The 16th century is the century of the rise of socio-political thought, reflected in journalistic writings. But we most often know them - if we know them - only in later copies. Until now, not a single autograph of Ivan the Terrible has been found, yet contemporaries wrote that he was “satisfied with the science of book teaching and extremely eloquent”!

Russia of the 16th century! How often do we unwittingly try to replace these words with others: “Russia of Ivan the Terrible.” The figure of the formidable king, who occupied the throne for half a century, seemed to overshadow Russian society of the 16th century. Even books about Russia XVI centuries were often called simply “Ivan the Terrible,” although they were devoted not to the biography of the first Russian Tsar, but to the history of Russia as a whole.

Ivan’s life, full of dramatic events, was of interest to many historians. Karamzin wrote in 1814 about his work on “The History of the Russian State”: “I am finishing Vasily Ivanovich and mentally looking at Ivan the Terrible. What a nice character for historical painting! It would be a pity if I told the story without this curious reign! Then she will be like a peacock without a tail.” Ivan himself is a mysterious figure. The sovereign, who did so much to strengthen the centralized state, to exalt Russia in the international arena, the patron of printing and the writer himself, he with his own hands destroyed what he had done, persecuted those to whose talent and intelligence he owed state reforms and victories over the enemy.

The 18th-century historian Shcherbatov wrote, not without confusion: “Ivan IV only appears in different forms, so that he is often more than one person.” And in works of art dedicated to Grozny, one can see a frank desire to show something out of the ordinary: the tsar is the culprit in the death of his daughter (in Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “The Pskov Woman” based on the drama Meya), the tsar is at the corpse of the son he killed (in Renin’s film), a tsar who reads the funeral prayer at the tomb of his wife and immediately exposes high treason (in the drama by A. N. Tolstoy). And in scientific works, and works of art seem to continue the polemic between Ivan the Terrible and the boyar Kurbsky, who fled from the tsar’s wrath to Poland and sent accusatory messages to the tsar, and then wrote the pamphlet “The Story of the Grand Duke of Moscow.” Ivan IV responded with frantic “biting words” - a message in which the main provisions of the ideology of “autocracy” were formulated. The dispute is natural, and its persistence, even its bitterness, is understandable - but hasn’t this pushed other, more important mysteries, more significant problems of the history of the Russian 16th century away from us?! Soviet scientists have done a lot in recent decades to identify these problems.

After all, the 16th century was a time of unusual expansion of the state. In the 16th century, the word “Russia”, “Russian”, which appeared at the end of the previous century, gained a place in official documents and was used in the royal title. Gradually, “Russian,” as academician M. N. Tikhomirov clarified, becomes the definition of a nationality, “Russian” means belonging to the state. Was this state already centralized at the turn of the 15th–16th centuries, or was centralization a long process that did not end with the unification of Russian lands at the end of the 15th century? We know that “class struggle, the struggle of the exploited part of the people against the exploiting part lies at the basis of political transformations and ultimately decides the fate of such transformations.” We are well aware of these provisions formulated in Lenin’s works. But they are known to us - people of the 20th century, enriched by the creative experience of Marxism. In the 16th century, history was reduced to the history of sovereigns and the state; in official chronicles, the facts of mass struggle were obscured, hushed up, and the independent role of the actions of the masses was simply not recognized. How to identify and summarize data on popular discontent? How many popular uprisings have there been? What is their scope and features? What are their consequences?

The 16th century was, as it were, a turning point. This is both the Middle Ages, but also the threshold of a new period. The reforms of the Chosen Rada (the circle of Tsar Ivan’s associates, which at one time was actually the government) determined the domestic policy for many decades to come, and the mid-century victories over the Tatar khanates and the successful start of the war for the Baltic states determined the foreign policy of the great power.

For the 16th century, the rise of crafts, the identification of particularly delicate and complex craft professions, the development of local markets, the growth of cities, and the involvement of the countryside in market relations are undeniable. But can this be considered a sign of capitalist relations?

In the 16th century in Rus' there were many heretics who were brutally persecuted. In the 16th century, individual progressive thinkers became familiar with foreign humanistic thought and expressed judgments that differed from official dogmas. But is it possible to talk about the development of humanism as a certain ideological direction of social thought in Russia at that time? Are the socio-economic conditions ripe for its intensive development? After all, humanism is accompanied by the growth of bourgeois relations, but is there any serious reason to see them in Russia in the 16th century?

