Original subtitles

[dramatic music]

[groans]

[narrator] Tsar Ivan.

History will remember him as "the Terrible."

[Andreas speaking in German]

[voice-over] It wasn't a system of political violence.

It was terror.

[narrator] Ivan liberates Russia from foreign oppressors.

[yelling] [swords clashing]

[Maureen] Soviet historians

regarded Ivan as their champion, as a sort of strong leader

who stood up against official corruption and exploitation.

[narrator] Ivan IV, Grand Duke of Moscow,

first Tsar of Russia by the grace of God.

A madman?

A sadist?

[speaking in German]

[voice-over] He must have got pleasure from torturing people in a particular way.

[narrator] Or was Ivan just a harsh ruler

who demanded absolute obedience and loyalty

in order to radically modernize Russia?

[percussion]

[speaking in German]

[voice-over] This was a man who was an intellectual,

indeed, for his time, an intellectual at a high level.

[dramatic orchestral music]

[narrator] The descriptions of his character

are as contradictory as the pictures painted of him.

A criminologist looking for the best photofit picture.

His task is to create a psychological profile of the tsar.

In the past, chroniclers have portrayed Ivan IV

as he is known from legends that are still being upheld today.

They've also made an impact on the case analyst from the Bremen CID.

[speaking in German]

[voice-over] He was, indeed, a multi-faceted person, a versatile mind,

but for me, as a criminologist, the focus is definitely on the criminal components.

[narrator] The profiler is examining documents

written by Ivan himself.

The first impression is that Tsar Ivan was unusually erudite and intelligent.

Ivan is born in 1530 in Moscow.

At the age of three, he loses his father, Grand Duke Vasily.

Five years later, his mother Helena dies, probably poisoned.

After the death of his mother,

the nobility rule on behalf of the orphaned Ivan.

The boyars are supposed to protect him.

Instead, they make Ivan's life hell.

[raucous laughing]

[narrator] Every day, the heir to the throne has to fight for his food.

He is constantly humiliated,

locked up without reason, hit for the fun of it.

Ivan is a thorn in the side of the boyars.

They would prefer to see him slowly liquidated.

But Ivan survives.

In later life, he will use this period to justify savageness and terror.

[speaking in German]

[voice-over] He spent his childhood in constant fear of his life.

He was never sure that he wasn't dumped in a hole and forgotten about.

[narrator] Heidi Kastner is a forensic psychiatrist.

She tries to make terrible crimes understandable

by looking at the childhood of the perpetrator.

[speaking in German]

[voice-over] He was completely powerless,

he had no chance to escape this situation by himself.

He was at the mercy of his tormentors and he knew it.

[suspenseful music]

[narrator] Ivan's facial features were modelled

by the Russian archaeologist, Mihail Gerasimov, in 1953,

based on Ivan's exhumed skull.

A 3D scanner digitalizes and converts a copy of the bust

in preparation for the first identicate picture of Ivan IV.

[lively drumming]

After 400 years,

the experts can look the infamous tsar in the face.

[solemn music]

[barking]

At 13, Ivan's impotence turns to rage.

He has become aware of his power and strikes back.

[barking and whimpering]

He sets a pack of vicious dogs on the leader of the boyars.

They tear him to pieces.

For the first time,

the once humiliated Ivan is able to cause fear in others...

a feeling to which he will get addicted.

[Heidi speaking in German]

[voice-over] The dogs he uses to tear other people apart follow his order,

are his extended arm, an external ego.

And the fear that he instils in others confirms the fact that he is in charge.

Even if it's not him doing the tearing to pieces,

it's his dogs, dogs following his orders.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] The unscrupulousness of this act

also shocks the Russian Orthodox Church.

Ivan is tougher and braver than expected.

He will survive, and at some point become Grand Duke of Moscow.

They will have to come to terms with him.

[monks chanting]

A wise, steadfast monk is given the task of taking care of Ivan's moral education

and preparing him for life as tsar.

Studying the Bible teaches the boy to read and write.

In the holy scripture,

the future tsar seeks something that will give his soul a footing

after a childhood full of beatings.

