Book Review: "Fearful Majesty: The Life and Reign of Ivan the Terrible" by Benson Bobrick

I'll start by saying I don't know a whole lot of Russian history, and what I do know is episodic.  I've read a great deal about the war in Russia from 1940 to 1945 (what the Russians call the "Great Patriotic War"), especially the Stalingrad campaign.  I've read a bit about the war in the east during the First World War, especially the Brusilov Offensive of 1916.  And I read a biography of Peter the Great about twenty years ago.  Beyond that what I know about Russian history has been more or less absorbed indirectly.  As a child of the Cold War that means a lot about Kruschev and Brezhnev and Gorbachev.  So yeah, it's fair to say I'm pretty ignorant about the topic.

I've heard of Ivan the Terrible; I imagine anyone who's read anything on post-medieval history has.  But I pretty much didn't know anything about him.  I've been on a Renaissance history kick lately, reading about the Italian Wars and such, and I'll be honest I wasn't looking for a book on Russian history but this one popped up on Amazon as a recommendation.  It looked interesting so I took the chance and bought it.  I have to say I'm glad I did.

First I'll get the negatives out of the way; this book needed more maps.  There are only like 4 maps in this entire book and they all suck.  I mean, they are so ridiculously bad the publisher should be embarrassed.  The lack of good maps seriously detracted from the enjoyment of the book.  I was lucky enough to finally find a good map on line of 16th century Russia and was able to bookmark it for reference, but it was annoying to have to pull out my iPad every time I needed to look at where the heck the action was taking place, so to speak.  In this day and age with computer generated imaging you'd think that they could flood the book with detailed maps, but that seems not to be the case.  They would have been better off leaving the maps they did provide out of the book; they could have saved themselves the money on the paper and ink.

One of the four truly awful maps in the book. Only about 10% or fewer of the place names mentioned are included, no river names are on the map, and worse yet the map includes features that were created post-World War 2 like reservoirs and the canal between the Volga and Don Rivers.

Okay, with that out of the way, I have to say this book was actually very good.  It assumed little to no knowledge of Russian history so it was perfect for me.  In addition, the chapters were kept surprisingly short...which again is perfect for me because my reading time is pretty limited most days.  It's nice to be able to have a good stopping point at short intervals in case I'm interrupted, and nicer to know that if I have a spare fifteen or twenty minutes I can actually get a chapter read in that time. So kudos to the author for that!

Beyond that, though, the book provided a clear, coherent narrative of the life of Ivan.  It starts by outlining Ivan's ancestry and the political situation at the time of his birth. It did a great job of outlining the competing factions that ruled during Ivan's minority, and discussed how these attempts to control him may have been linked to some of the actions later in his life.  It discussed his military campaigns, his apparent physical cowardice in warfare, his marriages and personal life, his later oppressions of the nobility and the populace (I, for one, had never heard of the oprichnina before), and most surprisingly his apparent religious devoutness.  In fact, Bobrick presents Ivan as a more than competent theologian which was something I never expected.

All in all, Ivan is presented as a figure of immense tragedy.  Yes, he opressed the nobility and the people and was paranoid and cruel, but Bobrick links that to the powerlessness he felt as a child ruler manipulated and used by the warring factions of the Russian nobility.  And he apparently was devoted to his first wife; Bobrick seems to link a lot of Ivan's excesses to after the death of his first wife and the loss of her moderating influence.  By far the biggest tragedy of Ivan's life, though, was when he killed his eldest son and heir in a fit of rage.  That single act not only doomed his legacy (his eldest son had been groomed to reign while his younger sibling was not competent), but that single, volatile, and irreversible act of violence seemed to sum up Ivan's entire reign.

I'm sure to people who are students of Russian history this work might seem superficial and many of his themes and connections may be debateable for those with more knowledge than me.  But as a complete newbie to this period of Russian history this book was perfect.  Thank you, Mr. Bobrick, for a good and informative read.

I recommend this book.