You're Dead to Me - Ivan the Terrible

Episode Date: August 20, 2021

Was he really so terrible (hint: yes!), or is it all just a translation error (well, sort of)? Greg Jenner and his guests dive into the life, times, and crimes of Russia's first Tsar, the infamous Ivan the Terrible. From his bumpy youth, early successes, and multiple wives, to his oppressive policy of oprichnina and notorious reputation for cruelty, the panel discusses the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly when it comes to one of history's most feared rulers. Featuring Professor Peter Frankopan (University of Oxford) and Russian-born comedian Olga Koch, whose BBC appearances include OK Computer, Human Error, Fight, QI, and The Now Show.The Athletic production for BBC Radio 4

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, a BBC Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author, broadcaster, and I'm the chief nerd on the BBC comedy show Horrible Histories. On this podcast, we ruthlessly smash together education and entertainment to expand your historical horizons whilst gently tickling your funny bone.

And in this episode, we're grabbing our iron staffs and pointy beards to travel all the way back to 16th century Russia to explore the life and times, or is that life and crimes, of Ivan the Terrible. To help us navigate the terrors and treacheries, we are joined by two very special guests. In History Corner, he's Professor of Global History at the University of Oxford, where he works on the history of Russia, the Middle East, China and beyond. He is the author of the fascinating bestsellers, The Silk Roads and The New Silk Roads. And you will remember him, of course, from the Genghis Khan or Chinggis Khan episode

and the Justinian and Theodora episodes of You're Dead to Me. It's one of our best podcast pals, Professor Peter Frankopan. It's great to have you back, Peter. I'm so relieved to be back. Thank you for having me again. We are delighted to have you back.

And in Comedy Corner, she's a hilarious stand-up and writer and actor who was nominated for Best Newcomer at the 2018 Edinburgh Comedy Awards. You'll recognise her from appearances on QI, Mock the Week and The Now Show. Plus, she also has three different shows available on BBC Sounds. There's Fight, about Russia in the 1990s. There's OK Computer.

And then there's also a new show that she co-hosts called Human Error, all about technology. It's the brilliant and clearly very busy Olga Koch. Welcome, Olga. Здравствуйте. Hello, everyone. Oh, hello. Olga, you're a proper Russian. Yeah, I think so. I hope so. Thank you so, so much for having me. I'm very, very excited to be here. Oh, we're delighted to have you here. I mean, you're a rising star of comedy, but were you an A-star history student? You know, at school, was history your bag? Or are you like, oh, God, what now?

I went to an American high school where the entirety of the classes was just learning every American president in sequence. So I don't think I'm going to be lifting heavy here, but we'll see. Okay. And who's your favorite American president? That urban legend about Woodrow Wilson's wife being president while he was like really sick is very cool, I think. So President Mrs. Wilson, nice.

Everyone should spend their time learning about US vice presidents. I've learned that if you have the million dollar question, it's always going to be about who is the US vice president because no one knows who any of those guys are. On that note, Olga, your dad was deputy prime minister of Russia, right? Yeah, that never comes up on any quiz.

I can guarantee you that. So you grew up in Russia did you do Ivan the Terrible at all at school or did you leave before you got to that part of the curriculum? We definitely did like I remember stuff and I think the most vivid thing I would dare say any Russian child remembers is like the legendary Repin painting of Ivan the Terrible killing his own son. And that's like in every textbook. And that's the first thing that comes to mind whenever you tell a Russian child, ask them about Ivan the Terrible. And that's a pretty terrible thing to be the first thing in a child's mind. Okay, so spoiler alert, Ivan the Terrible kills his son.

So what do you know? This is where I take a stab, lol, at what you might know about today's subject. And Ivan the Terrible is known as Russia's most infamous and cruel ruler, perhaps. The clue is in the name. He wasn't Ivan the Cuddly. You might be picturing a bearded evil genius similar to his appearance as the baddie in the 2009 film Night at the Museum, Battle of the Smithsonian. Or you may have come toe-to-toe with him as the dastardly Russian general in the video game Age of Emp the Museum, Battle of the Smithsonian. Or you may have come toe-to-toe with him as the dastardly Russian general in the video game Age of Empires III,

one of my faves. And if you're a movie buff, you might love the Eisenstein movie with the Prokofiev score. But what about the man himself? Was he really so terrible? Have we got him wrong? Should we be more sympathetic to Ivan the Lovely? Let's find out, shall we? Peter, can we get a little bit of background on 16th century Russia? Because it's not the same country we think of today. So what's the geopolitics of the world that Ivan is born into? It's not really Russia at all. It's actually Muscovy. What we think of of Russia, in fact, in Ukraine and Russia, have been pushed back north by the arrivals of the Mongols. And eventually a central nuclear point starts to

grow up around a town called Vladimir, which is very close to where Moscow is today. The person who's ruling that state is effectively, to start with, sort of paying gathering taxes and administering land that he pays as a tribute to the Tatar Khan or the Mongol Khan who's further to the south. By around about 1300s, the rulers of Muscovy are starting to become a bit more powerful. Before Ivan is born, we have sort of big monuments being built in Moscow. So the Cathedral of the Dormition, one of the most beautiful buildings, has been constructed. And so Muscovy is starting to see itself as being more than a satellite state. It's broken its links with the Khans. But there are bigger problems to the north. Traditional enemies are in Poland,