Ivan discovers his legitimation in his family tree:

his grandmother was the niece of the last Byzantine emperor,

and herself blue-blooded.

From this point on,

the religiously-minded young man feels that he has been appointed by God.

-[speaking Russian] Oh, this is Jesus. -[voice-over] Oh, That's Jesus?

[monk speaking in Russian]

[voice-over] No, that's John the Baptist.

And that's your grandmother, Sophia Palaiologina.

[speaking in German]

[voice-over] In Orthodox countries,

cooperation between the ruler and the head of the church

was always particularly close.

Both sides needed one another, profited from one another,

but, and this is decisive,

the sovereign was the senior partner in the relationship.

This is the major difference to the Roman Catholic Church,

where the Pope represents an independent power.

[drumroll]

[bells] [chanting]

[narrator] Over the following years,

the boy grows up under the strict moral supervision of the Church.

At 17, Ivan marries Anastasia Romanovna, the daughter of a boyar.

Contemporary witnesses report

that the search for a bride was particularly extensive,

allegedly involving 1,500 candidates.

[flute]

Until her death 13 years later,

Anastasia remains Ivan's most loyal companion.

She has a calming influence on his fiery temperament.

[priest speaking in Russian]

[narrator] A close relative of Anastasia is the progenitor of the Romanovs,

the dynasty of tsars that will only come to an end in the 20th century.

The Church urges Ivan to carry out reforms,

and after the wedding he liberates state and society

from century-old, anachronistic rules.

With Ivan and Anastasia, a new age begins for Russia.

[bells] [tense music]

[bells]

That same year, Ivan has himself proclaimed Grand Duke of Moscow.

He is the first Grand Duke to also take the title of "Tsar of the Russian Empire".

According to Byzantine custom, he is showered with gold coins.

[adventure music]

Ivan must now do something significant so as to cement his power.

For more than three centuries,

Russian principalities have been under the whip of Mongol horsemen.

Again and again, the Muslims have destroyed towns and villages

and plundered churches.

[whip]

A victory over the Mongols would make Ivan a hero.

But he needs a trick with which to surprise the enemy.

[drumroll] [bells]

In Moscow, the best carpenters in the country

put together fortifications for an army camp.

They can be taken down and put up again quickly somewhere else.

In secret, the components are transported across the rivers Moskva and Volga by raft

and on to the fortified city of Kazan, in the heart of the Mongol empire.

Overnight, they are reassembled there.

No amount of harassment by the Mongol troops

can prevent Ivan from erecting a secure combat position.

The trick pays off.

[choir chanting]

Ivan orders his troops to attack.

[yelling]

[shouts in Russian] [soldiers yell]

[narrator] In open country, the Mongol hordes are unbeatable.

In a confined area, it's another matter.

Wedged between town and river,

they can't develop their usual strike power,

exactly what Ivan has been counting on.

[yelling] [clanking swords]

[narrator] On 2nd October 1552, Kazan falls.

Ivan makes the Muslim Khan a liegeman.

[Andreas speaking in German]

[voice-over] This victory was the first step

in the founding of the Russian empire.

For the first time, Russia was populated not only by Christians,

but by Muslims as well.

And today, the Tartars are the biggest ethnic minority in Russia.

[narrator] Ivan's victory over the Tartars strengthens feelings

of Russian nationalism for centuries to come.

Ivan has proved himself a strong ruler and leader.

Maureen Perrie has examined Russian folk songs

for poetic representations of Ivan IV.

[monks chanting]

[Maureen] The peasants believed that the tsar was a good thing,

even an autocratic, powerful tsar,

that he was basically on their side

against corrupt officials and decadent nobles.

[orchestral music]

[narrator] In the 19th century, the composer Modest Mussorgsky

devoted a whole aria to Tsar Ivan in his opera Boris Godunov.

300 years on, he is still the "good tsar".

It was really surprising that this attitude

would be applied to someone like Ivan the Terrible who, you know,

as his epithet "terrible" suggests

didn't have a particularly positive reputation

amongst intellectual historians or amongst Russian intellectuals.

