Welcome to the Russian rulers podcast. Episode number 19.

Ivan becomes the terrible.

Last week we saw the beginnings of the change in Ivan's personality.

He suffers through the death of his son Dimitri,

and then the shattering death of his beloved Anastasia.

It is the latter event that begins the transformation of his personality from the Grozny stage, or awesome period, to the terrible connotation which history has tagged him with.

The Russian lands had seen incredible changes with improvements

to the church structure and the army, along with the seeming end to the tartar threat,

the descendants of the Mongols. But with the death of Ivan's wife

Anastasia, things were going to quickly unravel. Not only did his beloved die, but four of his six children from her did not survive to their second birthday.

Anna, Maria, Dimitri, and Yvedocia all died early, leaving only Ivan and Fyodor, the latter being of feeble mind and possibly

retarded. This must have presented a tremendous emotional burden on the young Tsar.

Now he began his turn away from the Enlightenment period of his reign by first banishing his religious mentor Sylvester to a faraway monastery, then sending Alexi Adeshev to fight in the

Levonian war where he was murdered. The two most trusted men by Ivan in his early days were gone, with no one to control him now.

With Sylvester gone, Adeshev and Anastasia dead, Ivan began to let loose and fall into a pattern of depravity, debauchery, violence, and terror.

From the deeply religious man who prayed his way to victory in Kazan.

Ivan changed to a partier drinking heavily every night,

carousing with street thugs, and participating in orgies.

Prince Kurbsky, watching things from up close, had this to say about Ivan.

The Tsar came to detest the narrow pathway laden with sorrows, which leads to salvation through repentance.

Instead, he ran joyfully along the broad highway that leads to hell.

Many times I heard from his own lips.

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