The 16th century is the century of the rise of socio-political thought, reflected in journalistic writings. But we most often know them - if we know them - only in later copies. Until now, not a single autograph of Ivan the Terrible has been found, yet contemporaries wrote that he was “satisfied with the science of book teaching and extremely eloquent”! In the 17th century, they did not hesitate to update the text when rewriting, to introduce their own interpretation, to eliminate the incomprehensible and unpleasant - it is not without reason that these works are published in academic editions with abundant, sometimes mutually exclusive, discrepancies in meaning! The writings of the noble ideologist Peresvetov are still being debated: is this a heartfelt project of a brave political thinker, who in 1549 managed to anticipate in detail the most important reforms and foreign policy measures of the reign of Ivan the Terrible, or a later attempt to justify and explain what he had done, hiding behind the name of a little-known petitioner?

The historian Klyuchevsky stated: “The triumph historical criticism- from what people of a certain time say, to overhear what they were silent about.” But what if they often just don’t talk? The people are silent for the historian in the literal sense of the word - they still did not have enough literacy, and there was no interest in writing about everyday, ordinary things, and rarely did anyone dare to express dissatisfaction with the existing system in writing.

We learn about the feudal economy mainly from monastic documentation - not a single archive of a secular feudal lord has survived. We judge the life of peasants mainly from documents about the so-called black-sown (that is, unenslaved) peasants, and even from the northern regions of the country, but most of the peasants lived in the central regions, and the majority were enslaved to one degree or another! As a result, we have little idea of ​​the life of working townspeople (posad population) and peasants, we know little about how corvée was expressed in practice (how many days a week did the peasant work on the land of the feudal lord, who owned the livestock and tools that were used to cultivate the land of the feudal lord, what The actual peasant plowing was equal to exactly how much money the peasant paid the feudal lord). The widely quoted words of the then publicists: “Rataev (peasants) are tormented for the sake of silver” is a true, but not concrete evidence of the severity of oppression.

And is it any wonder that so few documents have reached us! It’s worth remembering at least how many times Moscow burned in both the 16th and 19th centuries. XVII centuries... So we have to talk about mysteries, “personal” mysteries related to the fate of prominent people of that time, and about the mysteries of public life.

Secrets of the last sovereigns from the family of Ivan Kalita

There is a lot of unclear and mysterious even in the biographies of the last Rurikovichs on the Moscow throne.

We have a very vague idea of ​​the image Vasily III, as if pushed aside from the great historical arena, obscured by the high-profile acts of his father and son - Ivan III and Ivan IV. But an observant foreigner, an educated humanist, the ambassador of the German emperor, Herberstein, argued that Vasily achieved greater power than any of his contemporary sovereigns. During his reign (1505–1533), the Ryazan Grand Duchy and the Pskov Land finally became part of the Russian state. These are the years of large stone construction (it was then that the main ensemble of the Moscow Kremlin was completed), the years of increased translation activity (the famous thinker and scientist, an expert in ancient languages, Maxim the Greek, was invited to Moscow) and political journalism. Alas, so far not a single serious monograph has been devoted to the reign of Vasily III, and perhaps we are simply out of habit viewing this time as a twilight interval between two bright reigns?! What was he like, Vasily III? Whom did he more closely resemble—his wise, prudent and tough father, whom Marx aptly described as “the great Machiavellian”? Or the temperamental, addicted, frantic and uncontrollable son of the first Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible?

However, was Ivan the Terrible the legal heir and son of Vasily? The birth of Ivan was accompanied by strange rumors, ambiguous hints, gloomy predictions... Vasily III, “for the sake of childlessness,” in the name of procreation, twenty years after the wedding, decided to get a divorce - in violation church rules- with his wife Solomonia. Grand Duchess she deliberately resisted her husband for a long time and energetically, blaming him for her infertility. But she was forcibly tonsured a nun and sent to the Intercession Monastery in Suzdal. And the Grand Duke soon, in January 1526, married the daughter of a Lithuanian immigrant, the young princess Elena Glinskaya, and even, deviating from ancient customs, shaved off his beard for the sake of his young wife. However, the first child from this marriage, the future Tsar Ivan, was born only on August 25, 1530. The second son, Yuri, who remained a semi-degenerate until the end of his days, was born two years later. The grand-ducal couple's frequent "trips" to monasteries continued for four years - it can be assumed that Vasily III prayed for childbearing. Meanwhile, rumors spread in Moscow that Solomonia, tonsured under the name of Sophia, became a mother. An investigation was urgently launched; the mother announced the death of the baby, who was buried in the monastery. But the boy was allegedly saved by “faithful people” and, according to other legends, he became the famous robber Kudeyar (whose treasures were recently sought near Zhiguli). The legend about the birth of a boy, which seemed, as historian N.N. Voronin writes, to be an amusing fiction, unexpectedly found archaeological confirmation. In 1934, in the Intercession Monastery, near the tomb of Solomonia, a 16th-century tombstone was discovered, under which, in a small wooden block, there was a half-decayed bundle of rags - a skillfully made doll, dressed in a silk shirt, and a swaddling bag embroidered with pearls (these things can now be seen in the Suzdal Museum). It was not without reason that Tsar Ivan, 40 years later, requested the materials of the investigation into Solomonia’s infertility from the royal archives.

