The convocation at the Kremlin Palace opened on February 27, 1549. Ivan acknowledged that during the period of his minority many serious errors had been made by the ruling boyars and princes. Henceforward these errors would cease, for he would no longer tolerate them. He would permit the provincial nobility and the people to lodge complaints against their oppressors and offered to act as judge and final court of appeal. At the same time he appears to have accepted the proposition that the slate must be wiped clean and that there would be no punishments for any crimes committed in the past, for he said, “I have no rancor against any of you for what has happened in the past and I will not punish you, but you must not do these things in future.” One of the immediate results of this convocation was to place the provincial nobility outside the jurisdiction of the governors of the provinces except in matters relating to robbery and manslaughter.
The convocation of the people on the Red Square took place on March 3 with great ceremony. A procession of priests carrying banners and crosses emerged from the Kremlin, followed by the great princes and boyars of the court. The Red Square was crowded with people who had assembled from all the regions around Moscow. A religious service was performed, and then at last the young Tsar stepped onto the Lobnoye Mesto, a stone platform on the highest part of the Red Square and the traditional place for public pronouncements.
The Tsar turned to Makary at the beginning of his speech, begging for his prayers, and then delivered himself of an apology for the crimes committed during the rule of the Glinskys and all the other princes who had usurped the powers of the lawful ruler of Russia. He said:
I was very young when God took away my father and mother. The powerful boyars and nobles, who wished to rule over the country, failed to look after me. In my name they acquired high rank and honors and enriched themselves unjustly and oppressed the people, and there was no one to stop them. In my poor childhood I appeared like someone deaf and dumb. I did not listen to the groans of the poor, and being young and isolated from affairs, I did not reprimand the evil ones.
At this point Ivan turned toward the boyars and princes who were standing close by and cursed them, saying, “You were corrupt and rapacious, fabricators of false justice, and what answer will you give now? How many tears and how much blood has been shed because of you! I am guiltless of these crimes, but God’s judgment awaits you!”
It appears that these words were not part of the prepared speech. They were designed to placate the people. Only a few days before, while addressing the boyars and princes, he had wiped the slate clean. Now, quite suddenly, he saw that there were advantages in pleasing the crowd and showing that he was on their side against the most powerful men in the land. He went on:
God’s people were given to us by God. I beg you to have faith in God and to love me. It is not possible to remedy all the injustices and depredations you have suffered during my childhood as the result of wrongdoings by boyars and government officials. So I beg you to forget your quarrels with one another and the wrongs you have suffered, unless they were great wrongs. Concerning all these matters I shall be your judge and protector in the future. I shall stamp out these wrongdoings and I shall return to you all that has been taken from you.
Afterward it was remembered that the Tsar turned in all directions and bowed to the people.
What was curious about this speech was its theatricality. The drama of the setting, with the Kremlin wall as a backdrop, evidently excited him. Never before had he addressed a mass meeting of ordinary people; nor had he ever played so many roles in so short a space of time. He saw himself as Tsar and Grand Prince, as the aggrieved child, as the dedicated enemy of the boyars, as the protector of the people from the rapacity of the boyars and princely families, and as the man who would return to the people everything that had been wrongly taken from them.
According to the chronicler, Ivan wept and the people wept with him, so moved were they by the fervor of his words. The millennium was at hand, for had he not promised to return all their stolen possessions and punish the guilty? They did not know that he had promised to wipe the slate clean and punish no one.
In his first public appearance Ivan showed himself a consummate actor. He was not lacking in sincerity, for he genuinely believed in all the roles he was playing; and some of these roles were in conflict. He could not simultaneously protect the people against the boyars and the boyars against the people. He could not expropriate the land of the boyars and give it to the people. The Church owned nearly one-third of the land held in private possession in Russia, but he could not expropriate the Church lands without exacerbating his relations with the Church. Inevitably the great reforms would dwindle into little reforms.
