The oprichnina (, ; from ) 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:Walter Leitsch. "Russo-Polish Confrontation" in Taras Hunczak, ed. "Russian Imperialism". Rutgers University Press. 1974, p. 140
The notorious organization of six thousand oprichniki, the first political police in the history of Russia.Oleg Gordievsky and Christopher Andrew (1999). KGB: The Inside Story of its intelligence operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (Russian language edition, Moscow, Centerpoligraph, , p. 21) The portion of Russia, ruled directly by Ivan the Terrible, where his oprichniki operated. The corresponding period of Russian history.
Causes In 1558, Tsar Ivan IV started the Livonian War. A broad coalition, which included Poland, Lithuania and Sweden, became drawn into the war against Russia. The war was drawn-out (it continued until 1583) and expensive; raids by Crimean Tatars, Polish and Lithuanian invasions, famines, a trading blockade and the escalating costs of war ravaged Russia.
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 a readiness to betray him.R. Skrynnikov, Ivan Grosny, M., Science, 1975, pp. 93–96
Historians Vasily Klyuchevsky (1841–1911) and (1876–1952) explained the oprichnina in terms of Ivan's paranoia and denied larger social aims for the oprichnina. However, historian Sergey Platonov (1860–1933) argued that Ivan IV intended the oprichnina as a suppression of the rising boyar aristocracy.S.F. Platonov, Ivan the Terrible, trans. Joseph L. Wieczynski (Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1986), 101–02. 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.
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, many boyars, and the treasury accompanied him.
After a month of silence, Ivan finally issued two letters from his fortifications at Aleksandrova Sloboda on January 3, 1565. The first addressed the elite of Moscow and accused them of embezzlement and treason. Further accusations concerned the clergy and their protection of denounced boyars. In conclusion, Ivan announced his abdication. The second letter addressed the population of Moscow and claimed "he had no anger against" its citizenry. Divided between Aleksandrova Sloboda and Moscow, the boyar court was unable to rule in the absence of Ivan and feared the wrath of the Muscovite citizenry. Envoys departed for Aleksandrova Sloboda to beg Ivan to return to the throne.
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.
Organization
The oprichnina consisted of a separate territory within the borders of Russia, mostly in the territory of the former Novgorod Republic in the north. This region included many of the financial centers of the state, including the salt region of Staraya Russa and prominent merchant towns. Ivan held exclusive power over the oprichnina territory. The Boyar Council ruled the zemshchina ('land'), the second division of the state. Until 1568, the oprichnina relied upon many administrative institutions under zemshchina jurisdiction. Only when conflict between the zemshchina and oprichnina reached its peak did Ivan create independent institutions within the oprichnina.
Ivan also stipulated the creation of a personal guard known as the oprichniki (, , meaning 'men of oprichnina'; singular: oprichnik). The corps also served as police, and soldiers. Originally it was a thousand strong. Some scholars believe that Ivan's second wife, the Circassian Maria Temryukovna, first had the idea of forming the organization. This theory comes from Heinrich von Staden, a German oprichnik. Upon acceptance, the new oprichniki were required to swear an oath of allegiance: I swear to be true to the Lord, Grand Prince, and his realm, to the young Grand Princes, and to the Grand Princess, and not to maintain silence about any evil that I may know or have heard or may hear which is being contemplated against the Tsar, his realms, the young princes or the Tsaritsa. I swear also not to eat or drink with the zemshchina, and not to have anything in common with them. On this I kiss the cross.As noticed these individuals did not swear an oath to the Lord Jesus Christ as much as they were swearing to Governers of land. I feel their allegiance to the "Tsar" was not to the true "Cesar" whis is Christ Jesus.
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. Henri Troyat has emphasized the lowly origin of the oprichnina recruits.Henri Troyat, Ivan the Terrible, trans. E.P. Dutton (London: Phoenix Press, 2001), 129–30. 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.
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. Alexander Zimin and Stepan Veselovsky have argued that this division left hereditary landownership largely unaffected. However, Platonov and other scholars have posited that resettlement aimed to undermine the power of the landed nobility. Pavlov has cited the relocation of zemshchina servicemen from oprichnina territories onto heredity estates as a critical blow to the power of the princely class. The division of hereditary estates diminished the influence of the princely elites in their native provinces.S.F. Platonov, Ivan the Terrible, trans. Joseph L. Wieczynski (Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1986), 130. The worst affected was the province of Suzdal which lost 80% of its gentry.
The oprichniki enjoyed social and economic privileges under the oprichnina. While zemshchina boyars lost both hereditary 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.
Operations
The first wave of persecutions targeted primarily the princely clans of Russia, most 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. In a show of clemency, Ivan recalled a number of nobles to Moscow. The Tsar even called upon zemshchina nobles for a Zemsky Sobor concerning the Livonian War. Ivan posed the question of whether Russia should surrender the Livonian territories to recently victorious Lithuania or maintain the effort to conquer the region. The body approved war measures and advanced emergency taxes to support the draining treasury.
However, the Zemsky 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.
The overthrow of King Erik XIV of Sweden in 1568 and the death of Ivan's second wife in 1569 exacerbated Ivan's suspicions. His attention turned to the northwestern city of Novgorod. The second largest city in Russia, Novgorod housed a large service nobility with ties to some of the condemned boyar families of Moscow. Despite the sack of the city under Ivan III, Novgorod maintained a political organization removed from Russia’s central administration. Moreover, the influence of the city in the northeast had increased as the city fronted the military advance against the Lithuanian border. The treasonous surrender of the border town Izborsk to Lithuania also caused Ivan to question the faith of border towns.
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.
Modern theories suggest that the motivating purpose for the organization and existence of the oprichniki was to oppress people or groups opposed to the Tsar. Riding black horses and led by Ivan himself, the group terrorized civilian populations. Sometimes called the cromeshnina (selected) because they were a hand-picked body, the oprichniki dressed in black garb, similar to a monastic habit, and carried attached to their saddles a severed dog's head (to sniff out treason and enemies of the Tsar), or an actual wolf's head and a broom (to sweep them away). The wolf's head was also symbolic of the hounds of hell tearing at the heels of the Tsar's enemies. The logistics of acquiring the canine heads was quite gruesome. Due to the lack of taxidermy, the severed and drained heads would only remain frozen for the winter months of the year. To maintain their image, the oprichnik required a constant supply of fresh heads. Ivan himself carried a fearsome canine head made of iron with jaws that would open and snap shut as his horse galloped.
The oprichniki were ordered to execute anyone disloyal to Ivan and used various methods of torture to do so, including quartering, boiling, impalement, and roasting victims tied to poles over an open fire.
Oprichniki were devout Christians of the Eastern Orthodox Church similarly to the Tsar himself.