IVAN THE TERRIBLE IN RUSSIAN HISTORICAL MEMORY SINCE 1991, By Ayse Dietrich^*, Published by Academic Studies Press, Charles J. Halperin, Year of Publishing: 2021. Subject Area: Historiography, Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Book Type: Russian History. Total Number of Pages: 290. ISBN: 978-164-4696-132, hardback, $119.00.

This book is about the Russian Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible who was the first ruler to adopt the title Tsar of all Russia.

Ivan the Terrible’s unhealthy life increased his paranoia and brutality, and in order to reduce the Chosen Council’s (advisory council) power, dominated by the boyars, he threatened that he would abdicate to the Council to gain more power and to remove all obstacles to his absolute rule. He then divided his realm into two separate states. He organized a loyal militia, the oprichnina, in the lands that constituted his personal domain and which he administered as he wished. The rest of Russia was ruled by the zemshchina, the Boyar Duma. In his domain, he exiled the boyars and appanage princes, sent them to their new territories, gave their ancestral lands to his servitors, the oprichniki, who hunted down and swept away the tsar’s enemies, and began to arrest, torture, imprison and execute all traitors. For seven years, Ivan the Terrible carried out this oppression against his own people. Thousands of boyars lost their lands and their lives. Many innocent people died, especially in towns that were thought to be sheltering traitors.

In addition, by killing his son and heir in a fit of rage and leaving only a sickly son, Fedor, as his successor, Ivan the Terrible brought an the end of the Rurikid dynasty. Moscow descended into civil war, a period known as the Time of Troubles.

 

This book is an analysis of historiography of a polemical and politicized image of the Tsar Ivan the Terrible in Russia. The book consists of an introduction and two sections. In the Introduction, Halperin talks about the historians who were in disagreement over the reliability and authenticity of the sources on Ivan the Terrible’s rule, some of which denounce the tsar’s barbaric behavior, and some which defend his policies. The author claims that his book provides a comprehensive analysis of every study, both scholarly and non-scholarly, published in Russia about Ivan the Terrible since 1991.

The first section of the book contains ten chapters. In the first chapter, Halperin states that historical memory after 1991 shows that there were apologetic, positive, conflicted, critical and hostile approaches to Ivan the Terrible’s personality, policies and legacy, and that all of these evaluations are one-sided on Ivan’s behavior and fail to see the complex nature of the tsar. While most Western sources evaluated Ivan as insane and see no justification for his atrocities, executions and torture, there was no publication in the Soviet Union attributing the tsar’s behavior to insanity. It was only after 1991 that some historians in Russia began to mention his mental illness.

In the second chapter, Halperin discusses the New Chronology which treats the different phases of his life and his varying behavior, each belonging to a different person. He states that for the professional historians, the New Chronology is not history, but science fiction. According to the author, since the writers of the New Chronology, the mathematicians Anatolii Timofeevich Fomenko and Gleb Vladimirovich Nosovskii’s books are widely sold in Russia, they cannot be ignored, because they exploit the contradictory sides of the sources written by professional historians.

The third chapter brings forth the discussions and the campaigns around the canonization of Ivan the Terrible by the Orthodox Church, and the failure of the campaign. He claims that the debates over Ivan’s canonization was entirely worthless, and for the professional historians this debate on religious question is atypical of the current intellectual atmosphere in Russia.

In the fourth chapter, Halperin examines Kremlev’s and Ushakov’s evaluations of Ivan and Stalin and their connection, and claims that there is a big gap between the interpretations of Ivan by Kremlev who is apologetic, and by Ushakov who was hostile; he believes that both historians anachronistically drew a connection between Ivan and Stalin, and both believed that Russian history should be politicized and the comparison of Ivan to Stalin should be analyzed in terms of Russian patriotism.

In the fifth chapter, the author examines the neo-Stalinist publications advocating the creation of a new oprichnina to solve Russia’s problems, ignoring all historical context, and criticizes their selective conception of the oprichnina, discarding all the elements of the 16^th century in adapting Ivan’s reign as a model to current policy.

In the sixth chapter, Halperin analyzes Russian historical surveys and high school and university textbooks written since 1991. He discovered that the textbooks and trade books disregard the imaginative conclusions of the New Chronology and avoid any idealization of Ivan.

In the seventh chapter, the author analyzes two main sources: Gerasimov et al.’s - providing an innovative interpretation of Ivan from an imperial perspective and Kollman’s – an American approach to the same issue - and emphasizes that both sources are valuable contributions to the study of the imperial aspects of Ivan’s reign.

In the eight chapter, Halperin examines textbooks and surveys concerned with Ivan the Terrible’s reign and the conquest of the Tatar khanates, and analyzes the writers’ positive and critical approach.

In chapter nine, the author introduces two-volume publications of papers, Epoha Ivana Groznogo, a multidisciplinary approach to Ivan’s reign, presented at a conference in Russia, and claims that in the conference the scholars did not provide detailed information on Ivan’s persona and his image to extract a clear understanding of why Ivan was important in his own time and even today.

In chapter ten, Halperin criticized the second volume of Epokha Ivana Groznogo that did not engage in the military history of Ivan’s rule. He introduces a new anthology called Russkaia armiia v epokhu Ivana Groznogo: Materialy nauchnoi diskussii k 455-letiiu nachala Livonskoi voiny contributing valuable information on the military history, but also bemoans the lack of contributors. According to him, non of the contributors of this anthology mention Ivan’s overall role in military affairs.

The second Part of this book incudes three chapters on film. In chapter eleven, Halperin talks about Sergei Eisenstein’s film Ivan the Terrible, and claims that when producing this movie, Eisenstein wanted to create a contradictory and problematic image of Ivan, “the good and the bad Ivan dichotomy”, because he believed that it was more historically accurate than the image advocated by the Stalin cult. He also claims that Eisenstein tried to protect himself from the consequences of the image he created in his film. The author introduces a monograph on Eisenstein’s Ivan Groznyi written by Joan Neuberger, and her overall assessment of Eisenstein’s image of Ivan.

Chapter twelve discusses the topics that were not addressed by Neuberger, Eisenstein’s depiction of religion and the Russian Orthodox Church in the film. Halperin provides additional information that Neuberger disregarded that Eisenstein presented Ivan, his supporters and opponents as religious, but the clergy as the enemies of Russia due to the shift in the Soviet government policy.

In chapter thirteen, Halperin introduces a critical film of Ivan the Terrible titled Tsar’ by Pavel Lungin. He makes a comparison between Eisenstein’s Ivan and Lungin’s Ivan and states that Eisenstein’s Ivan is “a pious, patriotic and successful defender of the Russian state and the people, who is compelled by circumstance to play the cruel executioner, Lungin’s Ivan is a deluded religious hypocrite and sadist who destroys Russia for the sake of his ego”.

The conclusion includes Halperin’s views on why historical sources for Ivan’s reign became so popular and draw attention, and his suggestions on areas for further research.

Halperin’s book presents a very detailed analysis of the historiography of a polemical and politicized image of the Tsar Ivan the Terrible in Russia. He employs numerous historical sources from a variety of fields in his analysis and provides a far more nuanced portrayal of Ivan the Terrible than is found in previous works. This work is a valuable source for any researcher who deals with Ivan the Terrible and his legacy in any period of Russian history.