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These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: 1 00:00:01,160 --> 00:00:05,600 Mid-sixteenth century Russia - formerly known as Muscovy. 2 00:00:05,760 --> 00:00:07,840 Its leader, Ivan IV, 3 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:10,840 rules using terror and violence. 4 00:00:11,000 --> 00:00:13,240 Ivan was, by far, 5 00:00:13,400 --> 00:00:17,160 the most bloodthirsty ruler that country has had to endure. 6 00:00:17,320 --> 00:00:20,240 Also known as Ivan the Terrible, 7 00:00:20,400 --> 00:00:24,160 he tears his enemies limb from limb and feeds them to the dogs. 8 00:00:36,560 --> 00:00:39,040 Not even those closest to the Tsar 9 00:00:39,200 --> 00:00:40,920 can escape his killer instincts. 10 00:00:41,080 --> 00:00:43,320 The tale is he killed his own son. 11 00:00:44,240 --> 00:00:46,680 This is the absolute example 12 00:00:46,840 --> 00:00:50,000 of the rage taking over. 13 00:00:50,160 --> 00:00:54,480 But questions arise: was this tyrant truly evil 14 00:00:54,640 --> 00:00:58,720 or did madness motivate his murderous ways? 15 00:00:58,880 --> 00:01:01,240 Even people at the time were saying, 16 00:01:01,400 --> 00:01:03,440 'We don't really think you need to be this paranoid.' 17 00:01:03,600 --> 00:01:07,680 Did Ivan the Terrible die naturally, or was he poisoned? 18 00:01:14,160 --> 00:01:16,800 Using groundbreaking AI imagery 19 00:01:16,960 --> 00:01:19,240 to show his world as never before, 20 00:01:19,400 --> 00:01:22,680 we examine the myths that launched the mystery? 21 00:01:22,840 --> 00:01:25,680 Can new evidence help reevaluate 22 00:01:25,840 --> 00:01:28,240 the Tsar's brutal reputation? 23 00:01:28,400 --> 00:01:31,240 As a child he was abused 24 00:01:31,400 --> 00:01:34,640 by the people charged with taking care of him. 25 00:01:34,800 --> 00:01:36,680 Rulers come and go, 26 00:01:36,840 --> 00:01:40,120 but what legacy will the sands of time leave behind? 27 00:01:40,280 --> 00:01:43,000 Ivan the Terrible: is he truly... 28 00:01:43,160 --> 00:01:45,160 a Killer King? 29 00:02:18,920 --> 00:02:22,400 For five centuries, Ivan IV has cast a long shadow 30 00:02:22,560 --> 00:02:24,400 over the story of Russia. 31 00:02:25,440 --> 00:02:29,080 He's always been a figure of fascination ever since his time. 32 00:02:29,240 --> 00:02:31,440 Back in his bloody day, 33 00:02:31,600 --> 00:02:35,080 no-one was safe from his arbitrary assassinations. 34 00:02:41,280 --> 00:02:43,280 A list Ivan drew up himself 35 00:02:43,440 --> 00:02:47,080 of executions he ordered shows just how common. 36 00:02:47,240 --> 00:02:50,920 He put together a list that has some 3,000 names on it. 37 00:02:51,080 --> 00:02:54,280 He trampled on, and completely disregarded, 38 00:02:54,440 --> 00:02:58,560 a lot of the previous rule of law. 39 00:02:58,720 --> 00:03:03,320 He ordered the executions of hundreds, 40 00:03:03,480 --> 00:03:07,440 possibly thousands of people on an industrial scale. 41 00:03:08,520 --> 00:03:10,520 One town, Novgorod, 42 00:03:10,680 --> 00:03:12,840 would suffer his rage like no other. 43 00:03:13,800 --> 00:03:18,480 It spread to the whole of the town: nobody was safe. 44 00:03:24,880 --> 00:03:27,800 10,000 would die. 45 00:03:27,960 --> 00:03:32,800 It takes hundreds of years after he had ordered the death of so many 46 00:03:32,960 --> 00:03:35,560 that he acquires the title Ivan the Terrible. 47 00:03:35,720 --> 00:03:40,280 But is the judgement of history truly fair, accurate and balanced? 48 00:03:40,440 --> 00:03:42,480 Perhaps, in a literal sense, 49 00:03:42,640 --> 00:03:46,000 Ivan IV was not so terrible after all? 50 00:03:50,560 --> 00:03:53,920 Dr Monica White is a Russian and Slavic Studies academic 51 00:03:54,080 --> 00:03:56,600 at Nottingham University in England. 52 00:03:56,760 --> 00:03:59,880 The word that gets translated as 'terrible' 53 00:04:00,040 --> 00:04:02,440 is a not very accurate translation 54 00:04:02,600 --> 00:04:05,240 of a Russian word, which is 'Grozny'. 55 00:04:06,280 --> 00:04:08,360 A better way to translate it into modern English 56 00:04:08,520 --> 00:04:10,320 would be something like 'the dread'. 57 00:04:10,480 --> 00:04:13,680 And the thing about that is it was not considered... 58 00:04:13,840 --> 00:04:16,360 negative at the time, so there are... 59 00:04:16,520 --> 00:04:19,400 some writings which address Ivan, 60 00:04:19,560 --> 00:04:23,600 urging him to rule in a 'Grozny' way: 61 00:04:23,760 --> 00:04:27,040 in a sort of awe-inspiring way. 62 00:04:27,200 --> 00:04:30,080 And this was the idea that the ruler should be strong 63 00:04:30,240 --> 00:04:31,920 and... 64 00:04:32,080 --> 00:04:34,800 not put up with any messing around. 65 00:04:35,640 --> 00:04:38,320 Ivan IV: a strong leader... 66 00:04:38,480 --> 00:04:41,320 or a torturing, merciless Killer King? 67 00:04:41,480 --> 00:04:46,040 The man himself can tell us with words written by his own fair hand. 68 00:04:46,200 --> 00:04:49,960 What we know is what Ivan recounted 69 00:04:50,120 --> 00:04:55,040 in letters that he wrote later to a political enemy called Kurbsky. 70 00:04:56,960 --> 00:05:01,080 In 1564, General Kurbsky had defected from Russia, 71 00:05:01,240 --> 00:05:04,000 criticising Ivan's murderous regime. 72 00:05:04,160 --> 00:05:07,400 The Tsar responds with poison pen letters. 73 00:05:08,240 --> 00:05:12,280 Ivan was trying to justify a lot of his actions 74 00:05:12,440 --> 00:05:16,160 and talk about how put upon he was. 75 00:05:17,080 --> 00:05:19,200 What truth can be established 76 00:05:19,360 --> 00:05:21,120 about Ivan the Terrible? 77 00:05:21,280 --> 00:05:23,000 What actually shaped him? 78 00:05:23,160 --> 00:05:26,000 As the shifting sands of history are washed away, 79 00:05:26,160 --> 00:05:28,440 what is the true picture of a man 80 00:05:28,600 --> 00:05:30,480 whose creation of an army to serve him, 81 00:05:30,640 --> 00:05:33,560 and his ambitions to expand ever westward, 82 00:05:33,720 --> 00:05:36,040 might be seen as laying down a marker 83 00:05:36,200 --> 00:05:37,960 for future Russian leaders? 84 00:05:41,120 --> 00:05:44,040 It seems the seeds of Ivan's brutal reign... 85 00:05:44,200 --> 00:05:47,680 are sown in an abusive childhood. 