Who needs the myth of the sonicide tsar?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Everyone is familiar from childhood with the painting "Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan on November 16, 1581", created in 1883-1885. the great Russian artist Ilya Repin. It depicts Tsar John IV, bending over his son in deep sorrow. The reason for the grief, according to the plot of the picture, is understandable: the king, suddenly angry, mortally wounded his son and heir with his own hand. The story of the murder of Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich by Ivan the Terrible has become so firmly entrenched in the public consciousness that today almost no one doubts: the Russian tsar was really so bloodthirsty that he cruelly dealt with his own son, you can imagine how he dealt with the population of Russia.

When the work on the painting was completed, it was seen by the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the main ideologist of the Russian Empire at the end of the 19th century. Pobedonostsev did not just dislike the picture. The "court conservative" expressed his most decisive indignation, because he considered that the picture not only undermines the foundations of autocracy, but also contributes to the establishment of a historical myth that does not correspond to reality. Ivan the Terrible did not kill his son, Konstantin Pobedonostsev was convinced.

Ultimately, on April 1, 1885, Repin's painting was banned from showing in the Russian Empire. So for the first time censorship banned a painting - before literary works were censored.

However, on July 11, 1885, the ban on showing the picture was lifted. They say that the battle painter Alexei Bogolyubov, who was close to the imperial court and had a certain influence on the representatives of the government, petitioned for the work of Ilya Repin. After the lifting of censorship restrictions, the painting was able to be exhibited in the public domain. Soon she became the main symbol of the myth of the son-killer king, which is still cultivated even in the school education system.

What so outraged Pobedonostsev, and then Emperor Alexander III himself, in the picture? First of all, its historical unreliability. Until now, not a single real evidence has been presented in favor of the fact that it was Ivan the Terrible who killed Tsarevich Ivan. The cruel scene of filicide depicted in the picture is not just a figment of the artistic imagination of Ilya Repin. Back in the 16th century, rumors about the murder of Ivan Ivanovich by his own father spread widely in Europe precisely at the suggestion of European diplomats who worked at the Moscow court. They were interested in discrediting the Russian state by any means, including through the depiction of Tsar Ivan the Terrible as a cruel killer and psychopath who raised his hand against his own son, the heir to the throne.

Tsarevich Ivan on a walk. Painting by M. I. Avilov 1913 year.

Tsarevich Ivan was the son of John IV and his wife Anastasia Romanova. He was born in 1554. Since his elder brother Dmitry died in infancy in 1553, even before the birth of Ivan, the latter turned out to be the eldest living son of John IV and, accordingly, the heir to the throne. The grown-up Ivan accompanied Grozny on military campaigns, took part in governing the state, in a word, he was gradually preparing for the role of the future tsar. However, historians agree that Ivan Ivanovich was not an independent political figure in Moscow Russia. In his short life, Ivan Ivanovich was married three times. Each of the marriages of the young prince could be called unsuccessful.

The first time Ivan Ivanovich married in 1571, 17 years old, to Evdokia Saburova, the daughter of boyar Bogdan Yuryevich Saburov. However, already in 1572 the princess was tonsured into a nun. They officially cut her because of childlessness, but it is more likely that Evdokia somehow angered Ivan the Terrible and he decided to get rid of his daughter-in-law, while Ivan Ivanovich himself loved Evdokia and was very unhappy with his father's decision.

In 1575, three years after Evdokia's tonsure, Ivan Ivanovich married a second time - to Theodosia Solova, daughter of the Ryazan boyar of Horde origin Mikhail Timofeevich Petrov. Theodosia lived with the tsarevich for almost four years - until 1579, however, she was tonsured as a nun - also for childlessness. The latest version looks quite realistic, since in four years Theodosia did not give birth to an heir to the prince.

Finally, in 1581, Ivan Ivanovich married Elena Sheremeteva, the daughter of the famous governor Ivan "The Menshoy" Vasilyevich Sheremetev, who died in 1577 during the siege of Revel. She was a beautiful girl, but the Sheremetev family was unpleasant to Tsar John IV. Therefore, most likely, the prince made the choice on his own and this immediately brought on a negative attitude from his father. It was Elena Sheremeteva, according to the widespread version, that became the "cause" of the conflict between John IV and his son.

The Jesuit Antonio Possevino arrived in Moscow in 1581 as a papal legate. An experienced 47-year-old diplomat and former secretary of the Jesuit general, Possevino was sent to Russia by the Vatican to tackle several tasks. Firstly, he had to persuade the Moscow Tsar to join the Catholic Church, and secondly, to offer Ivan the Terrible, in exchange for the union of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches under the leadership of the Pope, the Polish crown. It was Possevino who left notes in which he told his version of the death of Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich, which happened just in 1581.

According to Possevino, Elena Sheremeteva was in a lower dress in her rest when the Grand Duke of Moscow Ivan the Terrible entered her. The monarch, distinguished by his irascibility, instantly flew into a rage at the appearance of the princess and brutally beat her with a staff. The princess was pregnant, but the next day after the beatings she had a miscarriage. While Ivan the Terrible was beating the princess, his son Ivan Ivanovich ran into the chambers and tried to stop the beating. However, the angry king, as Possevino noted, hit his son in the temple with a staff, inflicting a mortal wound on him.

It was this version, expressed by the papal legate, that later formed the basis of the widespread myth about the murder of his son by Ivan the Terrible. Other Western travelers who visited Russia, for example, Heinrich Staden, who for some time was even the Tsar's oprichnik, also began to report about the death of the tsarevich as a result of being struck by the tsar's rod. Whether a spy, or just a rogue, Heinrich Staden left completely Russophobic notes, which were later criticized by Russian historians as unreliable.