In response to the late marriage of Vasily III, there were predictions that the son from an illegal marriage would become a tormentor sovereign. They wrote about this later, during the years of the oprichnina: “And cruelty was born in crime and in voluptuousness.” And when, after the death of Vasily III, Elena became regent for her three-year-old son, rumors began to spread that Ivan IV’s mother had long been in an intimate relationship with the boyar, Prince Ivan Fedorovich Ovchina-Telepnev-Obolensky, who had now actually become her co-ruler. This boyar was killed immediately after the death of Elena in 1538 (also, according to some reports, she died not by her own death, but from poison). And is it a coincidence that in January 1547 young Ivan brutally dealt with the son of this boyar - he ordered him to be impaled and his cousin to have his head cut off on the ice of the Moscow River?! Did the sovereign get rid of people who knew too much about the dangerous details of court life?

Fratricide, perjury, and cruel executions accompanied the activities of almost the majority of medieval sovereigns (let us recall, for example, England of the 14th-16th centuries, if not according to the textbook, then according to the famous Shakespearean chronicle dramas of the times of Richard and Henry!). Machiavelli, who put “state interest” above all else, clearly formulated the position at the beginning of the 16th century that “the sovereign must use the techniques of both beast and man.” But the scale of the bloody deeds of the first Russian Tsar struck the imagination of both his contemporaries and descendants. The executions of Ivan the Terrible, his “ferocity”, which became a legend, is this a common phenomenon on the eve of absolutism, a kind of historical pattern? Or is it a consequence of the morbid suspicion of a sadistic king who has achieved uncontrolled power? Do we dare, when assessing the activities of Ivan the Terrible, to abandon the moral ideas we have firmly internalized, to consign to oblivion the thought so clearly expressed by Pushkin: genius and villainy are incompatible?

Historian R. Yu. Vipper wrote: “If Ivan IV had died in 1566 at the time of his greatest successes in western front, his preparations for the final conquest of Livonia, historical memory would have given him the name of a great conqueror, the creator of the largest power in the world, like Alexander the Great. The blame for the loss of the Baltic region he conquered would then fall on his successors: after all, only Alexander’s premature death saved him from a direct encounter with the collapse of the empire he created. In the event of such an early end, in the 36th year of his life, Ivan IV would have remained in historical tradition surrounded by the glory of a remarkable reformer, organizer of the military service class, and founder of the administrative centralization of the Moscow State. His vices, his executions would have been forgiven him just as posterity forgave Alexander the Great for his depravity and his atrocities.”

The life of the Terrible Tsar was a tragedy, he tormented others, and suffered himself, tormented by fear, loneliness, remorse, from the consciousness of the impossibility of carrying out his plans and the irreparability of the mistakes he made...

The fate of the king's sons was also tragic. The eldest son, Dmitry, drowned in infancy, falling from the hands of a nanny while crossing the river. Ivan, who was born after him (apparently similar in character to his father), was killed by Ivan the Terrible in 1581, as the famous painting by Repin recalls. Was he killed by accident, did the king forget himself in anger, or was he killed on purpose? Contemporaries explained this murder in different ways. Some believed that the prince wanted to stand at the head of the army defending Pskov from the troops of the Polish king Stefan Batory, and reproached the king for cowardice. The king thought about peace and was afraid to entrust the army to a dangerous heir. According to others, Grozny demanded that the prince divorce the third wife his father-in-law liked.

The third son, Fyodor, having unexpectedly reached the throne, tried to distance himself from state affairs. Tsar Fedor “has no concern for anything worldly, except for spiritual salvation.” But during the years when he was king (1584-1598), decrees were issued on the enslavement of the peasants, runaways united in Cossack colonies on the southern outskirts of the country, trying to oppose themselves to the centralized state, cherishing the naive dream of a peasant kingdom led by a “good” king.” , fortified cities are erected in the Volga region and near the southern and western borders, and the economic development of the Trans-Ural lands begins. And we still imagine Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich more from the drama of A.K. Tolstoy than from his contemporary historical sources. Was Tsar Fedor incapable of government activities, weak in mind? Or, on the contrary, was he smart enough to be afraid of power? How can we explain that this God-fearing tsar did not have time to accept the schema before his death, according to custom, and was buried in royal vestments, unlike his father, who was laid in a coffin in a monastic robe (this is how the dying Ivan the Terrible hoped to atone for his sins)? Did Fyodor die his own death?

