Ivan The Terrible Quotes

Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.

The next time someone pesters you with unneeded advice, gently remind him of the fate of the monk whom Ivan the Terrible put to death for delivering uninvited (and moralizing) advice. It works as a short-term cure.

There was no deceiving himself: something terrible, new, and more important than anything before in his life, was taking place within him of which he alone was aware.

Denunciation in Russia has a long history, going back at least as far as the sixteenth century and the testingly protracted reign of Ivan the Terrible (1533– 84). “Spy or die” was, more or less, the oath you swore. This practice, increasingly institutionalized under the old regime, was a tsarist barbarity that Lenin might have been expected to question.

And it's true that I lost my life here, over this curtain, as if I was storming a fortress. Can it be? How terrible and how stupid! It can't be! Can't be, but is.

One of Russia’s tsars, around 1580, was known as Ivan the Terrible, and rightly so. Beside him Nero was mild.

Ivan Ilych’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.

Moreover, probably owing to excessive self-consciousness, perhaps as the result of the generally unfortunate cast of my personality, there existed between my thoughts and feelings, and the expression of those feelings and thoughts, a sort of inexplicable, irrational, and utterly insuperable barrier; and whenever I made up my mind to overcome this obstacle by force, to break down this barrier, my gestures, the expression of my face, my whole being, took on an appearance of painful constraint. I not only seemed, I positively became unnatural and affected. I was conscious of this myself, and hastened to shrink back into myself. Then a terrible commotion was set up within me. I analysed myself to the last thread, compared myself with others, recalled the slightest glances, smiles, words of the people to whom I had tried to open myself out, put the worst construction on everything, laughed vindictively at my own pretensions to 'be like every one else,'—and suddenly, in the midst of my laughter, collapsed utterly into gloom, sank into absurd dejection, and then began again as before—went round and round, in fact, like a squirrel on its wheel. Whole days were spent in this harassing, fruitless exercise.

The story of Ivan Ilyich life was of the simplest, most ordinary and therefore most terrible". Tolstoy defines living an ordinary life as terrible - I really do have to agree!

Again minute followed minute and hour followed hour. Everything remained the same and there was no cessation. And the inevitable end of it all became more and more terrible. “Yes,

...The strange thing, you know, is that Stalin openly admired Ivan the Terrible. Two leaders who were willing to crush and kill their own people-to do anything necessary- in order to consolidate their power...Can you imagine a world in which Stalin could live for five hundred years...or perhaps forever?

Soviet joke about the terrible anxiety Ivan and his wife Masha experienced when the knock on the door came—and their relief when they learned it was only the neighbor come to tell them that the building was on fire.

I wondered if Ivan was asleep. It was terrible to think that he was in this city, possibly very nearby, but I couldn’t see him or talk to him because he didn’t love me. I couldn’t be with him for one minute, not even for the weird leftover hours that nobody else wanted, like from one to three a.m. on a Wednesday.

About Russia: Ironically, in the country where common people’s dislike and fear of their state takes place, we can hear much more talks about how people should love their state. The tradition comes from the history of massive executions in the name of state and ideology imposed by brutal leaders from Ivan the Terrible to Stalin.

I lost my life over that curtain as I might have done when storming a fort. Is that possible? How terrible and how stupid. It can't be true! It can't, but it is.

For the French it is Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People; for the Dutch, Rembrandt’s Night Watch; for the Americans, Washington Crossing the Delaware; and for we Russians? It is a pair of twins: Nikolai Ge’s Peter the Great Interrogating Alexei and Ilya Repin’s Ivan the Terrible and His Son. For decades, these two paintings have been revered by our public, praised by our critics,

Every country has its grand canvas, Sasha—the so-called masterpiece that hangs in a hallowed hall and sums up the national identity for generations to come. For the French it is Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People; for the Dutch, Rembrandt’s Night Watch; for the Americans, Washington Crossing the Delaware; and for we Russians? It is a pair of twins: Nikolai Ge’s Peter the Great Interrogating Alexei and Ilya Repin’s Ivan the Terrible and His Son. For decades, these two paintings have been revered by our public, praised by our critics, and sketched by our diligent students of the arts. And yet, what do they depict? In one, our most enlightened Tsar studies his oldest son with suspicion, on the verge of condemning him to death; while in the other, unflinching Ivan cradles the body of his eldest, having already exacted the supreme measure with a swing of the scepter to the head.

Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my thoughts and emotions, it’s altogether a different matter. It cannot be that I ought to die. That would be too terrible.