Lithuania and Sweden. So Ivan is born in a place that is in transition. It's on its way to becoming quite important. It's the home of the Orthodox Church in Russia. But Muscovy is adding muscles. It's in the process of taking steroids when Ivan is born. Russian taking steroids, I've never heard of such a thing. He's born in 1530. So just shy of 500 years ago, which makes him the contemporary of Henry VIII. And his childhood, is it happy fun times? Or is it political nightmare? I don't think anybody born 500 years ago had a great childhood. Vitamin deficiencies, nutrition, etc. But it was particularly tricky. If as happened with Ivan, your father died when you're three, and then your mother dies. It's a dark time because there are omens in the sky. Three comets

come past when Ivan is a young boy. There are terrible storms, and there are droughts that are so bad that we're told by one chronicle that birds are unable to fly. He falls ill when he's young, probably, in fact, because of vitamin deficiency. So not great. But then the bigger problem is if you're a young, posh boy whose parents are either dead or otherwise engaged, and you're the heir apparent, basically you're a kind of vacuum that other people are going to gather up to try and fill. And the aristocracy, the boyar class in Muscovy, all figure out that Ivan being young, impressionable, and precarious, that this gives them a chance to become wealthier, more powerful themselves. And that's a pretty tough world, I think, for a young boy to be growing up in. So Paulette Livon, his dad died when he was three. His mum died when he was eight. He's basically like Batman. His origin story is about being an orphan boy. Yeah, and they both have vitamin D deficiency because they're always in the dark.

So there's a family called the Shushki who sort of assume control, I think. Is that... My pronunciation is terrible, Olga. I'm so sorry. I'm judging you. Don't worry. Well, judge me out loud then. How should I say it?

Shushki? Shushki. Oh, okay. I'm miles off. So little Ivan really disliked Prince Andrei Shushki. And Olga, why do you think he found him so annoying? He called him terrible. No, it was a little bit more petty than that.

It was basically putting elbows on the table and putting your feet up on a chair. He was a bit fussy that way. Why is he such a pedantic 11-year-old? What is this? It's about status, right? Nobody likes to be treated badly and to be disrespected. I think that's the word young people use today. He got disrespected.

He sounds like Rushmore. Yeah, right. And when Ivan is 13 years old, his great rival, Prince Andrei Shushki, is murdered. We're not sure by whom, but presumably Ivan is either implicated or he's delighted. Right, Peter?

Well, so there are different stories about why Andrei Shushki is killed. One is that he's beaten to death by Ivan's henchmen. Another one, he's locked in a cellar and torn apart by ravenous dogs. It sounds plausible to me that Ivan would have been the person who ordered that, but lots of people wanted the Shchuskis out the way

because that opens up an opportunity and a space for them as well. He's giving mad King Joffrey vibes right now. Ah, funny you say that. Actually, the King Joffrey vibes are pretty much spot on. Apparently, Ivan, as a teenager, liked to amuse himself with some pretty cruel pranks. Do you want to guess what they are, Olga? Think animals.

It's eating, killing, or having sex with, and I hate all of them. Oh, no. He's a fan of gravity. He apparently likes throwing them off of tall buildings. And he also apparently, at the age of 15, likes to them off of tall buildings and he also apparently the age of 15 likes to go around on his horse and beat up members of the peasant class because he can it's someone in need of an xbox really isn't it he's just a sort of a petulant little boy who just needs a distraction olga you went to a pretty fancy school i think at some point did you have

any privileged brats who are beating up peasants and throwing things out of windows i'm hoping not not that i know of but i do think it's probably thanks to violent computer games right as you said you just outsource all of that into call of duty or whatever because killing people on call of duty is okay so age 16 ivan does get crowned and his dad has been prince of muscovy but he gets crowned as the Tsar of all Russia, the Tsar of the Rus. That feels like an upgrade. How does he manage to wangle that then? How he wangles it, if you're the ruler, you can wangle whatever you like. I mean, that's the joy number one, I guess.

Tsar is a Slavicised version of the word Caesar or Cesar. It's to create the connection back towards the Byzantine world and in fact, further back towards the Roman world. Moscow, the city being the third Rome, has a kind of claim on religious authority as well as imperial authority. So Ivan is really just saying, look, I'm not just important and I'm not just big in the forests. I actually have a claim that is much more substantial than that. I'm going to roll together religion, empire, history into showing that I'm numero uno. Nice. Olga, who would you like to be descended from?

If you were going to become the queen of comedy, who would your famous historical ancestor be? The first banana peel. That's my origin story. Okay, so he's calling himself a czar. He's giving himself that authority, that legitimacy, that history. It's also a very religious thing forar. He's giving himself that authority, that legitimacy, that history. It's also a very religious thing for him. He's establishing himself as a sort of defender of the faith. He's very learned, isn't he? He's got that very famous library that Stalin tried to find. We know that Ivan the Terrible liked to anatomise animals. He was interested in science. Obviously, in later life, his interest in body parts was also a bit more grim. We'll get to that.

But of course, as a new king, as a new Tsar, he needs to have babies. He's got to have an heir, which means he needs a new wife. So he marries a Tsarina and her name is Anastasia Romanovna. And they have a pretty special wedding night. I can only assume he was terrible in bed. Maybe Ivan the Terrible is a sort of Sex and the City nickname for him. I'm imagining Samantha going, oh my God, he was Ivan the Terrible is a sort of sex in the city nickname for him I'm imagining Samantha going oh my god he was Ivan the Terrible but I mean on his wedding night Olga do you want to guess what the rituals were that were performed in the room to ensure they had a happy marriage and they would have children what would you do what would I do well

on the first night with Ivan the Terrible ask him about his dead parents clearly no one else has this guy has a lot of psychological trauma they're like you're he's a really bad first night with Ivan the Terrible? Ask him about his dead parents. Clearly no one else has. This guy has a lot of psychological trauma. They're like, he's a really bad czar. What are you talking about? He lost his parents. What do you think the rituals were? I genuinely don't know. I assume they made love, but the fact that you are asking this question makes me think that maybe they didn't. Well, they probably did. But as well as that, tubs of wheat and sheaves of rye were spread all over the bed to ensure fertility. Very nice. You've got arrows being shot into the corners of the room to symbolically kill off all the enemies who might be lurking in the shadows.

