Information war against Russia: the black myth of the "bloody tyrant" Ivan the Terrible
470 years ago, 25 January 1547, the first wedding of the kingdom took place in Russia. On this day, the wedding took place on the kingdom of Ivan IV Vasilyevich. The celebration took place in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. Later, in the 1561 year, the Patriarch of Constantinople approved the royal title with a diploma.Sixteen-year-old Ivan IV solemnly "was crowned with the Russian kingdom" by Metropolitan Macarius, which meant that the young sovereign accepted the royal title. Signs of royal dignity were laid upon him: the cross of the Life-giving Tree, the barmas and the Monomah's hat.
This wedding to the kingdom was for the Russian kingdom an act of great political significance. The title of king testified to the autocratic nature of the power of its owner. In addition, the royal title allowed to take a significantly different position in diplomatic relations with the countries of Western Europe. The title of Grand Duke translated as "Prince" or "Grand Duke." The title “king” was either not translated at all, or translated as “emperor”. The Russian tsar thereby stood up on a par with the only emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in Europe.
In 1558, the Patriarch of Constantinople Joasaph II informed Ivan Vasilyevich that “his royal name is commemorated in the Cathedral Church on all Sundays, as the names of formerly former Greek Kings; this is commanded to do in all the dioceses, where only there are metropolitans and bishops, "but about your blessed wedding to the kingdom of St.. Metropolitan of All Russia, our brother and the co-servant, is accepted by us for the good and worthy of your kingdom. " “Show us,” wrote Joachim, the patriarch of Alexandria, “in modern times, the new feeder and promyshlitel about us, the good advocate, the chosen and God-instructed Ktitor of this holy monastery, what was once the newly blessed and equal-to-the-apostles Constantine ... on church rule, but also on meals with the ancients, who were formerly kings. ”
Kingdom wedding
Ivan IV was born on August 25 1530, in the village of Kolomenskoye near Moscow. Son of Grand Prince Vasily III and Elena Vasilyevna Glinskaya. After the death of his father, 3-year-old Ivan remained in the care of his mother, who died in the year of 1538, when he was 8 years old. Apparently, the mother was the victim of a conspiracy, she was poisoned. As a result, the young sovereign grew up in an atmosphere of palace coups, the struggle for power of the aristocratic clans of the Shuisky, Belsky, Glinsky and others fighting with each other.
This situation has corrupted the country. The board of the boyar government spoiled to know. Orders were executed poorly, managers slavied, stole. The "vertical of power" collapsed. Around the Grand Duke was a constant struggle and intrigue for influence on him. On the ground, abuses have increased many times, feeding turned into "feeders."
It was possible to restore order in the country only when the Grand Duke took the burden of power upon himself, personally taking care of state affairs. Metropolitan Macarius prepared Ivan Vasilyevich for this. When he turned 16 years, Macarius decided it was time. The beginning of an independent government was to be deeply symbolic. According to the Metropolitan's instructions, the Grand Duke made two decisions - to marry and get married to the kingdom. Marriage gave the young man the status of an adult. According to Russian traditions, an adult was considered a married man, the head of the family. A kingdom wedding was a new thing.
The title of king was special. Moscow rulers sometimes used it, but only in correspondence with foreigners, and in Russia they were content with the title of Grand Duke. Kings in Russia called the Byzantine emperors basileus and rulers of the Horde. Thus, the official adoption of such a title meant very serious applications of world significance. On the one hand, Ivan Vasilyevich declared himself the spiritual successor of the Byzantine emperors and the head of the entire Orthodox world. On the other hand, he claimed the legacy of the Horde Empire.
Macarius developed the rite. Composing the ruling on the kingdom, he accepted the Byzantine designs as a basis, but reworked them for Russian conditions. So, he added the rank of receiving St.. Joseph Volotsky about autocratic power. Macarius became the main organizer of the celebration.
16 (25) January 1547, in Moscow, the bells of the "forty-forty" churches and monasteries rang. The Kremlin was crowded. The ceremony took place in the Assumption Cathedral. After the prayer, the Metropolitan performed the anointing, the Grand Duke was given the grace of God for his ministry. Signs of authority were laid on him: the Honorable Life-giving Cross, the barmas and the Monomakh's hat. Macarius blessed him to strengthen the “court and truth” in his native land, to defend her from enemies, to be merciful to his subjects and to strictly punish evil, and the church was declared mother to the king.
