At the bottom was a huge class of peasants, very few of them free. Most toiled their lives away as krepostnoy krestyanin , or unfree peasants, commonly known as serfs. From the 11 th till the end of the 16 th century the elements of serfdom were scattered among certain classes of the rural population.
Continue Reading from Russiapedia. Russia during the 16th Century is dominated by one figure: Ivan the Terrible, who has gone down in history as one of the most infamous leaders of all times. His long reign, firstly as grand prince and then as the first tsar, witnessed Russia conquer the Kazan and Astrakhan Khanates and expand its borders into Siberia but this coincided with a long and costly war in Livonia, raids at the hands of the Crimean Tatars and the madness and violence of the Oprichnina as Ivan lost his mind.
His legacy even threatened the destruction of the state itself and led to the eventual downfall of the House of Ryurik. Continue Reading from Rusmania. Read: Ivan the Terrible. Read: History of Russia to He confiscated the property of the boyars and granted state property to those who served him.
Since his soldiers were tenured to the state for life, their land grants became hereditary and they formed a new ruling elite. In , after the Livonian War with Poland and Sweden, Russia lost her far northern territories and her access to the Baltic.
In the same year, the czar also killed his son, Ivan, in a fit of rage. When Ivan the Terrible died in , Russia was left in a state of almost total political and economic ruin. Ivan the Terrible. Most Recent. Lesser known facts about The Battle of the Somme. Ivan agreed to return with the understanding he would be granted absolute power and then instituted what is known as the oprichnina. This agreement changed the way the Russian state worked and began an era of oppression, executions, and state surveillance.
It split the Russian lands into two distinct spheres, with the northern region around the former Novgorod Republic placed under the absolute power of Ivan IV. The boyar council oversaw the rest of the Russian lands. This new proclamation also started a wave of persecution and against the boyars.
Ivan IV executed, exiled, or forcibly removed hundreds of boyars from power, solidifying his legacy as a paranoid and unstable ruler. Ivan IV established a powerful trade agreement with England and even asked for asylum, should he need it in his fights with the boyars, from Elizabeth I. His first conquest was the Kazan Khanate, which had been raiding the northeast region of Russia for decades.
This territory sits in modern-day Tatarstan. A faction of Russian supporters were already rising up in the region but Ivan IV led his army of , to battle in June of The conquest of the entire Kazan Khanate reshaped relations between the nomadic people and the Russian state.
It also created a more diverse population under the fold of the Russian state and the Church. Ivan IV also embarked on the Livonian War, which lasted 24 years.
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