Meanwhile, except for the papal legate, no one else testified not only about the death of the prince at the hands of his father, but in general about the violent reasons for the death of the heir to the throne. Ivan the Terrible himself wrote in a letter to N. R. Zakharyin-Yuriev and A. Ya. Shchelkanov that his son was seriously ill and therefore he could not come to Moscow. In the Russian annals, the death of the tsarevich is reported, but nowhere is it said that he was killed or died from the consequences of his injury.

Another version depicts Ivan the Terrible as a libertine who sexually harassed his daughter-in-law, and Ivan Ivanovich, indignant, entered into a conflict with his father and then the tsar hit him in the temple with a rod. But even this version has absolutely no evidence.

However, many Russian historians subsequently took Possevino's story as a basis, although in some works it was changed beyond recognition. For example, Nikolai Karamzin, without denying the murder of the tsarevich by Ivan the Terrible himself, argued that Ivan Ivanovich was killed by his father during a political discussion, when he demanded that the tsar send an army to liberate Pskov. Then Ivan the Terrible flew into a rage and hit the prince in the head with a rod. However, when the prince fell, the king realized what he had done. He rushed to his son, cried, prayed to God for the salvation of the prince, but all was in vain. It was Nikolai Karamzin's version that formed the basis for the artistic concept of the famous painting by Ilya Repin.

However, the Pskov Chronicle testifies that the conflict between the tsar and the tsarevich over the liberation of Pskov did take place, but in 1580 it had nothing to do with the death of Ivan Ivanovich. Grozny really hit his son with a rod, but did not inflict a mortal wound on him. Whatever it was, but on November 19, 1581, Ivan Ivanovich died at the age of 27 in the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda (now it is the territory of the city of Aleksandrov, Vladimir Region). Historical sources indicate that Ivan Ivanovich died slowly, due to a serious illness that struck him, which remained undefined.

In 1903, the Russian historian Nikolai Petrovich Likhachev concluded that the Tsarevich's illness lasted eleven days. At first, she seemed easy and did not attach importance to her, but then the prince became worse. The invited doctors could not save the heir to the throne and on November 19 he died. For Ivan the Terrible, the death of his son, the heir to the throne, was a powerful blow and in many respects crippled the health of the tsar, who died two and a half years after Ivan Ivanovich left. Ivan Ivanovich, and then his father Ivan the Terrible, was buried in the Archangel Cathedral.

In 1963, almost 400 years after the death of Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan the Terrible, scientists organized an examination of the remains of the Tsar and Tsarevich. For this, the opening of the tombs of Ivan the Terrible and Ivan Ivanovich was organized in the Archangel Cathedral on the territory of the Moscow Kremlin. The remains were given for medico-forensic and medico-chemical expertise. Research data showed that, for some inexplicable reason, the content of mercury in the remains of the tsarevich was 32 times exceeded, and the content of lead and arsenic was several times higher. This circumstance can testify only to one thing - the prince could have been poisoned. Then it becomes clear and the reason for his illness and death within eleven days.

Naturally, scientists tried to establish the fact that Ivan Ivanovich had head injuries. However, the skull of the heir to the royal throne was in such poor condition due to the decay of bone tissue that it was not possible to find out whether Ivan Ivanovich had injuries or not. If not for this circumstance, then we could forever receive reliable evidence that it was not at all a quarrel with his father that became the real cause of the death of the young prince.

Thus, we see that the myth of the filicide of Ivan the Terrible was deliberately inflated by Western sources as another proof of the supposedly wild morals that reigned in Russia. Meanwhile, real historical sources indicate that even during the reign of the hot-tempered Ivan the Terrible, justice in Muscovite Russia was much more humane and gentle than in Western countries. Not a single death sentence could be approved without the consent of the sovereign himself. Moreover, very often Ivan the Terrible had mercy on criminals, including those who committed serious crimes and, in theory, should have been executed in any case.

In addition, Ivan the Terrible was very soft even with regard to outright conspirators, for example, he endured Vladimir Staritsky for a very long time - his cousin, who weaved all sorts of intrigues and intrigues in order to eliminate Ivan the Terrible. The conspiracy of Vladimir Staritsky was opened in 1563, but the autocrat, who was able to simply destroy the conspirator, simply deprived him of the right to live in the Kremlin and removed him from the courtyard. In 1566 Ivan the Terrible forgave Vladimir Staritsky and returned him to the court. However, Vladimir Staritsky did not appreciate the mercy of John IV and continued his conspiratorial plans. In the end, Ivan the Terrible's patience ran out. In 1569, after receiving Ivan the Terrible, Staritsky felt unwell and soon died. For six years Ivan the Terrible endured the conspirator in his entourage and forgave him several times. Meanwhile, one can recall how "humane" were the European states of that time, where the Holy Inquisition raged, and the kings and queens led such a way of life, in comparison with which Ivan the Terrible was just a child.

It was during the reign of John IV that the Russian state began to turn into a truly powerful power, which included in its composition the fragments of the Golden Horde - the Astrakhan and Kazan Khanates, which waged successful wars against their strong opponents. Naturally, this circumstance could not please the rulers of the countries of Western Europe and, most importantly, the Vatican. Popes, claiming a leading role in the Christian world, could not come to terms with the fact that the Orthodox state had acquired such power. Therefore, numerous undercover games were played against Ivan the Terrible, and since the tsar could not be eliminated with the help of intrigues, it was decided to start an "information war" against him. Ivan the Terrible appears in the notes of Western diplomats and travelers as a crazy, aggressive, depraved despot, and the myth of the murder of his own son serves only as an illustration of a similar line of Western sources in relation to the Russian state and its ruler.

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