[narrator] Out of gratitude for God's help in taking Kazan,

Ivan has a church built in Moscow.

[solemn music]

[voice-over] Ivan was a religious person.

Everything we know about him points in that direction.

[mysterious music]

[narrator] The victory also gives him confidence.

Ivan feels as powerful as a Roman emperor.

It falls to a monk to warn him against arrogance

and draw parallels with the fall of the Roman empire.

[speaking in German]

[voice-over] The first Rome fell, the second Rome also fell,

because of the sins, the misdeeds of the Byzantine emperor.

Moscow remains as the third and final Rome,

there will not be another one.

[drumroll] [bells]

[narrator] This ideology has consequences:

the autocratic Ivan sees himself as being accountable only to God.

In this first half of his rule,

he modernizes laws and administration,

comes down hard on corruption and sets up a parliament of nobles,

surrounding himself with friends as advisers.

[screams]

But there are already early signs of the phenomena

that will make him notorious.

[coughs]

[narrator] He senses treachery everywhere.

His judgements are radical and bloody.

A mere suspicion is enough.

Whoever betrays him violates God's holy will

and is thus condemned to die.

Case analysts are often called in to discover a serial killer's motives.

Ivan the Terrible seems to be an open and shut case:

he was a beast.

Many people he executed with particular brutality.

Even for the unsqueamish 16th century,

Ivan put other rulers in the shade.

But what drove him to it?

[speaking in German]

[voice-over] The wives of supposed traitors

were killed and hung over the entrance to their house.

The alleged traitor couldn't react or show any feelings.

Ivan had huge pans made in which people were fried alive.

Or he had them first dipped in boiling water, then cold water,

then back again until their skin came off and they died.

He's also supposed to have had prisoners cut up in stages, slice by slice.

[speaking in German]

[narrator] The cutting up of victims has made the profiler prick up his ears:

such dismemberment is known by the pathological term "mutilation".

[mellow techno music]

[speaking in German]

[voice-over] We distinguish between defensive,

offensive and aggressive mutilation,

and in Ivan's behavior I can see two motives.

On the one hand, there's aggressive mutilation

that would have been driven by rage and hatred of other people,

and that manifested itself in this terrible dismemberment.

On the other, it may be that he got sexual gratification

from the fact that it all happened very, very slowly.

[screams]

[narrator] Despite having almost unlimited power,

it is childhood traumas that dictate Ivan's thoughts and deeds.

[suspenseful music]

[speaking in German]

[voice-over] The powerlessness that he saw in others

confirms his own position of power.

It is no longer the pain of his victims that drives the sadist on,

it is the reaction to the pain that he is causing them.

That is the drug!

The drug is "I am afraid of you,

I am suffering and only you, only you, only you can change that."

[monks chanting]

[narrator] The Cathedral of St. Basil near the Kremlin in Red Square,

built by Ivan after his victories over Kazan.

Here, around 1940,

another despot discovered his empathy for the infamous tsar.

The first public indication

that Ivan was the new cult figure

amongst historical figures

came in an article by the novelist Kastaljov

that was published in Istwestja,

which was an official mass-market national newspaper,

so very much indicative of official views.

[narrator] Stalin orders a film to be made

that will portray Ivan in a way that suits his interests.

The job goes to none other

than the avant-garde director Sergei Eisenstein.

It seems as if the instructions

to Eisenstein were fairly vague,

the main point that was made was about restoring

or rehabilitating Ivan's image compared with the negative representation

that he'd been given in the older historiography.

[stirring orchestral music]

[narrator] Eisenstein's film is released in 1940.

It is an opera-like portrait, complete with overwhelming pathos.

Ivan's barbarism is nowhere to be seen.

The tsar stands above the treachery lurking round every corner.

Eisenstein's patron is delighted,

and awards the director the Order of Lenin for his masterpiece.

[German film dub]

[guests cheering]

[narrator] At the time, no one wonders about the empathy

of a communist for a monarch.

The parallels between the two tyrants are all too obvious.