Artemy of Pskov and Ermolay Erazm had presented the case for the peasants. Another reformer, Ivan Peresvetov, presented the case for the petty nobility, landowners who received their land on condition that they put a stated number of farm workers into uniform, trained them, and led them into battle. On September 8, 1549, the feast day of the Nativity of the Virgin, Peresvetov placed in the Tsar’s hand his first petition on behalf of the petty nobility. The petition took the form of an allegory about a certain Sultan Mehmet who acquired a powerful state by executing all the princes who committed treason, uttered falsehood, took bribes, or were indolent. Sultan Mehmet placed his faith on the petty nobility, who were paid in coin of the realm raised in taxes. In their military service they received advancement by merit, not by seniority. Peresvetov believed that men of great wealth were incompetent military commanders because they were incurably indolent. He regarded indolence as a crime.
Peresvetov believed implicitly in Russia’s mission to conquer the Tatars and to regain the lost lands in the West. Hence the need for military reforms and the importance he attached to the petty nobility, who were the mainstay of the army. He believed that Russia would sooner or later find herself in conflict with the Ottoman Empire and liberate the Greeks and the Slavonic people in the Balkans. He was one of the first to envisage an imperial destiny for Russia.
Peresvetov’s reforms were not much more helpful than the reforms of Artemy and Ermolay Erazm, but they had the merit of offering practical solutions to practical problems. Neither Ivan nor the ruling boyars were quite ready to reform the basic concepts of the state. The princely families remained enormously powerful, the petty nobility received their land and titles at the pleasure of the Tsar, and the peasants were at the mercy of the landowners. Only the Church was open to immediate reforms, and these could be brought about all the more readily because the Church was divided between the followers of Joseph of Volokolamsk, who believed that the great monasteries should be permitted to own large estates and entire villages, and those who believed that the Church had no business acquiring wealth. Between the Josephites and the rest battle lines had already been drawn.
At the beginning of January 1551 Ivan convoked an assembly of churchmen at the Kremlin Palace. The Boyar Council was invited to attend and so were many court dignitaries. This was known as the Stoglav, meaning “a hundred chapters,” because the laws and recommendations reached by the assembly were included in a hundred articles.
Ivan addressed the assembly in his customary manner, robustly depicting himself as a sinner, demanding rather than seeking forgiveness, and blaming the boyars for the evils that had fallen on Russia. He said:
No one can describe or relate with the tongue of man all the evil things I have done through the sins of my youth. At first God humbled me by taking away my father, who was your shepherd and protector. The boyars and nobles, pretending to wish me well, were seeking power for themselves and because their minds were filled with darkness they dared to arrest my father’s brothers and murder them. On the death of my mother the boyars ruled the Tsardom like despots. Because of my sins, because I was an orphan and young, many people perished in civil strife, and I grew up neglected, without instruction, and accustomed to the evil ways of the boyars, and since that time to the present day how greatly have I sinned before God! How many punishments has God sent down on us!
More than once we attempted to revenge ourselves upon our enemies, but without success. It was beyond my understanding that God was inflicting great punishments on me, and therefore I did not repent my sins and continued to oppress the poor Christians with all manner of afflictions. God punished me for my sins with floods and plague, and even then I did not repent. Then God sent great fires and terror entered my soul, and my bones trembled and my soul was humbled; I was filled with great spiritual emotion and I knew I had sinned. I asked and received forgiveness from the priests and I forgave the princes and boyars.
Ivan’s mea culpa would have been more impressive if it had come from the heart; it is too contrived to be altogether convincing. “Do not spare me for my shortcomings, but boldly reprove my weaknesses so that my soul may live,” he went on. It appeared later that the only shortcomings to be discussed at length were to be found in the Church, and among the nobility, and in the private habits of ordinary citizens. The Church had a horror of the clowns who ran about in front of wedding processions, and they were banned. The Church also disapproved of the musicians who attended wedding feasts and sang bawdy songs; the priests were ordered to leave at the moment when the musicians began to play. The Church was appalled by the existence of soothsayers and fortunetellers, who were henceforth forbidden to ply their trade. Icon painters who led immoral lives were forbidden to paint. The Church gained easy victories for morality but suffered many financial defeats.