You've got Anastasia's brother, Nikita. He slept next to them in a slightly separate bed, hopefully. And then the icing on the wedding cake was a member of the influential family was outside the window riding up and down on a stallion waving his sword around. That's nice, isn't it? So basically, it's a full on spectacular. It's difficult to do it spontaneously if you have such a long rider of things that need to happen in order to create a mood. My brother got married at the weekend and I was best man. And I'm just I was imagining sort of having to go around the room with rye and wheat in a bow and arrow and rent a horse. It's a lot of responsibilities. So the wedding night was red hot.

It sounds steamy and dreamy. Unfortunately, Moscow was also red hot that month because there were devastating fires. Thousands are killed. Buildings are destroyed. And rumors circulate that the fire has been started deliberately. Olga, who do you think has started the fire, according to the rumors?

He's killed the guy, Shushka. Is it anyone related to him? Good guess. No, the rumors say the fire has been started by ghouls. Excuse me? I didn't know that was an option. Yeah, it's ghouls. Peter, what have ghouls got to do with it?

I mean, the Russian word is serdechniki, I think. Serdechniki. Okay, so Moscow, like most towns is Serdechniki, I think. Serdechniki. Okay, so Moscow, like most towns at this time, is made of wood. And that means that it catches fire regularly. And summers in Moscow can be really warm. In 1547, the fire is a really bad one. So lots of houses and shops go up.

One of the powder towers in the Kremlin blows up and scatters bricks everywhere and kills people. So the first question is, why has this happened? And lots of people start saying, well, it's omens. Others say we're being punished by God. Supposed our sister sort of forced to confess and then beheaded or impaled. But then a story goes around saying it's sirdecniki, so ghouls or sort of ghosts. And these are supposed to be spirits that tear people's hearts out and then create a special water that creates fire. The more weird thing is that Ivan's grandmother, Anna Glinskaya, she has turned into a magpie and is flying over Moscow, sprinkling this water over the buildings, and that's why it catches fire.

So they're saying that she's the witch, she's responsible, and she should be executed because that's the reason why Moscow has caught fire. Who are you going to call? Ghoulbusters! So we've got a raging inferno, we've got an angry mob, and they do show up and lynch a member of the family, right? Ivan's grandmother, they want her to come out and be executed, and they manage to get hold of someone in the Glinskaya family. This is serious, right, Peter? This is mob rule. The Glinskys are really unpopular. They're detested for being overgrasping. They're too sort of flashy. They have Lithuanian origins.

So there's a bit of xenophobia in there too, although they're very powerful. Ivan calls a commission to say, let's find out what has happened. Let's gather everybody in the Uspensky Cathedral, which miraculously hadn't burnt down, although it had caught fire. Standing outside watching it, Ivan calls all the boyas and yuri glinsky is there and he gets spotted identified

and runs into the cathedral to try and be safe and is then lynched by the crowd so the crowd then demand that anna glinskaya is handed over she's miles away and there are rumors that she's being hidden in the palace and so on and that she's communicating with the Tatars preparing to invade Muscovy. So there's a whole load of stuff going on here about Ivan basically being forced to choose. Does he take responsibility himself? Does he blame so-called arsonists? Does he go after the Glinsky family? And how does he deal with the boyars urging him on to take out the Glinskys,

which is what is really going on. They realise this is a perfect opportunity for them to get rid of one of the most powerful families and absorb their positions, lands, etc. And at no point does anybody suspect the town that's made out of wood, paper and rayon. Ivan's reign has started pretty badly. So he does the obvious thing, which is declare war, because everyone loves a nice war. So he pops on his combat boots and goes and pose for butch selfies with a big manly cannon. And who's he at war with, Peter? So it's heading south towards the Khanates, those post-Mongol entities. And some of them are still pretty powerful, like in Crimea,

the Golden Horde. The Khanate of Kazan is the one that has good lands, not too far away, and looks pretty ripe. But Ivan, although he's powerful back home, he's taunted. So the Crimean Khan writes to him and says, what do you want, little boy, my affection or bloodshed? You choose very carefully and we'll see what comes of it. That's so hot. It's quite a good line. But Ivan gets all of his armies together and heads for Kazan because he recognizes that if he doesn't capture it, the Crimean Khan will and his enemy will become even more powerful. He appears to spend most of his time inside his tent praying for success, which then duly happens.

And he forcibly converts the population of Kazan and then heads south towards Astrakhan, which is on the Caspian Sea. That opens up more trade routes and gathers lots of booty, gets lots of prestige. And so back home in Moscow, everybody's thrilled that this young guy who used to throw dogs and cats off balconies, turns out that he's pretty good at delivering, expanding territory, and obviously God is smiling on him. And so there are songs, huge banquets and, you know, accounts saying that no one ever seen such generosity and joy and celebration in Moscow. That's a big reversal from the fires and the lynching. Suddenly, everything's come out smelling of roses. You talked about a mass conversion. He was converting people from

Islamic faith to Greek Orthodox? From anything to Orthodoxy. I mean, it's a very good question about exactly what does it mean to be Christian or Muslim, particularly in borderlands. I mean, normal, the way of doing things is to be inclusive. But Ivan doesn't have any of that in him. He wants to show that Russian orthodoxy is what matters, that he's doing God's will. And to prove that, he builds a whopping great cathedral, St Basil's, in 1554, which is one of the best cathedrals. This is a man for whom religion is number one on the list. Well, because it gives an identity for everybody. So if you're rich, poor, if you're a peasant, if you're a boyar, it's something that everybody has in common.