So even that doesn’t make you happy? What about your Seventh Symphony? At least it rallied people. Once you told me how alive you felt then; you said you gave it your all— Didn’t you learn in school, he demanded in a hateful voice, that Ivan the Terrible, having coaxed his architect into, so to speak, putting the very best of himself into building Polrovsky Cathedral, afterwards put out his eyes? Anyway, things are so much easier in our century. LIFE HAS BECOME MORE JOYFUL!

A flicker of hope drowned by a raging sea of despair, and always that pain, that pain, the crushing, blank melancholy always the same. When he was alone he felt that melancholy terribly and would want to call for somebody, but he knew that in the company of others it would be even worse.

We are now standing on top of a small hill and can see something of the city. More black smoke and smouldering fires—a terrible sight, and we can feel Stalingrad’s hot breath. This must be how Rome looked after Nero put it to the torch The only difference is that here the inferno is made worse by the screaming shells and lethal explosions, increasing the madness and giving the onlooker the impression that he’s witnessing the end of the world. The further we penetrate into the city, the closer the shells fall around us. ‘The usual evening blessing from Ivan,’ remarks the medic.

It’s a terrible thing to say, but it’s the truth: if it were not for the misfortunes of the folk, thousands of our intellectuals would be profoundly unhappy people. How else could they have sat around and protested? What would they have cried and written about? Without the folk, life would not have been life for them.

In the depths of his soul Ivan Ilyich knew that he was dying... he simply did not, he could not possibly understand it. The example of a syllogism he had studied in Kiesewetter's logic - Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal-- had seemed to him all his life to be correct only in relation to Caius, but by no means himself. For the man Caius, man in general, it was perfectly correct; but he was not Caius and not man in general, he had always been quite, quite separate from all other human beings...And Caius is indeed mortal, and it's right that he die, but for me, Vanya, Ivan Ilyich, with all my feelings and thoughts-- for me it's another matter. And it cannot be that I should die. It would be too terrible. So it felt to him.

Ivan Ilych saw that he was dying, and he was in continual despair. In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he unaccustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it. The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter’s Logic: ‘Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal,’ had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but it certainly didn’t apply to himself. That Caius - man in the abstract - was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite separate from all others. He had been little Vanya, with a mamma and a papa, with Mitya and Volodya, with toys, a coachman and a nanny, afterwards with Katenka and with all the joys, griefs, and delights of childhood, boyhood, and youth. What did Caius know of the smell of that striped leather ball Vanya had been so fond of? Had Caius kissed his mother’s hand like that, and did the silk of her dress rustle for Caius? Had he noted like that at school when the pastry was bad? Had Caius been in love like that? Could Caius preside at session as he did? Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but as for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my thoughts and emotions, it’s altogether a different matter. It cannot be that I ought to die. That would be too terrible. Such was his feeling.

Tate was sprawled across the bed in his robe early the next morning when the sound of the front door opening penetrated his mind. There was an unholy commotion out there and his head was still throbbing, despite a bath, several cups of coffee and a handful of aspirin that had been forced on him the day before by two men he’d thought were his friends. He didn’t want to sober up. He only wanted to forget that Cecily didn’t want him anymore. He dragged himself off the bed and went into the living room, just in time to hear the door close. Cecily and her suitcase were standing with mutual rigidity just inside the front door. She was wearing a dress and boots and a coat and hat, red-faced and muttering words Tate had never heard her use before. He scowled. “How did you get here?” he asked. “Your boss brought me!” she raged. “He and that turncoat Colby Lane and two bodyguards, one of whom was the female counterpart of Ivan the Terrible! They forcibly dressed me and packed me and flew me up here on Mr. Hutton’s Learjet! When I refused to get out of the car, the male bodyguard swept me up and carried me here! I am going to kill people as soon as I get my breath and my wits back, and I am starting with you!” He leaned against the wall, still bleary-eyed and only half awake. She was beautiful with her body gently swollen and her lips pouting and her green eye sin their big-lensed frames glittering at him. She registered after a minute that he wasn’t himself. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked abruptly. He didn’t answer. He put a hand to his head. “You’re drunk!” she exclaimed in shock. “I have been,” he replied in a subdued tone. “For about a week, I think. Pierce and Colby got my landlord to let them in yesterday.” She smiled dimly. “I’d made some threats about what I’d do if he ever let anybody else into my apartment, after he let Audrey in the last time. I guess he believed them, because Colby had to flash his company ID to get in.” He chuckled weakly. “Nothing intimidates the masses like a CIA badge, even if it isn’t current.” “You’ve been drunk?” She moved a little closer into the apartment. “But, Tate, you don’t…you don’t drink,” she said. “I do now. The mother of my child won’t marry me,” he said simply. “I said you could have access…” His black eyes slid over her body like caressing hands. He’d missed her unbearably. Just the sight of her was calming now. “So you did.” Why did the feel guilty, for God’s sake, she wondered. She tried to recapture her former outrage. “I’ve been kidnapped!” “Apparently. Don’t look at me. Until today, I was too stoned to lift my head.” He looked around. “I guess they threw out the beer cans and the pizza boxes,” he murmured. “Pity. I think there was a slice of pizza left.” He sighed. “I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.” “Yesterday!