[joyful film choir]

[Maureen] Stalin believed that Ivan was as he...

Stalin saw himself, a strong ruler

who wasn't afraid to take harsh measures against his enemies,

if he believed they were in the interests of the state.

[tense guitar music]

[narrator] But is the matter really that simple?

Or is there more behind this disconcerting enthusiasm?

[drumroll] [bells]

Ivan is successful and loved by the common people.

Hitherto, he has had to take the Church

and the parliament of nobles into consideration.

Now he wants absolute power to be able to force through fundamental reforms.

A service nobility will form the basis for a new national administration

that only acts in the ruler's interests.

To maintain the nobles, he urgently needs land for fiefdoms.

In order to achieve his aims, Ivan has to limit the power of the boyars.

Around 1560, Anastasia,

his wife and confidante, falls seriously ill.

No doctor is able to help her.

Ivan suspects she has been poisoned

by the powerful princes of his empire.

[haunting choir music]

Then things happen very fast.

[drumroll]

The Tartars start an uprising.

In the South, Astrakhan has forged an alliance

with Tartars from the Crimea and mobilized forces against Russia.

Ivan sends in his Cossacks.

The resistance is hard to break,

so Ivan burns down the capital and drives out the Khan.

[yelling] [swords clashing]

The Mongols can no longer prevent Ivan from expanding his power.

The way to Siberia is now free.

But the Orthodox Church demands

that the Muslims be expelled from the Crimea.

[screaming gets louder]

[narrator] And if that wasn't enough,

the boyars want the strict hierarchy of high princes at court changed.

The Church and the nobility:

neither is counting on Ivan, in his late thirties,

already being a clever, if not to say cunning ruler.

But he will surprise them all.

[drumroll] [bells]

In 1560, after a long illness, Anastasia dies.

Even without proof of poisoning, Ivan has a few nobles executed.

It is not until the 20th century

that forensic scientists confirm Ivan's suspicions:

Anastasia's bones are found to contain large quantities of mercury,

arsenic and lead.

Ivan will never recover

from the death of his beloved wife and only confidante.

[speaking in German]

[voice-over] There were traces remaining of affinity to other people

that he obviously still felt towards his first wife.

She was clearly the only person

whom he did not have the urgent need to suspect.

He must have really trusted her,

his behavior towards her is described as being very loving and affectionate.

Then, after her death, he became far worse than before.

[eerie music]

[narrator] The loss weakens Ivan, the pain lasts three long years.

But then he does something

that to his contemporaries is incomprehensible.

In December 1563, Ivan gives orders to pack up his court.

The most important treasures are put on sleds.

[haunting string music]

Ivan leaves the Kremlin.

His goal is Alexandrovo Sloboda,

a small fortress 37 miles northeast of Moscow.

His people are in shock.

Ivan has abdicated.

But what lies behind this move?

[Heidi speaking in German]

[voice-over] Nothing nicer than seeing them all panic when I go.

I'm the one they need.

I'm the right man.

This is self-affirmation on a scale otherwise very hard to achieve.

You can get it by everyone being frightened of you,

he already has that,

but he can also get it by everyone falling into a state of panic

when he suddenly threatens to disappear.

[tense orchestral music]

[narrator] Ivan spends two months in self-imposed exile.

He avoids all contact with Moscow.

And waits.

[tense orchestral music]

Ivan's plan works.

[speaking Russian]

[Andreas speaking in German]

[voice-over] Ivan was aware that Russia,

that the Russian elite, couldn't imagine an empire without its tsar.

It was unthinkable, so it was obvious that the Muscovites,

the nobles, the local rulers, would ask him to come back.

[melancholic string music]

[narrator] A delegation of churchmen,

nobles and citizens set out on the trek to Aleksandrovo.

They're in a hurry,

managing the 37 miles in two days in mid-winter.

[snow crunching]

Both contemporary and later historians

have put forward many theories on Ivan's period of exile.

Pain at the loss of his beloved wife,

disappointment about treachery at court...

Today, opinions are almost unanimous

that it was, in fact, a cleverly calculated piece of theatre.