In an age demanding reforms the Church was vulnerable. Although Church lands remained inviolable in theory, decrees were issued that severely limited further acquisitions of property. The existing tax privileges were abolished; lands donated to the Church during Ivan’s minority were sequestered by the government; and all lands received by the Church in payment of debts incurred by the petty nobility and by the peasants became government property. The Church could hold land, but was forbidden to increase its holdings. This was not new, for in the time of Ivan’s father and grandfather there were laws forbidding the sale of land to the monasteries in many provinces. Now these laws were reaffirmed. The Chosen Council was determined to limit the financial power of the monasteries.
One of the most important rulings of the assembly of churchmen was designed to introduce universal education in Russian cities. Priests and deacons “well versed in reading and writing” were to establish schools in their own homes and the parents were ordered to pay whatever they could afford. These schools had existed for many years but had no legal basis. Now they were demanded by law. There were as yet no universities and education remained in the hands of the priests.
Another ruling concerned the copying of manuscripts by priestly scribes. So many defective or hastily written manuscripts had come into existence that the assembly gave orders that copies should be carefully compared with the original. Only good translations were permitted, and no copies could be sold until they had been checked for accuracy. Icons too must be accurate, following accepted traditions. Badly painted icons must be destroyed and self-taught icon painters must be taken in hand and taught to paint properly. The Church was taking a much larger role in education, and Ivan himself seems to have been largely responsible for these changes.
The chroniclers have very little to say about the early years of Ivan’s marriage. Anastasia remains a shadowy figure, beautiful, sweet-tempered, generous, deeply religious, the epitome of all the feminine virtues. Very occasionally they offer a brief glimpse of her. Thus we learn that on the night of August 10, 1549, she gave birth to her first child, a daughter, who was christened Anna. Two days later she was sitting up in bed, receiving a delegation led by the Metropolitan and including all the important churchmen, the boyars and their ladies. To all of them she gave sweetmeats with her own hands.
On the following day Ivan led another large group into the bedchamber. Once more the Metropolitan blessed Anastasia and her newborn daughter, and then Ivan asked the guests to sit down while Yuliana, the wife of his brother Yury, served the guests from a table heaped with sweetmeats. That night Ivan invited all his guests to attend a feast, and after dinner they trooped back to the bedchamber to congratulate Anastasia again, to drink wine, and to eat sweetmeats. Then the Metropolitan and clergy took their leave, and the guests returned to the dining hall and continued feasting. There were more feasts and festivities to celebrate the baptism of the princess, which took place a few days later, and largesse was distributed to the poor. Ivan’s joy was brimming over. He did not know that his firstborn would live less than a year.
Meanwhile Ivan and the Chosen Council were preoccupied with the coming war against Kazan. The days of skirmishes were over. More and more it was becoming an article of faith that the power of the Tatars must be destroyed. On November 24, 1549, Ivan set out from Moscow with 60,000 men on his second campaign against Kazan. At Vladimir, which he reached on December 3, he learned that there were dissensions within the army, especially among some of the officers who felt that they had received appointments not commensurate with their rank or ability. Makary made a long speech urging them to put aside their differences and to remember that they were all taking part in a war against the enemy of the Orthodox faith. If they believed they had received commands below their dignity, they should so inform the Tsar who would arrange matters and give them satisfaction. “You should not be separated from one another by pride but bound to one another by love as befits Christian men,” Makary warned them. “In this way you will receive laurels from Heaven and honors from the Tsar.” Then he gave his blessing to the entire army.