How fiercely everyone yearns for the Bolsheviks to perish! There’s not the most terrible biblical punishment that we wouldn’t wish on them. If the devil himself would burst into the city and literally go about with Bolshevik blood up to his neck, half of Odessa would weep from joy.9 There is so much lying going around that I could scream. All my friends, all my acquaintances, people whom earlier I never would have thought of as liars, are now uttering falsehoods at every turn.

Are they in cahoots with the Germans?4 No, that’s ridiculous. They’re fanatics, they believe in universal conflagration. But they fear everything like fire and suspect plots everywhere. And up until now they have also been in trembling for their power and for their lives. They, I repeat, never expected they would succeed in October. After Moscow had fallen, they were terribly confused. They ran over to us at New Life and begged us to be ministers, and presented us with briefcases. . . .” March 15 / 28, 1918

We approached the long, heavily guarded causeway. There were soldiers at the entrance. Our names were taken, and our permissions scrutinized, and then a bell rang and a military escort went with us through the gate. We didn’t go to the side where the government offices are. We walked inside the huge place, past the old cathedrals which have been there for so long, and we went through the museums in the giant palace which was used by so many czars, from Ivan the Terrible on. We went into the tiny bedroom that Ivan used, and into the little withdrawing rooms, and the private chapels. And they are very beautiful, and strange, and ancient, and they are kept just as they were. And we saw the museum where the armor, the plate, the weapons, the china services, the costumes, and the royal gifts for five hundred years are stored. There were huge crowns covered with diamonds and emeralds, there was the big sledge of Catherine the Great. We saw the fur garments and the fantastic armor of the old boyars. There were the gifts sent by other royal houses to the czars—a great silver dog sent by Queen Elizabeth, presents of German silver and china from Frederick the Great to Catherine, the swords of honor, the incredible claptrap of monarchy. It became apparent, after looking at a royal museum, that bad taste, far from being undesirable in royalty, is an absolute necessity.

Come on, let me through," said Ivan to the orderlies who had lined up to block the doorway. "Are you going to let me go or not?" shouted the poet in a terrible voice. Ryukhin shuddered. The woman pressed a button on the desk; a glittering metal box and a sealed ampoule popped out onto its glass surface. "Ah, so that's your game, is it?" said Ivan with a wild, hunted glance around. "All right then...good-bye!" And he thew himself head first at the shuttered window. There was a loud crash, but the glass did not even crack, and a moment later Ivan Nikolayich was struggling in the arms of the orderlies. He screamed, tried to bite, then shouted, "Fine sort of glass you put in your windows! Let me go! Let me go!

He wept on account of his helplessness, his terrible loneliness, the cruelty of man, the cruelty of God, and the absence of God. "Why hast thou done all this? Why hast thou brought me here to die?" He did not expect an answer, and yet wept because there was no answer and could be none. The pain again grew more acute, but he did not stir and did not call. He said to himself: "Go on! Strike me! But what is this for? What have I done to Thee?" Then he grew quiet and not only ceased weeping but even held his breath and became all attention. It was as though he were listening not to an audible voice but to the voice of his soul, the the current of thoughts arising within him. "what is it you want?" was the first clear conception capable of expression in words that he heard. "what do i want? to live and not to suffer." He answered. "What do you want? what do you want" he repeated to himself. And again he listened with such concentrated attention that even his pain did not distract him. "to live? how?" asked his inner voice. "Why, to live as before - well and pleasantly." as you lived before, well and pleasantly?" the voice echoed. And in imagination he began to recall the best moments of his pleasant life. But strange to say, none of those best moments of his pleasant life now seemed at all what they had seemed then - none of them except the first recollections of childhood. There, in childhood, there had been something really pleasant with which it would be possible to live if it could return. But the child who had experienced that happiness existed no longer, it was like a reminiscence of somebody else. As soon as the period began which had been produced the present Ivan Ilych, all that had then seemed joys now melted before his sight and turned into something trivial and often nasty. And the further he departed from childhood, and the nearer he came to the present, the more worthless and doubtful and false were the joys. This began with the School of Law. A little that was really good was still found there - lightheartedness, friendship and hope. But in the upper classes there had already been few of such good moments. Then during the first years of his official career, when he was in the service of the Governor, some pleasant moments again occured: they were memories of love for a woman. then all became confused and still less of what was good. later on again there was no good. the further he went, the less there was. his marriage, a mere accident, then the disenchantment and his wife's bad breath following it. Then the deadly official life and those preoccupations of money, a year of it, and two, then ten, then twenty years. and the longer it lasted, the more deadly it became. "What really happened was I went down hill but thought I was going up!