[drums]

The supplicants are almost desperate.

They have a petition with them asking not to be left without any protection.

[suspenseful music]

Ivan the tactician reacts as he has long planned.

[percussion]

As a justification for what is about to strike Russia and its people,

Ivan returns again and again to the traumas of his childhood...

[raucous laughter]

...and the thirst for vengeance.

[shrill and discordant string music]

[narrator] The reply is already prepared.

Ivan assures them they will not be left on their own.

He will remain their tsar.

But there is one condition...

[dramatic music]

More power than hitherto must be transferred to the tsar,

along with huge tracts of land.

And Ivan is certain they will accept.

[Maureen] We know that the people of Moscow,

the merchants were very prominent in inviting the tsar

to come back to Moscow, not to abdicate.

And...

these kind of demagogic maneuvers on Ivan's part,

I think, were designed by him to try and get popular support

from lower levels of society.

[tense music]

[narrator] Ivan returns to the tsar's throne in Moscow.

As absolute monarch, he begins to reshape his empire.

His new bodyguards, the Opricniki, will soon dispossess the nobility

and administer their estates and landed property.

Their symbols are a broom and a dog's head.

They clean up without mercy and are watchful sentinels.

In future, Ivan's private property will be known as Opricnina.

[ominous music]

The Opricniki are savage.

And complaining is no use, as they are only answerable to the Tsar.

[Andreas speaking in German]

[voice-over] All sections of the population

fell victim to Ivan's reign of terror,

from trusted followers and the higher nobility

to people of simpler descent.

It was brutality,

it was a matter of intimidating the whole population,

suffocating any breath of resistance against the tsar.

And the politics of terror were successful.

There was no noticeable opposition in the years that followed.

[mysterious choir music]

[narrator] The epoch of the Opricnina is to last seven years,

from 1565 to 1572.

Ivan claims two thirds of the empire as his personal property:

usually, the most fertile and industrially productive regions

and often formerly owned by the much-hated boyars.

[women singing]

[narrator] Whole families are driven off ancestral land.

What is to become of them

is of no interest to Ivan and his terror gangs.

[eerie music]

[women screaming]

Ivan's private army counted 1,500 troops.

One could only become an Opricnik

if one had previously had nothing to do with the boyars.

[screams]

[narrator] The soldiers lived strictly regulated lives

in separate communities like monks,

and were not allowed any friendships outside.

[ominous music intensifies]

In 1570, Ivan learns of a rumor

that treacherous plans are afoot in the city of Novgorod.

[yelling] [bells]

Here, his fury will be on a hitherto unheard-of scale.

Novgorod will never recover from this attack.

Why did the tsar feel so provoked by this town of all towns?

[suspenseful music]

The citizens of Novgorod were able to do something

that in agrarian Russia represented a special qualification.

For this, they needed the bark of a particular tree.

[voice-over] For the best birch bark,

we usually seek out mixed deciduous forest,

with no pine trees, but with aspen, mountain ash, alder.

Because, among these trees, the birch directs its crown upwards, to the light.

And that makes the trunk smooth, like this, without branches.

[narrator] In early summer, the yellow-red bark

can easily be peeled off.

[bark splitting]

[bark falling heavily]

[bark cracking]

Birch bark is an excellent material to work with.

[Vladimir speaks in Russian]

[voice-over] In the old days,

large amounts were stripped off and were used like tar,

or as a lubricant.

Birch bark is also excellent insulating material.

It's good for roofing, even house foundations,

because it's impossible to dig foundations here in this wet ground.

[narrator] Birch bark can also be used as paper.

Even the children in this city learned to read and write,

an invaluable, advantageous privilege.

[dramatic music]

Novgorod was a magnificent city, a cut above the rest.

Its arcades and numerous splendid churches still bear witness to its former wealth.

Ivan IV must have been envious.

[orchestral music]

Today, Novgorod is a treasure trove for archaeologists.

Since the end of the Soviet Union,

excavations have been carried out here in a small, undeveloped area of the city.

The teams have found well-preserved documents on birch bark,

evidence of the city's glittering past.

