306 Chapter 12

Chapter 12 The ‘Boyar Conspiracy’

The measures taken following the Zemskii Sobor clearly indicated that the government had no intention of heeding the zemshchina nobility’s demands that the oprichnina be abolished. After the stand taken by members of the Sobor, however, the authorities could not rely on repression alone and they at- tempted to strengthen the oprichnina by expanding its territory. In February–March 1567, the tsar took into the oprichnina the extensive Kostroma uezd. Kostroma was among the towns which had been a part of the Muscovite state from its beginning. The distinctive feature of the uezd was that most land was held by the lesser nobility and there was an almost complete absence of large princely votchiny. This characteristic explains why the evic- tion of landholders from Kostroma took place on a far more modest scale than the removal of nobles from Suzdal. According to the Razdriadnye knigi, in 1563 a total of 745 nobles from Kostroma served in the militia, in 1572 the figure was 500. While the authorities evicted at a minimum two-thirds of the local nobles in Suzdal, in the case of Kostroma they moved only a third. The inclusion of Kostroma made it possible to sharply increase the size of the oprichnina army. Its strength was immediately boosted by fifty percent. New contingents also expanded the oprichnina corps of strel’tsy. In 1572, the Razriadnyi prikaz sent on campaign against the Tatars “from Kostroma, Galich, Koriakovo and Balakhna [all in the Kostroma uezd – R.S.] 1000 men with their commanders” (kostromich i galichan i koriakovtsev i balakhontsev 1000 chelovek s ikh golovami).1 Following Kostroma, the tsar absorbed into the oprichnina the former terri- tory of the Staritsa appanage principality which had been part of the zem- shchina since 1566. The cost of maintaining the oprichnina army and of construction work were growing and the authorities tried to find new sources of income. By Au- gust 1566, the lands along the River Kama held by the merchant Stroganov fam- ily were taken into the oprichnina. The oprichnina authorities employed the Stroganovs in their trading activities. The family owned rich saltworks in the area of the Urals. The incorporation of the last major salt-producing centre in the east of the country ensured the oprichnina treasury’s monopoly in the salt

1 Buganov 1959, p. 174.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004304017_013 The ‘Boyar Conspiracy’ 307 trade. The tsar received further income to finance oprichnina projects. The Stroganovs in turn received the tsar’s full support for their own undertakings. In 1568, Ivan IV granted the family territories along the River Chusovaia which had still to be opened up. Contrary to the traditional view, however, the tsar had no thought of giving members of the merchant class (“torgovye muzhiki”) those extensive lands in the Kama basin as a votchina: in the letters patent (zhalovanaia gramota) he stressed that the area was “Our votchina”.2 The government not only expanded the boundaries of the oprichnina, but also strengthened its most important fortresses and strong points with feverish haste. In the early days of the oprichnina, Ivan IV assumed that he would adminis- ter his “appanage” from the Kremlin. Since the old palace apartments with the Chamber of Facets, prikaz offices and so on remained in the zemshchina, the tsar thought to establish a separate residence for himself in the far corner of the citadel, on the site of the old tsarina’s apartments and Vladimir Staritskii’s court, which had burnt down. To these he added the “metropolitan’s place” (mitropolich’e mesto).3 A year into the oprichnina, Ivan decided to leave the Kremlin, the ancient residence of the Muscovite rulers, where he was encircled by zemshchina boyars. On 12 January 1567, the tsar “moved to his new court which is outside the Kremlin, opposite the Gate of the Deposition of the Robe” (pereshel na novyi svoi dvor, chto za gorodom protiv Rizpolozhenskikh vorot).4 This palace in the Arbat district was enclosed by a mighty wall, with one sazhen above the ground of dressed stone and another two sazhens of brick. The gates facing the Krem- lin were reinforced with strips of iron and decorated with the figure of a lion. This creature’s gaping jaws were turned towards the zemshchina. The towers of the castle were crowned with black two-headed eagles. Night and day, several hundred oprichnina archers stood guard on its walls. The palace in the Arbat was constructed in an exceptionally short time and cost a great deal of money. The tsar, not wanting to deplete the oprichnina treasury, made the zemshchina pay. As Heinrich von Staden noted in his writ- ings, this palace “cost the country so dear that the people of the zemshchina wished it would burn down.” When he heard that, the tsar promised to give them a fire that would take them a long time to put out. The failure of the oprichnina measures on land and the searches for com- promise with the zemshchina placed the tsar in a difficult position. While

2 R.G. Skrynnikov, Sibirskaia ekspeditsiia Ermaka (Novosibirsk, 1986), pp. 98f 3 PSRL, vol. 13, p. 395. 4 Ibid., p. 406.