Iván the Terrible. (1530-1584.)
Iván the Terrible united the qualities of a great ruler with those of a most cruel tyrant. In his long epistles to Kúrbski he develops a strong sarcastic vein and defends himself with specious arguments, quoting copiously from the Bible and the Church Fathers. He denies his cruelty, but admits the execution of traitors, who, in his case, form an enormous category.
LETTER TO PRINCE KÚRBSKI
Our God, the Trinity, who has existed since eternity but now as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, has neither beginning nor end; through Him we live and move about, through Him kings rule and the mighty write laws. By our Lord Jesus Christ the victorious standard of God’s only Word and the blessed Cross which has never been vanquished have been given to Emperor Constantine, first in piety, and to all the orthodox tsars and protectors of orthodoxy and, in so far as the Word of God has been fulfillen, they, in eagle’s flight, have reached all the godly servants of God’s Word, until a spark of piety has fallen upon the Russian realm. The autocracy, by God’s will, had its origin in Grand Prince Vladímir, who had enlightened all Russia through the holy baptism, and the great Tsar Vladímir Monomákh, who had received memorable honours from the Greeks, and the valiant great Tsar Alexander Névski, who had obtained a great victory over the godless Germans, and the praiseworthy great Tsar Dmítri, who had obtained a great victory over the Hagarites beyond the Don, then it passed to the avenger of wrongs, our ancestor, the great Tsar Iván, the gatherer of the Russian land from among the ancestral possessions, and to our father of blessed memory, the great Tsar Vasíli, until it reached us, the humble sceptre-bearer of the Russian empire.
But we praise God for the great favour He has shown me in not permitting my right hand to become stained by the blood of my race: for we have not snatched the realm from anyone, but by the will of God and the blessing of our ancestors and parents, were we born in the realm, were brought up there and enthroned, taking, by the will of God and the blessing of our ancestors and parents, what belonged to us, and not seizing that which was not ours. Here follows the command of the orthodox, truly Christian autocrat, the possessor of many kingdoms,—our humble, Christian answer to him who was an orthodox, true Christian and a boyár of our realm, a councillor and a general, but now is a criminal before the blessed, vivifying cross of the Lord, a destroyer of Christians, a servant of the enemies of Christianity, who has departed from the divine worship of the images and has trodden under foot all sacred commands, destroyed the holy edifices, vilified and trampled the holy vessels and images, who unites in one person Leo the Isaurian, Constantine Kopronymos and Leo of Armenia,—to Prince Andréy Mikháylovich Kúrbski, who through treachery wanted to become a ruler of Yarosláv.
Wherefore, O Prince, if you regard yourself to have piety, have you lost your soul? What will you give in its place on the day of the terrible judgment? Even if you should acquire the whole world, death will reach you in the end! Why have you sold your soul for your body’s sake? Is it because you were afraid of death at the false instigation of your demons and influential friends and counsellors?...
Are you not ashamed before your slave Váska Shibánov, who preserved his piety and, having attached himself to you with a kiss of the cross, did not reject you before the Tsar and the whole people, though standing at the gate of death, but praised you and was all too ready to die for you? But you did not emulate his devotion: on account of a single angry word of mine, have you lost not only your own soul, but the souls of all your ancestors: for, by God’s will, had they been given as servants to our grandfather, the great Tsar, and they gave their souls to him and served him up to their death, and ordered you, their children, to serve the children and grandchildren of our grandfather. But you have forgotten everything and traitorously, like a dog, have you transgressed the oath and have gone over to the enemies of Christianity, and, not considering your wrath, you utter stupid words, hurling, as it were, stones at the sky....
We have never spilled blood in the churches. As for the victorious, saintly blood,—there has none appeared in our land, as far as we know. The thresholds of the churches: as far as our means and intelligence permit and our subjects are eager to serve us, the churches of the Lord are resplendent with all kinds of adornments, and through the gifts which we have offered since your satanic domination, not only the thresholds and pavements, but even the antechambers shine with ornaments, so that all the strangers may see them. We do not stain the thresholds of the churches with any blood, and there are no martyrs of faith with us now-a-days.... Tortures and persecutions and deaths in many forms we have devised against no one. As to treasons and magic, it is true, such dogs everywhere suffer capital punishment....
