Oprichnik
Encyclopedia
Tsar
Tsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...
Ivan the Terrible to govern the division of Russia known as the Oprichnina
Oprichnina
The oprichnina is the period of Russian history between Tsar Ivan the Terrible's 1565 initiation and his 1572 disbanding of a domestic policy of secret police, mass repressions, public executions, and confiscation of land from Russian aristocrats...
(1565-1572).
It is thought by some scholars that it was Ivan's second wife, the Tatar
Tatars
Tatars are a Turkic speaking ethnic group , numbering roughly 7 million.The majority of Tatars live in the Russian Federation, with a population of around 5.5 million, about 2 million of which in the republic of Tatarstan.Significant minority populations are found in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,...
Maria Temryukovna who first gave the Tsar the idea of forming the organization. This theory comes from a German oprichnik, Heinirich von Staden. Her brother also became a leading oprichnik.
Their oath of allegiance was:
I swear to be true to the Lord, Grand Prince, and his realm, to the young Grand Princes, and to the Grand Princess, and not to maintain silence about any evil that I may know or have heard or may hear which is being contemplated against the Tsar, his realms, the young princes or the Tsaritsa. I swear also not to eat or drink with the zemschina, and not to have anything in common with them. On this I kiss the cross.
The Oprichniki were responsible for the torture and murder of internal enemies of the Tsar
Tsar
Tsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...
. Notorious for their violent means of enforcement, they could be compared to modern "death squads"
Death squad
A death squad is an armed military, police, insurgent, or terrorist squad that conducts extrajudicial killings, assassinations, and forced disappearances of persons as part of a war, insurgency or terror campaign...
or even secret police
Secret police
Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....
. Guided by Ivan, they laid waste to civilian populations. They dressed in black garb, similar to a monastic habit, and bore the strange insignia of a severed dog's head (to sniff out treason and the enemies of the Tsar) and a broom (to sweep them away). The dog's head was also symbolic of "nipping at the heels of the Tsar's enemies." They were sometimes called the "Tsar's Dogs" on account of their loyalty to him. They also rode black horses in order to inspire greater terror. The Oprichniki were given orders to execute anyone who was disloyal to Ivan IV. Their most odious member was Malyuta Skuratov
Malyuta Skuratov
Grigory Lukyanovich Skuratov-Belskiy , better known as Malyuta Skuratov was one of the most odious leaders of the Oprichnina during the reign of Ivan the Terrible....
.
The Oprichniki would use different methods of torture including tying each limb to a different horse and riding in the opposite directions or dropping the person into a vat of boiling water. They would impale
Impalement
Impalement is the traumatic penetration of an organism by an elongated foreign object such as a stake, pole, or spear, and this usually implies complete perforation of the central mass of the impaled body...
victims, or even tie the victim to a pole and burn him over an open fire. All of this was supported by Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible).
When Ivan declared himself the "Hand of God", 300 of the Oprichniki were selected to be his personal "brotherhood" that lived within Ivan's castle at Aleksandrovskaia Sloboda near Vladimir
Vladimir
Vladimir is a city and the administrative center of Vladimir Oblast, Russia, located on the Klyazma River, to the east of Moscow along the M7 motorway. Population:...
. Every night at 4 am these Oprichnik "monks" would attend a sermon given by Ivan himself before the morning's ritual executions. The Oprichniki would lead an externally ascetic lifestyle, like the monks they emulated, but there would be rash outbreaks of cruelty and debauchery. Ivan would sing while they ate, not eating himself till everyone had finished. He would go to bed at 9pm when 3 blind men would tell him stories.
In the infamous Novgorod incident
Massacre of Novgorod
The Massacre of Novgorod was an attack launched by Tsar Ivan IV’s oprichniki on the city of Novgorod, Russia in 1570. The sheer number of casualties combined with the extreme level of violent cruelty makes this campaign possibly the most vicious in the brutal legacy of the oprichnina.-Paranoia,...
, the Oprichniks massacred an estimated 1500 presumably innocent "big people" (nobles), although the real figure is unknown.
By 1572, Tsar Ivan disbanded the Oprichnik due to his realization that they were causing more problems and internal instability than the solutions he had originally planned them to fulfill. Moreover, despite having created them himself, Ivan made it a capital crime to even mention the name "Oprichnina" or anything in relations to it.
Appearances in modern media
The Oprichniki appear in Ensemble Studio'sEnsemble Studios
Ensemble Studios was a video game developer initially established in 1995 as an independent company, but was owned by Microsoft from 2001 to 2009, when it was officially disbanded. Ensemble developed many real-time strategy games, including the Age of Empires game series, Age of Mythology, and Halo...
Age of Empires III
Age of Empires III
Age of Empires III is a real-time strategy game developed by Microsoft Corporation's Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios. The Mac version was ported over and developed by Destineer's MacSoft Games and published by Destineer and MacSoft Games...
. Somewhat reflecting their historical actions, Oprichniki in the game are good at killing villagers and burning down buildings.
The song "Dog and Broom" on Arghoslent's Hornets of the Pogrom album focuses specifically on the Oprichniki.
The Twelve Wallachian mercenaries in the 2009 novel Twelve by Jasper Kent
Jasper Kent
Jasper Kent is an English author and composer. As a composer his work is generally in the field of musical theatre and his novels include Twelve and Thirteen Years Later, the first two books of the Danilov Quintet.- Biography :...
are named after the original Oprichniki, but are not directly connected to them.
The game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a single-player action role-playing video game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks and the Take-Two Interactive subsidiary 2K Games...
has a faction of assassins known as "the Dark Brotherhood" who share many similarities with the oprichniki.
Author W. E. B. Griffin
W. E. B. Griffin
W. E. B. Griffin is a writer of military and detective fiction with 38 novels in six series published under that name. He has also published under several pseudonyms....
's novel Black Ops claims as a plot point that all subsequent Russian secret police agencies such as the SVR
Foreign Intelligence Service (Russia)
The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service is Russia's primary external intelligence agency. The SVR is the successor of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB since December 1991...
are descendants of the Oprichniki.
The novel Day of the Oprichnik by Vladamir Sorokin imagines the return of the oprichniki in a futuristic-theocratic Russia.
Tsar (film)
Tsar (film)
Tsar is a 2009 Russian drama film directed by Pavel Lungin. It competed in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.-Cast:*Pyotr Mamonov - Ivan The Terrible*Oleg Yankovskiy - Metropolitan Philip Kolychev...
a 2009 Russian drama film directed by Pavel Lungin
Pavel Lungin
Pavel Semyonovich Lungin is a Russian film director. He is sometimes credited as Pavel Loungine .Born July 12, 1949 in Moscow, Lungin is the son of a scriptwriter and philologist. He later attended Moscow State University from which he graduated in 1971...
.
See also
- Okhrana, a force invested with special policing privileges that spread terror and might be seen as a successor.