The quarrels over appointments were patched up and the army moved on to Nizhni-Novgorod, where Ivan arrived on January 18, 1550. A severe Russian winter had set in, and many of the soldiers froze to death. It took nearly three weeks for the army to reach Kazan along the icy roads, and when at last the heavy guns were posted outside the city and the white tents went up, the military commanders congratulated themselves that they had brought a vast army and overwhelming firepower against the enemy. Ivan, the first Grand Prince of Russia to set eyes on Kazan, took part in the military councils, showed himself to the soldiers, exhorted them to fight until victory was achieved, and hugely enjoyed himself.
It appeared that everything was working for the Russians. Kazan was close to civil war, the Khan was a child, the Regent was unpopular, and many Tatars inside the city were working for Ivan, who possessed a formidable Tatar army of his own, for Khan Shigaley, a claimant to the throne of Kazan, was commanding Tatar troops against the Tatar city. The Russian army was under the overall command of Prince Dmitry Belsky and Prince Vladimir Vorotynsky.
The plans were well laid; everything was ready for an assault on the city; and then the weather changed and all their carefully contrived plans came to nothing. First came tremendous winds, then the weather became unseasonably warm, and then the torrential rains fell. The ice melted, the rivers and streams overflowed their banks, the heavy guns were bogged down in the mud, the powder used in firing the muskets became damp. Soon everyone realized that the siege would have to be lifted. During eleven days of torrential rains the army waited patiently for the weather to change, but it did not change. Food was running out. The artillery captains were wondering how they would be able to dig out their guns. Finally on February 25 it was decided to raise the siege.
Returning to Moscow along the still-frozen surface of the Volga River, Ivan granted himself a pleasure reserved for kings and emperors. About twenty miles from Kazan he observed near the mouth of the Sviaga River a rounded hill with a lake beyond it. With a suite of about thirty boyars and nobles of his court Ivan rode to the top of the hill and announced: “On this hill we shall construct a Christian city. From here we shall attack Kazan and God will deliver the city into our hands.” In this way the fortress town of Sviazhsk came into existence.
The raising of the siege gave encouragement to the Tatars, who were troublesome throughout the summer and the following winter. Ivan spent a month in the late summer on the southern front, awaiting a Tatar attack that never came. In the winter the Nogay Tatars raided the southeastern borders of Russia. An expedition was sent out against them, and this time the weather favored the Russians, for many of the Tatars froze to death and most of the survivors were rounded up. Ivan was so pleased with the success of this expedition that he gave large rewards to the commanders and banqueted them in the Kremlin.
The Khan of Kazan was Utemish Guirey, grandson of the Nogay chieftain Yusuf Mirza, whom Sulayman the Magnificent once described as “the prince of princes.” Khan Utemish was about five years old, and the real power lay in the hands of the Crimean nobleman Ulan Korshchak, who detested the Russians and was prepared to fight to the death to preserve Kazan in Tatar hands. In the spring of 1551 the third expedition against Kazan set out from Moscow under the command of Khan Shigaley, and on May 18 an advance detachment of Russian cavalry under Prince Peter Serebriany fell on the suburbs of Kazan and succeeded in doing considerable damage during a dense fog. The Tatars were taken by surprise, many prisoners were taken, many Russian prisoners in Tatar hands were released, and the Russians were able to celebrate a small victory.
Six days later, on May 24, Khan Shigaley and the main body of the army arrived at the rounded hill overlooking the Sviaga River, to be greeted by Prince Serebriany and his soldiers carrying trophies of victory. The lumber for building the fortress town of Sviazhsk had now arrived, the trees on top of the hill were cut down, the walls of the town were marked out, priests walked in procession, carrying banners and icons and sprinkling holy water. Within four weeks the town was solidly built and ready for occupancy. There was even a wooden church dedicated to the Nativity of the Mother of God. The Cheremiss tribesmen living nearby were suitably impressed by the speed with which the Russians were able to build a fortress so close to Kazan.