Stalin never forgot or forgave. He once told a Russian writer that Ivan the Terrible had not been ruthless enough because he left too many enemies alive.

The doctor declared that his physical sufferings were terrible, and he was right; but more horrible even than his physical sufferings were his moral sufferings, his greatest torment.

The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter's Logic: "Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal," had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius—man in the abstract—was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others. He had been little Vanya, with a mamma and a papa, with Mitya and Volodya, with the toys, a coachman and a nurse, afterwards with Katenka and [with] all the joys, griefs, and delights of childhood, boyhood, and youth. What did Caius know of the smell of that striped leather ball Vanya had been so fond of? Had Caius kissed his mother's hand like that, and did the silk of her dress rustle so for Caius? Had he rioted like that at school when the pastry was bad? Had Caius been in love like that? Could Caius preside at a session as he did? "Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my thoughts and emotions, it's altogether a different matter. It cannot be that I ought to die. That would be too terrible.

[The Death of Ivan Ilych is] possibly the best short story ever written, depending on whether or not you consider The Leopard [Giuseppe di Lampedusa] to be a short story, but it is only about 50 pages or so. It describes how easy it is to go through life, in the same way as Eliot describes in ‘Prufrock’, trying to please everyone and to be a good person, to conform, without really having any authentic intimacy with anyone. And the great importance really of waking up and smelling the coffee and seeing that the superficial things in life really are superficial and that what actually matters is how you conduct yourself in your relationships with your intimates. Well [Tolstoy]... was [bad at that], yes. And, er, that’s true, of course, of many authors. They can be extraordinarily adept at writing stories about the things that they are unable to do themselves. [Defining authentic intimacy...] ...that’s a whole subject but sincerity is that you feel passionately that something is real and important, as opposed to authenticity where you divine internal truth, your true feeling and also external truth, the true feeling of other people. It’s not about being Tony Blair who is sincere but inauthentic; it’s about being… well, who? It’s very difficult to know, though, because these people are so good at presenting themselves. Somebody who is authentic in the public eye… well, very few people. Most high achievers are not very authentic. Unless you know people very well it’s hard to judge. [I suppose the point of superficiality is that it’s a defence against vulnerability. Being authentic makes you terribly vulnerable.] I don’t think it’s the same thing as telling the truth. My mother, in her later years after my father died, was a good example of someone who became very wise when she got older. If she watched me doing something stupid, she wouldn’t say: ‘Oh, don’t be so stupid,’ but she’d ask a question: ‘I wonder if you’ve thought about this or that?’ If I didn’t want to hear any more she would let it go. She didn’t try to impose her version on me but at the same time she tried to signal what she felt was true. She certainly didn’t tell lies. An authentic person in an inauthentic environment, like a corporate headquarters or a television company, might need to construct quite an elaborate persona and it might entail… well, keeping your mouth shut a lot.

Following the crowds came the blog entries. My early favorite read: “I thought for sure the soup would have a ketchup flavor to it, so I was surprised and thrilled to eat such an authentic, delicious bowl of ramen. Sorry, Ivan, for thinking such negative things about you.” Every news article, blog post, TV interview, and conversation focused on the gaijin angle. Every positive review started, “I expected Ivan Ramen to be terrible, but …” The online forums were alive with conspiracy theories. Some people said I was a front for a large Korean corporation; others claimed that I was just a front for a Japanese chef; my favorite one speculated that I was really Japanese and was just pretending to be a foreigner.

