Oprichnina
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Oprichnik Forces Russian: Опричные войска, romanized: Oprichnie voyska | |
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Active | 1565—1572; de jure to 1584 |
Country | Tsardom of Russia |
Allegiance | Tsar |
Size | 6,000 |
Nickname(s) | Oprichnina |
The oprichnina (Russian: опри́чнина, IPA: [ɐˈprʲitɕnʲɪnə]) was a state policy implemented by Tsar Ivan the Terrible in Russia between 1565 and 1572. The policy included mass repression of the boyars (Russian aristocrats), including public executions and confiscation of their land and property. In this context the term can also refer to:[1][2]
- The notorious organization of six thousand
- The portion of Russia, ruled directly by Ivan the Terrible, where his Oprichniki operated.
- The corresponding period of Russian history.
The term oprichnina, which Ivan coined for this policy, derives from the Russian word oprich (Russian: опричь, apart from, except).
Causes
In 1558, Tsar Ivan IV started the
In 1564, Prince Andrey Kurbsky defected to the Lithuanians and commanded the Lithuanian army against Russia, devastating the Russian region of Velikiye Luki.
Tsar Ivan began to suspect other aristocrats of readiness to betray him.[5]
Historians Vasily Klyuchevsky (1841–1911) and Stepan Veselovsky (1876–1952) explained the oprichnina in terms of Ivan's paranoia and denied larger social aims for the oprichnina.[6] However, historian Sergey Platonov (1860–1933) argued that Ivan IV intended the oprichnina as a suppression of the rising boyar aristocracy.[7] Professor Isabel de Madariaga (1919–2014) expanded this idea to explain the oprichnina as Ivan's attempt to subordinate all independent social classes to the autocracy.[8]
Establishment
On December 3, 1564, Ivan IV departed Moscow on pilgrimage. While such journeys were routine for the throne, Ivan neglected to set in place the usual arrangements for rule in his absence. Moreover, an unusually large personal guard, a significant number of boyars, and the treasury accompanied him.[9]
After a month of silence, Ivan finally issued two letters from his fortifications at
Ivan IV agreed to return on condition that he might prosecute people for treason outside legal limitations. He demanded the right to execute and confiscate the land of traitors without interference from the boyar council or from the church. To pursue his investigations, Ivan decreed the establishment of the oprichnina (originally a term for land left to a noble widow, separate from her children's land). He also raised a levy of 100,000 rubles to pay for the oprichnina.[12]
Organization
The oprichnina consisted of a separate territory within the borders of Russia, mostly in the territory of the former
Ivan also stipulated the creation of a personal guard known as the oprichniki. Originally it was a thousand strong. The noble oprichniki Aleksei Basmanov and Afanasy Viazemsky oversaw recruitment. Nobles and townsmen free of relations to the zemshchina or its administration were eligible for Ivan’s new guard.[14] Henri Troyat has emphasized the lowly origin of the oprichnina recruits.[15] However, historian Vladimir Kobrin has contested that a shift to the lower classes constituted a late development in the oprichnina era. Many early oprichniki had close ties to the princely and boyar clans of Russia.[16]
Territorial divisions under the oprichnina led to mass resettlement. When the property of zemshchina nobles fell within oprichnina territory, oprichniki seized their lands and forced the owners onto zemshchina land. The oprichnina territory included primarily service estates.
The oprichniki enjoyed social and economic privileges under the oprichnina. While zemshchina boyars lost both heredity and service land, the oprichniki retained hereditary holdings that fell in zemshchina land. Moreover, Ivan granted the oprichnina the spoils of a heavy tax levied upon the zemshchina nobles. The rising oprichniki owed their allegiance to Ivan, not heredity or local bonds.[19]
Operations
The first wave of persecutions targeted primarily the princely clans of Russia, notably the influential families of Suzdal. Ivan executed, exiled, or tortured prominent members of the boyar clans on questionable accusations of conspiracy. 1566 saw the oprichnina extended to eight central districts. Of the 12,000 nobles there, 570 became oprichniks, and the rest were expelled. They had to make their way to the zemshchina in mid-winter; peasants who helped them were executed.
