Tag Archives: Reign of Terror

Ivan the Power Hungry

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Ivan’s rule was centered around the pursuit of power for self preservation. After seeing so many of those close to him dying, whether it was the suspicious death of his mother, or the tragic death of his beloved wife, death had surrounded Ivan from a young age. Many of the actions he took were strengthening the central government in Moscow by directly enhancing his own power and giving billets in local government to his supporters, but he also gave power out to loyal servants, “oprichniki” to do his bidding. These oprichniki acted in unrestricted violence to do whatever Ivan told them. Their violence towards boyars, churchmen, and normal citizens were truly terrible.

In the account of a foreigner, Heinrich von Staden, working as an oprichniki he described some truly sadistic punishments that were directly ordered by Ivan. His bloody and merciless path to find who was against him cost many innocent people their lives. (Kaiser 153) However, this is the account of a foreigner who used these stories to try and convince the German Emperor to invade Muscovy. The actual twisted nature of Ivan can not be accurately found in these accounts.

However, the boyars were not simply useless to Ivan, he did strengthen the boyars who supported him, again showing how he was seeking power to protect himself. It was quite natural for leaders during this time to consolidate power and kill people who opposed them. The Western idea of Ivan and “the Terrible” can quite possibly have been distorted by the report of von Staden. While the tragic events in Ivan’s youth and young adult life could certainly have done some mental damage, most of his actions seem rational to strengthen the state, but more importantly, his own safety.

Did the actions Ivan take accidentally strengthen the state, or was it a conscious action to protect Muscovy?

 

The Psychology of Ivan IV

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As a young child, Ivan IV was a victim of the same caprice and cruelty that would later characterize his own reign. After his mother’s “haughty and arbitrary”  ((RS 101)))  regime, the young Ivan lived under chaotic boyar rule where “imprisonments, exiles, executions, and murders proliferated.” ((RS 133))  The boyars who had served Ivan as an autocrat while his mother was alive became neglectful and cruel of the young heir in his private life. Ivan seized his rule at age 13 and insisted that he be crowned as tsar (rather than Grand Prince) at age 16. Though he enjoyed a happy marriage to Anasatsia of the Romanov boyar family, Ivan’s personal traumas continued. Soon after his wedding a great fire razed Moscow, leading to riots that killed his uncle and nearly killed Ivan himself. Riasanovsky and Steinberg call the riot “one of the psychological crises that were periodically to mark his explosive reign.”

I found Ivan’s psychology intriguing, since he – like Mao Zedong and Josef Stalin – was a fearsome ruler who grew up in a home marked by violence and trauma. Ivan’s psychological profile seems to be a topic of interest in Russian history, since the 1897 portrait by Victor Vasnetov is characterized as a “psychological portrait.” The actions that characterized his Reign of Terror (such as the founding of the oprichniki) don’t seem so much like sadistic punishments of his people as a they do a measure of personal protection.

 

Discussion questions:

What were Ivan’s motivations for his Reign of Terror? What events in his life made him paranoid and fearful for his personal safety and hegemony?

Ivan IV Questions

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Was Ivan well-liked or at least tolerable in the 1540s and 1550s, prior to his institution of the oprichnina? Does the oprichnina mark the period in which Ivan’s mental health deteriorated or was he extremely paranoid throughout his entire rule? What exactly was the oprichnina? I know it was a second, separate administration instituted by Ivan but what was its intended goal? Did the oprichnina have any other function besides its infliction of a reign of terror?

Values of Revolutionary Culture

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La Marseillaise is a remarkably bloodthirsty national anthem, marking the desire for revenge over those who oppressed the French citizenry. It is interesting that Rouget de Lisle was himself a royalist, not only because he composed this anthem in a revolutionary spirit, but also because of the incredibly violent nature of the lyrics:

Aux armes citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons!
Qu’un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons.

To arms, citizens!
Form up your battalions
Let us march, Let us march!
That their impure blood
Should water our fields

These lyrics express a desire to repay blood with blood, which with the limited information about Rouget de Lisle provided, is strange because it would seem that himself, as a royalist, would be one of the ones whose blood would “water [the] fields.” It would seem that he took a great risk by refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the new constitution, and he narrowly escaped the guillotine.

The Cult of the Supreme Being by Robespierre at parts seems almost to contradict many of the events of the Reign of Terror. Robespierre says the Supreme Being “created men to help each other, to love each other mutually, and to attain to happiness by the way of virtue.” According to him, however, this only applies to those Frenchmen taking part in the revolution, and basically the opposite applies to the oppressors.

These references to the “Supreme Being” are the establishment of Deism as a state religion, meaning that Robespierre and many French revolutionists believed that there was a Supreme Being, or God, who created the universe but did not interact with it. The revolutionists believed that the Supreme Being was in favor of their movement and against all those who opposed it. This, again seems to be contradictory since a main tenet of deism is that the Supreme Being does not interact with the universe which He created.

These works by Rouget de Lisle and Robespierre show us that the values of revolutionary culture were geared primarily at attaining their goal of overthrowing the French monarchy and establishing a new order. They were not necessarily concerned with absolute consistency in their ideals, as is evident in the 40,000 people who were sent to the guillotine while revolutionists preached that the Supreme Being created man to “love each other mutually” and to seek enlightenment. Robespierre says “[m]ay all the crimes and all the misfortunes of the world disappear…Armed in turn with the daggers of fanaticism and the poisons of atheism, kings have always conspired to assassinate humanity.” This seems oddly reminiscent of the way the revolutionists handled their Reign of Terror; one could easily argue that there were a great many crimes and misfortunes inflicted on the world, and a great many assassinations were carried out at the guillotine.

Values and Goals of the French Revolution

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The bloodiness of the French Revolution came from its values, which are especially seen in La Marseillaise and The Cult of the Supreme Being. The French National anthem is drastically different from the American equivalent. It promotes values of war and violence to achieve liberty. La Marseillaise inspired citizens to take up arms to end government tyranny. The anthem is appropriate for troops marching into combat under heavy fire whereas the Star-Spangled Banner focuses on the values achieved by the war’s success such as liberty and equality.

The Cult of the Supreme Being, written by Robespierre in the Reign of Terror, represents similar values of violence and rebellion but from a very different angle. Robespierre justifies the call to arms with religion. He merges God with war by saying the He created men to help one another and that it is their duty to “purify the earth which they have soiled.” His radical writings are faith with fanaticism. Robespierre is careful to give “Him” a new name–The Supreme Being–to avoid losing the supports of more religious people of the Third Estate.

The dramatic text is an extreme, twisted version of civil religion. Instead of creating loyalty to the state through religious symbolism, he creates loyalty to the French Revolution with religious symbolism. He is certainly not the first to make his own perspective on religious to further violent goals.

The goals of the famous texts which inspired the revolution were corrupted during the actual revolution. Instead of achieving enlightenment through thinking for oneself or engaging in intellectual debate to better civil society, the goal became a violent overthrow of government tyranny. The French Revolution was an accurate depiction of Hobbes’ state of nature. Perhaps a contributing factor to the French Revolution’s unsuccessfulness (as compared to America) was that the civil religion used to inspire and justify the bloody revolution was never adapted for peacetime. Just a speculation…