86 00:05:47,840 --> 00:05:50,680 Everything was unbefitting my tender years. 87 00:05:50,840 --> 00:05:53,120 They began to feed us as though we were foreigners 88 00:05:53,280 --> 00:05:55,480 or the most wretched menials. 89 00:05:55,640 --> 00:05:58,000 What sufferings did I endure through... 90 00:05:58,160 --> 00:06:00,520 lack of clothing or hunger? 91 00:06:02,040 --> 00:06:04,920 As a young boy, Prince Ivan and his brother Georgi 92 00:06:05,080 --> 00:06:07,440 had been imprisoned in the palace tower. 93 00:06:08,280 --> 00:06:11,280 The modern definitions of child abuse, 94 00:06:11,440 --> 00:06:13,760 I'm sure would apply to him. 95 00:06:13,920 --> 00:06:17,200 Emotional abuse, possibly physical abuse, 96 00:06:17,360 --> 00:06:19,760 I think is almost certain to have happened. 97 00:06:21,000 --> 00:06:23,760 Ivan's only possible response to this 98 00:06:23,920 --> 00:06:28,120 would have been to completely desensitise himself 99 00:06:28,280 --> 00:06:31,200 to any traces of human feeling, 100 00:06:31,360 --> 00:06:33,840 any traces of sentiment at all. 101 00:06:34,000 --> 00:06:36,560 And we see this emerging... 102 00:06:36,720 --> 00:06:40,000 in the acts that he then reputedly carries out. 103 00:06:41,280 --> 00:06:44,600 There are tales of Ivan throwing cats, 104 00:06:44,760 --> 00:06:48,280 throwing dogs out of tower windows to see what happens. 105 00:06:52,600 --> 00:06:56,640 This is somebody who has been completely... 106 00:06:56,800 --> 00:07:00,120 desensitised to any normal human emotion, 107 00:07:00,280 --> 00:07:02,120 even at a very young age. 108 00:07:03,440 --> 00:07:07,200 The abuse is not meted out by Ivan's parents... 109 00:07:07,360 --> 00:07:09,640 but by a shady noble elite 110 00:07:09,800 --> 00:07:12,960 entrusted to watch over him: the Boyars. 111 00:07:14,720 --> 00:07:19,160 The Boyars were the highest rank of the nobility. 112 00:07:20,960 --> 00:07:24,160 The Boyars were all from very ancient families 113 00:07:24,320 --> 00:07:26,560 who could trace their roots back centuries. 114 00:07:26,720 --> 00:07:31,400 Ivan's father, Vasili III, had died in 1533. 115 00:07:31,560 --> 00:07:34,640 The Boyars were brought in to advise the young Prince 116 00:07:34,800 --> 00:07:36,680 as he inherited the throne. 117 00:07:36,840 --> 00:07:38,760 They had to set up a regency council. 118 00:07:38,920 --> 00:07:40,880 His mother was still alive, 119 00:07:41,040 --> 00:07:45,480 and she seems to have been fairly powerful within the regency council. 120 00:07:45,640 --> 00:07:48,400 But she was not the only factor. 121 00:07:48,560 --> 00:07:53,200 So the Boyars were continually jockeying for control 122 00:07:53,360 --> 00:07:55,880 over this very young Prince. 123 00:07:57,040 --> 00:08:01,160 Ivan was a bit of a prisoner of this power struggle 124 00:08:04,320 --> 00:08:08,240 Dr Anton Hauk is an expert on medieval Slavic History. 125 00:08:20,160 --> 00:08:23,200 Five years later, as the Boyars vie for control, 126 00:08:23,360 --> 00:08:25,840 young Ivan was dealt another blow. 127 00:08:29,080 --> 00:08:32,320 Thus by God's will did it come to pass that our mother, 128 00:08:32,480 --> 00:08:34,680 the pious Tsaritsa Elena, 129 00:08:34,840 --> 00:08:37,640 went from the earthly kingdom to the heavenly. 130 00:08:37,800 --> 00:08:41,160 And we and our brother Georgiy remained as orphans, 131 00:08:41,320 --> 00:08:43,840 receiving no human care from any quarter. 132 00:08:45,040 --> 00:08:48,640 He was in a very vulnerable state, 133 00:08:48,800 --> 00:08:52,280 and especially after their mother died, he was only eight years old. 134 00:08:52,440 --> 00:08:55,080 He felt responsible for his disabled younger brother. 135 00:08:55,240 --> 00:08:59,240 And he had these very powerful men... 136 00:08:59,400 --> 00:09:01,280 making his life miserable. 137 00:09:01,440 --> 00:09:03,640 Whilst the Prince is too young to rule, 138 00:09:03,800 --> 00:09:06,160 the Boyars become de facto leaders. 139 00:09:06,320 --> 00:09:09,520 He accuses them of mismanaging his affairs. 140 00:09:10,520 --> 00:09:14,160 What of the treasures inherited by me from my father? 141 00:09:14,320 --> 00:09:16,920 With their cunning scheme, they seized it all. 142 00:09:17,080 --> 00:09:20,120 They took it all for themselves for their own profit. 143 00:09:20,280 --> 00:09:22,160 To add to his rage, 144 00:09:22,320 --> 00:09:24,960 young Ivan learns that his mother was poisoned. 145 00:09:25,120 --> 00:09:28,320 Rumours reveal the perpetrator is one of the Boyars: 146 00:09:28,480 --> 00:09:31,080 Prince Andrey Shuysky. 147 00:09:31,240 --> 00:09:35,560 This death happened under suspicious circumstances. 148 00:09:35,720 --> 00:09:39,720 At the time, Muscovy was part of a culture of high intrigue, 149 00:09:39,880 --> 00:09:43,240 high stakes and a lot of violence. 150 00:09:43,400 --> 00:09:46,080 It was the kind of environment where people... 151 00:09:46,240 --> 00:09:48,200 would have poisoned each other. 152 00:09:48,360 --> 00:09:51,640 So what we've got with Ivan is somebody who... 153 00:09:51,800 --> 00:09:55,200 is suffering these incredible losses as a very young child. 154 00:09:55,360 --> 00:09:58,080 The idea that it was done deliberately 155 00:09:58,240 --> 00:10:00,200 will have engendered within him 156 00:10:00,360 --> 00:10:03,800 an absolute hatred of humanity. 157 00:10:03,960 --> 00:10:07,960 These acts seem to have been done... 158 00:10:08,120 --> 00:10:11,120 by the very people that he was now dependent upon 159 00:10:11,280 --> 00:10:13,160 as his caregivers, 160 00:10:13,320 --> 00:10:16,360 will have had an enormous psychological effect 161 00:10:16,520 --> 00:10:18,760 on this very small boy, 162 00:10:18,920 --> 00:10:22,760 making him feel... unsafe, threatened. 163 00:10:22,920 --> 00:10:26,680 Making him, I think, not to depend upon anyone. 164 00:10:28,040 --> 00:10:30,760 As Ivan hits his teens, he wreaks his revenge 165 00:10:30,920 --> 00:10:34,240 on his tormentor-in-chief, Prince Andrey Shuysky. 166 00:10:34,400 --> 00:10:37,240 The Shuysky family had been controlling affairs 167 00:10:37,400 --> 00:10:39,200 for all of Ivan's childhood, 168 00:10:39,360 --> 00:10:42,280 and Ivan was now a little bit older. 