However, the zemskii sobor also forwarded a petition to end the oprichnina. The Tsar reacted with a renewal of the oprichnina terror. He ordered the immediate arrest of the petitioners and executed the alleged leaders of the protest. Further investigations tied Ivan Federov, leader of the zemshchina duma, to a plot to overthrow Tsar Ivan; Federov was removed from court and executed shortly thereafter.[21]
The overthrow of King
Ivan IV and an oprichniki detachment instituted a month-long terror in Novgorod (the Massacre of Novgorod). The oprichniki raided the town and conducted executions among all classes. As the Livonian campaign constituted a significant drain on state resources, Ivan targeted ecclesiastical and merchant holdings with particular fervor. After Novgorod, the oprichniki company turned to the adjacent merchant city Pskov. The city received relatively merciful treatment. The oprichniki limited executions and focused primarily upon the seizure of ecclesiastical wealth. According to a popular apocryphal account, Nicholas Salos of Pskov the fool-for-Christ prophesied the fall of Ivan and thus motivated the deeply religious Tsar to spare the city. Alternatively, Ivan may have felt no need to institute a terror in Pskov due to his prior sack of the city in wake of the Izborsk treason. The dire financial condition of the state and the need to bolster the war treasury likely inspired the second raid.[22]
Ivan IV maintained the heightened terror as he returned to Moscow. A series of particularly brutal open-air executions took place in Moscow's Pagan Square.[citation needed] The persecutions began to target the oprichnina leadership itself. The tsar had already refused Basmanov and Viazemsky participation in the Novgorod campaign. Upon his return, Ivan condemned the two to prison, where they died shortly thereafter. Pavlov links Ivan's turn against the higher echelons of oprichniki to the increasing number of the lower-born among their ranks. Ivan may have reacted to the apparent discontent among the princely oprichniki over the brutal treatment of Novgorod. Furthermore, class disparity may have set the lower recruits against the princely oprichniki. As Ivan already suspected the older oprichniki on the issue of Novgorod, the lower-born recruits may have advanced the new persecutions to increase their influence in the oprichnina hierarchy.[23]
Disbandment
1572 saw the fall of the oprichnina state structure. The zemshchina and oprichnina territories were reunited and placed under rule of a reformed Boyar Council, which included members from both sides of the divided apparatus.[24]
Scholars have cited diverse factors to explain the dissolution of the oprichnina. When the
Legacy
Scholar Robert O. Crummey and Platonov have emphasized the social impact of the mass resettlements under the oprichnina. The division of large estates into smaller oprichnik plots subjected the peasants to a stricter landowning dominion. Furthermore, a new itinerant population emerged as state terror and the seizure of lands forced many peasants from their lands. The increase in itinerants may have motivated the ultimate institutionalization of serfdom by the Russian throne.[26] The oprichnina coincided with the major social and economic crisis in Russia and, according to some contemporary and historical accounts, contributed to it.[27]
Historian Isabel de Madariaga has emphasized the role of the oprichnina in the consolidation of aristocratic power. Resettlement drastically reduced the power of the hereditary nobility. Oprichniki landowners who owed their loyalty to the throne replaced an aristocracy that might have evolved independent political ambitions.[28] Alternatively, Crummey has summarized the social effects of the oprichnina as a failure. From this perspective, the oprichnina failed to pursue coherent social motives and instead pursued a largely unfocused terror.[29] Such interpretations are derived from the 1960s works by Ruslan Skrynnikov who described the Oprichnina as the reign of terror designed to root out every possible challenge to the autocracy:
Under conditions of mass terror, universal fear and denunciations, the apparatus of violence acquired an entire overwhelming influence on the political structure of the leadership. The infernal machine of terror escaped from the control of its creators. The final victims of the Oprichnina proved to be all of those who had stood at its cradle.[30]
Cultural depictions
A fantasy variation on the Oprichnina appears in the Japanese light novel franchise Gate. It retains the name, purpose, activities, dog head motif, and even the use of brooms from the historic original.
Vladimir Sorokin's 2006 novel Day of the Oprichnik envisions a dystopian near future in which the Russian monarchy and oprichnina have been reestablished. The novel's oprichnina drive red cars with severed dog heads as hood ornaments, rape and kill dissenting nobles, and consume massive amounts of alcohol and narcotics, all while praising the monarchy and the Russian Orthodox Church.