Mistake ? of course we were mistaken. But the revolution and the victims were bound to be. I could even have wished they were more numerous and more terrible. We can’t destroy Turkey by force of arms, but we can gain the sympathies of the world, at least, by our frightful sufferings, by our martyrdom, by the rivers of blood that are now flowing in Bulgaria.

Five long centuries of absolutism -from Ivan the Terrible to the Soviet seventies- had left the Russian massed submissive. In their personal lives, I found them ingenious in beating the numbing inefficiency of the state economy. Their black market was so vast that it operated as a countereconomy, even to the extent of producing underground millionaires. But in the sphere of political action, grass-roots initative was moribund.

Voyez-vous, l’élite soviétique, au fond, ressemblait beaucoup à la vieille noblesse tsariste. Un peu moins élégante, un peu plus instruite, mais avec le même mépris aristocratique pour l’argent, la même distance sidérale du peuple, la même propension à l’arrogance et à la violence. On n’échappe pas à son propre destin et celui des Russes est d’être gouvernés par les descendants d’Ivan le Terrible. On peut inventer tout ce qu’on voudra, la révolution prolétaire, le libéralisme effréné, le résultat est toujours le même : au sommet il y a les opritchniki, les chiens de garde du tsar.

À un certain moment, nous avons eu l’idée d’un grand show patriotique. En demandant à notre public de nous indiquer ses héros, les personnages sur lesquels se fonde l’orgueil de la mère Russie, nous nous attendions aux grands esprits : Tolstoï, Pouchkine, Andreï Roublev, ou que sais-je, un chanteur, un acteur comme cela arriverait chez vous. Mais que nous ont donné les spectateurs, la masse informe du peuple habitué à courber le dos et baisser le regard ? Que des noms de dictateurs. Leurs héros, les fondateurs de la patrie, coïncidaient avec une liste d’autocrates sanguinaires : Ivan le Terrible, Pierre le Grand, Lénine, Staline. On a été obligés de falsifier les résultats pour faire gagner Alexandre Nevski, un guerrier au moins, pas un exterminateur. Mais celui qui a recueilli le plus de voix fut Staline. Staline, vous vous rendez compte ? C’est là que j’ai compris que la Russie ne serait jamais devenue un pays comme les autres. Non pas qu’il y ait eu un vrai doute.

{The Death of Ivan Ilych is} possibly the best short story ever written, depending on whether or not you consider The Leopard [Giuseppe di Lampedusa] to be a short story, but it is only about 50 pages or so. It describes how easy it is to go through life, in the same way as Eliot describes in ‘Prufrock’, trying to please everyone and to be a good person, to conform, without really having any authentic intimacy with anyone. And the great importance really of waking up and smelling the coffee and seeing that the superficial things in life really are superficial and that what actually matters is how you conduct yourself in your relationships with your intimates. Well [Tolstoy]... was [bad at that], yes. And, er, that’s true, of course, of many authors. They can be extraordinarily adept at writing stories about the things that they are unable to do themselves. [Defining authentic intimacy...] ...that’s a whole subject but sincerity is that you feel passionately that something is real and important, as opposed to authenticity where you divine internal truth, your true feeling and also external truth, the true feeling of other people. It’s not about being Tony Blair who is sincere but inauthentic; it’s about being… well, who? It’s very difficult to know, though, because these people are so good at presenting themselves. Somebody who is authentic in the public eye… well, very few people. Most high achievers are not very authentic. Unless you know people very well it’s hard to judge. [I suppose the point of superficiality is that it’s a defence against vulnerability. Being authentic makes you terribly vulnerable.] I don’t think it’s the same thing as telling the truth. My mother, in her later years after my father died, was a good example of someone who became very wise when she got older. If she watched me doing something stupid, she wouldn’t say: ‘Oh, don’t be so stupid,’ but she’d ask a question: ‘I wonder if you’ve thought about this or that?’ If I didn’t want to hear any more she would let it go. She didn’t try to impose her version on me but at the same time she tried to signal what she felt was true. She certainly didn’t tell lies. An authentic person in an inauthentic environment, like a corporate headquarters or a television company, might need to construct quite an elaborate persona and it might entail… well, keeping your mouth shut a lot.

The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter's Logic: "Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal," had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius—man in the abstract—was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others. He had been little Vanya, with a mamma and a papa, with Mitya and Volodya, with the toys, a coachman and a nurse, afterwards with Katenka and will all the joys, griefs, and delights of childhood, boyhood, and youth. What did Caius know of the smell of that striped leather ball Vanya had been so fond of? Had Caius kissed his mother's hand like that, and did the silk of her dress rustle so for Caius? Had he rioted like that at school when the pastry was bad? Had Caius been in love like that? Could Caius preside at a session as he did? "Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my thoughts and emotions, it's altogether a different matter. It cannot be that I ought to die. That would be too terrible.