169 00:10:42,440 --> 00:10:44,800 He was asserting more control, 170 00:10:44,960 --> 00:10:48,880 and he seems to have been very fed up with this family 171 00:10:49,040 --> 00:10:51,280 ordering him around and not treating him very well. 172 00:10:53,280 --> 00:10:56,240 We know that Andrey was thrown to the dogs. 173 00:11:08,360 --> 00:11:10,360 A more brutal, painful, 174 00:11:10,520 --> 00:11:13,040 excruciating murder. 175 00:11:14,840 --> 00:11:18,640 I think this ordering of the execution at the age of 13 176 00:11:18,800 --> 00:11:22,320 was absolutely a definitive act. 177 00:11:22,480 --> 00:11:25,480 It happened at the psychological stage 178 00:11:25,640 --> 00:11:29,400 at which people are beginning to form their identities. 179 00:11:29,560 --> 00:11:33,320 And I think this act represents an absolute choice 180 00:11:33,480 --> 00:11:37,680 on the part of Ivan to not trust anyone 181 00:11:37,840 --> 00:11:39,840 to fight against his destiny, 182 00:11:40,000 --> 00:11:44,720 rather than to passively accept it in a victim-type role. 183 00:11:45,760 --> 00:11:49,040 The young teen has had his first taste of blood. 184 00:11:49,200 --> 00:11:51,160 Now he's hungry for more. 185 00:11:53,720 --> 00:11:55,680 Then we have another tale of Buturlin, 186 00:11:55,840 --> 00:11:59,280 somebody who, in the court, who said an impolite word, 187 00:11:59,440 --> 00:12:02,240 Ivan ordered his tongue to be cut out. 188 00:12:03,280 --> 00:12:07,760 We know that we're talking about times that were barbaric. 189 00:12:07,920 --> 00:12:11,640 But nonetheless, they are incredibly sadistic acts. 190 00:12:11,800 --> 00:12:14,160 The first signs of mental illness... 191 00:12:14,320 --> 00:12:17,760 or a simple but brutal assertion of power? 192 00:12:17,920 --> 00:12:21,360 They are about Ivan trying to obliterate... 193 00:12:22,440 --> 00:12:26,440 ...the vulnerable, sensitive little boy who lost his parents, 194 00:12:26,600 --> 00:12:29,560 who felt so exposed and powerless. 195 00:12:29,720 --> 00:12:31,760 They are him trying to show, 196 00:12:31,920 --> 00:12:34,440 to himself as much as to the world, 197 00:12:34,600 --> 00:12:36,880 that that little boy no longer exists: 198 00:12:37,040 --> 00:12:40,360 that he is now Ivan the Terrible. 199 00:12:52,160 --> 00:12:54,240 The treachery of the Boyar nobility 200 00:12:54,400 --> 00:12:56,640 has left mental scars on the teenage Prince. 201 00:12:57,520 --> 00:13:01,000 We hear of episodes of Ivan banging his head against the wall, 202 00:13:01,160 --> 00:13:06,000 foaming at the mouth, being silent and still for hours. 203 00:13:06,880 --> 00:13:10,080 There is no doubt that his thinking was psychotic 204 00:13:10,240 --> 00:13:13,840 in the sense of being divorced from reality in some way. 205 00:13:15,880 --> 00:13:18,520 Now, this is all consistent with this idea 206 00:13:18,680 --> 00:13:21,120 of the emotions producing... 207 00:13:21,280 --> 00:13:23,960 a very abnormal human state. 208 00:13:28,200 --> 00:13:31,960 With his coming of age at 16, Ivan can get his revenge 209 00:13:32,120 --> 00:13:35,520 when he's finally crowned Tsar and Grand Prince of all Moscow. 210 00:13:35,680 --> 00:13:38,680 The brakes are off on his power. 211 00:13:38,840 --> 00:13:42,560 He was the first ruler of Moscow to be crowned Emperor, or Tsar. 212 00:13:44,960 --> 00:13:48,880 He very much felt like there was nothing he could do that was wrong. 213 00:13:49,040 --> 00:13:51,280 One thing that tends to get overlooked... 214 00:13:51,440 --> 00:13:55,960 is Ivan's belief in his divine right: 215 00:13:56,120 --> 00:13:58,000 that he was appointed by God, 216 00:13:58,160 --> 00:14:00,440 and that nobody could tell him what to do. 217 00:14:02,240 --> 00:14:04,880 Maybe that feeling was strengthened 218 00:14:05,040 --> 00:14:07,200 because of his years of being so powerless 219 00:14:25,320 --> 00:14:30,440 He took his role as God's anointed very seriously. 220 00:14:30,600 --> 00:14:33,840 In his own writings, he refers to his subjects as his slaves, 221 00:14:34,000 --> 00:14:37,080 and anything he might do to them is fine, 222 00:14:37,240 --> 00:14:38,920 because he is appointed by God. 223 00:14:39,760 --> 00:14:43,920 It does go some way toward explaining how he acted. 224 00:14:45,400 --> 00:14:48,800 The young Tsar's first mission is to see off his old enemy. 225 00:14:49,800 --> 00:14:53,360 He was able to shake off the Boyars 226 00:14:53,520 --> 00:14:56,280 and bring in inner circle. 227 00:14:56,440 --> 00:15:01,080 And these were new people whom Ivan brought in to start his reign. 228 00:15:01,240 --> 00:15:04,000 And he came in with a lot of ambition and a lot of energy 229 00:15:04,160 --> 00:15:06,760 despite his traumatised childhood. 230 00:15:06,920 --> 00:15:10,600 He set about very energetically putting things in place. 231 00:15:10,760 --> 00:15:14,880 On the throne, Ivan could be a very successful, 232 00:15:15,040 --> 00:15:18,840 very productive, constructive leader. 233 00:15:19,000 --> 00:15:22,720 A new law code, reform in the Orthodox Church 234 00:15:22,880 --> 00:15:27,560 to raise the level of education and morality of the clergy. 235 00:15:28,440 --> 00:15:31,120 The reforms were intended to benefit... 236 00:15:31,280 --> 00:15:33,160 large swathes of the country, 237 00:15:33,320 --> 00:15:36,680 and mostly, people seem to have gone along with it 238 00:15:36,840 --> 00:15:39,040 and supported all of what he was trying to do. 239 00:15:42,560 --> 00:15:44,520 But just a year into Ivan's reign 240 00:15:44,680 --> 00:15:46,680 comes his first real test: 241 00:15:46,840 --> 00:15:51,400 a huge fire sweeps Moscow, killing 4,000 of his subjects. 242 00:15:53,280 --> 00:15:57,320 The finger points at the young Tsar's family using witchcraft, 243 00:15:57,480 --> 00:16:00,920 and there's a mass uprising on the streets of the capital. 244 00:16:19,800 --> 00:16:23,560 He was showing signs of being vengeful 245 00:16:23,720 --> 00:16:25,960 and possibly paranoid. 246 00:16:26,120 --> 00:16:28,000 But in the early years, 247 00:16:28,160 --> 00:16:30,840 he was surrounded by a pretty positive... 