The church supported the young king. To this end, at the beginning of February, the Metropolitan convened the Consecrated Cathedral. In the process of compiling the Great Chetyih Miny (books of the lives of the saints of the Orthodox Church), Macarius collected information about the lives and exploits of the saints who were venerated in various areas of the country, and now it was decided to canonize them for all-Russian veneration. Tsar Ivan took the most active part in the work of the Council, 23 saints were canonized, including the great warrior and organizer of Russia Alexander Nevsky. Spiritual unity strengthened the unity of the entire Russian state.
February 13 held another celebration, the king's wedding. The bride was chosen from the noble girls of the whole power. The choice fell on Anastasia Romanovna from the Zakharyins-Yuryevs. The bride was beautiful and smart. Also, apparently, they took into account the fact that the Zakharyins were one of the most notable boyar families, their ancestors from the XIV century served the great princes. This marriage strengthened the support of the king in the old-Moscow nobility. In addition, the Zakharyins-Yuryevs never participated in any conspiracies, did not belong to the opposition. It was one of the most loyal to the throne of aristocratic families. The metropolitan himself crowned the young. He said: “Today you are forever connected by the sacrament of the Church, but together worship the Almighty and live in virtue, and your virtue is truth and mercy ...” Anastasia made the wedding ceremony not only for his wife, but also “the Christ-loving queen”.
The Black Myth about Ivan the Terrible
It is worth noting that Ivan Vasilyevich became one of the most effective managers of the Russian civilization. Ivan Vasilyevich actually restored the Russian Empire, which was created by the first Rurikovich, but then it was ruined by the efforts of the “elite” —the princes and boyars, who carried Russia along their inheritances and patrimonies, began to be sold to the then West. Ivan the Terrible completed the process of creating a centralized Russian state, a mighty empire power capable of opposing both the West, the South and the East. Russia again became an independent world center of power.
Under Ivan the Terrible, Russia annexed Kazan and Astrakhan, received the entire Volga route, began to explore Siberia. Thus, Moscow led the process of restoring the ancient northern empire, stretching from the Black (Russian) Sea, the Carpathians and the Varangian (Baltic) Sea in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east, the Arctic Ocean in the north, and to the borders of China, India and Persia - in the south. The traditions of this empire go back to hoary antiquity right up to the time of the Aryans and the legendary Hyperborea. Moscow also became the successor not only of the fallen Byzantine Empire, but the disintegrated Horde Empire. Horde Tatars naturally became part of the Russian civilization. The union of the Russian and Tatar ethnic groups became the core of the new empire. It was not for nothing that Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich in 1575 put down the kingdom of a Tatar prince, a direct descendant of the khans of the Golden Horde, Simeon Bekbulatovich (Grand Duke of All Russia from the Chingizid family). He became the possible successor to the great king.
Under Ivan Vasilyevich, Russia attempted to reclaim its lands in the Baltic, and to solve military-strategic and economic tasks in the north-west. However, the Livonian war became another conflict between the Russian and Western civilizations. A whole coalition came out against Russia - Livonia, Lithuania, Poland (they then united in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), Sweden. Opponents of Russia supported the German emperor, the Catholic Rome. At the same time, in the South, the Russian kingdom had to keep its defense against the Crimean-Turkish troops. The state of Grozny withstood this most difficult war with the West and the South; it did not fall apart, showing the enormous potential of a single Russian state. Moreover, Ivan the Terrible showed the main directions of the future foreign policy of Russia: the Baltic, the confrontation with Poland in order to return the Western Russian lands, the Northern Black Sea region, the Caucasus and Siberia (East).
A powerful information campaign was then launched against Russia. It was then that the main methods and images were formed (“black myths”), which opponents of the Russian people used for centuries, right up to the present. Ivan the Terrible with the efforts of Western propaganda, and then local Russian singing, turned into one of the most "scary and bloody" figures of the world and Russian stories ("Black Myth" about the first Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible; Information War of the West against Ivan the Terrible). And no wonder. It is difficult to find a person in Russian history who would have done so much for our people. Thus, the territory of the Russian state has almost doubled. For the hosts of the West, Ivan Vasilyevich is a terrible and wise enemy. Hence the hatred of him, slander. Although compared with the Western rulers of the same era, who literally drowned their own and neighboring countries, cities in the blood, and which in Western countries are considered great and wise, “pillars of the nation”, Ivan the Terrible is a great humanist. After all, he repressed only a few thousand people. And he suffered from this, his conscience tormented. And the Western rulers, on account of which tens and hundreds of thousands of the dead, did not suffer from this. In particular, Catholic Rome, which initiated the courts of the Inquisition, the execution of "heretics", the genocide of the Moors, the Jews, started the crusades and the "witch hunt", had no doubts about their actions.