That and language are the two big things that allows the territories to be united under obvious big symbols. In fact, it's not called St Basil's. That's only given that name a little bit later. It's the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Virgin. St Basil was a holy man who hung around the building site the cathedral took on his name. So he was definitely in the right place at the right time.

So Ivan's religious policy is build a cathedral, convert everybody. And in terms of his fiscal policy, he's anti-corruption. He closes tax loopholes. He gets rid of the banditry. Things are going quite well. Rulership is a tricky thing to get right. But generally, transparency, lack of corruption, rooting out all the dodgy officials is quite a smart way of doing it and having law codes that standardise. The question is who stands to benefit. When you centralise, you can concentrate more and more power on the position of the emperor, but that starts to cut other people out of the decision making process and out of that rich golden fountain that springs out gold coins for people to benefit from. And that creates its own problems too, because then you have a boyar class

who has less authority, less prestige, fewer resources, and it's normally a matter of time before that pressure starts to build up. I'm reminded, Olga, of your show Fight on BBC Sounds. Your father was partially responsible for the economic redistribution of money and power to just a tiny set of oligarchs. So I guess things happen in cycles in Russian history, perhaps. Oh, yeah. We only know one way to do things, and the way is bad. I'm not blaming your father. I'm just saying these things are tricky, and obviously they can go a little bit wrong. Oh, I'm blaming him. That's okay.

The major thing that's kind of a huge part of his life isn't it 1553 ivan has a terrifying illness that very nearly kills him and his heir is a tiny baby called dimitri and ivan is he's on his deathbed and he's like i want all the boyars to swear allegiance to my baby and they are all like yeah not really that fast, to be honest. And so this is a tricky moment, isn't it? Because Ivan survives his illness and he's seen all the boyars refuse to pledge allegiance to his son. So is this where he becomes increasingly controlling? The general consensus is that it spooks him. I mean, he really is very close to death.

He has his will checked. He's properly ill. I mean, he really is very close to death. He has his will checked. He's properly ill. And so the fear of leaving a precarious child, it all reminds him of where he's been before. Quite a few of the boyars do swear allegiance to Dimitri,

but some of the others do a kind of out of office email response. They say, oh, well, I'm not really at home at the moment. Or, you know, I'm also ill, so I can't really do it. But trust, you know, I will. Just let me know how it goes. And that's in a way understandable, because you don't want to be backing the wrong horse in a time like this. Backing the wrong baby. But then when he gets better, he does seem to go after the people who he thinks haven't shown him the suitable level of respect. So at that point, he starts thinking that all these guys around me are clowns they're all going to try and pull the rug from under me whenever they have a moment they're certainly

not going to help my son so this self-obsessed bunch of losers I'm going to start treating them in a slightly different way I mean that's that's not exactly his words because we don't know exactly what he thought but I think that there is a kind of stiffening of his resolve things get very sad for Ivan now at this point, because even though he survives his health crisis, his wife Anastasia, she doesn't. She dies. He thinks possibly poison has been involved.

And also their son Dimitri, the baby, he tragically gets dropped in a river accidentally and drowns, which is obviously very sad. And then they've also had three daughters, all of whom have died very young. So in the space of a few years, he's lost his wife and four kids and possibly thinks poison might have been involved. So we're getting a kind of sad, depressed, paranoid Ivan showing up as well. But the grief manifests itself in a slightly unusual way. I'm

not going to judge here because grief is a complicated human emotion. But he doesn't go for the Queen Victoria, I'm very sad, I'm only going to wear black for 40 years kind of route an unofficial source accuses him of launching into an orgy of promiscuous behavior which i think is the best kind of orgy certainly better than the orgies of violence he'll do later on in his life as long as there was enough wheat for everyone there's so much wheat in his bed tonight oh wow okay is the brother staying no okay his answer to this accusation was to say we are all human which i think is a good line i always love like you can't shame me if i'm not ashamed answer yes if you if you try to sort of accuse anyone and they're like what are you jealous that's the coolest thing

so ivan is accused of doing debauched things with all sorts of people. He's probably bisexual. He has a long affair with a court favorite called Fyodor Basmanov. But he's obviously having a lot of fun with the ladies as well. But he does then settle down and he does find a new love. He finds a new lady and he marries her. And then he finds a new lady and he marries her. And then he finds a new lady and he marries her and then he finds a new lady and he married

actually olga how many wives did ivan the terrible have i genuinely didn't know this aspect but now that like i know for a fact that like there are were always a lot of parallels with henry the eighth six oh close seven we think seven okay but as with boris johnson's children it's a vague approximation you always have to sort of add plus or minus either way. We think seven, but apparently towards the end of his life, he was shopping in England for wife number eight. Peter, actually, that's interesting. So Ivan the Terrible, Tsar of Russia, Russia is quite a long way away from England,

but his chief diplomatic ally is Elizabeth I in England. What's that about? Well, it's partly he struggles to find friends locally. That may be a personality thing. But also he's, you know, all of his neighbours are his rivals. So if you've met him, you don't like him if you're 4,000 miles away. Then he's safe. But he's very persistent about thinking that England offer opportunities, partly because the English themselves are quite interested in exploring trade links to Asia and through Russia. But he's extremely persistent. He has an English doctor who quite interested in exploring trade links to Asia and through

Russia. But he's extremely persistent. He has an English doctor who he meets in Moscow, who suggests to him a woman called Mary Hastings, who is a sort of English aristocratic woman in her late 20s, not married. So Ivan sends an ambassador to England to propose an alliance, but also to get all the stats on Mary, her height, her looks, her measurements. Some historians have said that, well, maybe Ivan was looking for somewhere to run a wave to. But that doesn't sound to me the Ivan that I know and love or fear. There's a lot going on between London and Moscow at this time of elaborate gift giving, even gifts like clocks and lion cubs passing between the two. So there's something in it of Ivan wanting to try to have friends

so he can not be lonely. He's just a sad little boy whose parents died when he was young and he's just trying to make it in the world. So this idea of some historians, Peter, have suggested that he may have been looking for a place to run away to if there's a coup. So I love the idea of him showing up at Elizabeth I's house going, can i stay on your couch i brought a lion cub it's sort of house they mention the couch because if he puts his boots up on that then there's going to be trouble there's chopped off from what i understand is it nicolai the second nicholas the second who also tried to run away to the uk and got turned around by his cousin. Yeah. Why do we keep trying if you keep turning us away?