Ivan Ivanovitch flew into a terrible passion: “Yes, sir, I am a general, and a lieutenant-general, and I have served my Tsar, and you, sir, are a puppy and an infidel!

For a while, indeed, Stalin through sheer terrorism almost succeeded in turning himself into a Divine King in the image of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. he could be addressed, Russians have pointed out, only in the form that was used exclusively in the past in addressing a Czar. Stalin's solemn pronouncement on every subject from the mechanism of genetic inheritance to the origins of language were fatuously hailed as the voice of omniscience. So they became the ultimate guides to scholars and scientists who had spent their lifetime on research without ever reaching such ultimate and irrefragable truths. The same tendency later became magnified even to the point of gross caricature-if that were possible-in the pronouncements of Mao Tse-tung.

John [Ivan] the Terrible,

La Russie « a besoin d’un nouvel Ivan le Terrible, c’est l’unique moyen de préserver le trône ; le peuple russe ne prospère que sous la poigne d’un maître, il n’est riche et heureux qu’en esclavage »

He suffered terribly the last few days." "Did he?" asked Pyotr Ivanovich. "Oh, frightfully! He screamed incessantly, not for minutes but for hours on end. He screamed for three straight days without pausing for breath.

In the end I said to her, "You can't understand me; we belong to two different generations." She was terribly offended, but I thought to myself, "What's one to do? The pill is bitter but it has to be swallowed." Now our turn has come, and our heirs can say to us, "You don't belong to our generation. Swallow the pill.

Russians like the rest of us prefer to believe that their history has progressed in a straight and positive line. They explain away troubling events such as brutal reigns of Ivan the Terrible or Stalin as necessary stages on the path to greatness.

I understand it all too well, Ivan: to want to love with your insides, your guts—you said it beautifully, and I’m terribly glad that you want so much to live,” Alyosha exclaimed. “I think that everyone should love life before everything else in the world.” “Love life more than its meaning?” “Certainly, love it before logic, as you say, certainly before logic, and only then will I also understand its meaning. That is how I’ve long imagined it. Half your work is done and acquired, Ivan: you love life. Now you need only apply yourself to the second half, and you are saved.” “You’re already saving me, though maybe I wasn’t perishing. And what does this second half consist of?” “Resurrecting your dead, who may never have died. Now give me some tea. I’m glad we’re talking, Ivan.

Yaroslav died on February 28, 1054, and was buried in the Cathedral of St. Sophia, which he had built. His earthly remains were placed in a white marble sarcophagus decorated with carvings of the Christian cross and Mediterranean plants, including palms, which were by no means native to Kyivan Rus’. According to one theory, the sarcophagus—a stone embodiment of Byzantine cultural imperialism—had once been the final resting place of a Byzantine notable but was brought to Kyiv either by marauding Vikings or by enterprising Greeks. The sarcophagus is still preserved in the cathedral, but the remains of Yaroslav the Wise disappeared from Kyiv in 1943, during the German occupation of the city. By some accounts, they ended up in the hands of Ukrainian Orthodox hierarchs in the United States and were spotted in Manhattan after the war. Some suspect that they may now be in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Brooklyn. What could account for the transfer of Prince Yaroslav’s remains all the way to the Western Hemisphere? The answer has nothing to do with American cultural imperialism but is closely associated with the Ukrainian claim to the legacy of Kyivan Rus’. Ukrainian clergymen leaving their homeland removed the relics so as to prevent them from falling into the hands of the advancing Soviet army. Concern that if returned to Kyiv, they might end up in Russia explains enough the continuing refusal of the custodians of the Brooklyn church to discuss the issue of Yaroslav’s remains with representatives of the Ukrainian government. Both Ukrainians and Russians claim Yaroslav the Wise as one of their eminent medieval rulers, and his image appears on the banknotes of both countries. The Ukrainian bill depicts Yaroslav with a Ukrainian-style moustache in the tradition of Prince Sviatoslav and the Ukrainian Cossacks. On the Russian note, we see a monument to him as the legendary founder of the Russian city of Yaroslavl, first mentioned in a chronicle seventeen years after his death. The Russian bill shows Yaroslav with a beard in the tradition of Ivan the Terrible and the Muscovite tsars of his era.