Ivan the Terrible in the West was called a "tyrant" who was bathed in the blood of his subjects and exterminates the "pillars" of the Russian state. This idea was spread among the gentry, in European courts, that is, to individuals and groups interested in weakening the Russian state. They sent them to the Russian noblemen in order to lure them to the side of the West, to choose "freedom" instead of "slavery" and "dictatorship". This method has survived to the present: it is now denoted by the term "European choice." They say that in Russia the eternal "dictatorship", "totalitarianism", "imperial habits", "prison of nations", "Great Russian chauvinism". And in Europe - “freedom”, “human rights” and “tolerance”. Also in the West, they actively formed the image of "cruel, aggressive Russian barbarians, slavishly submissive to their tyrant king" (the basis has been preserved to this day).
For example, when in 1561 there appeared a piece with the following heading: “Very ugly, terrible, hitherto unheard of, true new news, what kind of atrocities Muscovites commit with captive Christians from Livonia, men and women, virgins and children, and what harm they cause every day in their country. Along the way, it is shown what the big danger and the need of Livonians are. All Christians were warned and improved their sinful life written from Livonia and printed. Nuremberg 1561. Thus, the myth of "Germans raped by the Russians" in 1945 was only a repetition of an earlier image.
Ivan the Terrible was compared to Pharaoh, who persecuted the Jews, Nebuchadnezzar and Herod. He was defined as a tyrant. It was then that the word “tyrant” began to call all the rulers of Russia in principle, which the Westerners did not like (that is, they defended the interests of Russia and the Russian people). In the West, the myth about the murder of his own son by Ivan the Terrible was launched. The Saxon Elector Augustus I became the author of the famous maxim, the meaning of which was reduced to the fact that the Russian danger is comparable only with the Turkish one. Ivan the Terrible was depicted in the dress of the Turkish Sultan. They wrote about his harem from dozens of wives, and he allegedly killed those who got bored.
Thus, the foundations of the information war, which was waged during the Livonian War against Russia, the Russians and Ivan the Terrible, survived the centuries. As soon as Russia begins to defend its interests, in the West they immediately raise a new wave about the “Russian threat” and the Russian tsar- “tyrant”. At the same time, in Russia itself, this myth is rooted in the pro-Western "elite" and the intelligentsia.
Starting with N. M. Karamzin and subsequent liberal Russian historians and publicists in Russia, the myth of the “bloody murderous tsar” was formed. He was so strong that Ivan the Terrible, one of the brightest and greatest figures in the history of Russia, had no place in the landmark Millennium of Russia monument (1862). In the future, this negative assessment of Grozny still dominated. At the same time, the Russian aristocracy and the liberal intelligentsia were full supporters of Marx, Engels and Lenin. Only under Tsar Alexander III, when he embarked on strengthening patriotic values and combating Russophobia, were they trying to whitewash the image of the great ruler Ivan the Terrible. The exception was also the era of Joseph Stalin - the Russian statesman, defender of national, imperial interests understood Ivan Vasilyevich well. With him, Ivan the Terrible was honored. In recent years, works have also begun to appear in Russia that refute the "generally accepted" historical myths accusing the great Russian tsar of "tyranny" of pathological cruelty, including the murder of his own son.
In domestic politics, Ivan the Terrible also did not please the external and internal enemies of the Russian super-ethnos. The terrible king, having created the oprichnina, showed how to fight with internal enemies who are oriented toward the West or are pulling civilization into the past, preventing it from developing. He showed that in order for Russia to save itself, to survive before the onslaught of the West and to start moving into a “bright future,” it is necessary to suppress internal treason, to bring cosmopolitans and just thieves. It is also worth noting that the oprichnina of Grozny was a bold attempt (ahead of its time) to create a parallel control loop to counter the narrow group, clan interests of the princes and the boyars, the separatism of the regions. At the same time, a rather effective system of local self-government was formed during Grozny. It is not for nothing that the former oprichnich lands of the Pomeranian North and Volga region will later become areas of the formation of the Second Militia of Minin and Pozharsky in the 1612 year, and this says a lot.