248 00:16:31,000 --> 00:16:34,920 and supportive group of people, who might have made up a bit for that. 249 00:16:36,240 --> 00:16:38,240 The promise of marriage 250 00:16:38,400 --> 00:16:41,360 also seems to temper Ivan's vengeance. 251 00:16:41,520 --> 00:16:44,680 He selects his bride-to-be, Anastasia Romanova, 252 00:16:44,840 --> 00:16:46,920 from 1,500 hopefuls. 253 00:16:57,040 --> 00:17:01,280 It seems that the marriage was a happy one, 254 00:17:01,440 --> 00:17:06,240 and he personally chose her rather than it being an arranged marriage. 255 00:17:06,400 --> 00:17:10,800 A lot of historians draw on court chronicles that were being kept. 256 00:17:23,400 --> 00:17:25,400 But in his first decade of rule, 257 00:17:25,560 --> 00:17:28,160 Ivan rides high on a wave of popularity, 258 00:17:28,320 --> 00:17:31,720 one which also sees him create Russia's first standing army - 259 00:17:31,880 --> 00:17:35,840 the Streltsy - which provided Ivan with a bodyguard... 260 00:17:36,000 --> 00:17:37,760 and more. 261 00:17:37,920 --> 00:17:39,800 Ivan had some early military successes, 262 00:17:39,960 --> 00:17:44,120 conquering Kazan and Astrakhan to the southeast of Muscovy. 263 00:17:44,280 --> 00:17:47,960 This was a huge success. It was really celebrated in Moscow. 264 00:17:48,120 --> 00:17:52,120 Anastasia produces two potential heirs to the throne: 265 00:17:52,280 --> 00:17:54,640 Ivan junior, and later Feodor. 266 00:17:54,800 --> 00:17:57,800 During his marriage to Anastasia, 267 00:17:57,960 --> 00:18:00,440 there was a period of relative calm. 268 00:18:02,160 --> 00:18:05,160 And then she is suddenly murdered... 269 00:18:06,200 --> 00:18:08,560 ...in suspicious circumstances. 270 00:18:08,720 --> 00:18:12,800 Rumours swirl around the palace of yet another poisoning. 271 00:18:12,960 --> 00:18:15,240 To have her taken away from him, 272 00:18:15,400 --> 00:18:17,560 in what appears to be... 273 00:18:17,720 --> 00:18:20,560 very similar circumstances as his mother, 274 00:18:20,720 --> 00:18:25,040 would have triggered his paranoia, his hatred once again, 275 00:18:25,200 --> 00:18:27,240 but this time, to a new level. 276 00:18:27,400 --> 00:18:31,200 It will have unleashed a new level of terror 277 00:18:33,920 --> 00:18:36,320 After remarrying a year later, 278 00:18:36,480 --> 00:18:41,400 what will happen next gives rise to one of Ivan's most infamous legends. 279 00:18:41,560 --> 00:18:46,400 By now, those he had loved had died more than they had survived. 280 00:18:46,560 --> 00:18:50,560 Is he forever deeply damaged as events unfold? 281 00:18:51,400 --> 00:18:55,880 The cathedral on Red Square - called St Basil's, popularly - 282 00:18:56,040 --> 00:18:58,280 it was built to commemorate the victory in Kazan. 283 00:18:58,440 --> 00:19:02,600 Ivan was so moved by the beauty of the cathedral 284 00:19:02,760 --> 00:19:06,400 and wanted in to ensure that it couldn't be replicated. 285 00:19:06,560 --> 00:19:09,000 There is a rumour or legend that... 286 00:19:09,160 --> 00:19:11,680 Ivan blinded the Architect... 287 00:19:13,560 --> 00:19:17,760 ...so that he couldn't create anything else so amazing. 288 00:19:19,160 --> 00:19:21,000 I think, psychologically, 289 00:19:21,160 --> 00:19:25,320 Ivan would have been very troubled by the emotion, 290 00:19:25,480 --> 00:19:27,640 by this hint of humanity, 291 00:19:27,800 --> 00:19:30,960 that the beauty of the cathedral sparked within him. 292 00:19:31,120 --> 00:19:33,800 And he needed to eradicate it immediately, 293 00:19:33,960 --> 00:19:36,040 because any sense of this 294 00:19:36,200 --> 00:19:38,720 fights against his power, reduces his power. 295 00:19:38,880 --> 00:19:41,560 It's much more about obliterating 296 00:19:41,720 --> 00:19:44,880 his own vulnerability at all costs. 297 00:19:45,040 --> 00:19:48,360 But this notorious Ivan the Terrible tale 298 00:19:48,520 --> 00:19:50,760 has been dissected by historians. 299 00:19:50,920 --> 00:19:55,200 To them, his actions are par for the medieval Russian course. 300 00:20:10,240 --> 00:20:13,680 These kinds of stories seem to have circulated at that time, 301 00:20:13,840 --> 00:20:18,520 but there's no specific evidence about it in that case. 302 00:20:20,360 --> 00:20:24,880 The tide now starts to turn against the once-popular Tsar. 303 00:20:26,160 --> 00:20:30,320 In 1564, Ivan was feeling very paranoid, 304 00:20:30,480 --> 00:20:32,440 feeling like everyone was against him. 305 00:20:32,600 --> 00:20:37,360 Earlier Ivan began to have ideas about looking to the West, 306 00:20:37,520 --> 00:20:40,800 and getting, especially, a foothold into the Baltics. 307 00:20:40,960 --> 00:20:42,400 But that didn't go so well. 308 00:20:43,560 --> 00:20:46,360 Ivan, like many Russian leaders before and since, 309 00:20:46,520 --> 00:20:48,400 had begun looking westwards, 310 00:20:48,560 --> 00:20:50,680 greedily eyeing the lands of others. 311 00:20:50,840 --> 00:20:52,840 He'd set his sights on Livonia: 312 00:20:53,000 --> 00:20:55,280 now present-day Latvia and Estonia. 313 00:20:56,800 --> 00:20:59,480 Livonia was an old crusader state 314 00:20:59,640 --> 00:21:01,920 that Ivan thought he could just swoop in 315 00:21:02,080 --> 00:21:03,760 and more or less take it over, 316 00:21:03,920 --> 00:21:07,280 and then have a great bit of Baltic coastline to use for ports 317 00:21:07,440 --> 00:21:11,320 that were ice-free year-round, which Muscovy didn't have. 318 00:21:11,480 --> 00:21:13,920 Livonia itself was not a strong state, 319 00:21:14,080 --> 00:21:16,240 but it had strong neighbours, 320 00:21:16,400 --> 00:21:18,200 including Sweden and Poland. 321 00:21:18,360 --> 00:21:20,360 And they were not keen on... 322 00:21:20,520 --> 00:21:22,720 having Muscovy show up next door. 323 00:21:22,880 --> 00:21:24,800 So it... 324 00:21:24,960 --> 00:21:27,320 turned into a real mess. 325 00:21:39,000 --> 00:21:41,280 The Livonian War was going badly. 326 00:21:41,440 --> 00:21:43,680 It got bogged down very quickly, 327 00:21:43,840 --> 00:21:45,640 became a bit of a quagmire. 328 00:21:46,520 --> 00:21:49,640 Things just seemed to be going from bad to worse. 329 00:21:49,800 --> 00:21:51,840 He blamed the Boyars. 330 00:21:52,000 --> 00:21:53,720 And he... 331 00:21:53,880 --> 00:21:57,480 pulled a move that has caused a lot of controversy since then. 332 00:21:57,640 --> 00:22:00,440 It is December 1564 333 00:22:00,600 --> 00:22:04,160 when the embattled Tsar makes a high-stakes gamble. 