How many people did ivan the terrible

Historians have not determined whether policy differences, personal animosities, or mental imbalance cause his wrath. In he divided Muscovy into two parts: his private domain and the public realm. For his private domain, Ivan chose some of the most prosperous and important districts of Muscovy. In these areas, Ivan's agents attacked boyars, merchants, and even common people, summarily executing some and confiscating land and possessions.

Thus began a decade of terror in Muscovy. As a result of this policy, called the oprichnina , Ivan broke the economic and political power of the leading boyar families, thereby destroying precisely those persons who had built up Muscovy and were the most capable of administering it. Trade diminished, and peasants, faced with mounting taxes and threats of violence, began to leave Muscovy.

Efforts to curtail the mobility of the peasants by tying them to their land brought Muscovy closer to legal serfdom. In Ivan finally abandoned the practices of the oprichnina. Ivan became a paranoid psychotic in after Anastasia death. He believed that she was poisoned and began imagining that everyone was against him and set about ordering wholesale executions of landowners. Ivan the Terrible took part in murders and massacres. He sacked and burned Novgorod on the basis of unproved accusations of treason and tortured its inhabitants and killed thousands in a pogrom there.

In some cases men were roasted on spits on special frying pans made for the occasion. Novgorod's archbishop was first sewn up in a bearskin and then hunted to death by a pack of hounds. Men, women and children were tied to sleighs, which were then run into the freezing waters of the Volkhov River. A German mercenary wrote: "Mounting a horse and brandishing a spear, he charged in and ran people through while his son watched the entertainment Later the city of Pskov suffered a similar fate.

Ivan also reportedly liked to torture victims modeled on biblical accounts of the sufferings of hell but he also said to have earnestly prayed for his victims before he butchered them. His treasurer, Nikita Funikov, was boiled to death in a cauldron.

His councillor, Ivan Viskovaty, was hung, while Ivan's entourage took turns hacking off pieces of his body. An offending boyar blown to bits after being tied on a barrel of gunpowder.

Ivan the Terrible carryied an iron-pointed staff with him, which he used to beat and bludgeon people who pissed him off. Once, he had peasant women stripped naked and used as target practice by his Oprichniki. Another time, he had several hundred beggars drowned in a lake.

Jerome Horsey wrote how Prince Boris Telupa "was drawn upon a long sharp-made stake, which entered the lower part of his body and came out of his neck; upon which he languished a horrible pain for 15 hours alive, and spoke to his mother, brought to behold that woeful sight.

And she was given to gunners, who defiled her to death, and the Emperor's hungry hounds devoured her flesh and bones". The was impaled under Wassilissa's window. In , Ivan the Terrible killed his oldest son Ivan, possibly on the urging of the Boyar Boris Godunov, who became tsar eight years later.

Ivan killed his son with an iron-pointed stick when he was a young man after becoming enraged father. Ivan was said to be consumed by guilt over the death of his son.

In the last years if his life he joined an order of hermits and died as the monk Johan. He died of poisoning in His brother, the feeble-minded Fedor, became tsar after Ivan's death.

On November 19, Ivan became angry with his son's pregnant wife, because of the clothes she wore, and beat her up. As a result she miscarried. His son argued with his father about this beating. In a sudden fit of rage, Ivan the Terrible raised his iron-tipped staff and struck his son a mortal blow to the head. Ivan's rule was full of contradiction, success and failure. Was his rule bloody? How many Russian people were killed by him? However, this website seems to be the most comprehensive and reliable, and claims that a total of anywhere from 60, to , people could have been killed, depending on the source.

Novgorod Massacre : at least 15, killed the low figure is from Kurbsky. When Ivan the Terrible took control over the city of Pskov, he was responsible for 60, deaths. The Oprichnina, an organization founded by Ivan the Terrible, was probably responsible for at least 40, deaths although this number is debatable.

No one will give you the exact number. Some historians, for example, tells about , or even , killed in Novgorod, but at that time the entire population of the city was about 40, Historian Ruslan G. Even if we are not counting hunger into it. So, the time of Ivan the Terrible was extremely bloody.

What is the measure of his own guilt - is another question and I am afraid, out of the scope of this site - it hasn't one answer. Well, if we put aside the 'legitimate" deaths occurred during wars -- siege of Novgorod which revolted against his rule , capture of Kazan and Astrakhan, war in Livonia etc -- then the number comes down to around , most of whom are listed by Ivan IV himself in his own prayer book which he supposedly kept in order to say proper prayers about all of them.

Almost all of these people were executed after trials and under court orders - then again, courts were very much under tzar's own authority, although there were rare cases when they ruled for the accused. Quite a lot of these people were self-confessed conspirators against him, who at least three times attempted his overthrow and murder. It is also highly likely that his first and favorite wife was poisoned by his enemies.

For comparison, meet some of his "contemporaries": Henry VIII of England around 50, people executed during his reign - heretics, those against his laws on religion, peasants revolting against his barons and his taxes ; Charles IX of France St.

Bartholomew's Day Massacre, around just in one day, and then tens of thousands during next month or so. And of course there are many other cases a bit closer to our era -- like tens of thousands Native Indians killed during "manifest destiny" push to the West in the USA, or hundreds of thousands sic! Again, I am talking about non-military murders and executions -- although one can always argue that many of these killings were made in the "heat of the moment" and should be considered in the historical context.

Great suggestion! Examples are abound everywhere we look Russia would not merge from the chaos until the reign of Peter the Great more than a century later. Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein's two-part epic about the infamous leader, Ivan Groznyi , , is considered one of the finest films of the Soviet era. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!

Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov developed his concept of the conditioned reflex through a famous study with dogs and won a Nobel Prize Award in Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union for more than two decades, instituting a reign of death and terror while modernizing Russia and helping to defeat Nazism.

Nicholas II was the last tsar of Russia under Romanov rule. Ivan Milat was best known as the Backpacker Murderer, convicted of seven murders of backpackers in Australia.

Peter the Great was a Russian czar in the late 17th century, who is best known for his extensive reforms in an attempt to establish Russia as a great nation. Anastasia was the daughter of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II. After she and her family were executed, rumors claimed that she might have survived. Rasputin is best known for his role as a mystical adviser in the court of Czar Nicholas II of Russia.

Peter III was emperor of Russia for a mere six months in before he was overthrown by his wife, Catherine the Great, and assassinated in Ivan the Terrible was the first tsar of all Russia. The organisation was disbanded and many of its leaders were executed in The Oprichnina region itself was abolished in , after which it became an offence punishable by death even to mention the word.

One of the last brutal acts of his reign occurred in when, upon encountering his heavily pregnant daughter-in-law in a state of undress, he beat her so severely that she miscarried. Ivan, who always carried a sharpened baton around which he used to to beat anyone who displeased him, hit his son over the head so hard that he collapsed and died several days later. Nobody, not even his own family, was safe from Ivan the Terrible. Ivan died from a stroke while playing chess with a close friend in at the age of fifty-three.

Read more about: British History 9 facts about 'the Anarchy': England's dark period of lawlessness and war by James Brigden. From butchering his subjects to slaughtering the citizens of the towns and cities he conquered to the killing of his own son, Ivan was terrible in both the old and new definition of the word.

He had started as a reasonable ruler, but his escalating paranoia and the deterioration of his mental health from onwards turned him into a monstrous tyrant who left death, destruction and economic ruin in his wake. Yes, Ivan the Terrible truly was as terrible as his nickname suggests. Why was Ivan so terrible? Most Recent. A history of the poppy: Why we wear them as a symbol of remembrance and other facts.

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