Oprichnina

The oprichnina (Russian: опри́чнина, IPA: [ɐˈprʲitɕnʲɪnə]) was a state policy implemented by Tsar Ivan the Terrible in Russia between 1565 and 1572.

[6] However, historian Sergey Platonov (1860–1933) argued that Ivan IV intended the oprichnina as a suppression of the rising boyar aristocracy.

[7] Professor Isabel De Madariaga (1919–2014) expanded this idea to explain the oprichnina as Ivan's attempt to subordinate all independent social classes to the autocracy.

While such journeys were routine for the throne, Ivan neglected to set in place the usual arrangements for rule in his absence.

Divided between Aleksandrova Sloboda and Moscow, the boyar court was unable to rule in the absence of Ivan and feared the wrath of the Muscovite citizenry.

[16] However, historian Vladimir Kobrin has contested that a shift to the lower classes constituted a late development in the oprichnina era.

[clarification needed] Alexander Zimin and Stepan Veselovsky have argued that this division left hereditary landownership largely unaffected.

Pavlov has cited the relocation of zemshchina servicemen from oprichnina territories onto heredity estates as a critical blow to the power of the princely class.

Ivan posed the question whether Russia should surrender the Livonian territories to recently victorious Lithuania or maintain the effort to conquer the region.

The second largest city in Russia, Novgorod housed a large service nobility with ties to some of the condemned boyar families of Moscow.

Despite the sack of the city under Ivan III, Novgorod maintained a political organization removed from Russia’s central administration.

As the Livonian campaign constituted a significant drain on state resources, Ivan targeted ecclesiastical and merchant holdings with particular fervor.

According to a popular apocryphal account, Nicholas Salos of Pskov the fool-for-Christ prophesied the fall of Ivan and thus motivated the deeply religious Tsar to spare the city.

Alternatively, Ivan may have felt no need to institute a terror in Pskov due to his prior sack of the city in wake of the Izborsk treason.

As Ivan already suspected the older oprichniki on the issue of Novgorod, the lower-born recruits may have advanced the new persecutions to increase their influence in the oprichnina hierarchy.

The zemshchina and oprichnina territories were reunited and placed under rule of a reformed Boyar Council, which included members from both sides of the divided apparatus.

Ivan may have found state division ineffective in a period of war and its significant social and economic pressures.

Alternatively, Ivan may have deemed the oprichnina a success; the weakening of the princely elite having been achieved, the Tsar may have felt that the terror had simply outlived its usefulness.

[32] The oprichnina coincided with the major social and economic crisis in Russia and, according to some contemporary and historical accounts, contributed to it.

In turn, Tchaikovsky's opera inspired a 1911 painting by Apollinary Vasnetsov, depicting a city street and people fleeing in panic at the arrival of the oprichniki.

Vladimir Sorokin's 2006 novel Day of the Oprichnik envisions a dystopian near future in which the Russian monarchy and oprichnina have been reestablished.

The novel's oprichnina drive red cars with severed dog heads as hood ornaments, rape and kill dissenting nobles, and consume massive amounts of alcohol and narcotics, all while praising the monarchy and the Russian Orthodox Church.