Finally, the youngest son, also Dmitry (from Ivan’s last, seventh wife Maria Nagoya), died in Uglich in 1591. Died at the age of nine under strange circumstances. Either he ran into a knife himself during a game or an epileptic attack, or was he killed? If killed, by whom and why? Was it at the instigation of Godunov, who sought to achieve the throne? Or, on the contrary, those who wanted to interfere with Godunov in his intentions, spreading the version about the murderer ruler and clearing the way for themselves to power? And was it Dmitry who was killed, or did he also escape, like the son of Solomonia, and then turned out to be the toy of foreign and domestic political adventurers? All this is of interest not only to masters of fiction, but also to historians!

Was localism evil?

This question was asked by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.

Localism! The word has become firmly entrenched in our spoken language. Who doesn’t know that to be parochial means to oppose narrow egoistic interests to general ones, and private ones to state ones? But in the 16th–17th centuries, localism regulated service relations between members of service families at court, in military and administrative service, and was a feature of the political organization of Russian society.

This name itself came from the custom of being considered “places” in the service and at the table, and the “place” depended on the “fatherland”, “fatherly honor”, ​​which consisted of two elements - pedigree (that is, origin) and the service career of the serving person himself and his ancestors and relatives. A serving man had to “know his limits” and make sure that his “honor” was not “wasted”, calculating below whom he should serve “instead”, who was “a mile away” from him, that is, “equal”, and to whom “ in the fatherland” there were not enough places with him. This calculation was made based on previous recorded “cases,” and each parochial “find” promoted all the relatives of the service person, and each “loss” lowered them all on the parochial ladder. Those dissatisfied with the appointment “beat the sovereign on places,” “looked for the fatherland,” and asked to give them “defense.” This is exactly what Pushkin wrote about in an excerpt from the satirical poem “The Genealogy of My Hero”:

“The boyars were famous for their pride;

For an argument, now with this one, now with another.

With great dishonor we deduce

Been there for the royal meal,

But again he went under the royal wrath

And he died, reseeding the Sitskys.”

Historians could not ignore localism - this phenomenon is too striking when getting acquainted with the history of Russia of the 16th–17th centuries! - but localism was judged, as a rule, only on the basis of the few surviving facts of local documentation or even arbitrarily selected examples. The idea of ​​localism, consolidated by the authority of Klyuchevsky, spread as a “fatal hereditary arrangement” of service people, when “everyone’s official position was predetermined, not won, not deserved, but inherited.” And the localism of the 16th century, when the hereditary aristocracy was in power, was transferred to the ideas of the late 17th century, when many noble families were already “passed away without a trace.” Localism was assessed as a purely negative phenomenon, which always interfered with the centralization of the state. But then why did neither Ivan III nor Ivan IV seriously fight with him?

Yes, because for them localism was not so much an enemy as a tool. Localism helped to weaken and divide the aristocracy: what they could not achieve to weaken the boyars by “bringing on little people” and executions during the oprichnina was achieved with the help of local arithmetic. Localism was characterized not by clan, but by service-clan seniority - noble birth it had to be combined with the merits of their ancestors: families, even the most noble ones, whose representatives did not receive official appointments for a long time or “lived in disgrace,” found themselves “ossified.” Treason, “rebellion,” the official “loss” of one member of the clan “crushed in the fatherland” the entire clan and forced the princes themselves to restrain each other. Service was recognized as more valuable than “breed”. They acted according to the proverb “Whose clan is loved, that clan rises.” And the family was “loved” by the sovereign!

Not in spite of localism, but thanks to it, people like Alexei Adashev and Boris Godunov rose to the occasion. Let us remember that the “locals” - even the most honored and well-born - humiliatingly called themselves serfs in their petitions to the Tsar: “The sovereign is free to choose his servants as whomever he grants,” “God and the sovereign are free in that; whom great and small will do.”

Is there an involuntary displacement of antiquity and novelty in the minds of historians? Do they not introduce the concepts of honor and dignity that came to us with the “Age of Enlightenment” into the ideas of the oprichnina’s contemporaries?

Localism was not only the defense of the aristocracy from the central government, as V. O. Klyuchevsky believed, but in the 16th century, to an even greater extent, the defense of the autocratic central government from the then strong aristocracy. It contributed to the establishment of absolutism and became unnecessary for established absolutism.