Archaeologist Sergeij Trojanow is leading the dig.

[Sergeij speaks in Russian]

[voice-over] We have a pretty harsh climate here.

The big lake nearby means the town gets a lot of precipitation,

and water preserves against oxygen.

So all the wooden buildings

and rubbish dumps were impregnated with water,

which meant that all the old remains were preserved for us.

Including birch bark, leather and all organic materials.

[narrator] The artefacts show that Novgorod was wealthy and powerful.

[workers chat in Russian]

[speaking in Russian]

[voice-over] The grand dukes from Moscow didn't have much influence here.

What made Novgorod so independent?

Where did the wealth that enables this freedom come from?

[narrator] The written evidence of the birch bark gives an answer.

And a clue as to why Ivan detested the town with the "privileged position".

The swampy ground wasn't suitable for agriculture,

which was predominant in the rest of the empire.

The citizens of Novgorod had something else,

and were extremely successful.

[workers chat in Russian]

[narrator] They were better dressed than their contemporaries

in other parts of Russia, and they were better educated.

[melancholy guitar music]

Many merchants' guilds erected churches near the river,

where they prayed for God's help with their business.

These point to Novgorod's real strength.

[various birdcalls]

[speaking in Russian]

[voice-over] From the unusually large number

of birch bark documents, we can see that the inhabitants of Novgorod

carried on long-distance trade.

They were merchants with good connections to Europe

who didn't really take much notice of what Moscow had to say.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] Ivan hated people he couldn't control.

A city with wide-ranging trading connections

and privileges didn't suit him.

It had to go.

The Opricniki put an end to this flourishing city.

Novgorod remains a symbol of the economic ruin

that Ivan's reign of terror brought to Russia.

[speaking in Russian]

[voice-over] We usually split the reign of Ivan IV into two periods:

the period of reform until about 1560,

and the period of terror that began thereafter.

[narrator] Did Ivan spread terror just for the sake of it?

Because he was a sadist?

[melancholic piano music]

It's an exaggeration.

And there are common features,

particularly if you believe, as I do, on the whole,

that the Opricnina did, at least initially,

have some kind of rationale

of reorganizing the landed base

of the elites,

in the hope of strengthening Russia's military power.

Then you could see that sort of aim

as being a consistent type of continuation

of some of the reform measures

of the earlier period of the 1550s.

[narrator] Reform through terror?

Was that what fascinated Stalin?

Perrie has analyzed the political visions of Ivan IV.

Ivan has the opportunity to extend his empire eastwards

to the endless expanse of Siberia.

But that puts a strain on his military capabilities.

[haunting choir music]

The endless steppes remain in the hands of nomads on horseback.

In the years that follow, the Tartars make repeated incursions,

even as far as Moscow.

[dramatic music]

Things are different in the West.

Ivan concentrates on a new enemy:

the Order of Teutonic Knights in the Baltic.

He demands the payment of tributes.

His grandfather conquered the town of Dorpat,

and the Knights have been using it ever since.

This provocative act pays off.

At the time, when the Livonian knights

who'd previously been the dominant force on the Baltic coast,

when the Livonian knights were in a period of decline

and the other powers of the region were also trying to take advantage of this

to assert their own positions,

it meant that if Muscovy had access to the Baltic,

it would raise their prestige and status

as a rising European power.

[narrator] The Baltic with access to the sea.

Ivan is pursuing concrete trading interests,

an opening to Western Europe, long before Peter the Great.

[suspenseful music]

A port ice-free all year round would be an incalculable advantage.

Are the ice-free harbors of the Baltic perhaps one reason

for a communist to commission a film about a monarch like Ivan?

The coronation scene with the pledge to the Russian people gives it away:

[German film dub]

[voice-over] The upper reaches of all our rivers,

the Volga, the Dvina, the Volchov, are in our possession.

But their estuaries are in foreign hands.

The land of our forefathers,

our ancestral estates, were stolen from us.

That is why, heed my words,

we are today being crowned sovereign also of those Russian lands,

which to our sorrow are still suffering under foreign rule.