Here on the right bank of the Volga many tribesmen of many different origins were living under the suzerainty of the Khan of Kazan. There were Cheremiss, Chuvash, and Mordvins, all speaking Finno-Ugric dialects. The tribal chieftains were aware of the power of the Russian army and swore allegiance to Ivan. Delegations arrived at the Russian camp and were rewarded with charters confirming the chieftains in their positions and exempting the tribesmen from taxes for three years. Administratively they were attached to the new, gleaming town of Sviazhsk. Throughout the summer the tribesmen, traveling in groups of five or six hundred, traveled to Moscow to pay their respects to Ivan and were royally feasted. The chieftains received gifts of armor, horses, money, bolts of cloth, and velvet coats embroidered with gold and with fur trimmings. Ivan was scattering largesse to an extent that amazed the chroniclers who reported they had never seen anything like it. In fact he was acting sensibly, since he intended to use the tribesmen to help him to conquer Kazan. Within a month of Khan Shigaley’s arrival at Sviazhsk, an army of Cheremiss tribesmen was recruited to fight against the city. Outgunned and outnumbered by the Tatars, they were forced to withdraw, leaving a hundred dead and some fifty captured. They had proved their loyalty and thereafter they were used as scouts.
The news that the tribesmen were going over to Ivan brought consternation to the Tatars in Kazan. Ulan Korshchak promised eventual victory, but no one knew how it would come about, for the Tatars had less than 20,000 soldiers, the surrounding countryside was in Russian hands, and the Russians were united under Ivan while the Tatars were divided among themselves. The Russian plan to conquer Kazan by threats, by intimidation, and by negotiation with dissident Tatar nobles was succeeding. Soon even Ulan Korshchak realized he was in danger and with three hundred Crimean followers he fled the city, having first looted the treasury. As the Tatars were crossing the Kama River, the Russian cavalry suddenly fell on them, destroyed their rafts, and captured about fifty of them. Ulan Korshchak was caught, sent to Moscow, and executed.
Tatar embassies arrived in Moscow and offered to accept Ivan’s vassal, Khan Shigaley, as ruler of Kazan. Ivan demanded the surrender of Suyun Beka and her young son Khan Utemish. The ambassadors agreed, but demanded that the right bank of the Volga should be returned to Kazan. On this subject Ivan was adamant; he would return nothing he had conquered. Alexey Adashev was sent to Khan Shigaley to explain the situation. The Khan answered quite intelligently, “If you do this, how shall I be able to rule? Can I demand the affection of my subjects when I have ceded to Russia a large part of their land?” More ambassadors came from Kazan to discuss and argue, but there was nothing to discuss and no arguments were permitted. Ivan had said the right bank belonged to Russia, and so it was.
On August 11 Suyun Beka arrived with her son, having prostrated herself at her husband’s tomb before setting out on the journey. Weeping, she left her weeping people; and although she received all the honors due to her rank, she found no comfort in captivity. She became a hostage for the good behavior of Kazan.
Khan Shigaley entered Kazan and took up his residence in the palace formerly occupied by Suyun Beka and her young son. Three hundred of his own Tatar guards from Kasimov and two hundred Russian musketeers accompanied him. According to the Russian chronicler there was an enthronement ceremony superintended by Prince Yury Bulgakov, a member of an old and powerful boyar family, who represented Ivan and officially proclaimed Khan Shigaley as the rightful Khan of Kazan, but it is more likely that Prince Bulgakov remained in the background for fear of offending Tatar sensibilities. Ivan had taken possession of Kazan but he had not yet convinced the people that he was their rightful sovereign and it was necessary to act cautiously.
A new law went out from the palace: Any Tatar found using Russians as slaves would be executed. Suddenly, from all the crannies of Kazan, Russians captured in Tatar raids emerged to claim their freedom. There were a surprisingly large number of them, and many of them had been woefully ill-used. They were taken to Sviazhsk, where they were clothed and fed and sent back to their towns and villages. We hear of sixty thousand Russian slaves being set free, and although the figure appears to be inordinately large it is not impossible. Later it was learned that the Tatars still had many Russian slaves hidden away in cellars and holes in the ground.