That's why you keep trying. The negging. That's the psychology, yeah. So we get the sense now that Ivan is getting increasingly paranoid. The boyars have refused to swear allegiance to his tiny baby. His wife, he thinks maybe was poisoned.

So is this when he turns on his boyars now? He now goes in to crush them? Well, he's never had a great relationship with them. And the problem is, is that the longer the list becomes of people who have annoyed him or been disgraced or had lands confiscated, the more that paranoia is probably justified. It doesn't help that he decides that he wants to push back against his neighbours in the West in Livonia and that doesn't go particularly well and the people who tell him it's not going to go particularly well and then who make it not go particularly well also join his hit list. So for all of that it starts to become

quite an unpleasant moment where Ivan thinks he's being cornered by everybody where everybody's conspiring against him and he also needs scapego. And it's only so many times that you can keep blaming the boyar class. And one of the boyars he falls out with is a guy called Mikhail Petrovich Repnin. He has him executed in 1564. What do you think Mikhail has done to annoy Ivan? And think here about parties. I mean, I don't know, throw a gluten-free orgy? There's no wheat! What am I going to do? No, apparently Ivan took parties very seriously, and Repnin was a killjoy who was refusing to wear a mask or dance at the party,

and so Ivan murdered him. Deserved, sorry! Yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly. And Ivan potentially lays a very smart trap here, Peter. Historians debate it slightly as to whether he does this on purpose. But he manages to wrestle power away from the boyars by abdicating or pretending to quit. He's like, you know what, I'm done with this. I'm bored of this.

And they beg him to come back. It's slightly hard to make sense of exactly what is going on. what is going on. Ivan starts announcing that he's got big plans and starts going around Moscow, collecting all the best icons from churches and cathedrals and so on, and holds a service and says goodbye to everybody. And he says, look, I'm basically going to go into some form of exile. I'm not going to abdicate. He doesn't quite say that, but he says, I'm going to create a new kingdom somewhere else, basically where everyone's going to love me, possibly where nobody lives, which should explain that one. He then says, look, the reason I'm doing this is because you boyars and most of you guys in the church, you're part of the problem. You're not defending

orthodoxy. You know, you're too friendly with all of our neighbours. Because I've got so little support from you clowns, I'm going to leave and God is going to tell me where that new place should be. But at the same time as doing that, he writes an open letter, essentially, to the people of Moscow. And he says, this is all the fault of the boyars. I did the best I could, but they're all hopeless and rapacious. And they're the cause of all of your problems. And the people of Moscow don't need any excuse or explanation about that. I mean, it's one thing having a czar who sits at the top, who maybe funnels all the cash into his pockets, but actually the kind of middle management of the boyar class are the ones that nobody likes.

The metropolitan liberal elite. Yeah, exactly. The metropolitan, that's exactly what they are. I think it's slightly hard to work out, was it a sort of super bluff and that he sort of got persuaded to come back? But anyway, the boyars basically get spooked because they realise that they don't have an obvious candidate who's going to take over. There's going to be bloodshed. And so they basically say, look, come back, Ivan, we're so sorry, we'll do everything you tell us. And you can choose anything from now on, we won't stand in your way. That's potentially the source of why Ivan gets to be so terrible in the last part of his reign.

Yeah, because the next part of his career is what we are getting towards which is the dark nasty horrific terrible territory and the thing that he is most famous for is called the oprichnina olga have you heard of this have you encountered this at school or just in general life i don't know if i've encountered it in general life but yes i did learn about it in school yeah hopefully you haven't encountered it in your daily life now yeah that's his like calling card that's his thing that he did that he's remembered for he basically endeavors to destroy the boyar class and then creates like his own personal militia and becomes like a tyrant with his own militia well remembered i mean oh sorry i was talking about vladimir putin Sorry. And now we're banned from Russia.

So, I mean, Peter, Oprachnina is a process of sort of splitting the kingdom almost in half, isn't it? He's sort of taking half the land and going, I will administer these lands with my rules, my men. And then there's a second section of land that the boyars can rule that bit. So it's a sort of divide and conquer section. It's essentially what Henry VIII does in England, which is the nationalisation or the crown taking hold of all the ecclesiastical properties. So what the oprichnina does is establishes that the crown controls the best cuts of land and forces everybody else off. And so there's a division between the oprichnina on the one hand, and then the Zemstvina on the other. And the boyars get to, in theory, be in charge of their own lands, etc. in the Zemstvina, although they will have to keep paying taxes.

But on the other hand, the Tsar essentially establishes the Tsar as being all-powerful. He establishes an organization or a bunch of individuals called the Oprichniki, who are black-robed, semi-monastic enforcers who, like the Spanish Inquisition, turn up unannounced and demanding to have access to whatever they want. So in theory, they're there to stop sedition, overhear conversations,

make sure no one's plotting against the Tsar. But they quickly realise that the more plots they uncover, the more powerful they themselves become, because, of course, it gives an opportunity to boot people off off their land so their aim we're told is to uphold order peace and unity that's what Ivan is trying to do and you can get where he's coming from but in fact he establishes something that is much darker and more oppressive well the UK and the US are really have no idea about what it's like to have a monarch be a real estate mogul, do they? No parallel whatsoever with the British royal family.