[dramatic choir music]

[narrator] Sergei Eisenstein's two-part film is pure propaganda.

The Hitler-Stalin pact had given the dictator carte blanche

to annex the Baltic states, but...

[Maureen] Stalin still was enough of a Marxist

and enough of his associates were still Marxists,

not to want to say "We want to take these Baltic States over

because they were part of the Tsarist empire,

and we are the successors to the Tsarist Empire."

Particularly since Bolsheviks of the time had of course always condemned

the imperialist, colonialist attitudes of the tsarist empire.

[narrator] Eisenstein's film makes it clear to the people:

the Baltic has been Russian since ancient times.

We're only taking what belongs to us anyway.

[German film dub]

There is a parallel there between Stalin and his move into the Baltic,

partly reminding the Russian people

that Russian interests in the Baltic go back allegedly

to the Kievan period as well as that Ivan had asserted them.

[narrator] In 1940, Stalin gets his ice-free ports

by annexing the Baltic states of Estonia and Lithuania.

Stalin achieves what Ivan could not sustain in the long term.

[tense string music]

[drumroll] [bells]

Ivan does take the ports of Narva and Dorpat

and appoints his best general Andrei Kurbski as governor.

But the rapid military successes do not last.

Allies, primarily Sweden and Poland-Lithuania,

rush to assist the Teutonic knights,

who had ruled the region for the last 400-500 years.

Ivan sets his hopes on the strength of his friend Kurbski.

[battle commotion]

[tense music]

The first pamphlets in German

appear among the Estonians and Lithuanians,

stirring up public opinion against Ivan.

These precursors of our tabloid press

try to outdo each other in their portrayal of Moscow's brutality.

The image of the barbarous Russian quickly spreads.

[ominous music]

The Swiss historian Andreas Kappeler has studied these pamphlets in detail.

They have helped define the image of Ivan IV right up to the present day.

[Andreas speaking in German]

[voice-over] This picture is heavily influenced

by the neighboring countries, by Livonia, Poland-Lithuania,

in part by Sweden, who used this publicity as propaganda against Russia,

so effectively that the picture endures for a long time

and the image of Ivan stays negative.

[drumroll] [bells]

[narrator] After his initial victories, Ivan returns to Moscow

and leaves it in the hands of his confidant and friend Kurbski

to continue the war.

But this is to prove a bitter disappointment.

[suspenseful music]

Kurbski defects to his opponents, the allied troops of Poland and Lithuania.

[dramatic choir music]

Ivan is beside himself.

For him, this is treason of the worst kind,

and hits him at a time when he is still suffering badly from the loss of his wife.

[yells]

Their correspondence reflects this mood:

Ivan accuses Kurbski of having abandoned and disappointed not only a friend,

but also God's chosen ruler of Russia.

In his reply, Kurbski justifies his actions with the tsar's barbarity,

under which he himself has suffered.

Ivan spends 80 pages rejecting the accusations.

Since the end of the 19th century,

this correspondence has been seen as a unique source of information

about Ivan's Russia.

[dramatic orchestral music]

But in the 1970s, questions were raised as to the authenticity of the letters.

[speaking in German]

[voice-over] I, too, have my doubts,

if only because it would have been very unusual for a sovereign

to have conducted a correspondence with a fallen ex-noble

about the legitimacy of his rule.

Ivan himself never otherwise expressed himself so extensively.

According to this theory,

the correspondence between Ivan IV and Kurbski never took place.

[narrator] The letters, however, painted a picture

which matched eye-witness reports and confirmed the prejudices of the time.

Together, the pamphlets and this correspondence

have had the effect of ensuring that the name of Tsar Ivan IV

is followed by the epithet "the Terrible".

[speaking in German]

[voice-over] The nickname "the Terrible"

first became common parlance in the 18th century.

It stems from a mistranslation of the Russian word grozny,

which actually equates to "the strict", but by no means meant negatively.

[narrator] Each epoch creates imagery suited to its needs:

in contrast to the revolutionary butcher Lenin,

whose statue still graces many Russian cities today,

after the fall of Stalin

Ivan IV became the prototype of a brutal tyrant.