334 00:22:12,640 --> 00:22:16,520 Ivan flees 80 miles north to Alexandrov, 335 00:22:16,680 --> 00:22:19,320 leaving no-one in charge at the capital. 336 00:22:19,480 --> 00:22:22,000 In a typically calculated move, 337 00:22:22,160 --> 00:22:25,760 he has created a power vacuum at the heart of the country. 338 00:22:34,520 --> 00:22:37,280 He declared that he was leaving the throne: 339 00:22:37,440 --> 00:22:39,240 because the Boyars were so treacherous, 340 00:22:39,400 --> 00:22:42,840 he couldn't deal with them any more, and he had had enough. 341 00:22:44,480 --> 00:22:47,960 But the wily Tsar has another trick up his sleeve. 342 00:22:48,120 --> 00:22:51,440 Ivan floods Moscow's streets with his loyal fanbase 343 00:22:51,600 --> 00:22:54,760 and pays them to rally the crowds demanding his return. 344 00:23:03,680 --> 00:23:05,720 The fact that he's sending out these people 345 00:23:05,880 --> 00:23:07,600 to try and engender sympathy, 346 00:23:07,760 --> 00:23:11,480 to try and generate some positive emotion towards him: 347 00:23:11,640 --> 00:23:14,080 psychologically speaking, this is very interesting, 348 00:23:14,240 --> 00:23:16,040 because these are all indications... 349 00:23:16,200 --> 00:23:19,520 of a touch of vulnerability remaining. 350 00:23:20,360 --> 00:23:22,480 This was a very calculated move. 351 00:23:22,640 --> 00:23:26,160 He knew that the court would be so horrified and shocked 352 00:23:26,320 --> 00:23:28,760 that they would then beg him to come back... 353 00:23:28,920 --> 00:23:32,640 which he did... but on certain conditions. 354 00:23:33,520 --> 00:23:37,520 He wanted to implement a new legal framework, 355 00:23:37,680 --> 00:23:40,320 which allowed him to root out traitors: 356 00:23:40,480 --> 00:23:44,320 effectively establish his own secret police force. 357 00:23:45,600 --> 00:23:48,360 This elite force, the oprichniki, 358 00:23:48,520 --> 00:23:51,080 would answer to Ivan and Ivan alone. 359 00:23:51,240 --> 00:23:54,480 They would grow to become his own personal death squad, 360 00:23:54,640 --> 00:23:57,840 used to strike fear into any enemy. 361 00:23:58,000 --> 00:24:02,120 Which makes the evil that he was then able to perpetrate 362 00:24:02,280 --> 00:24:05,120 all the more... terrifying. 363 00:24:14,960 --> 00:24:18,600 Ivan the Terrible has a sinister band of enforcers, 364 00:24:18,760 --> 00:24:22,120 the oprichniki, to seek out his enemies. 365 00:24:40,280 --> 00:24:44,960 Ivan seems to have been really fascinated by monastic life. 366 00:24:45,120 --> 00:24:47,920 And a lot of elements of the oprichniki 367 00:24:48,080 --> 00:24:50,640 were weird imitations, 368 00:24:50,800 --> 00:24:52,800 including their black costume. 369 00:24:54,000 --> 00:24:56,040 They would dine communally 370 00:24:56,200 --> 00:24:59,640 and have someone acting kind of in the role of the abbot. 371 00:24:59,800 --> 00:25:03,280 They must pledge absolute loyalty to him 372 00:25:03,440 --> 00:25:06,960 and renounce their families, their relatives, 373 00:25:07,120 --> 00:25:09,440 their lives beyond that entirely. 374 00:25:10,760 --> 00:25:15,160 And then the symbols that they had with them were the broom, 375 00:25:15,320 --> 00:25:18,800 to sweep out... any kind of sedition. 376 00:25:18,960 --> 00:25:20,880 And the dog's head. 377 00:25:22,000 --> 00:25:24,720 The canine head is attached to their horses 378 00:25:24,880 --> 00:25:27,760 as the oprichniki prepare their missions of terror. 379 00:25:27,920 --> 00:25:30,040 I've heard different explanations for the dog's head, 380 00:25:30,200 --> 00:25:31,960 and one is that it shows 381 00:25:32,120 --> 00:25:35,160 that they were the loyal guard dogs of the sovereign. 382 00:25:35,320 --> 00:25:40,320 Another is that it symbolised the bite of the Oprichnina. 383 00:25:41,560 --> 00:25:46,160 Ivan took a lot of the most central and productive land 384 00:25:46,320 --> 00:25:48,560 and called it the Oprichnina. 385 00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:52,280 So that became a state within a state, I guess you could say, 386 00:25:52,440 --> 00:25:55,160 which had its own institutions, and its own secret police. 387 00:25:55,320 --> 00:25:58,280 Certainly a forerunner of the Tsar's Okhrana, 388 00:25:58,440 --> 00:26:02,680 and then Lenin's Cheka, their job was to root out the enemy within: 389 00:26:02,840 --> 00:26:05,200 traitors, real or imagined. 390 00:26:05,360 --> 00:26:07,840 Their job was to go and find traitors, 391 00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:12,480 and Ivan seems to be feeding names to them. 392 00:26:12,640 --> 00:26:16,080 Ivan gives his mobsters a licence to kill, 393 00:26:16,240 --> 00:26:19,320 and to assassinate anyone who stands in his way. 394 00:26:23,400 --> 00:26:27,920 We have tales of people fleeing villages for their lives, 395 00:26:28,080 --> 00:26:30,640 and that terror would have spread like a wildfire. 396 00:26:30,800 --> 00:26:34,040 So his main psychological mechanism... 397 00:26:34,200 --> 00:26:36,840 of maintaining his power was terror. 398 00:26:38,520 --> 00:26:41,240 Terror is the one emotion... 399 00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:44,400 that Ivan knows only too well, 400 00:26:44,560 --> 00:26:46,760 because this is the one emotion 401 00:26:46,920 --> 00:26:51,360 that I think will have dominated his emotional landscape as a young boy. 402 00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:54,120 Thousands of innocent subjects 403 00:26:54,280 --> 00:26:56,280 are caught up in the slaughter. 404 00:26:56,440 --> 00:26:58,560 But it's Ivan's old enemy the Boyars 405 00:26:58,720 --> 00:27:01,480 who bear the brunt of his brutal landgrab. 406 00:27:02,880 --> 00:27:05,600 The Boyars were given other lands 407 00:27:05,760 --> 00:27:08,440 that were further away and less desirable. 408 00:27:08,600 --> 00:27:13,520 And if a Boyar land was in the Oprichnina, the Boyar had to move, 409 00:27:13,680 --> 00:27:16,720 and then his land would be taken over by an oprichnik. 