Or Donald Trump. Or Donald Trump. Olga, in terms of the aesthetic, I mean, Peter's mentioned the black robes. Can you guess what else the operechniki wear? Oh God, now I'm just thinking about that Mitchell Webb, maybe we're the baddies sketch. How do you sort of signal to yourselves that you think you're up to no good maybe give them all like sickles the way death does oh nice that would be fun black robes and a sickle you're not far off they had brooms for sweeping away injustice they had brooms they're basically

janitors for justice they would sweep away the treachery as well like bewitched are you thinking of the sitcom or you think of the 90s girl band because i in my head i'm thinking of the girl band in the dungarees because that's if the oprychniki look like the girls from bewitched that would be amazing so the oprychniki wear black and as well as their brooms and their dark robes, they also had dog-headed logos. The dog symbolizing they were going to bite the Tsar's enemies. This is where he becomes Ivan the Terrible, right, Peter? In 1568, his rival is a guy called Chelyadin Fedorov, one of the boyars, who he thinks is behind a petition to try and reverse some of these policies. He doesn't just sort of tap him on the nose with a rolled up newspaper and say,

bad boy, does he? He kills him in a very dramatic way. I think it's semi-dramatic given what's coming up. Okay. Chelyadny Fyodorov is one of these guys who Ivan becomes convinced is after his throne. So he gets him to come to the palace and dresses him up in royal robes and then makes him sit on the throne. And he then looks at him and says to the palace and dresses him up in royal robes and then makes him sit on the throne and he then looks at him and says to Chilenian Fyodorov he says look uh you

now you finally got what you wanted which is to be the grand prince of Muscovy and to take my place and then he says to him with a kind of classic goodfellas follow-up he goes just as it's in my power to put you on the throne it's also my power to remove you and then he stabs him in the chest before getting the oprychniki to polish him off and then chuck him on a dung heap olga your face right now i just want to say yes how real housewives is that so ivan has bumped off his arch rival he's murdered him in a throne room which is in very game of thrones and we've had i think so far ivan the mean and shifty ivan the pretty sinister ivan the quite shrewd but we are now entering into this phase of his career which i'm afraid to say is genuinely horrific and i'm gonna switch

out of comedy mode here because you probably need to hear these crimes but um they're not funny well i mean they're not funny to us although there is an argument for Ivan the Terrible having a really twisted sense of humour. So he ordered a monk to be sat on a barrel of gunpowder and then had him blown up. And he quoted at the time that if the monk wants to be an angel, he can fly up to heaven. Why did he have zingers for each and every one of the murders i don't understand this is the thing olga is that ivan the terrible seems to have a kind of weird sense of humor there's a sort of irony to some of his executions as if they're kind of bespokely crafted for the individual victims a bit like the horrible killer in the saw movies like there's a

sort of theater to them okay so the next. He has an archbishop stripped naked, sewn into a bear skin and then set upon by wild dogs. He had seven monks mauled to death by bears. Allegedly, Prince Nikita Odoievsky was executed by having a wound inserted into his chest and then one in his back and then a shirt was stuffed through the hole in his chest and out of his back and then he was flossed to death with his shirt, which is just horrific. He burned construction workers alive for the crime of eating veal,

which the church had banned. And he had his chief minister of the treasury. He killed him by scolding him with boiling water, then alternating it with freezing water so that his skin peeled off like an eel. So these are six of the ways that he killed people. We've got a long list of many more. I didn't want to terrify you with too many options. But they're so gruesome, Peter.

They're so horrifying. And in some ways we might then say, these are so gothic that they must be made up, that they're folk stories, that they've been enlarged and exaggerated with each retelling. Do we have reliable sources for this stuff? Do we think these are true? I think it's something he's genuinely doing. The thing that is most telling are letters that Ivan himself writes to other leaders. So he writes the King of Poland and says, look, I hear you being bad mouthing me saying I'm cruel and doing

nasty things to my subjects. But of course, that's absolute nonsense. I would never punish anybody. I would never fly into a merciless rage, unless someone had done something really bad and deserved it. For him to be responding that way is telling you that news is getting beyond, and that he thinks it's worth tailoring his message. And, you know, he writes again repeatedly to other leaders saying things like, I'm hugely merciful as a king, but guilty people need to face their judgment and be executed. So the style in which it's being done, I mean, I think with all these things with history, one has to always ask, you know, the Tsar himself is not wielding the knife, usually. You say usually, we do think he did a couple of these murders himself, didn't he?

He did get his hands bloody. But ordering women to be stripped naked and chase chickens and then have them shot with bows and arrows, it's not clear that he's one of the bow and arrow guys always watching. And we then get to the story of Novgorod, the city in northwest Russia, which is his own city. He's obviously conquered other cities. He's conquered in the Crimea and so on,

but he's now conquering his own city. He's obviously conquered other cities. He's conquered in the Crimea and so on, but he's now conquering his own city. And this is genuinely horrific. And this is probably the worst of his crimes, right, Peter? This is the thing that makes him legendary almost. It's a bloodbath. It's shocking even by his standards. So Novgorod is one of the older cities in what's now Russia. And about 100 years before Ivan's reign,

it becomes incorporated into Muscovy. Novgorod is quite fancy. It's further west. It's on trade routes. It has this old history. And so it's been viewed with a little bit of suspicion by Muscovites and by Ivan because there are rumours that the Novgorodians are upset with Ivan, that they're thinking about throwing their lot in with Poland. So Ivan decides that he wants to teach him a lesson. So he starts to march on the city. And on the way there, Burns Noble's alive. Anybody who stands up to him gets in his way. Anybody who thinks looks a little bit funnily at him, they get set on fire and thrown into frozen lakes and held down by stakes to be held under the water. Women are asphyxiated, children made to drink poison. I mean, it's absolutely horrific. Women are asphyxiated, children are made to drink poison. I mean, it's absolutely horrific. And then eventually they reach Novgorod.