In the 17th century, localism became outdated not only from the point of view of the central government. In some places, even ordinary service people, even clerks, began to compete, and for the aristocracy it became humiliating and painful. It is no coincidence that one of the initiators of the abolition of localism was the noble boyar Prince Vasily Vasilyevich Golitsyn, who is so well remembered by us all from A. Tolstoy’s novel “Peter the Great”.

The history of localism essentially awaits further research.

Against Ivashki and Matfeek

Even as children, we learn that in December 1564, Ivan the Terrible suddenly left Moscow, heading “who knows where” along with his family and large retinue. And a month later, two royal letters arrived from the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda (a hundred miles north of Moscow). One - to the Metropolitan, the other - to the merchants and “all Orthodox Christianity in the city of Moscow.” In the first of them, “the betrayals of boyars and governors and all sorts of officials are written.”

In response, a delegation went to the king, and then a lot of people to beg the king to return to power.

Ivan condescended to the requests with the condition that from now on he would rule “as is fitting for him as a sovereign.” (And here you will inevitably remember one of the most famous scenes famous painting S. M. Eisenstein “Ivan the Terrible”: a dark chain of Muscovites stretches across the snow towards the royal residence, and in the window above them is the predatory profile of the king.)

All this information is taken from completely official sources of that time. But... was that all true?

Let's start with the fact that the crowd, excited and frightened by the tsar's departure, simply could not penetrate the Alexandrovskaya Sloboda: Ivan locked himself there as if in a military camp, and the guards did not immediately allow even two clergy of the highest rank to see him.

And the tsar did not address his message to all “Orthodox Christianity.” Just on the eve of the introduction of the oprichnina, the Zemsky Sobor was created - it was, apparently, the addressee of the message.

Sudden departure? But before that, the tsar spent two weeks touring Moscow monasteries and churches, selecting valuables. Lists of people whom the king took with him were compiled in advance.

Well, why did Grozny need this departure himself? For a very long time it was explained by the danger from the boyars. only if? 1564 is a year of crop failure and fires, a year of severe military failures, a year of conspiracy against the king of the Crimean Khan with the Polish king. The Tsar's commander, Prince Kurbsky, flees abroad. The boyars protested (though timidly) against the executions that had begun, and Grozny, who did not expect this, had to temporarily resign himself. This year, Ivan thinks a lot about death and allocates a special chapel for his grave in the Archangel Cathedral. The painting of the chapel, as historian E. S. Sizov established, allegorically conveys the biography of Ivan the Terrible with an emphasis on his “grievances” from the boyars. And parallels immediately arise between this painting and Ivan’s angry response message to Prince Kurbsky.

In a word, the idea of ​​the oprichnina has been gestating for quite a long time, although it is becoming increasingly clear that not only Grozny determined the course of events - he himself was frightened by their social intensity. Was oprichnina necessary? Did it serve progress? To solve this, you need to find out who it was directed against.

What a question! Of course, against the rebellious boyars - the feudal aristocracy - this seems to be clear...

But then why, during the years of the oprichnina, did the worst enemies of this aristocracy die - the clerical elite, who actually controlled all the orders? But these “arty clerks” could not defend the boyars.

The nobility suffered greatly, but the elite survived; The most notable Rurikovichs have also been preserved - the Shuisky princes and the most notable Gediminovichs (descendants of the Lithuanian Grand Duke) - the Mstislavsky and Volsky princes.

Oprichnina was the opposition to the boyars of the serving nobility? But there were many very noble people in the guardsmen, and they fell into disgrace great amount nobles

Monasteries suffered greatly from the oprichnina. But this was hardly planned, so to speak: in its first years, the monasteries received direct benefits from the oprichnina.

Ivan’s associates and he himself made a lot of efforts to embellish the oprichnina in the chronicles and show that it allegedly enjoyed widespread support. And many mysteries associated with it owe their existence to direct falsification. Others are the result of incomplete documents. Still others may be explained by the inability of people of the 20th century to penetrate the spirit of the 16th century. But besides these mysteries, we also have facts.

“... Ivashka was tortured by the oprichniki, and his cattle were slaughtered, and his bellies (property) were robbed, and his children fled... In the same village, the bow (unit of taxation) is empty Matfika Pakhomova, Matfika of the oprichniki was killed, and his cattle were slaughtered, his bellies were robbed , and his children ran away unknown... To the same village...” and so on. This is from the officially dispassionate list of objects subject to taxation - an inventory of the Novgorod lands shortly after their defeat by the guardsmen. On the Kola Peninsula, after the guardsman Basarga, “yards and empty courtyards and barns and all sorts of land were desolate.”