410 00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:19,520 The fury, the hatred, the paranoia: 411 00:27:19,680 --> 00:27:24,400 these are phenomenally exhausting emotions for any human being, 412 00:27:24,560 --> 00:27:28,800 however desensitised they have become. 413 00:27:28,960 --> 00:27:31,800 They are absolutely draining. 414 00:27:32,760 --> 00:27:36,240 But Ivan's paranoia is not just imaginary. 415 00:27:37,800 --> 00:27:40,960 In 1567, he uncovers a Boyar plot 416 00:27:41,120 --> 00:27:43,240 in collusion with the King of Poland, 417 00:27:43,400 --> 00:27:45,840 Sigismund II, to overthrow him. 418 00:28:08,440 --> 00:28:13,560 A lot of the executions were about humiliating the victim. 419 00:28:14,480 --> 00:28:17,320 You know, dismembering, prolonged torture, 420 00:28:17,480 --> 00:28:20,360 and also denying them a Christian burial, 421 00:28:20,520 --> 00:28:24,480 which was, in some ways, worse for someone at the time. 422 00:28:24,640 --> 00:28:28,760 So he was definitely fascinated with torture and humiliation 423 00:28:28,920 --> 00:28:30,800 more than the body count. 424 00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:35,280 Ivan's unrelenting barbarity soon causes a rift 425 00:28:35,440 --> 00:28:37,280 with the head of the Orthodox Church. 426 00:28:37,440 --> 00:28:39,680 The Metropolitan of Moscow, Philip II, 427 00:28:39,840 --> 00:28:43,080 bravely squares up to the Tsar. 428 00:28:56,240 --> 00:28:58,720 And so Philip kept speaking out, 429 00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:00,840 and the rest of the clergy 430 00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:03,480 did not back him up because they were terrified. 431 00:29:16,680 --> 00:29:18,400 For Ivan, 432 00:29:18,560 --> 00:29:21,360 who believed he had been deprived of anyone he had ever loved, 433 00:29:21,520 --> 00:29:24,240 the idea that God was now disappointed in him 434 00:29:24,400 --> 00:29:26,320 was too much to bear. 435 00:29:26,480 --> 00:29:29,080 And Ivan finally decided he had had enough. 436 00:29:29,240 --> 00:29:32,560 It prompted him to exile the leader of his church, 437 00:29:32,720 --> 00:29:35,120 whom he had known since he was a boy, and then, 438 00:29:35,280 --> 00:29:39,480 once he was safely out of sight, to have him assassinated. 439 00:29:41,560 --> 00:29:46,160 Philip's assumption that he could rely on his childhood friendship 440 00:29:46,320 --> 00:29:49,920 to protect him was the big mistake. 441 00:29:50,080 --> 00:29:53,040 He misunderstood: he failed to realise that... 442 00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:55,840 Ivan was not somebody who... 443 00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:58,280 has any comprehension... 444 00:29:58,440 --> 00:30:01,680 of loyalty or honour at all. 445 00:30:01,840 --> 00:30:04,000 He trusts no-one. 446 00:30:04,160 --> 00:30:07,120 He would've been the first to say that the church also has corruption, 447 00:30:07,280 --> 00:30:09,040 and the church also needs correction: 448 00:30:09,200 --> 00:30:10,960 who better to do it than me? 449 00:30:19,120 --> 00:30:21,080 With the fear of more rebellion, 450 00:30:21,240 --> 00:30:24,000 within the year, Ivan plans another violent purge. 451 00:30:24,160 --> 00:30:28,480 But this requires bloodshed on a scale never before seen. 452 00:30:29,640 --> 00:30:34,200 Novgorod had been a very independent city in the far north. 453 00:30:34,360 --> 00:30:38,560 It was also the second-largest city in the country, in Muscovy. 454 00:30:51,440 --> 00:30:54,560 Ivan supposedly heard rumours that... 455 00:30:54,720 --> 00:30:58,280 the Novgorod elite was plotting against him. 456 00:30:59,680 --> 00:31:01,960 And not just plotting against him 457 00:31:02,120 --> 00:31:05,560 but planning to replace him with his cousin Prince Vladimir Andreyevich. 458 00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:09,640 The brutal dictator has a terrifying solution. 459 00:31:09,800 --> 00:31:14,480 He went up there with a whole army of the oprichniki 460 00:31:14,640 --> 00:31:18,040 and spent about six weeks just massacring... 461 00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:19,920 anything that moved 462 00:31:50,120 --> 00:31:53,400 Even the city's churches are no longer safe. 463 00:32:12,600 --> 00:32:15,600 All of the church's property was confiscated, 464 00:32:15,760 --> 00:32:18,600 all of the movable wealth was taken back to Moscow: 465 00:32:18,760 --> 00:32:20,560 so any wealth, any independence, 466 00:32:20,720 --> 00:32:23,720 any separate culture was expropriated. 467 00:32:24,560 --> 00:32:28,240 Ivan was able to maintain his fury: 468 00:32:28,400 --> 00:32:30,400 to maintain this tyranny, 469 00:32:30,560 --> 00:32:33,680 for weeks on end and with no exceptions. 470 00:32:33,840 --> 00:32:36,080 It speaks again to the way 471 00:32:36,240 --> 00:32:40,320 that his character was formed so early. 472 00:32:40,480 --> 00:32:42,840 It wasn't just a facet of his personality, 473 00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:45,360 it was his whole being. 474 00:32:45,520 --> 00:32:49,920 Before that time, you know, Muscovy had rule of law, 475 00:32:50,080 --> 00:32:52,720 so what he did was not normal. 476 00:32:52,880 --> 00:32:57,080 But this is not the end of Ivan IV's bloodletting. 477 00:32:58,040 --> 00:33:02,640 These abnormally out-of-control episodes of rage, 478 00:33:02,800 --> 00:33:05,400 and this being divorced from reality, 479 00:33:05,560 --> 00:33:09,840 produces somebody who is not fully in control. 480 00:33:18,680 --> 00:33:21,120 Now having ruled Russia for over two decades, 481 00:33:21,280 --> 00:33:24,600 an increasingly unstable Tsar is lashing out, 482 00:33:24,760 --> 00:33:26,920 even to those closest to him. 483 00:33:27,080 --> 00:33:29,920 On a whim, Ivan disbands his loyal oprichniki 484 00:33:30,080 --> 00:33:32,080 and executes its leaders. 485 00:33:32,240 --> 00:33:34,520 He then marries for a third time, 486 00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:38,440 but his wife Marfa mysteriously dies of poisoning... 487 00:33:38,600 --> 00:33:40,480 just days after their wedding. 488 00:33:40,640 --> 00:33:42,920 The only psychological response to that 489 00:33:43,080 --> 00:33:46,320 is to develop an ever-ready state of vigilance: 490 00:33:46,480 --> 00:33:49,320 a state of almost complete paranoia. 