How terrible it is that quite without understanding or intention, when we are still too young to realize what the result may be, we can do things that affect our whole life and change our whole future.

Enter Ivan the Terrible, the first Tsar. He put into practice the concept of attack as defence – i.e., beginning your expansion by consolidating at home and then moving outwards. This led to greatness. Here was a man to give support to the theory that individuals can change history. Without his character of both utter ruthlessness and vision, Russian history would be very different.

At home, Russia is facing many challenges, not least of which is demographic. The sharp decline in population growth may have been arrested, but it remains a problem. The average lifespan for a Russian man is below sixty-five, ranking Russia in the bottom half of the world’s 193 UN member states, and there are now only 144 million Russians (excluding Crimea). From the Grand Principality of Muscovy, through Peter the Great, Stalin and now Putin, each Russian leader has been confronted by the same problems. It doesn’t matter if the ideology of those in control is tsarist, Communist or crony capitalist – the ports still freeze, and the North European Plain is still flat. Strip out the lines of nation states, and the map Ivan the Terrible confronted is the same one Vladimir Putin is faced with to this day.

The main torment for Ivan Ilyich was the lie, that lie for some reason by everyone, that he was merely ill and not dying, and that he needed only to keep calm and be treated, and then something very good would come of it. While he knew that whatever they did, nothing would come of it except still more tormenting suffering and death. And he was tormented by that lie, tormented that no one wanted to acknowledge what they all knew and he knew, but wanted to lie to him about his terrible situation, and wanted him and even forced him to participate in that lie. The lie, this lie, perpetrated upon him on the eve of his death, the lie that must needs reduce the dreadful, solemn act of his death to the level of all their visits, curtains, sturgeon dinners... was terribly tormenting for Ivan Ilyich.

he knew that, whatever was done to him, nothing would emerge but more and more agony, suffering and death. And this lie was torture for him - he was tortured by their unwillingness to acknowledge what they all knew and he knew; they wanted to lie to him about his terrible situation, and they wanted him - they were compelling him - to be a party to this lie. All this lying to him, lie upon lie, on the eve of his death, lying that was inexorably reducing the solemn act of his death to the same level as their social calls, their draperies, the sturgeon for dinner ... it was all a terrible torment for Ivan Ilyich.

Ivan Ivanovich, or John son of John. He is a kind of Russian Mr. Nobody. Like calling someone Jan Kowalski in Poland, Pepík Vondráček in Czechia and John Smith in England. Even the dummy, which flew into space on the Vostok ship before Gagarin, they called Ivan Ivanovich. And in Stalin's prison camps this was an insult. This is what they called all professors, writers, artists, engineers, party officials, teachers - all intelligentsia. Their fate in that era was most terrible. Successive waves of purges wiped out at least half of the Russian intelligentsia. They were executed or thrown into gulags. This is how the "monstrous selection of the Stalinist period was carried out," writes former prisoner Wiera Szulc in her memoirs, "which created, it would seem, a new species of people: humble, numb, lacking initiative, silent. The Soviet man was born, homo sovieticus, an individual without even a hint of rebelliousness, but with a great talent for thievery. That's where it's still said that a thief doesn't steal, he just takes what lies wrong. The new Soviet man is a will-less, fearful, lazy man who suffers from the syndrome of silence and the syndrome of the poputchik. He is a man who does not shout his pain from his soul, but whispers it to a stranger on the road. Or he desensitizes it with vodka.

Morning or evening, Friday or Sunday - it didn't matter, it was all the same - grinding, agonizing pain, never for a moment relenting; an awareness of life hopelessly slipping away but not yet gone; the same terrible, relentless approach of hateful death, the only reality; and still all that lying. With all of this, what did the days, weeks and hours matter?

Olives?” “No, thank you,” Evan said. “Not for the Polugar.” “I understand.” The single-malt rye vodka smelled like dough. A throwback to the pre-ethanol distillation process that produced the Russian breadwine enjoyed by literal and literary nobility from Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great to Pushkin and Dostoyevsky, Polugar meant “half-burned.” The term signified the outstanding portion of liquid remaining after the excess had been burned away. Far off the beaten path in the woods of Poland, the vodka was not aged in oak barrels but triple-distilled in copper and filtrated with egg whites and birch coal.

Ivan has a terrible memory.

gently remind him of the fate of the monk whom Ivan the Terrible put to death for delivering uninvited (and moralizing) advice.

