Sometimes it's Too Late

Originally published on OO 1/24/22. Heavily edited.

Sometimes its too late

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This is a story about a man born into extreme wealth and privilege, who would go on to do profound damage to the people he was entrusted to protect.

This man never saw or understood the lives of others. He cared only about his own comforts and vanity, and thus was easily manipulated throughout his life by others seeking power, influence, and control.

His name was Ivan Vasilyevich, and he was the first-born son of the Grand Prince of Moscow, who died when Ivan was just three.

Ivan spent his childhood ignored, exploited, and even starved by powerful boyar families like the Shuiskys and Belskys, who poisoned his mother with mercury when he was 8, then used Ivan as a pawn in their political and economic machinations.

When Ivan was just 16, he was made Grand Prince of Moscow himself, and given the title of Tsar (or Caesar), playing up an entirely mythical connection to the rulers of Ancient Rome.

This effort to consolidate power across Russia's distinct principalities led to major changes in the way Russian society was organized. Particularly for elites, they went from being partners to the crown, to being servants of the crown.

This move was backed by members of Ivan's own family, and by a faction of the church that wanted increased control, spear-headed by a man named Metropolitan Macarius, who was the leader of the Orthodox Church.

They created a "Cult of the third Rome", and strove to bind religious and secular authority into a single figure - the so-called tzar.

A new group of thugs and sycophants began to assume power around Ivan, burning the furniture to heat the house, ripping out old ways of doing things and replacing them with something somehow even worse. They created secret police to enforce their dominance, and went to war against their neighbors.

Tax burden went up. Land was seized. Peasants were stripped of rights. Violence, torture, and executions became commonplace. Hyperinflation and famine surged, as fields fell fallow and the peasantry fled central Russia to avoid the Oprichnina.

Ivan's reign lasted 40 years, backed by corrupt, venal morons who looted the nation, while cloaking themselves in religion and 'tradition'.

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Then, in 1581, when Ivan was an old man, he went into the rooms of his pregnant daughter-in-law, and found her 'immodestly dressed' due to the heat.

Ivan flew into a rage and beat his daugher-in-law, Yelena Sheremeteva, drawing the attention of his son, Ivan Ivanovich, who rushed in and confronted his father.

Blinded by vanity, pride, arrogance, and egotism, Ivan IV, tsar of Russia, struck down his own chosen successor with a pointed scepter. The blow punctured the prince’s skull, and he died 3 days later.

Soon after, Yelena miscarried the czar’s grandchild.

A single egoic injury, a slight loss of the great czar’s perceived control (his daughter-in-law’s impudent attire), caused Ivan to kill not just one future king, but two.

With one action, Ivan undid himself.

But did he really care? Was he grief-stricken that he killed his own son and grandson? Did Ivan understand that he destroyed his own legacy? Or did he just view them as a threat to his own power and celebrate their removal from the board?

We will never know.

But 300 years later, in 1885, Ilya Reptin created the painting below, which hangs in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. The painting has actually been attacked twice.