491 00:33:49,480 --> 00:33:51,640 You have to be suspicious. 492 00:33:51,800 --> 00:33:55,960 You have to be alert to the next thing that could come to hit you. 493 00:33:57,000 --> 00:33:59,400 As Ivan's court descends into chaos, 494 00:33:59,560 --> 00:34:04,720 in 1575, the mercurial Tsar makes another strange move. 495 00:34:05,640 --> 00:34:07,880 He puts a Tatar Prince on his throne 496 00:34:08,040 --> 00:34:11,080 from one of Muscovy's largest Turkic minorities: 497 00:34:11,240 --> 00:34:13,440 Simeon Bekbulatovich. 498 00:34:14,320 --> 00:34:16,880 It's a very mysterious episode. 499 00:34:17,040 --> 00:34:21,560 This was another occasion when Ivan apparently abdicated power. 500 00:34:21,720 --> 00:34:26,240 The vacuum that's left of some of the barbaric acts he's carried out 501 00:34:26,400 --> 00:34:30,120 will have just left him an empty shell of a man. 502 00:34:30,280 --> 00:34:32,680 He was tired, 503 00:34:32,840 --> 00:34:35,280 and felt he had run out of ideas, 504 00:34:35,440 --> 00:34:37,840 and couldn't carry on. 505 00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:40,480 Also, he may have just been going a bit crazy. 506 00:34:42,520 --> 00:34:44,520 A tired Ivan the Terrible 507 00:34:44,680 --> 00:34:47,280 hasn't lost his capacity for violence. 508 00:34:47,440 --> 00:34:51,080 Legend has it that he then marries and is widowed a further two times 509 00:34:51,240 --> 00:34:52,960 in as many years, 510 00:34:53,120 --> 00:34:56,040 with his seventh wife, Maria Dolgorukaya, 511 00:34:56,200 --> 00:34:58,280 dispatched by drowning. 512 00:35:01,120 --> 00:35:03,120 This eradication... 513 00:35:03,280 --> 00:35:07,360 what appears to be murder, is a definitive act. 514 00:35:09,120 --> 00:35:12,040 But modern-day historians question whether... 515 00:35:12,200 --> 00:35:14,880 wife Maria is, in fact, just a myth: 516 00:35:15,040 --> 00:35:19,720 a character created in later centuries by the Russian Empire. 517 00:35:30,040 --> 00:35:33,480 Ivan's marriage allegedly legitimises later claims 518 00:35:33,640 --> 00:35:38,720 that medieval Rus combined Kyiv Rus, AKA modern-day Ukraine, 519 00:35:38,880 --> 00:35:41,400 as one kingdom with Russia. 520 00:35:42,440 --> 00:35:45,640 Ivan's mythical wife Maria is said to be the descendant 521 00:35:45,800 --> 00:35:48,760 of Yury Dolgoruky - the Grand Prince of Kyiv, 522 00:35:48,920 --> 00:35:51,280 who also founded Moscow. 523 00:35:51,440 --> 00:35:53,840 He's believed to be buried here in Kyiv, 524 00:35:54,000 --> 00:35:56,640 and the legend has been used through the centuries 525 00:35:56,800 --> 00:35:59,120 to support expansion from Muscovy, 526 00:35:59,280 --> 00:36:01,320 AKA Russia, to the West. 527 00:36:05,520 --> 00:36:10,520 But myth or legend, a brutal miscalculation by the tyrant in 1581 528 00:36:10,680 --> 00:36:12,800 would rock his entire dynasty. 529 00:36:13,680 --> 00:36:16,760 The most popular account, 530 00:36:16,920 --> 00:36:20,040 which comes from the English envoy at the court, 531 00:36:20,200 --> 00:36:24,680 is that Ivan encountered his daughter-in-law. 532 00:36:24,840 --> 00:36:27,040 She was pregnant and not dressed properly, 533 00:36:27,200 --> 00:36:31,080 and he started berating her, possibly hit her. 534 00:36:31,240 --> 00:36:33,840 Her husband came to her defence, 535 00:36:34,000 --> 00:36:37,960 and the father and son started fighting. 536 00:36:40,280 --> 00:36:43,840 And Ivan hit his son. 537 00:36:45,960 --> 00:36:48,360 It ended up being a fatal blow to the head. 538 00:36:50,720 --> 00:36:53,040 There's some accounts of the time of... 539 00:36:53,200 --> 00:36:55,440 him being absolutely... 540 00:36:55,600 --> 00:36:57,640 inconsolable with grief. 541 00:36:58,640 --> 00:37:01,920 My sense is that this will have been... 542 00:37:02,080 --> 00:37:06,480 a murder committed not almost in a fully conscious state: 543 00:37:06,640 --> 00:37:10,240 this is the absolute example of... 544 00:37:10,400 --> 00:37:12,520 the rage taking over. 545 00:37:12,680 --> 00:37:17,160 And the moment the act is done, the sense of normality creeps in. 546 00:37:17,320 --> 00:37:21,240 But did the Moscow tyrant really kill his eldest son? 547 00:37:21,400 --> 00:37:23,760 To some historians, it's a mere fable. 548 00:37:23,920 --> 00:37:26,920 His oldest son, Ivan Ivanovich, 549 00:37:27,080 --> 00:37:31,160 definitely did die in 1581. 550 00:37:31,320 --> 00:37:33,240 It's possible that Ivan killed him. 551 00:37:33,400 --> 00:37:35,200 And there are a number of accounts from the time 552 00:37:35,360 --> 00:37:37,280 that say Ivan killed him. 553 00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:40,640 But there are also very different accounts of what happened. 554 00:37:40,800 --> 00:37:43,800 The accusation perhaps came from the Tsar's enemies 555 00:37:43,960 --> 00:37:47,760 as a ruse to add to his already terrible reputation. 556 00:38:08,240 --> 00:38:10,520 Whatever happened to the younger Ivan 557 00:38:10,680 --> 00:38:14,040 was in the very inner private apartments 558 00:38:14,200 --> 00:38:16,440 of the imperial family, 559 00:38:16,600 --> 00:38:20,280 and nobody else was around, and so... 560 00:38:20,440 --> 00:38:24,800 there's no actual firm evidence... one way or the other. 561 00:38:34,960 --> 00:38:38,200 Wracked with grief and guilt in his twilight years, 562 00:38:38,360 --> 00:38:41,480 the tyrant makes a final unexpected gesture. 563 00:38:42,360 --> 00:38:45,880 Ivan put together a memorial list 564 00:38:46,040 --> 00:38:49,680 of... maybe not all, but quite a large number of his own victims. 565 00:38:49,840 --> 00:38:54,080 He seems to have been overcome with guilt about this. 566 00:38:54,240 --> 00:38:59,120 He wanted the church to pray for the souls of the people he had killed. 567 00:38:59,280 --> 00:39:01,440 We're looking at huge numbers of people. 568 00:39:02,680 --> 00:39:06,520 But nothing can save Ivan the Terrible from the inevitable. 569 00:39:08,240 --> 00:39:10,640 On 28th March 1584, 570 00:39:10,800 --> 00:39:14,080 he dies of a stroke... whilst playing chess. 