In the sixties of the 16th century, the road from Yaroslavl to Vologda went among rich villages; twenty years later the roadside villages were empty.

The Moscow center and north-west Russia were depopulated. And Ivashki and Matfeiki could not possibly have been involved in the conspiracies of the nobility.

The people also had their say about the guardsmen: in the twentieth century, the guardsmen were called the tsar’s punishers.

If the oprichnina contributed to the centralization of the country, then at what cost!

And, apparently, at least one of the riddles associated with the oprichnina can be answered clearly: it brought Russia, first of all, harm.

Sigurd Schmidt

Source "ZS" No. 10/1969

HISTORY OF RUSSIA 16TH CENTURY. TIMES ARE TERRIBLE. TIMES ARE TROUBLESOME.
In the 16th century, Russia entered under the “sign” of the double-headed eagle, firmly holding the Russian lands in Europe and Asia in its paws. It was led by an intelligent politician and talented leader, “Sovereign of All Rus',” Ivan lll. Unification, law and autocracy are the goals and objectives that he strove for and which he put into practice. Endless civil strife and strife between principalities and cities weakened the military and economic potential of the Russian lands. Centralization of management was achieved by any possible means. The Grand Duke created a professional army, well equipped and organized. Many appanage rulers voluntarily and consciously recognized the priority of Moscow in public administration. All those dissatisfied with this policy were punished and deposed. Residents of the cities did not want to participate in fratricidal wars for the sake of princely sovereignty. Moscow was not perceived as an enemy and an enslaver. The city was known for its good nature and willingness to accept anyone who wanted to live and work peacefully and honestly. Ivan Kalita also cleared the Moscow lands from theft and robbery. Those oppressed by Catholic Lithuania found refuge here. The Crimean Tatars fled here, seeking protection from the Sultan.
Mr. Veliky Novgorod himself, who arrogantly rejected diplomatic attempts at peaceful solutions, was defeated. Novgorod troops suffered a brutal defeat on the Sheloni River in 1471. The Novgorodians paid a penny and lost part of their lands, and seven years later they voluntarily asked Moscow for a protectorate. By this time, the Russian state had already determined its basic forms, although the annexation of new lands continued.
Not all neighboring states were happy with the expansion, strengthening and independence of Russian lands in the 16th century. The Lithuanians and Livonians threatened from the northwest, and the Great Horde could not come to terms with the loss of the source of rich tribute in the southeast. Akhmat Khan, after many years of preparation, led his army to Rus'. The armies stood on opposite banks of the Ugra River. Attempts by the Mongols to cross were met with rebuff. The “stand on the Ugra River” lasted more than a month, after which the khan withdrew his troops. On the way back, Akhmat was killed, and his severed head was delivered to the Grand Duke. This is how the story of the Mongol-Tatar yoke ended.
But not only foreign policy was a priority in government reforms. Local government; estate, civil and criminal legal relations required adaptation and regulation in new conditions. In 1497, the first collection of laws and rules in the history of Rus', the Code of Laws, was published. It was based on the provisions of the “Russian Truth” (a set of regulations regulating legal and judicial decisions in Ancient Rus'). Big list The Code of Laws included additions and a new interpretation of some codes, in accordance with the conditions and spirit of the times.
The history of Russia in the 16th century took the baton from the past century. Vasily lll is crowned on the throne, continuing the work of his father. The new sovereign was a tough politician and autocrat. Appanage princes who declared disobedience to Moscow were perceived as internal enemies. Any unrest was nipped in the bud. The boyar class, which had great wealth, power and freedom of choice, did not go unnoticed (the boyar had the right to choose which prince to serve). The Duma boyars considered themselves no lower than the princes in matters of state. There were still memorable times in history when the princes could not implement decisions that were not approved by the Duma. Vasily Ivanovich eliminated those who were excessively free-thinking, without hesitation in means and methods. The opponent could be sent to another war, exiled to a monastery or executed, for a suitable reason. Foreign policy continued the line of establishing Russia as an independent and strong state. Diplomatic ties were established with European countries. There was an attempt to conclude a union with the Pope about a joint struggle with the Sultan. In a treaty of 1514 concluded with the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian, Grand Duke Vasily is first mentioned as “Emperor Rusov,” which suggests that in the 16th century Russia declared itself as an equal among equals. Vasily lll inherited from his father insight and patience in anticipation of the result. In order to protect the southern borders from restless Crimeans, he invited and accepted into the service of noble Tatar nobles who settled in Russia, started families, and thus received “dual citizenship.” They were interested in the stability of relations between the old and new homeland, using all their influence on this.