[Maureen] In the Glasnost period under Gorbatschov,

liberal oppositionist historians wanted to go even further,

they were identifying Stalin with Ivan,

Ivan the Terrible, and using this to blacken him.

And by this time,

the negative image of Ivan had been revived to such an extent

that this was an effective way of condemning Stalin.

[drumroll] [bells]

[narrator] Almost three decades after the first attack on the Baltic knights,

the tsar has to admit to himself: the war against Livonia is lost.

The Teutonic Order of Knights is dissolved

and its territories taken over by Denmark, Sweden and Poland.

The new rulers put up bitter resistance to Ivan

until finally the new Polish king, Stephan Báthory,

imposes a peace treaty to which the war-wearied tsar agrees.

Thus, Ivan's dream of access to the Baltic and trade with Western Europe is over.

[melancholic string music]

Only the old route remains,

from the White Sea around the North Cape during the few months it is ice-free.

Ivan did have some bold political visions.

It was even rumored that he wanted to marry

Queen Elizabeth I of England himself,

although that seems unlikely, but he did pursue an English marriage.

He was quick to see the possible advantages,

but possibly underestimated the difficulties.

[drumroll] [bells]

[narrator] Ivan had several other marriages

to daughters of Russian nobility,

but he wanted the heir to the throne to be his eldest son Ivan Ivanovich,

born of his beloved Anastasia.

Father and son have much in common.

But things turn out differently.

[suspenseful music]

After decades on the throne,

suspicion and fear of treason have made Ivan paranoid.

More and more frequently, he loses control.

[chess pieces clatter]

[chess pieces clatter]

Did Ivan go mad in his old age, as many contemporaries supposed?

[ominous music]

In a way it's a bit of a cop-out, I mean,

it means that as a historian you don't have to start looking too deeply

for other factors and other patterns,

you just say, "Well, there isn't a pattern, it's crazy..."

[narrator] One small incident is enough to trigger Ivan's fury.

Lack of impulse control and fits of rage were always his biggest problems.

One day he encounters his daughter-in-law dressed in a fashion he finds unsuitable

and goes berserk.

[tense music]

Ivan Ivanovich defends his wife against his father.

The situation escalates.

[yelling]

Ivan beats his beloved son to death,

thus depriving Russia of a capable heir to the throne.

At the time, Ivan doesn't know

that he has dealt a severe blow to his subjects

and destroyed a great deal of his own achievements.

Only his brother can now become tsar.

But he is mentally retarded.

[music ends abruptly]

The killing by Ivan of his own son

has long been a matter for debate by psychologists and artists.

How much strength, how much rage, is necessary to kill one's own child?

Loss of control leads to curious forms of what is known as displacement activity.

[speaking in German]

This is something I experience again and again

when someone has died and a close relative is responsible.

Very often, rage, hate and aggression make the deed possible in the first place,

and then later on, rational reasoning returns,

accompanied by activities of symbolic retraction.

That can go as far as covering up the body,

or placing sacred objects next to it.

And when we then find the body, it's almost as if it were lying in state.

[narrator] The death of his son destroyed Ivan

and jeopardized the future of the empire.

Ivan has become his own final victim.

[tense music]

[Heidi speaking in German]

[voice-over] This is not a form of aggression

with which he can live easily, because he has lost control,

and for him control is extremely important.

And then he stands there and rues the consequences

and realizes that control has slipped away from him.

And that doesn't fit with his self-image at all.

[narrator] Three years later, Ivan dies.

The tormented child became a despot.

His heir is weak.

The boyars soon seize power

and their subsequent, never-ending feuds about supremacy in Russia

plunge the country into chaos and confusion.

This time in the wilderness does not end until Peter the Great, 200 years later.

Tsar Peter achieves what Ivan dreamed of,

but through brutality and madness destroyed

the modernization and stabilization of Russia.

He builds the port on the Baltic

for which Ivan had waged war for nearly 30 years in vain:

St. Petersburg.

[dramatic orchestral music]