46 Fun Facts About Ivan the Terrible

The title tsar, which Ivan was the first Russian ruler to be crowned with, comes from which ancient name?

Caesar. Russians already used the word for the khans of the Golden Horde, so taking it at his coronation, aged 16, announced that he now answered to no one.

The Russian word 'grozny' in Ivan's epithet is better translated as what?

Formidable or awe-inspiring. When the nickname was first put into English, 'terrible' still meant inspiring terror and awe rather than bad or wicked, and the old translation stuck.

Who first ruled as regent for the three-year-old Ivan?

His mother. Elena Glinskaya held power until she died in 1538, leaving the seven-year-old Ivan in the hands of feuding boyar clans.

Ivan's grandmother Sophia Palaiologina belonged to the imperial family of which fallen power?

Byzantium. She was a niece of its last emperor, and she brought the old empire's court ceremony to the Kremlin, feeding Moscow's claim to be the 'Third Rome'.

Ivan's mother, Elena Glinskaya, died in 1538; what do many believe happened to her?

She was poisoned. That is the long-standing suspicion, and her death threw the seven-year-old Ivan into nine years of murderous feuding among the boyars, whom he never forgave.

Weeks after his coronation in 1547, the 16-year-old Ivan held which other ceremony?

His wedding. Noble families across Russia had been told to send their daughters to the Kremlin for inspection, and from that bride-show he chose Anastasia, the first tsaritsa.

Ivan's first wife, Anastasia, came from which noble family?

The Romanovs. The name came later, from her father Roman, but her great-nephew Michael became the first Romanov tsar and the family ruled Russia for three centuries.

Ivan liked to claim descent from a brother of which Roman emperor?

Augustus. A court legend traced the ruling house back through Rurik to Prus, an invented brother of the emperor, and Ivan liked to cite it to show his blood was no ordinary Russian's.

What was the Sudebnik, which Ivan reissued in 1550?

A law code. It replaced his grandfather's code of 1497, part of a wave of reforms that also put local law and order in the hands of officials elected in each district.

The streltsy, founded by Ivan as Russia's first standing army, fought mainly with what?

Firearms. Their name means 'shooters', and each man also carried a long-handled axe that doubled as a rest for the heavy gun barrel.

Ivan the Terrible's grandfather, Ivan III, who ended Moscow's tribute to the Tatars, is remembered by which nickname?

Ivan the Great. In 1480 his army and the khan's faced each other across the Ugra river for weeks, until the Tatars turned for home after little fighting.

A gravely ill Ivan asked his boyars in 1553 to swear loyalty to his baby son; how did many respond?

Refused the oath. They thought he was past saving, but Ivan recovered, and their holding back deepened his distrust of his nobles.

Which technology did Ivan bring to Moscow in the 1550s, only for its first workshop to be burned down?

The printing press. Moscow's scribes saw it as a threat to their trade and hounded the first printers, who fled to Lithuania after the workshop burned and carried on working there.

Which Moscow landmark did Ivan build to celebrate his conquest of a Tatar khanate?

Saint Basil's Cathedral. That is only its nickname: it was dedicated to the Intercession of the Virgin, and took its popular name from a 'holy fool' called Basil, over whose grave a chapel was added in 1588.

By legend, what did Ivan do to the architect of his most famous cathedral so he could never match it?

Had him blinded. Historians call it a myth: the builder, Postnik Yakovlev, was still at work for Ivan through the 1560s, long after the cathedral was finished.

Prince Andrey Kurbsky, once Ivan's close adviser, is remembered for doing what in 1564?

Defecting to the enemy. He went over to Poland-Lithuania in mid-war, and from there he and Ivan traded long, furious letters that are a prized record of the reign, though some scholars argue they are later forgeries.

After abruptly leaving Moscow in December 1564, Ivan sent letters back to the capital announcing what?

His abdication. The bluff worked: Moscow begged him to return, and his price was the right to execute 'traitors' and seize their estates without interference.

What was the oprichnina, which Ivan created in 1565?

His private state within Russia. He ruled it apart from the rest of the country, staffed it with hand-picked men loyal only to him, and scrapped it in 1572 after a reign of terror.

Ivan's oprichniki are said to have ridden with a broom and which animal's severed head?

Dog. The emblems carried a message: the tsar's men were his hounds, who would sniff out treason and then sweep it from the land.

Metropolitan Philip, Russia's senior churchman, was killed in 1569 after doing what?

Rebuking Ivan publicly. He refused the tsar his blessing in the cathedral in 1568, was deposed and shut up in a monastery, and was strangled there the next year by one of Ivan's men.

Which wealthy trading city did Ivan's black-clad guard sack in 1570 on suspicion that it was plotting treason?

Novgorod. The killing went on for weeks, with victims pushed into the freezing river, and the city, until then one of Russia's leading towns, never recovered its standing.

Which of Ivan's courtiers went on to become tsar himself in 1598?

Boris Godunov. His sister was married to Ivan's son and heir Feodor, and when Feodor died without children a national assembly elected Boris; Mussorgsky later made an opera of his story.

Which foreign monarch did Ivan spend years trying to win as an ally?

Elizabeth I of England. She wanted trade and he wanted an alliance, and late in life he even sought to marry one of her ladies, Mary Hastings, though he already had a wife.