Ivan appeared to have succeeded far better than he expected. He had conquered Kazan without losing a single Russian life; he had annexed the right bank of the Volga and freed countless Russians who had been enslaved by the Tatars, and he had appointed a vassal Khan who appeared to be amenable to his commands. Khan Shigaley was determined that there should be no opposition to his rule, and he therefore invited some of the Tatar nobles to a feast of reconciliation and then massacred them. Seventy were killed, others escaped in the uproar, some made their way to Moscow, and others joined the Nogay horde. The classic method of solving disputes is not always the best, and Kazan was no happier under Khan Shigaley, the creature of Ivan, than under the appointees of the powerful Khan of the Crimea.
Khan Shigaley’s relations with Moscow grew worse, for he kept insisting that without the right bank it was impossible to rule the city. The Tatar nobles who escaped the massacre accused him of being a bloodthirsty monster and said he should be deposed, and if a successor could not be found, then it was up to Ivan to appoint a viceroy. But the viceroy could not take power until the last remnants of opposition within the city had been quashed. Khan Shigaley was ordered to present himself with his nobles at Sviazhsk after first rendering the city defenseless.
The plot was carried out with exemplary cunning. On March 6, 1552, having spiked some of Kazan’s guns and removed many barrels of gunpowder and many muskets secretly to Sviazhsk, Khan Shigaley left Kazan ostensibly to go fishing in a nearby lake. It is unlikely that anyone really believed that he was going fishing, because he was accompanied by a massive retinue which consisted of nobles from his own court of Kasimov, some eighty-four nobles from Kazan, and five hundred Russian musketeers, whose presence gave authority and force to whatever he might say.
Once outside the walls of Kazan Khan Shigaley had the nobles from Kazan surrounded and then addressed them at some length, promising them a just retribution for their sins. “You wanted to kill me and you petitioned the Tsar to have me dethroned because I was treating you so badly, and then you asked that a Viceroy should be appointed instead of me!” he declared. “Well, the Tsar has ordered me to step down from the throne of Kazan, and I am going to him now. We shall settle our score there!” Khan Shigaley was in an ugly mood, and he appears to have hoped that the entire nobility of Kazan would be wiped out at the orders of Ivan. This did not happen, for when they reached Sviazhsk they were told that if they swore allegiance to Ivan, they would be permitted to return and continue to enjoy their high positions. Ivan had evidently concluded that to rule Kazan it would be necessary to use the Tatar nobility.
The way was now clear for the Viceroy, Prince Simeon Mikulinsky, to make his official entry into Kazan, accompanied by his servants and bodyguards and some of the Tatar nobles who swore allegiance to the Tsar at Sviazhsk. In addition he took with him Ivan Sheremetev and Alexey Adashev, who were among the most powerful men in Russia. The Tatar nobles promised Prince Mikulinsky that he would be received with great ceremony and cordiality. He set out in high spirits and was pleased when he encountered a delegation of Tatars from Kazan who greeted him with much flattery and provided him with suitable entertainment. He decided to send on his luggage and servants in advance. Why hurry to enter Kazan when he could enjoy a rest in the meadows in delightful company? In this way the Russians fell into the trap. Some Tatar nobles rode ahead with the luggage and spread the rumor that the Muscovites intended to kill off all the inhabitants of Kazan, and when at last the prince arrived outside the gates, he found them closed against him and there were armed Tatars on the walls.
For a day and a half the Russians were compelled to waste their energies in vain negotiations outside the gates. Kazan was defiant: it would not let the Viceroy in and it would not let the Russian servants out. The people were aroused and determined to defend themselves. Yediger Makhmet, the son of a former Khan of Astrakhan, was now proclaimed Khan of Kazan, after promising the people that not a single Muscovite would ever enter the city gates. Prince Mikulinsky returned to Sviazhsk, and wrote a long dispatch to Ivan describing the latest act of Tatar treachery.
