Russia`s Defining Period

At the time that Ivan Grozny crowned himself tsar in 1547 he vowed to make Russia a united country under the command of a mighty ruler. To accomplish this, he recognized several weaknesses within the country that had prevented Russia from becoming more powerful in the past and thus had to be rectified. He first determined that the boyars' power held within the church and central government had to be dissipated. After accomplishing this, he knew that an expanding state needed a reformed military and that this military needed to be funded through an enlarged taxation system. Ivan Grozny's expansion of the state was the defining characteristic of Muscovite Russia. This expansion was accomplished through the repression of the boyars, increasing the size and capability of the army, and introducing new domestic measures and institutions. While this level of expansion was unique to the period, the problems that these reforms caused were issues that Russia had dealt with before and ones that Ivan had been hoping to avoid. One of the greatest threats that the Russian state faced was political instability. This capricious reality was often caused by conflicts originating between boyars for control of respective regions or political power. Ivan Grozny himself witnessed the damage that the boyars could inflict during his early life. While he was still young, Ivan replaced Prince Ivan Shuisky with the more loyal Ivan Bel'sky in an attempt to gain the state control that had been largely held by Shuisky. Ivan wrote of what happened next that, "Shuisky, having united all the people beneath his banner...marched in arms on Moscow" (Kurbsky-Ivan 94). This army proceeded to kill other boyars and even exiled the head of the Metropolitan, all of which weakened the state as well as breeding further animosity between boyar clans. Ivan's reforms in his expansion of state power sought to curb this boyar influence to a minimum in favor of an absolute Tsar, claiming that "Only a tsar with unlimited power can ensure the existence of Russia". He replaced the old system of governance in the towns in which Moscow chose the rulers with a semi-democratic system that allowed citizens to choose their representatives. These representatives were chosen based on merit instead of class or wealth, which excluded many of the boyars who were distrusted by the population. The boyars also saw their influence restricted in the military, where they had traditionally commanded their own retinue. Ivan instead established a standing army that was loyal to the Tsar. In addition, the boyars saw a sharp decline in their political power. Before the rule of Ivan Grozny, it was common for boyars to gift lands to the Orthodox Church in order to accrue favor; Ivan ended this practice outright and instead confiscated many church lands in order to gift them to others who he deemed worthy of the estates. Where the boyars were not suppressed through mandate, they were suppressed through force during the time of Ivan's terror. The most notable instance of this was during the siege of Novgorod in 1570, when for five weeks Ivan had the boyars and their families tortured in all manner of ways and then "ordered that each man be tied to a sled, be dragged to the Volkhov Bridge behind the moving sleds, and be thrown into the Volkhov River." (Punishment of Novgorod) while the women and children were tied together and drowned. Such actions continued throughout the countryside as the boyars were forced to obey every command from the secret police formed by Ivan. They could do little as the power they had built for centuries became engulfed by the voracious state that Ivan had constructed. Ivan made it clear throughout his reign that his dream of a magnificent Russia was not going to be ruined by a group of turbulent nobility. Ivan had a vision from an early age of an immense Russian Empire that spread throughout the globe. To accomplish this, Ivan understood that this required both revenue and a modern army that could defeat any force, even one rivaling the Mongol horde. This force was levied from the common people, with officer positions going to those who were deemed worthy. Technology was stressed as a crucial element and the Russians engineered several formidable war machines including a rudimentary version of the gatling gun called the solok and a mobile wooden fortress known as the guliai Gorod (xenophon-mil.org). Technological prowess was combined with a capable and well trained army of musketeer infantry, missile cavalry, and artillery units. With this army, Ivan successfully conquered the neighboring Tatars of Kazan as well as Astrakhan. These military successes granted the Rus' full control of the Volga River, which made trade substantially more productive in the newly conquered lands. Despite Ivan's reforms, Russian military expansion stagnated during the Livonian War with Poland-Lithuania in the mid 16th century which was fought for control of the Baltic Sea. The Rus' were met with heavy resistance and could claim no more than a few minor fortresses. The effects of this war forced the state to place heavy burdens upon the taxpayers which eventually left the state vulnerable to foreign invasion. While Ivan's new military of regular soldiers was quite successful in the defeat of Kazan, the Livonian War which began in 1558 and lasted until 1583 put increasing pressures on the peasants. In order to fund the war Ivan introduced several new laws that expanded the