Ivan IV, “the Terrible” (1533–1584), is one of the key figures in Russian history, yet he has remained among the most neglected. Notorious for pioneering a policy of unrestrained terror—and for killing his own son—he has been credited with establishing autocracy in Russia. This is the first attempt to write a biography of Ivan from birth to death, to study his policies, his marriages, his atrocities, and his disordered personality, and to link them as a coherent whole.
Isabel de Madariaga situates Ivan within the background of Russian political developments in the sixteenth century. And, with revealing comparisons with English, Spanish, and other European courts, she sets him within the international context of his time. The biography includes a new account of the role of astrology and magic at Ivan’s court and provides fresh insights into his foreign policy. Facing up to problems of authenticity (much of Ivan’s archive was destroyed by fire in 1626) and controversies which have paralyzed western scholarship, de Madariaga seeks to present Russia as viewed from the Kremlin rather than from abroad and to comprehend the full tragedy of Ivan’s reign.
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. De Madariaga accomplishes a lot in this significant biography of the 16th-century Russian czar, contextualizing his life without minimizing his brutality. From a compendious knowledge of both primary and secondary sources, de Madariaga shows how Ivan increased his power in an attempt to assert his authority in a vast land still ruled by local princes. He also expanded Russian control to new areas, particularly western Siberia. She doesn't neglect his abuses of power. But the needs of ruling an enormous, divided country don't explain that brutality—both in extracting money from the peasantry to pay for his lengthy wars and in the capricious violence he inflicted on those he suspected of treason. Here de Madariaga admits the role of psychopathology. Nor does the author (Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great), a professor emeritus of Russian studies at the University of London, neglect other aspects of Ivan's reign. She deftly describes the active role that religion, magic and astrology played in Ivan's life and court. In fact, Ivan's belief that violence was necessary to purify himself and his people drove many of his actions, she argues. The book is written for scholars and students, but general readers willing to plow through the dry prose will be amply rewarded with what is likely to become the definitive work on Ivan for some time. Illus., maps not seen by PW.(July)
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From Booklist
The authoritative historians of Ivan IV have been Russian scholars, and de Madariaga explains that her biography assesses the persuasiveness of their differing interpretations of his personality and the significance of his reign. Though possessing this academic purpose, de Madariaga embeds it in a narrative of Ivan's life (1530-84) that will be of interest to general readers. Enthroned when a boy, Ivan inherited a complicated set of titles and a government dominated by landowning magnates, the boyars. His decimation of the boyars, often performed personally and with imaginative sadism, endowed Ivan with his fearsome reputation; some historians, notably in the Soviet period, considered Ivan's bloodbaths as a ghastly but modernizing passage to a centralized Russian state. More realistically, de Madariaga describes the victims of Ivan's capricious wrath in the context of his superstitions and paranoia about treason. Regarding Ivan as more rational--though hardly humanitarian in foreign affairs, de Madariaga evenly relates his diplomacy and near-continual warfare. Considering him as basically a historical horror, de Madariaga's expertly presented Ivan the Terrible measures up to the moniker. Gilbert Taylor
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