See also
- Crisis of the late 16th century in Russia
- Cheka
- Reign of Terror
- Al-Ahbash
- Anti-clericalism in France
- NKVD
- KGB
- Okhrana
- Burning of books and burying of scholars
- literary inquisition
- Great Purge
References
- The Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
- ^ Walter Leitsch. "Russo-Polish Confrontation" in Taras Hunczak, ed. "Russian Imperialism". Rutgers University Press. 1974, p. 140
- ISBN 5-227-00437-4, p. 21)
- ^ Manaev, G. (2019-01-07). "The madness of 3 Russian tsars, and the truth behind it". Russia Beyond the Headlines. Retrieved 2020-01-29.
- ^ R. Skrynnikov, Ivan Grosny, M., Science, 1975, pp. 93–96
- ^ Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie, Ivan the Terrible (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2003), 123.
- ^ S.F. Platonov, Ivan the Terrible, trans. Joseph L. Wieczynski (Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1986), 101–02.
- ^ Isabel de Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia (London: Yale University Press, 2005), 364–65, 368–70.
- ^ Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie, Ivan the Terrible (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2003), 107.
- ^
Compare:
ISBN 9780300119732. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
The Metropolitan [...] sent Archbishop Pimen and Achimandrite Levkii as his envoys to Aleksandrovskaia Sloboda [...]. [...] The envoys from Moscow reached Aleksandrovskaia Sloboda on 5 January 1565, followed by a long trail of nobles, armed men, merchants, townspeople and the common people of the city. [...] The Tsar received first the ecclesiastics, then the boyars [...].
- ^ Isabel De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia (London: Yale University Press, 2005), 176–78; Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie, Ivan the Terrible (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2003), 112–13.
- ^ Isabel de Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, 179–80.
- ^ Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie, Ivan the Terrible (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2003), 109–11, 140.
- ^ Isabel De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia (London: Yale University Press, 2005), 182–83; Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie, Ivan the Terrible (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2003), 112–13.
- ^ Henri Troyat, Ivan the Terrible, trans. E.P. Dutton (London: Phoenix Press, 2001), 129–30.
- ^ Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie, Ivan the Terrible (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2003), 113.
- ^ Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie, Ivan the Terrible (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2003), 143–45; S.F. Platonov, Ivan the Terrible, trans. Joseph L. Wieczynski (Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1986), 130.
- ^ Isabel de Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, p. 182
- ^ Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie, Ivan the Terrible (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2003), 113.
- ^ Isabel de Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, p. 183
- ^ Isabel De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia (London: Yale University Press, 2005), 202–08, 231–32; Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie, Ivan the Terrible (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2003), 130–34.
- ^ Isabel De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia (London: Yale University Press, 2005), 242–50; Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie, Ivan the Terrible (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2003), 147–52.
- ^ Isabel De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia (London: Yale University Press, 2005), 255–60; Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie, Ivan the Terrible (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2003), 155–56, 161–62.
- ^ Isabel De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia (London: Yale University Press, 2005), 282; Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie, Ivan the Terrible (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2003), 166–67.
- ^ Isabel De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia (London: Yale University Press, 2005), 278–79; Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie, Ivan the Terrible (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2003), 162–67.
- ^ Robert O. Crummey, "Ivan IV: Reformer or Tyrant?" in Reinterpreting Russian History, ed. Daniel H. Kaiser and Gary Marker (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 162–63; S.F. Platonov, Ivan the Terrible, trans. Joseph L. Wieczynski (Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1986), 114–19.
- ^ Колычева, Евгения Ивановна (1987). Аграрный строй России XVI в. (in Russian). Наука. p. 181.
- ^ Isabel De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia (London: Yale University Press, 2005), 368–70.
- ^ Robert O. Crummey, "Ivan IV: Reformer or Tyrant?" in Reinterpreting Russian History, ed. Daniel H. Kaiser and Gary Marker (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 162.
- ISBN 9780520042827. p. 315.
Further reading
- Walter Leitsch. "Russo-Polish Confrontation" in Taras Hunczak, ed. "Russian Imperialism". Rutgers University Press. 1974, p. 140
- ISBN 5-227-00437-4, page 21)
External links
- The New York Times Book Review - A Dystopian Tale of Russia’s Future (2011/03/13)