And of course, the Novgorodians think, well, there's obviously a deal to make. There's something we need to sign or, you know, what should we say or do? And he'll go away. Instead, it's a sort of bloodbath. Thousands of people killed. People are hunted down. Lots of stories about cannibalism. The Opichniki fill their boots with plunder and then taking people back to Moscow. That's where we have one of the guys who's dipped into boiling water, then freezing water, then boiling water, so his skin is

peeled off like an eel. The sack of Novgorod is a sign that Ivan is seriously unbalanced or is making strategic decisions that create bloodshed on a massive scale. Okay, but we are a comedy show, so here's some light relief, Olga. He doesn't kill everyone. Hooray! He merely humiliated an archbishop. He stripped him of his holy vestments, dressed him as a clown, married him to a horse, strapped him to the horse, and made him play musical instruments while riding through the streets of Moscow. That's classic.

That's the classic clown horse musical instrument gag. We love it. So after seven years of the Oprechnina and the reign of terror, the lands being split apart, the persecution of the boyars, this policy comes to an end in 1572. And it's not because Ivan has had a change of heart and he's now a lovely fella. It's because the Crimean carnates invade and Russia has suffered enormously so has Ivan's family because he turns on his daughter-in-law and of course famously he kills his son you know you mentioned Olga at the beginning of the show that painting of him killing his son do you remember why he kills his son I don't know

the story exactly it's like one of the most this is a terrible word to use but like effective paintings you'll ever see because it's directly after he stabbed his son. And then you see the glistening tears in his eyes and sort of the understanding what he's just done. My question is, where did the son come from? Krypton. He landed. No, never mind. The problem with Ivan the Terrible is he has probably seven wives.

We're not really sure that much about them, to be honest. But we think obviously the heirs were born to his first wife, Anastasia. The story goes, I think, Peter, his son's wife, his daughter-in-law, is pregnant and she is wearing not enough clothes. She's showing too much skin and he attacks her for immodesty. His son steps in to protect her and he smacks him around the head with an iron bar. Is that about right? Yeah, that's one of the stories.

There are other stories that are also told about why he kills him. And one is that his son asks the Tsar if he could have a military command position. And that makes the Tsar think, all right, well, you're trying to take my position too. So wallops him. And then there's yet another version, which is that some of the boyars come and say, you should really put your son in charge of military unit and the command position. And he goes, aha, you're trying to put my son in charge and wallets are on the head. But I think the consensus is that he sees his son as a threat. So those tears that are painted in are probably well chosen. But clearly, here's a man who's highly disturbed, extremely paranoid, and personally very aggressive.

So Ivan only has one son left in the end, who of course inherits his throne. So he doesn't kill his entire family. But it is quite a sad end to Ivan's life. And I'm not sympathising with him. He's a monster. But by the end of his life, he's a very poorly old man. He's very unwell. He's drinking mercury and arsenic, possibly to cure his ailments. We know this because later on his body was dug up in Stalin's reign. Mortality is knocking on Ivan's door. And do we get a sense, Peter, that he's starting to ask for forgiveness and perhaps feeling some grief and remorse for the things that he's done? Because he compiles memorial lists, doesn't he, of his victims? Yes. So towards the end of his life, he starts creating what are called synodiki.

So from the Byzantine world, the Greek world, lists of commemorating people. So he starts writing down everybody he's ordered to be killed, people he's been mean to. It's a long list. It's a very long list. And none of these survive in full, but there are fragments of enough to tell us that there is a kind of seemingly some sort of act of contrition. And as well as writing these lists, he starts shelling out large amounts of money to monasteries, giving cash to all of them. Possibly this is all because he needs to atone before he meets his maker. Possibly it's quite cunning of thinking distributing cash to monasteries is quite a successful way of keeping the boyars' hands off it. Because if

monasteries are good at one thing, it's making sure no one gets hold of their money. But he asks for prayers to be said for all the souls of the people he's killed. So there seems to be some form of reflection going on at the end of this very bloody life. And Olga, do you know how he dies? I don't know, but I really hope he had a good zinger for it. I wouldn't say it was a zinger. He had a nice bath and then he played a game of chess and then he conked over dead. Did he win the chess game? Oh, I don't know. Mid-game probably. When he knew he wasn't going to win, he was like, I'm going to peace. Quit a while at my hands. probably. When he knew he wasn't going to win,

he was like, I'm going to peace. Quit ahead of him while I'm ahead. So that's the end of him. His only surviving son, Fedor, takes over. That is the end of Ivan the Terrible.

So it's time now for the nuance window. The nuance window! Now this is my favourite part of the show. This is where Olga and I take a breather and Peter talks for two uninterrupted minutes on something he needs us to know about Ivan. And I suppose the thing that we're all wondering, Peter, is was he so terrible and why was he so terrible? Can we understand why he was so cruel? So without much further ado, Peter, take it away. The easiest thing is to blame Ivan as being paranoid or whatever. But, you know, I think we've got to be careful about all of that. First, it's very hard to diagnose from a distance. As it happens,

around this period across large parts of Europe, rulers are argued about whether they are unstable in some shape or form, whether they're pathological sadists, you know, that's the same in Tudor England and Stuart England, that's the same with the French kingdoms. And with Habsburg monarchs, the idea of the ruler as being crazy and bloodthirsty is something that we see in lots of other places. And I suppose the more useful question is about cruelty and political control, right? And in that sense, Ivan, however awful it is, one doesn't have to do a compare and contrast, but seeing the Atlantic slave trade, which is just starting around this time where there's a total disregard for human life and how people

