The main results of the reign of Ivan the Terrible

Ivan the Terrible was the son of Grand Duke Vasily III. The childhood and youth of the future ruler took place during a turbulent period of unrest in the Russian lands, which had a significant impact on the further vision of Ivan IV of his role as a prince. And as a result, the results of the reign of Ivan the Terrible became more important for the further development of the country than the activities of any other Russian sovereign of that era.

According to a number of historians, it was then that the fate of Russia was laid as a special civilizational and geopolitical formation between the East and the West.

The activities of the prince and the most important results of the reign of Ivan the Terrible

Ivan IV came to the throne as a very young man - in 1547. An important event of this year was the Moscow uprising of a people protesting against the arbitrariness of the boyars. Unrest reached the point that some members of the Rurikovich dynasty were killed . Even for the seventeen-year-old prince, it became obvious that the state needed a wide range of reforms: the creation of a single bureaucratic apparatus, the transformation of the judicial system, the publication of new legislation that would meet the requirements of the time, and so on. Actually, this activity determines the main results of the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the domestic policy of the prince. In 1547, at the court of the prince, an unofficial government was formed, assembled from nobles, clergy and officials, whose goal was to carry out large-scale reforms in the state. The main areas of activity of the Chosen Council (the name of this government, reinforced in historiography) are the following:

• 
  the reorganization of the judicial system and the publication of a full-fledged judicial in 1550;
• religious unification of church canons throughout Russian land and the subordination of the church to a secular government;
• the transformation of the state apparatus, which led to the transformation of all aristocrats into state officials and increased dependence of local administrations on central authority;
• military reform, which implied the introduction of a unified order of service throughout the country and the creation of new types of regular troops (archers, gunners). The result of this activity was the emergence of a strong centralized state in the place of the Russian principalities fragmented several decades ago.

Oprichnina and foreign policy. results

However, after 1560, a conflict occurs between the leaders of the Chosen One and the Grand Duke. The next period in Russian history is known as the “oprichnina”, during which Ivan IV personally formed a loyal corps of troops and led real terror against the aristocracy of Russian lands. On the one hand, this led to the assertion of an absolute monarchy, which was a fairly natural process for Europe at that time. On the other hand, the oprichnina laid the foundation for a large-scale crisis that erupted half a century later and became known as the Great Troubles. The results of the reign of Ivan the Terrible for the international position of the Moscow state also became very important. It not only became the first powerful political formation of the Eastern Slavs since the time of Kievan Rus, in the middle of the 16th century, Moscow began an active struggle for the expansion of its possessions. First of all, in the Baltic states and in the east, due to the possessions of the former Tatar Horde, where Ivan the Terrible was the first to actively attack the Russian princes. The results of the board are briefly summarized in the table.

The main results of the reign of Ivan the Terrible. Table

However, it should be borne in mind that tabular results are displayed very schematically.