It had pleased God to take away our mother, the pious Tsarítsa Helen, from the earthly kingdom to the kingdom of heaven. My brother George, who now rests in heaven, and I were left orphans and, as we received no care from any one, we laid our trust in the Holy Virgin, and in the prayers of all the saints, and in the blessing of our parents. When I was in my eighth year, our subjects acted according to their will, for they found the empire without a ruler, and did not deign to bestow their voluntary attention upon us, their master, but were bent on acquiring wealth and glory, and were quarrelling with each other. And what have they not done! How many boyárs, how many friends of our father and generals they have killed! And they seized the farms and villages and possessions of our uncles, and established themselves therein. The treasure of our mother they trod under foot and pierced with sharp sticks, and transferred it to the great treasure, but some of it they grabbed themselves; and that was done by your grandfather Mikháylo Tuchkóv. The Princes Vasíli and Iván Shúyski took it upon themselves to have me in their keeping, and those who had been the chief traitors of our father and mother they let out of prison, and they made friends with them. Prince Vasíli Shúyski with a Judas crowd fell in the court belonging to our uncle upon our father confessor Fedór Mishúrin, and insulted him, and killed him; and they imprisoned Prince Iván Fedórovich Byélski and many others in various places, and armed themselves against the realm; they ousted metropolitan Daniel from the metropolitan see and banished him: and thus they improved their opportunity, and began to rule themselves.
Me and my brother George, of blessed memory, they brought up like vagrants and children of the poorest. What have I not suffered for want of garments and food! And all that against my will and as did not become my extreme youth. I shall mention just one thing: once in my childhood we were playing, and Prince Iván Vasílevich Shúyski was sitting on a bench, leaning with his elbow against our father’s bed, and even putting his foot upon it; he treated us not as a parent, but as a master ... who could bear such presumption? How can I recount all the miseries which I have suffered in my youth? Often did I dine late, against my will. What had become of the treasure left me by my father? They had carried everything away, under the cunning pretext that they had to pay the boyár children from it, but, in reality, they had kept it back from them, to their own advantage, and had not paid them off according to their deserts; and they had also held back an immense treasure of my grandfather and father, and made it into gold and silver vessels, inscribing thereupon the names of their parents, as if they had been their inheritance.... It is hardly necessary to mention what became of the treasure of our uncles: they appropriated it all to themselves! Then they attacked towns and villages, tortured the people most cruelly, brought much misery upon them, and mercilessly pillaged the possessions of the inhabitants....
When we reached the age of fifteen, we, inspired by God, undertook to rule our own realm and, with the aid of almighty God, we ruled our realm in peace and undisturbed, according to our will. But it happened then that, on account of our sins, a fire having spread, by God’s will, the royal city of Moscow was consumed. Our boyárs, the traitors whom you call martyrs, whose names I shall purposely pass over in silence, made use of the favourable opportunity for their mean treachery, whispered into the ears of a stupid crowd that the mother of my mother, Princess Anna Glínski, with all her children and household, was in the habit of extracting men’s hearts, and that by a similar sorcery she had put Moscow on fire, and that we knew of her doings. By the instigation of these our traitors, a mass of insensate people, crying in the manner of the Jews, came to the apostolic cathedral of the holy martyr Dimítri of Selún, dragged out of it our boyár Yúri Vasílevich Glínski, pulled him inhumanly into the cathedral of the Assumption, and killed the innocent man in the church, opposite the metropolitan’s place; they stained the floor of the church with his blood, dragged his body through the front door, and exposed him on the market-place as a criminal,—everybody knows about this murder in the church. We were then living in the village of Vorobévo; the same traitors instigated the populace to kill us under the pretext (and you, dog, repeat the lie) that we were keeping from them Prince Yúri’s mother, Princess Anna, and his brother, Prince Mikhaíl. How is one not to laugh at such stupidity? Why should we be incendiaries in our own empire?...
You say that your blood has been spilled in wars with foreigners, and you add, in your foolishness, that it cries to God against us. That is ridiculous! It has been spilled by one, and it cries out against another. If it is true that your blood has been spilled by the enemy, then you have done your duty to your country; if you had not done so, you would not have been a Christian but a barbarian:—but that is not our affair. How much more ours, that has been spilled by you, cries out to the Lord against you! Not with wounds, nor drops of blood, but with much sweating and toiling have I been burdened by you unnecessarily and above my strength! Your many meannesses and persecutions have caused me, instead of blood, to shed many tears, and to utter sobs and have anguish of my soul....
You say you want to put your letter in your grave: that shows that you have completely renounced your Christianity! For God has ordered not to resist evil, but you renounce the final pardon which is granted to the ignorant; therefore it is not even proper that any mass shall be sung after you. In our patrimony, in the country of Lifland, you name the city of Volmir as belonging to our enemy, King Sigismund: by this you only complete the treachery of a vicious dog!...
Written in our great Russia, in the famous, royal capital city of Moscow, on the steps of our imperial threshold, in the year from the creation of the world 7072, the fifth day of July.