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Oprichnina

The oprichnina was a system of emergency measures used by the Russian Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible in 1565-1572 in domestic politics to defeat the boyar-princely opposition and strengthen the Russian centralized state. (The very word “oprichnina” (“opryshnina”) comes from the ancient Russian - “special.” In the 14th – 15th centuries, “Oprishnina” was called the state inheritance allocated to members of the Grand Dynasty with territory, troops, and institution).

Introduction of the oprichnina in the 16th century. Ivan the Terrible was caused by the difficulties of the internal situation in the country, including the contradiction between the political consciousness of the boyars, certain circles of the highest bureaucracy (clerks), the higher clergy, who wanted independence, on the one hand and, on the other, the desire of Ivan the Terrible for unlimited autocracy based on based on the latter’s firm faith in personal God-likeness and God's chosenness, and who set the goal of bringing reality into line with his own convictions. The stubbornness of Ivan the Terrible in achieving absolute power, not constrained by law, custom, or even common sense and considerations of state good, was reinforced by his sharp temper. The appearance of the oprichnina was associated with the bloodless country that began in 1558 with the Livonian War, deterioration of the situation of the people in connection with crop failures, famine, fires caused for many years by extremely hot summers. The people perceived adversity as God's punishment for the sins of the rich boyars and expected the tsar to create the ideal of the state system (“Holy Russia”).

The domestic political crisis was aggravated by the resignation of Ivan the Terrible by the Chosen One (1560), the death of Metropolitan Makarii (1563), who kept the tsar within the framework of prudence, treason and flight abroad of Prince A.M. Kurbsky (April 1564). Deciding to break the brewing opposition, on December 3, 1564, Ivan the Terrible, taking with him the state treasury, personal library, revered icons and symbols of power, together with his wife Maria Temryukovna and children, suddenly left Moscow, leaving for a pilgrimage in the village. Kolomenskoye. He did not return to Moscow, wandered for several weeks in its environs, until he settled 65 miles from the capital in the Alexander settlement. On January 3, 1565, Ivan the Terrible announced his abdication due to “anger” at the boyars, governor’s and commanding people, accusing them of treason, embezzlement , unwillingness to “fight against enemies”. Posadsky announced that he did not have anger and disgrace.

Fearing “troubles” in Moscow, on January 5, a deputation from the boyars, clergy, and other people, headed by Archbishop Pimen, arrived from Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda with a request that the tsar return and “complete the sovereign’s business.” Having torn consent from the Boyar Duma to impose a state of emergency in the state, the tsar put forward the conditions that henceforth he was free to execute and pardon at his discretion and demanded the establishment of the oprichnina . In February 1565, Grozny returned to Moscow. Nearby people did not recognize him: his burning eyes faded, his hair turned gray, his eyes were running, his hands were shaking, his voice was hoarse (After reading about this from V.O. Klyuchevsky, psychiatrist academician V.M. Bekhterev diagnosed four years later as “paranoia” )

A significant part of the territory of the Moscow state was allocated by Ivan the Terrible to a special sovereign inheritance; here, traditional law was replaced by the "word" (arbitrariness) of the monarch. “Sovereigns” were created in the sovereign’s lot: a thought, orders (“cells”), the Tsar’s personal guard (up to 1 thousand oprichniks at the beginning and to the end of the oprichnina — up to 6 thousand). The best lands and more than 20 large cities (Moscow, Vyazma, Suzdal, Kozelsk, Medyn, Veliky Ustyug, etc.) went to the oprichnina; by the end of the oprichnina, its territory amounted to 60% of the Moscow state. The territory not included in the oprichnina was called a zemstvo; she retained the Boyar Duma and "her" orders. From the Zemshchina, the tsar demanded a huge sum of 100 thousand rubles for the device of the oprichnina. However, the king did not limit his power to the territory of the oprichnina.