571 00:39:17,400 --> 00:39:19,320 Or did he? 572 00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:24,040 He was exhumed in the 1960s by Soviet archaeologists, and... 573 00:39:24,200 --> 00:39:27,560 they found a very high level of mercury in his bones. 574 00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:47,160 There could be a less cloak-and-dagger explanation. 575 00:39:47,320 --> 00:39:49,600 It might have been from medicine that he was taking, 576 00:39:49,760 --> 00:39:52,280 because his spine had a deformity, 577 00:39:52,440 --> 00:39:54,320 which probably caused a lot of pain. 578 00:39:54,480 --> 00:39:57,800 And he may have been taking medicine with mercury in it. 579 00:39:57,960 --> 00:40:01,160 High levels of mercury may have caused him to act erratically, 580 00:40:01,320 --> 00:40:03,560 and people wouldn't have understood that at the time. 581 00:40:07,640 --> 00:40:09,680 The Tsar's mysterious demise 582 00:40:09,840 --> 00:40:11,880 continues to cause debate and intrigue. 583 00:40:12,040 --> 00:40:16,520 Even in 2024, Ivan went viral when scientists from Brazil 584 00:40:16,680 --> 00:40:19,960 recreated his face using measurements of his skull 585 00:40:20,120 --> 00:40:23,880 and the latest in forensic facial reconstruction software. 586 00:40:24,040 --> 00:40:27,960 There are no firm conclusions on how the dictator died. 587 00:40:28,120 --> 00:40:30,840 But there is no doubt about the mess... 588 00:40:31,000 --> 00:40:33,240 that he created of his country. 589 00:40:33,400 --> 00:40:38,320 Muscovy was not in a great state at that time, for various reasons. 590 00:40:39,320 --> 00:40:42,280 They had negotiated an end to the Livonian War 591 00:40:42,440 --> 00:40:44,480 but not on favourable terms. 592 00:40:44,640 --> 00:40:47,960 They had had to make some territorial concessions. 593 00:40:48,120 --> 00:40:49,960 They just used up a lot of resources. 594 00:40:50,120 --> 00:40:52,560 They had to do a lot of extraordinary taxation 595 00:40:52,720 --> 00:40:57,680 to fund the war, so all of that had come off of people's incomes. 596 00:40:57,840 --> 00:41:00,520 And the country had completely exhausted itself. 597 00:41:00,680 --> 00:41:03,040 And then he left a succession crisis, 598 00:41:03,200 --> 00:41:07,120 because he had killed his oldest and only capable son. 599 00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:11,680 There's something ironic about the fact that at his own hands... 600 00:41:11,840 --> 00:41:16,120 that his significance, his place in history is killed. 601 00:41:17,760 --> 00:41:21,960 Ivan's younger son Feodor cannot step up to the plate. 602 00:41:22,120 --> 00:41:24,240 He wasn't capable of ruling, 603 00:41:24,400 --> 00:41:27,880 and it's not entirely clear why not. 604 00:41:28,880 --> 00:41:31,360 He may have had some kind of learning disability. 605 00:41:31,520 --> 00:41:36,520 So the real ruling ended up being done by Feodor's brother-in-law, 606 00:41:36,680 --> 00:41:38,680 who was called Boris Godunov, 607 00:41:38,840 --> 00:41:42,080 who was doing the real ruling behind the throne. 608 00:41:43,160 --> 00:41:46,560 Fourteen years later, Prince Feodor mysteriously dies, 609 00:41:46,720 --> 00:41:50,320 severing the final link between Ivan's Rurik dynasty 610 00:41:50,480 --> 00:41:52,480 and the Russian throne. 611 00:41:53,360 --> 00:41:58,040 One of the many, many terrible things about... Ivan and his legacy 612 00:41:58,200 --> 00:42:00,040 is that through his actions, 613 00:42:00,200 --> 00:42:03,240 he brought an end to his own princely line. 614 00:42:03,400 --> 00:42:05,880 It was one of the most successful dynasties 615 00:42:06,040 --> 00:42:09,760 that had been in power for 700 years or so in that part of the world. 616 00:42:13,760 --> 00:42:16,320 Despite the bulging case file of killings, 617 00:42:16,480 --> 00:42:19,960 it seems Ivan IV is soon forgiven. 618 00:42:20,120 --> 00:42:22,120 The country was absolutely bereft. 619 00:42:22,280 --> 00:42:26,640 It's hard to describe how attached the people of Muscovy 620 00:42:26,800 --> 00:42:29,080 was to this particular family. 621 00:42:29,240 --> 00:42:31,120 It wasn't just that they could go find another... 622 00:42:31,280 --> 00:42:33,360 a Boyar family or something, and bring them in. 623 00:42:33,520 --> 00:42:36,280 It had to be this particular family. 624 00:42:36,440 --> 00:42:39,120 The revolving door of leaders that follows 625 00:42:39,280 --> 00:42:43,200 plunges Russia into an era coined the 'Time of the Troubles': 626 00:42:43,360 --> 00:42:47,760 reportedly even more chaotic than the reign under Ivan the Terrible. 627 00:42:48,640 --> 00:42:51,080 There are thousands on his death list, 628 00:42:51,240 --> 00:42:54,680 but does Ivan deserve his nickname and reputation? 629 00:42:56,160 --> 00:42:58,160 I think among his contemporaries in Europe, 630 00:42:58,320 --> 00:43:03,080 Ivan was by far the worst and most bloodthirsty ruler... 631 00:43:03,240 --> 00:43:05,000 that country has had to endure. 632 00:43:05,160 --> 00:43:07,160 So... plain bad? 633 00:43:07,320 --> 00:43:10,080 Or was this Killer King just mad? 634 00:43:10,240 --> 00:43:13,720 How will the sands of time treat his legacy? 635 00:43:13,880 --> 00:43:17,560 That paranoia... even people at the time were saying, 636 00:43:17,720 --> 00:43:20,200 'We don't really think you need to be this paranoid.' 637 00:43:21,880 --> 00:43:26,600 Someone who was capable of committing horrific, barbaric acts: 638 00:43:26,760 --> 00:43:31,000 I'm often asked, 'Are they mad? Are they bad or just misunderstood?' 639 00:43:31,160 --> 00:43:33,880 For me, Ivan the Terrible... 640 00:43:34,040 --> 00:43:36,640 fits most closely the mad. 641 00:43:37,680 --> 00:43:40,840 People have diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia, 642 00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:44,120 some modern label: I don't think that works very well. 643 00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:47,880 He would have seen his repressions of the people as... 644 00:43:48,040 --> 00:43:50,600 him doing his job to... 645 00:43:50,760 --> 00:43:53,560 raise the moral standards of the country. 646 00:44:44,040 --> 00:44:47,080 Subtitles by Sky Access Services 53143

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