Oprichnina

As Oprichnina ( Russian опричнина ) a specially managed area within Russia was designated 1565-1572. This was directly subordinate to Tsar Ivan IV ("Ivan the Terrible"). To enforce his claims to power, Ivan created a special military unit , the oprichniki . That part of the empire that remained under the boyar duma was called Semshchina .

history

In 1564, Prince Kurbski , commander of the western Russian army, betrayed the tsar and switched to Poland. Together with the Polish-Lithuanian army, the prince devastated the Russian region of Velikiye Luki . The tsar suspected other boyars of also planning treason and introduced the oprichnina. In the regions of the oprichnina the number of landed boyars was low and the army consisted of the lower nobility. Leaning on the oprichnina, the tsar wanted to push back the powerful boyar aristocracy and destroy the remnants of feudalism.

The oprichniki consisted of about 1,500 men (some sources also mention 6,000), all of them confidants and servants, including nobles , Tatars and European mercenaries . They were initially used for his protection.

The prerequisite for admission was that the person in question had no ties to boyarism. In addition, the oprichniki had to swear unconditional loyalty to the tsar and undertake to report traitors, maintain no friendships outside of the oprichnina and give the loyalty to the tsar top priority, even before ties to family and country. As a thank you, Ivan had them settle on stolen boyar estates.

The oprichniki caused great fear among the population, and their appearance was already suitable for this. They were dressed in black cloaks, similar to monk's robes , and carried a broom and a dog's head as insignia . The broom symbolized the “cleaning order”, the dog's head was a symbol of vigilance and submission, of blind obedience to Tsar Ivan IV.

Many nobles, metropolitans and citizens were killed by the oprichnina , and churches, monasteries and properties were plundered. In a slaughter in Novgorod lasting several weeks, around 30,000 people are said to have died; modern researchers estimate the number of victims at 2000-3000 (after a bad harvest and plague pandemic in the 1560s, the population of Novgorod was only around 10,000-20,000 people).

In the 1570s Ivan IV admitted men to the Oprichnina who had previously escaped death themselves. This unsettled the life guards and the new oprichniki killed members of the former oprichnina. One of the most famous was Fyodor Basmanov , who joined in 1565 and died in prison.

In 1572 the Oprichnina was dissolved by the tsar.

literature

• Peter Alberts: From Westphalia to Moscow. My service in the terror troop of Tsar Ivan. Heinrich von Staden. Fighters, Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-932208-05-6
• Ruslan Grigoryevich Skrynnikow: Ivan the Terrible and his time . Beck, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-406-36492-6
• Martin Grüning: Ivan IV's opričnina politics and its goals ( Memento of October 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) , Master's thesis , University of Kiel 1999, p. 85.
• Julia Fatianova: Oprichnina. Order of Terror or a precursor to the Russian police force? In: Jonas Grutzpalk u. a. (Ed.): Contributions to a comparative sociology of the police. Universitätsverlag, Potsdam 2009. pp. 70–89, ISBN 978-3-940793-74-4 [1]

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ruslan G. Skrynnikow, Iwan Grozny , M., AST, 2001
2. ↑ Ruslan G. Skrynnikow examined the report of the commander of the oprichniki Malyuta Skuratow and memorial lists ( Sinodiki ) and estimated the number of victims at 2000-3000 (Skrynnikow, RG: Iwan Grozny , M., AST, 2001).
3. ↑ Н.М. Карамзин. История государства Российского. Том 9. Глава 3. Продолжение царстования Иоанна Грозного. Г. 1569-1572. Retrieved May 27, 2019 . 
4. ↑ The angry tsar . Spiegel online , January 31, 2012