The composition of the oprichnik court was heterogeneous: among the oprichniks there were princes (Odoevsky, Khovansky, Trubetskoy, etc.), and boyars, foreign mercenaries, just service people. Entering the oprichnina, they renounced the family and generally accepted norms of behavior, took the oath of allegiance to the tsar, including not to communicate with "Zemstvo" people. Their goal was to approach the throne, power and wealth.

Promising the people to "build the kingdom of God on earth" led by him, "the anointed of God," Grozny began with a bloody assertion of the autocracy’s power. He called himself "abbot"; the guardsmen - the “monastic brother”, who in churches, dressed in black at night, performed blasphemous rituals. A symbol of the guardsmen’s service to the king was a dog’s head and broomstick, which meant “gnawing and sweeping treason.” Being a suspicious person, the king began to see this betrayal everywhere and especially did not tolerate honest and independent people who stood up for the persecuted.

Associated with severe discipline and common crimes, the guardsmen were operating in the Zemstvo as on enemy territory, zealously following Grozny’s orders to eradicate “sedition”, abusing unlimitedly the power granted to them. Their actions were aimed at paralyzing the people's will to resist, instilling horror, and achieving unquestioning obedience to the will of the monarch. Cruelties and atrocities in the massacre of people became the norm for the guardsmen. Often they were not satisfied with a simple execution: cut off their heads, cut people into pieces, burned alive. Opals and executions became an everyday occurrence. The provincial nobleman Malyuta Skuratov stood out with particular zeal and fulfillment of royal tricks and decrees (M.L. Skuratov - Belsky), Boyar A.D. Basmanov, Prince A.I. Vyazemsky. In the eyes of the people the guardsmen became worse than the Tatars.

The idea of ??the oprichnina was to take away from the higher nobility a monopoly on key posts, especially in the army. The Oprichny army demanded a lot of land, moreover, a rich, fertile land inhabited by peasants. Where to get it from? The center of Russia was experiencing fierce land hunger. They began to take away the land from the old owners, who were not suitable for the oprichnina service, and give it to the new owners - the guardsmen.

The task of Ivan the Terrible was to weaken the Boyar Duma. The first victims of the guardsmen were representatives of a number of noble families, especially severely the king persecuted his distant relatives, descendants of the Suzdal princes. Hundreds of local feudal landowners were evicted from the territory of the oprichnina. Their lands and the lands of their peasants were transferred to the noblemen-guardsmen, while peasants were often simply killed. The nobles taken to the oprichnina were better than other landlords, endowed with land and serfs, and received generous benefits. By such a land redistribution, indeed, the economic and political influence of the land aristocracy was greatly undermined.

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

In 1570 all the forces of the guardsmen were turned to rebellious Novgorod. In the course of the advance of the tsar’s oprichnina army to Novgorod in Tver, Torzhok, in all settlements, the oprichniks killed and robbed the population. After the defeat of Novgorod lasting six weeks, hundreds of corpses remained, as a result of this campaign, their number was estimated at no less than 10 thousand people, in Novgorod itself the majority of the dead were posad people. All repressions were accompanied by robberies of property of churches, monasteries and merchants, after which the population was taxed with excessive taxes, the same tortures and executions were used to collect them. The number of victims of the oprichnina for 7 years only of its “official” existence amounted to a total of up to 20 thousand (with the total population of the Moscow state by the end of the 16th century about 6 million).

Grozny managed to achieve a sharp increase in autocratic power, to give it the features of an oriental despotism. Zemsky opposition was broken. The economic independence of large cities (Novgorod, Pskov, etc.) was undermined and they never rose to the same level. In an atmosphere of general distrust, the economy could not develop. Of course, the oprichnina in the end could not change the structure of large land ownership, but after Grozny it took time to revive the boyar and princely land tenure necessary at that time for the country's economic development. The division of troops into the oprichnina and the zemstvo became the cause of the decline in the combat effectiveness of the Russian state. Oprichnina weakened the Moscow state, corrupted the upper layer of society. When in 1571 the Crimean Khan Devlet-Giray attacked Moscow, who became robbers and murderers of the guardsmen, did not want to go on a campaign to defend Moscow. Devlet Giray reached Moscow and burned it, and the frightened tsar rushed to flee the capital. The campaign of Devlet-Giray "sobered up" Grozny and served as the reason for the very early official cancellation of the oprichnina: in 1572, Grozny forbade even to mention the oprichnina under penalty of a whip.