With the death of Vasily Ivanovich in 1533, Russia entered a period of struggle for the throne. The heir was three years old at that time. The boyar and princely nobility were divided into two camps. Some supported the rule of the dowager empress, others sought to establish a boyar protectorate, led by a representative of the Rurik dynasty. It was a time of intrigue and death. The heir's mother was poisoned when he was eight years old. For the same number of years, after her death, the state was ruled by boyars. In January 1547, sixteen-year-old Ivan lV was crowned king. Arrived new stage history of Russia in the 16th century. The young king, ambitious, suspicious and hot-tempered, zealously took the helm of power. He did not trust the boyars and brought into his circle representatives of the nobility and a progressive-minded priesthood, who became the backbone of the “Chosen Rada”. Created in 1549, it is a reform-minded legislative body. The elected Rada was subject to “orders”, institutions performing control duties in all spheres of government: military, legal, financial and political. The orders were headed by trusted persons who controlled the flow of income into the state treasury. The Zemsky Sobor, convened in 1550, declared inter-class reconciliation. The theses of the new relations formed the basis of the Code of Law, adopted around the same time. In 1951, a church council was convened. Government headed by the tsar, presents to the council the structure of church-state relations, with a list of one hundred chapters (hence the name “Hundred-Glavy Cathedral”). Restrictions were introduced on the participation of the church in secular affairs and cuts in income and estates. Monasteries, in particular, were forbidden to give the population money in interest and bread at “nasp”, that is, at interest. The uncontrolled purchase of land by monasteries was prohibited.
A new structure of army service was established, in the direction of increasing “serving people according to the instrument.” Their maintenance was provided by the state treasury. Large landowners were obliged to provide, on occasion, a certain reserve of manpower in full military equipment. The “staff” militia of rural residents and townspeople also remained. “Localism” was abolished in the army, which opened the way to command positions for less noble, but more talented people.
The order on “feeding” issued by the king in 1556 abolished the powers of the governors and the rights of the regional nobility. A new principle of dividing territories into “lips” was introduced. At the head of the province, a local governor was appointed, who supervised the investigative, judicial and penal authorities. The headman reported directly to the central government.
The years of reform in the history of the reign of Ivan the Terrible were the most productive and served to further consolidate and centralize the Russian state. For many high-ranking officials, from among the clergy and boyar class, such changes seemed unacceptable. Discontent was brewing internal politics the king, so far only in minds and words. But Ivan Vasilyevich, whose suspicion intensified to mania after the death of his wife, makes a move unexpected for his opponents and supporters. He first demonstrates his desire to leave the throne, and then announces to the shocked people that he will remain in power if the citizens guarantee him unconditional support in the fight against traitors. Traitors meant all those dissatisfied with the authorities.
The time of “oprichnina” was coming. All royal and state lands and institutions, and everything that belonged to the oprichnina, were declared oprichnina. Repressions began among the opposition-minded boyars. The confiscated property of those repressed went into the royal register. The guardsmen guarded the Tsar and were his secret police. They carried out terror against undesirable members of the military and aristocratic elite. A terrible time of denunciation, torture and executions began. Based on false slander, an expedition to Novgorod was undertaken. Novgorodians accused of treason were mercilessly exterminated without trial or investigation. Up to six hundred people died every day.
The failure of the guardsmen as a military force was revealed in 1571, when the hordes of the Crimean Khan besieged Moscow. Many simply did not show up at the military location. Soon the oprichnina was abolished as a state institution, but remained in the structure of the court. The same goes for government properties. The renaming to “dvorovyi” and “domroviye” did not change the essence of affiliation.
There is no consensus on the causes and circumstances of the emergence of the oprichnina. Some researchers of the history of Russia of the 16th century see them in the unsuccessful wars with Livonia and the betrayal of Kurbsky, which prompted the tsarist authorities to think about conspiracy and treason. Others, in the paranoid tendencies of Ivan the Terrible. Whatever it was, the oprichnina caused enormous damage to the state. A colossal number of people at that time were exterminated. Many estates were plundered and neglected. People wandered without work, shelter and bread.
Ivan the Terrible died in 1584, leaving behind the feeble-minded Fyodor as his heir. Feodor reigned unnoticed and died unnoticed. The history of the Rurik dynasty ended with the 16th century. It was coming Time of Troubles.