are treated, we find it inconceivable to see that people can act with such cruelty towards each other. And yet, this is a kind of world where violence is ubiquitous. And when violence and cruelty are committed, it's not about insanity, or lack of control of faculties it's about decision making about political control so you know again there's a lot written about Ivan and that childhood we talked about and how traumatic it was and did he throw animals off buildings but you know his childhood presumably wasn't any more traumatic than Queen Elizabeth I whose you know mothers executed and there's instability and so on and but you know this is happening at a time where the reformation is happening over the rest of europe where if your religious beliefs are said

to be one thing or another you know you're tied up to a stake and burnt in this in city centers so i think that there is no way i think of understanding this other than people believe that the ends justifies the means in evans case that wanton cruelty and the scale of it, and as you said, the kind of amusement is a tool of control in itself. So I think that we've got to be careful to not make Russia exceptional. This is what people do to each other in lots of different circumstances. And so maybe we shouldn't think of Ivan as being more terrible than anybody else. Maybe all these rulers were terrible too. He just has the misfortune of having his name attached as Grozny thank you so

much peter olga one thing i really did want to talk about is grozny which is terrible like i've been the terrible if i'm grozny in russian the word in russian is less so terrible and more like authoritarian and scary from a position of power so it's ivan the intimidating yeah more like even that like intimidating in a serious way, like in a scary way. I'd say awe-inspiring or awesome. I mean, awesome is a good thing, right? But awe-inspiring that could be turned into stone is both good and bad. It definitely has a double meaning.

So Ivan the shit-in-the-pants scary, but not necessarily Ivan the psychopathic killer. And I think actually the name Groshny doesn't get applied to him until quite long after he's dead. So it's not necessarily a thing that everyone was saying at the time. But Ivan the Terrible, he clearly was terrible. He was a terrible, terrible man. But perhaps we should call him Ivan the Dreaded. So what do you know now? Now it's time for the So What Do You Know Now now this is a quickfire quiz for our comedian olga

to see how much she has learned uh olga you've got 10 questions coming up on ivan the terrible how are you feeling about him and how are you feeling about the quiz are you slightly scared of ivan and his weird reputation i'm more scared of the quiz i feel like i have so much more empathy for ivan though okay he's like an anti-hero. I love it. Like a Joker backstory. They're going to cast a movie with him. Yeah, he's like a villain. He's just classic villain origin story. I'm sorry. Both parents dead?

Okay, DC Comics. All right. Okay. Question one. Roughly how long ago was Ivan the Terrible born? 500 years. It was roughly 500 years. 1530. Oh, amazing. That's really good. What was the name of the aristocratic class that advised the Tsar and then fell out with him? Boyars. It is Boyars. Question three. Who did people think was to blame for the 1547 Moscow

fires? Ghouls! They tore out your hearts and turned them into water and sprinkled the water. That's absolutely right. Or either an evil magpie granny as well. Question four. What was the name of Ivan the Terrible's first wife? Oh! Romanovna is her patronym. Yes, and it begins with A. And that's what I'm going to call her.

It's not Anna, is it? Yelena? Anastasia. I'll give you half a point for the surname. Question five. Why did Ivan have Killjoy Mikhail Petrovich Repnin executed in 1564 after a party? He refused to wear a mask to a party. Yeah, and he refused to dance as well.

Yes, absolutely right. Question six. In 1565, Ivan split Russia into two parts. What was the new area called that he was in charge of? Oh, Lord. I don't remember. Begins with O. I know the word, but. I don't know. It begins with O. I know the word,

but I know that I will mispronounce it, and I know that if any Russian listens to it, I will be deported. Okay, the Oprechnina. Question seven. Name one of the things that Ivan's scary Oprechniki wore to identify themselves.

Black robes and brooms. It's like witches, really, isn't it? Question eight. Ivan was a brutal tort really, isn't it? Question eight. Ivan was a brutal torturer, but one archbishop escaped being murdered and was merely humiliated. What did Ivan do to him? Clown costume, married to a horse, tied to the horse, played musical instruments on the horse in the town. Absolutely. Question nine.

Ivan married seven times, but diplomatically he flirted with which English queen? Elizabeth I? It is Elizabeth I. And question 10, how did Ivan the Terrible die? Midway through losing a game of chess. That's right. I'm giving you eight and a half out of 10, which is a very strong score. Well done, Olga. How are you feeling? I feel good. Well, thank you, Olga. I'm very sorry for all the horrific violence we've made you listen to. So if we get you back on the show, we'll have to do the history of puppies or something nice. Listeners, if today's episode has you craving more terrifyingly bearded men,

then check out our episode on the infamous pirate Blackbeard. Or if you'd like to dig into more history with Peter, then go listen to our episodes on Genghis Khan or Justinian and Theodora. They're all available alongside many more on BBC Sounds. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast and had a laugh, please leave us a review, share the show with your friends. Make sure to subscribe to You're Dead to me on bbc sounds so you never miss an episode i'd like to say a huge thank you to our guests in history corner we've had the marvelous

professor peter francopan from university of oxford thank you peter thank you so much and in comedy corner we've had the outstanding olga cock thank you olga thank you so much and you lovely listener make sure to join me next time as we dive headfirst into the past once more with two different study buddies. But now I'm off to rebrand myself as the Tsar of podcasting. But a nice one, I promise.

Bye! You're Dead to Me was a production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4. The research was by Chris Wakefield. The script was by Emma Naguse, Chris Wakefield and me. The project manager Neguse, Chris Wakefield and me, the project manager was Saifah Mio and the edit producer was Cornelius Mendez.