OVER THE MORE THAN FOUR CENTURIES from the time of Ivan the Terrible, Russia expanded an average of fifty square miles per day.

I'm nearly thirty, and up to now I've lived as the grass grows. What terrible emptiness! Nothing but selfishness and indifference to others. I must pull myself up before it is too late. Ivan Ilich Telegin.

Ivan Ivan looked longingly at the apples. He desperately wanted to run over to the stall and grab one, but he knew that was a terrible idea. Within seconds, he would be grabbed by guards and sent off to the dungeons.

His Plot to Overthrow Christmas was pure delight: first heard Dec. 25, 1938, on Words Without Music, it told of a scheme by the demons of Hell to assassinate Santa Claus. “Did you hear about the plot to overthrow Christmas?” the narrator began: “Well, gather ye now from Maine to the Isthmus/Of Panama, and listen to the story/Of the utter inglory/Of some gory goings-on in Hell.” In Hell, the listener met as motley a crew of villains as history and literature had yet devised: Ivan the Terrible, Haman, Caligula, Medusa, Simon Legree, and Circe (Mercy!). Nero was fiddling, as was his wont, while Borgia thought of the North Pole jaunt: “Just think how it would tickle us/To liquidate St. Nicholas!” But the plot failed as Nero, sent to do the deed, turned into mush at Santa’s feet. House Jameson starred as Santa, with Will Geer as the Devil and Eric Burroughs as Nero.

Alas for me a sinner, woe to me in my despair, Oh me, in my foulness...it behoves you, our masters to illuminate us who have lost our way in the darkness of pride, who are mired in sinful vanity, gluttony and intemperance. And I, a stinking hound, whom can I teach, what can I preach, and with what can I enlighten others? Myself always wallowing in drunkenness, fornication, adultery, filth, murders, rapine, despoliation, hatred and all sorts of evil-doing.' - Tsar Ivan IV ("Ivan the Terrible") to Abbot Koz'ma of the Beloozero monastery, 1573

Next he placed on his head the fur-rimmed Crown (or Cap) of Monomakh, embellished with rubies and emeralds, and handed him the orb and sceptre. Michael sat on the throne of Monomakh. The Cap had never been owned by the Byzantine emperor Constantine Monomakh who gave it his name, but was a royal Mongol helmet, adapted in the fourteenth century, while the wooden throne, carved with lions and Byzantine scenes, had actually been built for Ivan the Terrible.

Ivan the Terrible, the first Tsar. He put into practice the concept of attack as defence – i.e., beginning your expansion by consolidating at home and then moving outwards.

Both Ukrainians and Russians claim Yaroslav the Wise as one of their eminent medieval rulers, and his image appears on the banknotes of both countries. The Ukrainian bill depicts Yaroslav with a Ukrainian-style moustache in the tradition of Prince Sviatoslav and the Ukrainian Cossacks. On the Russian note, we see a monument to him as the legendary founder of the Russian city of Yaroslavl, first mentioned in a chronicle seventeen years after his death. The Russian bill shows Yaroslav with a beard in the tradition of Ivan the Terrible and the Muscovite tsars of his era.

What could account for the transfer of Prince Yaroslav’s remains all the way to the Western Hemisphere? The answer has nothing to do with American cultural imperialism but is closely associated with the Ukrainian claim to the legacy of Kyivan Rus’. Ukrainian clergymen leaving their homeland removed the relics so as to prevent them from falling into the hands of the advancing Soviet army. Concern that if returned to Kyiv, they might end up in Russia explains enough the continuing refusal of the custodians of the Brooklyn church to discuss the issue of Yaroslav’s remains with representatives of the Ukrainian government. Both Ukrainians and Russians claim Yaroslav the Wise as one of their eminent medieval rulers, and his image appears on the banknotes of both countries. The Ukrainian bill depicts Yaroslav with a Ukrainian-style moustache in the tradition of Prince Sviatoslav and the Ukrainian Cossacks. On the Russian note, we see a monument to him as the legendary founder of the Russian city of Yaroslavl, first mentioned in a chronicle seventeen years after his death. The Russian bill shows Yaroslav with a beard in the tradition of Ivan the Terrible and the Muscovite tsars of his era.

like a man in black, she would find all this so much easier. “Ivan, you do not understand us. A marriage is a private thing. It has its own wild laws, and secret histories, and savage acts, and what passes between married people is incomprehensible to outsiders. We look terrible to you, and severe, and you see our blood flying, but what we carry between us is hard-won, and we made it just as we wished it to be, just the color, just the shape.