By the end of the 15th century, there was a noticeable strengthening of the power of the Moscow princes: the title sovereign(or gospodar, i.e. master, lord), appear royal regalia– a crown (Monomakh’s hat – apparently a gift from the Uzbek Khan to Ivan Kalita), a scepter (rod) and an orb (a ball with a cross). In 1476, Ivan III married the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, Sophia Paleologus. This turned Moscow into the legal successor of Byzantium. State emblem Russia became a double-headed eagle.

On the other hand, the power of the sovereign was limited by the Boyar Duma, an advisory body of the highest aristocracy under the prince. The Moscow prince was obliged to consult with the boyars on all major issues and could not resist their will. The Duma included about 15 boyars, who were divided into duma and okolnichy.

A system of central government bodies is gradually being established, consisting of Treasury, which conducted financial, foreign policy and other national affairs, and Palaces– Novgorod, Tver, etc. The palaces were engaged in legal proceedings and the distribution of estates to the nobles. The main role in the Treasury and Palaces was played by clerks- officials who come from unprivileged classes.

To control individual counties, into which the vast territory of the new state was now divided, governors were appointed from the center. They had full power locally and lived off feeding– various extortions from the local population. Feedings were not very beneficial to the state, since, thanks to them, the governors were not dependent on the central government.

The monetary system was extremely primitive. Each city minted its own coin - money. For the convenience of counting money, merchants used a special unit of account - the ruble, but such a coin did not yet exist. The imperfection of the monetary system was associated with the weak development of trade between the regions of Russia. A single coin was simply not needed.

At the end of the 15th century, a single Moscow army was formed, consisting of three types of troops - the feudal (boyar-noble) cavalry militia, infantry collected for the annual review, and permanent artillery.

the main role in the mounted militia was assigned to the boyars, who had to report for service “horse-mounted, crowded and armed”, i.e. with their horses, weapons and foot militia. However, during this period there was a process of mass landlessness of the boyars. They bequeathed their lands not to one heir, who would serve the prince, but divided them among all their sons. Many boyars, before their death, went to monasteries and transferred part of their lands there. As a result, the main component of the militia became not the boyars, but nobles. In an effort to provide themselves with a sufficient number of military servants, the Moscow princes from the end of the 14th century began to grant them estates- lands that, unlike estates, remained the property of the state and were given for temporary use for service, primarily military. The nobles could not dispose of their lands (transfer by inheritance, divide between sons, sell or mortgage). The estates were cultivated not by serfs, like boyar estates, but by land-dependent peasants, who still had to be kept on the landowner's land. In his Code of Laws (1497 ) - a set of laws of a single state - Ivan III took the first step towards attaching peasants to the land ( enslavement): the right to transfer from one owner to another was now limited to two weeks a year - the week before St. George's Day(November 26) and the week after. Moreover, such a transition was possible only after payment elderly, i.e. compensation to the landowner for the departure of the peasant.

The artillery was formed from a new layer of the population - service people– professional military men who receive a salary for their service, but have the right to engage in crafts and trade. The artillerymen were almost entirely literate. The Pushkars lived compactly, in a special Pushkarskaya settlement in Moscow. Russian artillery at that time was the strongest in the world.

Section 5. Russia under Ivan IV

1505 – 1533 - reign of Ivan III's son Vasily III. He continued his father's policy aimed at strengthening the power of the Moscow prince. He repeatedly entered into tough confrontation with the Boyar Duma. He executed some of its members (including Bersen Beklemishev).

In 1533, Vasily III dies and his son Ivan IV Vasilyevich, born in 1530, becomes the Grand Duke. The regent for the young prince is his mother Elena Glinskaya. She passed the money (the first national coin was introduced - silver penny) and starts lip reform(local government reform, restriction and abolition of the feeding system, began in 1539).

In 1538, Elena Glinskaya died and the period of boyar rule began. The struggle for influence over the young prince was waged by the Shuisky and Belsky clans. These events had a great influence on Ivan's personality and taught him suspicion and cruelty.

IN January 1547 For the first time in the history of Russia, Mr. Ivan received the royal title and married Anastasia Zakharyina-Yuryeva. In the summer of 1547, a fire broke out in Moscow, which served as the reason for a popular uprising against the hated boyars. They managed to calm the people, but Ivan came to the conclusion that it was necessary to carry out large-scale political reforms. The main goal of the reforms was to create an effective management apparatus for the huge, unified Russian state. In addition, the tsar sought to strengthen his own power and weaken the boyar opposition.

Russian history. From ancient times to the 16th century. 6th grade Kiselev Alexander Fedotovich

Chapter 6. RUSSIA IN THE XVI CENTURY

RUSSIA IN THE 16TH CENTURY