Which Tatar khanate fell to Ivan's army in October 1552?

Kazan. Foreign engineers cut off the city's water and blew gaps in its walls, and 150 cannon and a final assault ended the siege after five weeks.

Ivan was crowned with the Cap of Monomakh, a jewelled gold skullcap trimmed with what?

Sable fur. It is the oldest crown in the Kremlin's collection, and some scholars think it began as a gift from a khan of the Golden Horde to the Moscow prince he ruled over.

Ivan's capture of Astrakhan in 1556 gave Russia the whole length of which river?

The Volga. With both ends of the river in Russian hands the trade route to the Caspian Sea was safe, and Muscovy had become an empire ruling other peoples.

By tradition, which symbol did Ivan order placed beneath the cross on church domes after defeating the Tatars?

The crescent. So the story goes, at least: a cross standing over a crescent was read as Christianity's triumph over Islam, and the design tops many Russian church domes.

Ivan fought the long Livonian War in the hope of winning Russia a coastline on which sea?

The Baltic Sea. After 24 years of war against Poland, Lithuania and Sweden he held less of the Baltic shore than when he began, and the economy was close to collapse.

Stephen Báthory, the Polish king who beat Ivan in the Livonian War, had earlier ruled which land?

Transylvania. Elected to the Polish throne in the 1570s, he carried the war into Russia and besieged Pskov for five months, until Ivan gave up all his gains in Livonia.

What did a Crimean Tatar army do to Moscow in 1571 while Ivan's troops were away fighting in Livonia?

Burned much of the city. The raiders fired the suburbs and a sudden wind did the rest, and the failure of Ivan's personal guard to stop them led him to disband it the next year.

How did Ivan repay Prince Vorotynsky, who saved Moscow from the Tatars in 1572?

Had him killed. Within a year of his victory at Molodi the prince fell from favour, and in one account he was accused of bewitching the tsar, tortured over fire and died on the way to a monastery.

Which merchant family did Ivan grant a 1558 charter to colonise the Kama River lands?

The Stroganovs. Already rich from salt, they hired Cossacks to guard the new lands, which began Russia's push into Siberia, and beef Stroganoff is named after a later member of the family.

Which Cossack leader, hired by merchants to guard their frontier, began Russia's conquest of Siberia?

Yermak Timofeyevich. He overthrew the khan of Sibir with a few hundred men, then drowned crossing a river after a night ambush, weighed down, the story goes, by armour the tsar had sent him.

What became of two wives Ivan tired of?

Sent to convents. The Church barred even a fourth marriage and recognised only four of his six or more, and two of the later brides were made nuns within a few years of marrying him.

Ivan's third wife, Marfa Sobakina, died how soon after they married in October 1571?

About two weeks. She was already ailing when they married, and when she died Ivan, suspecting foul play, had a number of people put to death.

How is Ivan generally believed to have killed his eldest son and heir in 1581?

With a blow from his staff. The quarrel is said to have begun when Ivan attacked his son's pregnant wife over her dress, and the heir's death left the throne to his frail brother Feodor.

Which painter's celebrated 1885 canvas shows Ivan cradling his dying son?

Ilya Repin. Tsar Alexander III disliked the picture so much that it was banned from display for three months, and visitors have attacked it twice since, in 1913 and in 2018.

Which composer wrote the music for the 1940s Soviet film epic Ivan the Terrible?

Sergei Prokofiev. His score outlived the film: it was reworked for the concert hall as an oratorio and, in 1975, turned into a ballet for the Bolshoi.

What was Ivan doing when he collapsed and died in March 1584?

Playing chess. He slumped back in his chair during a game with the courtier Bogdan Belsky, and the throne passed to his gentle, church-loving son Feodor.

When Feodor, Ivan's successor, died childless in 1598, what period of Russian history began?

The Time of Troubles. Fifteen years of famine, foreign invasion and impostors claiming to be Ivan's dead son Dmitry followed, ending only when a new dynasty took the throne in 1613.

Which substance did Soviet scientists find in excess when they exhumed Ivan's remains in 1963?

Mercury. It was a common ingredient in the medicines of his day, and his bones were so overgrown with spurs that in his last years he could barely move and had to be carried.

Soviet scientists who opened Ivan's tomb in 1963 used his skull to do what?

Reconstruct his face. Almost every portrait of him was painted after his death, so the head that Mikhail Gerasimov sculpted over the skull is the nearest thing to a true likeness.

Besides his letters, Ivan is credited with composing which kind of music?

Church hymns. A chant in honour of Peter, a sainted metropolitan of Moscow, is credited to the same tsar who had a later metropolitan strangled.

Which Soviet director made a two-part film about Ivan under Stalin's personal supervision?

Sergei Eisenstein. Part One won a Stalin Prize, but Part Two showed a tsar tormented by doubt and was banned until 1958, and the third part he had planned was never finished.

Which actor played Ivan the Terrible in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009)?

Christopher Guest. His Ivan is recruited by an Egyptian pharaoh alongside Napoleon and Al Capone, as one of three villains from history sent to seize a magic tablet.

The white stone Church of the Ascension at Kolomenskoye is traditionally said to celebrate which event?

Ivan's birth. His father had waited so long for an heir that he set aside his wife of twenty years to remarry, and he marked the boy's arrival with a new kind of church, shaped like a stone tent.