However, only the name of the oprichnina disappeared, and the sovereignty of Grozny and repression continued under the name of “sovereign court”, but now they were turned against the oprichniks. In 1575, the tsar, hoping to gain allies in foreign policy, even declared the Tatar serviceman Khan Simeon Bekbulatovich “sovereign of all Russia”, and he called himself the specific prince “Ivan the Moscow”, but already in 1576 regained the royal throne, simultaneously changing almost the entire structure of the oprichnina.

The essence of the oprichnina and its methods contributed to the enslavement of the peasants. In the years of the oprichnina, the landowners generously were given "black" and palace lands, peasant duties increased sharply. Oprichniki took the peasants out of the Zemstvo "by force and not on time." This affected almost all lands, leading to the ruin of land holdings. The area of ??arable land was rapidly declining. (84% in Moscow Uyezd, 92% in Novgorod and Pskov lands, etc.) The devastation of the country played a negative role in the establishment of serfdom in Russia. Peasants fled to the Urals, in the Volga region. In response, in 1581 "reserved summers" were introduced, when "temporarily" the peasants were forbidden to even leave the landlords even on St. George's Day.

From state taxes, pestilence, famine depopulated the city. The exhausted country suffered one after another serious defeats in the Livonian War. By the armistice of 1582, she ceded to the Poles the whole of Livonia, and by agreement with the Swedes, she lost the cities of Yam, Ivan the city, etc.

Historians still argue whether the oprichnina was aiming at the remnants of princely antiquity or was directed against forces that hindered the consolidation of the autocracy of Ivan the Terrible, and the defeat of the boyar opposition was only a byproduct. The question of whether the oprichnina king was abolished altogether and whether her second “surge” was in the 1570s and on other issues was not resolved. It is obvious only one thing that the oprichnina was not a step towards a progressive form of government and did not contribute to the development of the state. This was a bloody reform that destroyed it, as evidenced by its consequences, including the onset of the “turmoil ” in the early 17th century. The dreams of the people and above all the nobility of a strong monarch, "standing for the great truth" were embodied in unbridled despotism.

In essence, there is an endless, meaningless debate between the two forms of simplification of the historical life of Russia.

Those who see the oprichnina only as a blessing usually say: the great far-sighted strategist Ivan IV created a machine to suppress treason, which penetrated deep into the body of Russia. It was a kind of all-seeing effective NKVD of the 16th century. Well, that a lot of people were executed, so much more was executed in Europe. No need to see in Ivan IV a bloody tyrant, the emperor was cruelly slandered.

Those who see only one evil in the oprichnina use a different set of cliches: the bloody mad maniac despotically tortured his people, and the people slavishly kissed his boots, since in Russia, from time to time, all slaves and thieves from top to bottom. Oprichnina was the ugliest variation of the NKVD in the 16th century.

But in the oprichnina — the real, historical oprichnina — there is nothing simple. the oprichnina received support from wide sections of Russian society. She was supported by several clans of ancient Moscow boyars: the Plescheevs, Chobotovs, Kolychev-Umny and, possibly, the Romanov-Yuriev. A minor princely nobility went there to serve, before which the oprichnina opened up brilliant career opportunities.

The oprichnina existed for only seven years, and for almost three years out of seven there were no mass repressions. At the end of 1567, during a campaign against Lithuania, Ivan IV learned of a conspiracy against his life. Whether the conspiracy really existed or it didn’t exist - disputes are still ongoing. The period of "great terror" began only in 1568. His subjects were mortally amazed by an unprecedented spectacle: the monarch killed several hundred guilty and innocent people, including children and women. Then thousands in the winter of 1569/1570. In September 1572, the oprichnina was canceled.