All the carefully contrived negotiations and the intricate plotting of many months had come to nought. Tatar armies were now successfully attacking the Cheremiss on the right bank of the Volga; the Chuvash and the Mordvins were flocking to the Tatar banners. Kazan appeared to be more powerful than ever, threatening Sviazhsk, where there was an epidemic of scurvy and where morale was low. It appeared that the Russian soldiers in this fortress outpost had become incapable of fighting.
Ivan looked for remedies and found none. Yediger Makhmet could not be bribed into vassaldom; he refused to negotiate; he was determined to attack. He had brought with him five hundred armed Nogay Tatars and they succeeded in stiffening the determination of the people of Kazan to remain independent.
The news from Sviazhsk was especially disquieting. Large numbers of women and girls freed from Tatar captivity were enjoying their freedom in the warm spring weather. Horrified priests reported to Moscow that the town was a den of iniquity. They reported that the soldiers were shaving off their beards to please the women, that grown men were going to bed with boys, and that Sviazhsk was both Sodom and Gomorrah.
This dreadful news reached Ivan in May, and he immediately sought the help of Makary, who believed in the power of the saints to remedy all the evils affecting the Russian people. He therefore ordered that all the available relics be gathered together in the Uspensky Cathedral and held a service in which he called upon God to protect the purity and vigor of the soldiers of Sviazhsk. Makary was unable to go to Sviazhsk himself, but sent a priest from the Church of the Annunciation instead. With the priest went bottles of holy water blessed within sight of the relics, certain instructions about the ceremonial purification of the town, and a long sermon. Makary hoped that when they heard the sermon, the soldiers of Sviazhsk would change their ways.
Blessings from the most holy Makary, Metropolitan of all Russia, to the new town of Sviazhsk, to the princes, boyars, voyevodas, and nobles, and to the army, and to all the Christian people!
By the will and mercy of God, by the prayers of the Virgin and the saints, and by the unwavering faith, the prayers and vigorous efforts of our God-loving Tsar Ivan, and by our own blessed meekness, and by the prayers of the entire priesthood and of all Orthodox Christians, God deigned that this town together with its churches should be built. And so it was built and it was filled with people and with good cheer. And then God gave to our God-loving Tsar and to all our God-loving army a joyful and bloodless victory, for Kazan yielded, the people on the right bank submitted to the Tsar, and millions of captive Christians, men, women, youths, girls, and children were freed from the infidels and went joyously and freely to their homes. And all this was due to the mercy of God, the will of the Tsar and your own valor. . . .
All this was merely the opening flourish of a sermon of immense prolixity. The people of Sviazhsk were not let off lightly. Their gluttony, their drinking, their unseemly laughter, their chatter, their shamelessness, their adulteries, their addiction to sodomy and other acts of lewdness, all these were passed in review and solemnly excoriated. Makary was especially incensed because the men had shaved off their beards, “according to the customs of the heretical Latins, although it is foreign to Christian tradition and is sinful.” Shaving off their beards showed that they had forgotten the fear of God and the commandments of the Tsar. Worse still, they had forgotten that God had created man in His image, for God was bearded. Therefore He had sent them a plague of scurvy and permitted many of them to drown in the Volga after drunken orgies. “Let them remember the hour of their deaths and the Last Judgment and the Coming of Christ,” he thundered. And then more mildly: “Let them go to church and listen attentively and with pure thoughts, and let them give to the priests and to the poor such gifts as they can afford from their well-deserved earnings, and they will receive rewards in heaven.”
On May 21, 1552, the Archpriest Timofey left Moscow with the sermon and the holy water for Sviazhsk. It was becoming clear that neither sermons nor holy water would solve the problem of Kazan. The negotiations continued, but were fruitless. There was only one solution—conquest.