Ivan The Terrible Research Paper

742 Words3 Pages
How Ivan the Terrible Came to Be Ivan IV was only three years old when his father died in 1533, so his mother ruled Russia in his name. This haughty woman ran the country as she wish, ignoring the opinions of the boyars. Five years in to her reign, she suddenly dies, poisoned, or so her son believed. Publicly, the boyars bowed before the Young prince Ivan. Privately, they bullied and neglected him while they schemed against each other to control the throne. Greed and suspicion ruled. The powerful boyars used their influence too funnel wealth to family and friends. They imprisoned, exiled, or murdered rivals who got in their way. Surrounded by cruelty, Ivan learned to be cruel. He like to ride horse back through the streets of Moscow, slashing…show more content…
Ivan himself planned every detail of the coronation and made sure the ceremony was full of pomp and pageantry, Ivan’s reign got off to a rocky start. The teenage tsar did not tolerate any challenge or criticism. When a group came to complain about the governor he had appointed for their city, Ivan reportedly poured boiling wine on them and burned their beards off with a candle. Thus, he became known as Ivan the…show more content…
He saw traitors everywhere, especially among the boyars. Anyone who managed to displease him felt the force of his wrath. Once he invited several of his advisors on a winter trip to their country. Halfway there, he stripped them of their royal robed and forced them to return to Moscow naked, on foot, in the snow. Ivan’s brutal rule became a reign of fear. The tsar’s black-hooded secret police roamed Russia on black horses. They terrorized the country, torturing and killing Ivan’s subjects by the hundreds. Meanwhile Ivan poured his energy into inventing horrible new tortures. No one knew who might next fall victim to the tsar’s wrath. In a rage, Ivan even struck and killed his oldest son. By the end of Ivan’s reign, a huge portion of the boyar class lay dead. The survivors lived in fear. Russia’s serfs sent their lives tied to the land. No one dared to question any decision of the tsar. His grip on Russia was cruel, tight, and all-powerful. When Ivan the Terrible died in 1584, he left behind a vast empire, greatly expanded by his military victories. But his reign of terror left Russia smaller in spirit and largely isolated from the growth of thought and culture in the

More about Ivan The Terrible Research Paper

Open Document