Ivan the Terrible

Write an article on Ivan the Terrible. It needs to be at least 2750 words. Ivan inherited his father’s throne amidst violence, and turmoil as the Boyars ran about looting and fighting immediately following Vasily’s death when he was just three years old.4 Four of Ivan’s uncles were murdered following his father’s death, and some of the murders took place in Ivan’s presence.5. The trauma of his early years, and the loss of family, which left Ivan feeling unsafe and vulnerable, would affect him the rest of his life.6 As a result, Ivan would become known as Russia’s most violent and warmongering ruler in history: Ivan the Terrible.

Ivan exhibited cruel behaviors as a young child, like throwing domestic pets from the belfry tower to watch them fall to their deaths.7 Ivan’s cruelty was a manifestation of his fears, his sense of loss, and a valid sense that he had to learn to be as violent as the Boyars who would have themselves dropped Ivan from the belfry but for the fact that they needed him.8

By the time Ivan was a young adolescent, Ivan was already taking control of his throne. He demonstrated a never before seen propensity for violence, suspicious of the Boyars and clergymen, he confiscated property under the control of the throne so that the Boyars owned nothing.9
“In 1543, at the age of thirteen, Ivan manifested some of the qualities for which he later earned the name Groznyi (“Stern,” or more commonly, “the Terrible”), when he ordered that the leader of the boyar clique, Andrei Shuiskii, be summarily executed in his presence. Later he ordered that a nobleman, who was apparently rude to him, have his tongue cut out. There were other similar incidents and only the Metropolitan of Moscow, Makarii, could restrain some of these excesses. Still, during his minority, the kingdom was ruled by the Glinski family. Ivan spent his days hunting and traveling, being particularly fond of visiting remote monasteries.