The successes of the first king were immense. The territory of the Russian state has almost doubled, from 2,8 million to 5,4 million square meters. km By area, Russia has become the largest state in Europe. The Middle and Lower Volga regions were annexed, the Volga route was entirely withdrawn to Russia, the Urals, Western Siberia, and the forest-steppe and steppe regions of the Black Soil Region were mastered. Russia began to gain a foothold in the North Caucasus. The accession of Siberia began, which will end with the release of the Russians to the Pacific and the emergence of Russian America. During this period there were major wars, forays, epidemics, but, nevertheless, the population increased: according to various estimates, its growth ranged from 30 to 50%. Thus, in two of the most important indicators (territory growth and demography), the rule of Grozny was successful.
The Russian state under Ivan the Terrible held out in the war against almost the entire “enlightened Europe”. The strongest land armies of Western Europe — Polish and Swedish — fought against the Russian army. They were supported by the most professional fighters - mercenaries - Germans, Hungarians. The “German emperor, papal Rome” launched an “information war” against Russia. The Vatican actively led not only the information war, but also the organizational work, it was his agents who were able to carry out a brilliant operation to merge Lithuania and Poland into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Lublin Union 1569 of the Year). Russia survived the war on the third front - against Turkey and the Crimean Khanate. Moscow repelled two powerful blows of the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Khanate. In 1569, the campaign of the Crimean-Turkish army against Astrakhan failed. The enemy army was almost completely destroyed. In 1572, in the decisive Battle of the Young, another Crimean-Turkish army was defeated, put to flight and destroyed, despite its great numerical superiority. The strategic implications of these events were colossal. Moscow opened the way through the Volga to the East and South (the Caspian Sea). In the context of confrontation with the West (Livonian War), Moscow defended the accession of Kazan and Astrakhan (the Crimea and the Port claimed the inheritance of the Horde) and preserved the achievements of the previous century. They could not take the Crimea yet, but behind it was a powerful Ottoman Empire. To solve this problem will require more than one hard war.
Also, when Ivan IV began to create a regular army. The most important military reform of the first king was the establishment in 1550 of the year of the rifle troops, armed with handguns weapons. Since the second half of the XVI century. Local land ownership is built into a coherent system. The lawsuit of 1550 of the year forbade princes and boyars to accept as slaves "children of the boyars and their children", the decree of the 1558 of the year extended this rule to all the sons of the petty nobles. That is, now the service of all the nobles was only sovereign and hereditary. The feudal nobility could no longer form their servants and military detachments of nobles. The founding document was the 1556 Service Code of the Year. Every 150 tithe exhibited one warrior "on horseback and in full armor." Landowners who have more than 150 tithes in estates and estates, exhibited a proportionate arable land number of fighters. Ivan the Terrible made a noble service of hereditary duty. From this service could only release the king himself. In order not to lose the estate, the landlords had to serve the Motherland, shed blood for it, keep it to themselves and prepare sons for service. Local troops were the core of the army of Ivan the Terrible. Russia had a strong military production. In particular, the artillery of the Russian kingdom was at the level of the advanced Western European countries.
In Russia, there was no mass terror, as in Western countries. Over half a century of the reign of the great king, 4-5 thousand were executed (including traitors and criminals). For example, it was only during the St. Bartholomew's night in Paris 24 of August 1572 that the Huguenots (Protestants) were cut out as much or even more than for the whole reign of Ivan Vasilyevich. In the following days, around 25-30 thousand people were killed in Paris and throughout France. And this is only one event. And during the civil wars in France, the massacre between French Catholics and French Huguenots, many more people died.
Under Ivan Vasilyevich, 155 of new cities and fortresses was founded. So that people could live and work in peace, the system was cut off by a notch, ramparts, ditches, plosokow, ostrozhkov-fortress, guard posts and guards. The construction of the “Great borderline” of the Russian state was completed in 1566 year. Outside the borders, on the distant approaches to them, a powerful and mobile belt of the Cossack Troops was formed. An advanced defense zone and a possible springboard for an offensive was located in Zaporizhia, on the Don, Terek, Volga, Yaik (Ural), Orenburg region and Siberia. Grozny gave his son a strong state and a rich treasury. With the money accumulated by his father, Fedor Ivanovich at the beginning of his reign will build a new wall around the capital - the White City. In the Volga basin, Tsarevokokshaysk, Samara, Tsaritsyn will be erected, another line of fortresses in the south will be built: Kursk, Belgorod, Valuyki, Oskol, Voronezh.
Thus, one should not be surprised at such hatred of the first Russian tsar by external and internal enemies of the Russian people. Ivan Vasilyevich is one of the most skilful and zealous rulers of Russia throughout its history. At the same time, he was a "formidable" king for the enemies of Russia, who dreamed of destroying her, dismembling her, and dragging her along the "fates".
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