state while at the same time crippled Russia. Earlier in the Muscovite period, Ivan's father had already introduced the Sudebnik of 1550 which aimed to reduce corruption, bribery, and forgery within local governments by applying more central control. This bureaucratic expansion required a significant amount from the royal coffers in order to pay for the officials, placing a heavier burden on the people. This onus was only increased during the Livonian War as Ivan was compelled to introduce new tax regulations. The practices of barschina, or obligatory labor as a tax in kind, was replaced with a straight monetary tax known as obrok. This obrok was determined by the value of land that lords controlled and thus how much they were forced to tax their peasants. Not only was the system enlarged and reformed, but the government became so desperate for funds for the war and the bureaucracy that taxation rates reached astounding levels. While during the rule of Vasili III peasants paid only three rubles per unit of land, by 1561 the amount had risen to twenty two rubles per unit. The duty of enforcing these new tax levels was granted to the oprichnina a secret police force that was known for its cruelty and brutality. Composed of ordinary people, these oprichniki had an almost unchecked power. "A person from the oprichnina could accuse someone from the [local council] of owing him a sum of money...the latter had to pay him immediately or he was publicly beaten in the marketplace" (Oprichnina 152). These guards were responsible for arresting and many times killing those who did not pay the outrageous taxes asked of the population. They often did so without the tsars permission. "[They] ransacked the entire countryside and all the cities and villages of the barschina, although the Grand Prince had never given them permission to do that" (Oprichnina 153). Many times these guards were awarded confiscated church and boyar lands from which they were free to extract as much wealth as they pleased from their peasants. The effects of this army of terror were devastating; unable to pay, and with no protection from the unrestrained oprichnina, thousands of peasants fled Russia for neighboring lands. In Moscow, during the terror, over 85% of the land laid fallow. Very few were left to collect taxes from in the midst of the Livonian War:Novgorod alone could only muster a 1,110 ruble payment in 1583, while in the 1560s it had sent over 13,000 rubles to the capital. The reduction in population also led to a marked drop in trade since there were very few people to sell goods to and many merchants did not feel themselves safe doing business in Russia. Ivan had attempted to bring great glory to Russia with his expansion of the state, but instead left them defenseless and weak, much like Russia before the invasion of the Mongols several centuries before. Ivan attempted to build a very different Russia from the previous two historical periods of Kiev and the Mongols by building an autocratic state. Many of his reforms constituted a break with previous Russian history while others mirrored mistakes that former Russian Tsars had made. His suppression of the boyars was one such break from history as in previous years the boyars had enjoyed a high class standing within society. Many of these princes had built estates under the Mongol Yoke in return for cooperation with the invaders. Removing their power allowed Ivan unprecedented control over the Russian state. Before Ivan's time, the Russian military had always been adequate, but was no match for the forces of the Khan and the Mongols. The military prowess that Russia invested so heavily in (and paid so dearly for) during Ivan's reign was centered around a strong missile cavalry that composed much of the army. This composition was taken almost directly from the Mongol horde, who used the same type of army to conquer Rus in 1237. Alas, despite his best efforts, Ivan's expansionary policies recreated a problem that had weakened Kievan Rus' and allowed the Mongols to so easily invade several centuries earlier: the problem of internal conflict. The oprichnina were infamous for their brutality which left much of Russia barren and desolate, which was a common problem for the state during the Kievan Rus period when boyars and princes would viciously vie for state control under the rota system. These conflicts decimated much of the Russian population, much like the oprichnina did centuries later. Just like the rota systems divisive and destructive nature left Russia open to Mongol conquest, the devastation caused by the oprichnina was responsible for Russia's weakness at the time of the Tatar invasion. The Muscovite period, specifically during the reign of Ivan Grozny, was definitive in its aggressive expansion of state power. This period witnessed a severe decline in boyar power as had never been possible before. This centralization of state power under the tsar coupled with a local governing council allowed Ivan to enlarge and modernize his military which he planned to use to build Russia into a military superpower. However, the costs of this power necessitated an unprecedented increase in taxation rates and the creation of the much-feared oprichnina that massacred thousands and bled the Russian population to the point of death. The Muscovite period showed the incredible potential of a Russia united under a strong ruler in control of a modern military while also creating another tragic chapter in Russia history.