Volume 52, Number 14 · September 22, 2005
The Divine Terrorist
By Orlando Figes
Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia
by Isabel de Madariaga
Yale University Press, 484 pp., $35.00
It is no easy task to write the life of Ivan IV ('the Terrible'), tsar of all the Russias from 1547 to 1584. The figure of the tsar towers over Russian history, and divides historians. For some he was the founder of the modern Russian state and even the empire; for others, a cruel tyrant who set Russia on the path of despotism and terror. But for all the historical controversy that Ivan generates, there is very little evidence about his life. Most of the Kremlin's medieval archives had been destroyed by fires by the time Nikolai Karamzin, the first serious historian of Russia, began working on his twelve-volume History of the Russian State (published between 1818 and 1826).
Review, 4018 words
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