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The Oprichnina (1565 - 1572) was one of the saddest and most terrifying episodes in Russian history, this fire of cruelty, formed by Tsar Ivan IV (also known as Ivan the Terrible) with the purpose of strengthening of his reign with autocracy and preventing of noble interference, cost thousands of human lives to the country. He included to the Oprichnina the best and the most valuable lands of Russia, such as Moscow and some large central cities that covered about 60 % of the country. The rest of the lands was named as the Zemshchina, which had a separated governing body as Zemskiy Soon and was ruled by boyars. The Oprichnina was administrated and controlled by terroristic Army of oprichnina, selected by Ivan himself from young noblemen to implement his policy of terror against opposition. At the beginning of his reign in Russia in 1547, Ivan introduced a number of reforms with the aim of reorganizing the country and strengthening of both the military and his own power.
His concrete intentions with the Oprichnina can be viewed in different ways: creating of an isolated empire to be ruled by fear, a concerted attempt to destroy the boyars and take over their lands, or even as an experiment in governing. In practice, the Oprichnina gave Ivan the chance to solidify his power, but it brought to terrible results, like thousands of killed people and devastated area. After the first ten years of Ivans reign, his power as the Tsar had come under attacks from boyar, fired by his own temperament and failure in wars in the North. In 1553 Ivan had fallen critically ill and wanted the ruling boyars to give oaths of loyalty to his 1. 5 years old son, Dimitrii; the majority refused, understanding the danger of probable fights for the reign in absence of an adult gerent.
When Ivans wife Anastasia died, he suspected poisoning, and sent two of his previously loyal advisors to a rigged trial. Ivan implemented some critical political reforms, made changes in Rada (government), which evoke protests and even acts of betrayal from boyars side, so Ivan was growing to hate them. The reign of terror initiated by Ivan as the Oprichnina proved far more dangerous to the stability of the country than the danger that it was designed to suppress. As a conclusion, the Oprichnina of Ivan could have two main objectives: the elimination of the political influence of the landed aristocracy and the destruction of treason. Burning with a desire of lowering of the strength of his boyar opponents, Ivan established his own control over the most strategically and economically important lands and formed his own police, the oprichnina, who could travel freely all around the country, making plunders and executions. The oprichnina were the main instrument demonstrating Tsars power during the Oprichnina; they had right to judge and execute.
Each perspective member of Army of oprichnina was picked from the military or society levels and carefully questioned and checked. As a member of the oprichnina, one received land and money. The main criteria were infinite loyalty to the Tsar and determination against the opposition. The Army of oprichnina has grown from 1000 at the beginning of the Oprichnina to 6000 of members at its peak time.
The oprichnina were ruled directly by Ivan or his officers, they had to visit different places around the country, both in the Oprichnina and Zemshchina, and punish traitors. The oprichnina always were dressed in black clothes, had black horses and carriages. As their symbols they often carried brooms and real dog's heads, representing the 'sweeping away' of betrayers and 'snapping at the heels' of their enemies. They put on promiscuous massacre in the country, the most terrible sorts of murders, people were impaled and mutilated, rapes, whipping and other torture were all around. In Moscow Ivan built a legendary Oprichnina Palace, where he personally, being an oprichnik too, supervised tortures of prisoners with joy of revenge for betrayals.
Drowned in total cruelty and blood, soon many oprichnina leaders began blaming each other of treason, and a great deal of Zemshchina officials were taken to the Army as replacements. During the time of the Oprichnina, two periods can be spotted, which display growing of the terror and increasing of Ivan's paranoiac obsessions. In the first period, from 1565 to 1566, he exiled to Kazan city some formerly loyal boyars, impounded all their wealth and properties and gave theis lands for the disposal of his oprichnina. A year or two later Ivan granted a pardon to some of the exiled, but they had nothing left to be returned to.
When taken into the Oprichnina all the little sub ordinators, princes and boyars, were categorized according to birth. They gave a promise to have no any sort of interaction and contact with the zemskie people. All suspicious, guilty or just subjected to be killed with no proper reason people from the Oprichnina or Zemshchina were first whipped on the streets or in the marketplace until they signed over all their property, if they had any, to the Treasury of the Tsar. Those who were supposed not to have recourses to be expropriated were tortured and murdered on public, or in their homes, no matter asleep or awake, after that bodies used to be thrown outside to the streets and lie there day and night as a terrible sign warning to other people. As a rule there was a note pinned to the clothes of the corpse, indicating the reason of the death of a particular person. During the second period of the Oprichnina, all Russia was brought to total disarray, horror and devastation.
The Oprichnina was spread in certain territories, pieces of the countrys lands surrounded by the old boyar domains which were forming the Zemshchina. Ivan's torturing of victims was growing worse and worse. Many were drowned, chocked off or strangled, or flogged to death; some were impaled, others roasted on a spit, still others fried in large skillets. Many boyars and other members of the gentry perished in this terror, some being executed on public with intended and symbolic cruelty. Among those killed was the Metropolitan Filing Kolychev, who had criticized the Oprichnina, and Prince Vladimir Staritsky, chosen as the candidate to replace Ivan had he died from pyrexia in 1553. These features of brutality are characteristic for the second and most lethal stage of the Oprichnina.
In 1570 the Army of oprichnina was led by Ivan against Novgorod, demolishing and executing people on the way and thousand of citys inhabitants. The entire Novgorod was brought into terrible torture with the reason that its archbishop had thoughts of betrayal to the favor of the Lithuanians. Two of city's districts were domain or court land, the other three part of the Zemshchina. During only a first week 60 thousand of citizens were murdered and destroyed, thousands of people were drowned, hanged, prisoner or deported, while the buildings and territories were exenterate d and destroyed, and this orgy was going on and on in the city for six weeks without interruption. Every place where money or property were intended to be taken to the Treasury of the Tsar was sealed. Dungeons and torture chambers were filled with dying prisoners subjected to death in agony.
Ivan enjoyed these executions personally, cheering up his warriors. He used to order from his soldiers to kill this or that merchant or noble together with his family, and to take his wealth and property to Ivans Treasury. The city was completely devastated, everything that had a value was stolen, the things which soldiers could not carry off they threw into the river or burned. If someone of the Zemskie people tried to rescue anything, he was killed. The oprichnina turned upside down the entire countryside and all the small cities of the Zemshchina, although Ivan had not given them instructions to do that. They began ruling the situation themselves.
In the Zemshchina, they thus committed many murders and assassinations, which are beyond description. Not less brutal attack to the city of Pskov followed this, along with the execution of Zemshchina administrators in Moscow. The Oprichnina was eliminated after the failure of Ivans powers to protect Moscow from the attacks of Tatar Army. The Oprichnina showed very clearly that using of policy of infinite fear and terror seriously damages political, economical and social life of the country. The implementing of the Oprichnina is a brutal bloody experience during Ivan's reign, causing discussions about his mental derangements and being obsessively suspicious and vindictive.
Murders, expropriations of property, exile and tortures crushed the boyars, and the oprichnina became new nobility, the majority of the lands and loot remained in their hands. The population was considerably lowered and crashed, governing system disarrayed, and as a result, the country lost its political strength in the eyes of enemies. REFERENCES: Heinrich von State "The land and government of Muscovy" (1565 - 70) Available: web Melvin C. Wren, The Course of Russian History (London: Macmillan, 1968). Available: web Wild, Robert, European History: The Oprichnina of Ivan IV. Available: web
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