At the age of thirteen Ivan IV suddenly turned on Andrew Shuisky, who was arrested and dispatched by the tsar's servants. The autocrat entered into his inheritance. The year 1547 is commonly considered the introduction to Ivan IV's effective reign. In that year, at the age of sixteen, he decided to be crowned, not as grand prince, but as tsar, paying minute attention to details in planning the ceremony in order to make it as majestic and awe-inspiring as possible. In the same year Ivan IV married Anastasia of the popular Romanov boyar family: again, he acted with great seriousness and deliberation in selecting Anastasia from a special list of eligible young Russian ladies after he had considered and dismissed the alternative of a foreign marital alliance. The marriage turned out to be a very happy one. Still in the same year, a great fire, followed by a riot, swept Moscow. As the city burned, and even the belfry of Ivan the Great in the Kremlin collapsed, crazed mobs killed an uncle of the tsar and imperiled the tsar's own life before being dispersed. The tsar himself experienced one of the psychological crises which were periodically to mark his explosive reign. He apparently believed the disaster to be a punishment for his sins: he repented publicly in Red Square and promised to rule in the interests of the people.
What followed has traditionally been described as the first, the good, half of Ivan IV's rule. The young tsar, beneficially influenced by his kind and attractive wife, worked with a small group of able and enlightened advisers, the Chosen Council, which included Metropolitan Macarius, a priest named Sylvester, and a court official of relatively low origin, Alexis Adashev. In 1549 he called together the first full zemskii sobor, an institution similar to a gathering of the representatives of estates in other European countries, which will be discussed in a later chapter. While our knowl-
edge of the assembly of 1549 remains fragmentary, it seems that Ivan IV solicited and received its approval for his projected reforms, notably for a new code of law and for changes in local government, and that he also used that occasion to hear complaints and learn opinions of his subjects concerning various matters.
In 1551 a great Church council, known as the Council of a Hundred Chapters, took place. Its decrees did much to regulate the position of the Church in relation to the state and society as well as to regulate ecclesiastical affairs proper. Significantly, the Church lost the right to acquire more land without the tsar's explicit permission, a regulation which could not, however, be effectively put into practice. In general, Metropolitan Macarius and his associates accomplished a great deal in tightening and perfecting the organization of the Church in the sprawling, but now firmly united, Russian state. One interesting aspect of this process was their incorporation of different regional Russian saints - with a number of new canonizations in 1547 and 1549 - into a single Church calendar.
Ivan the Terrible also presented to the Church council his new legal code, the Sudebnik of 1550, and the local government reform, and received its approval. Both measures became law. The institution of a novel scheme of local government deserves special attention as one of the more daring attempts in Russian history to resolve this perennially difficult problem. The new system aimed at the elimination of corruption and oppression on the part of centrally appointed officials by means of popular participation in local affairs. Various localities had already received permission to elect their own judicial authorities to deal, drastically if need be, with crime. Now, in areas whose population guaranteed a certain amount of dues to the treasury, other locally elected officials replaced the centrally appointed governors. And even where the governors remained, the people could elect assessors to check closely on their activities and, indeed, impeach them when necessary. But we shall return to the Muscovite system of government in a later chapter.
In 1556 Ivan IV established general regulations for military service of the gentry. While this service had existed for a long time, it remained without comprehensive organization or standardization until the new rules set a definite relationship between the size of the estate and the number of warriors and horses the landlord had to produce on demand. It should be noted that by the middle of the sixteenth century the distinction between the hereditary votchina and the pomestie, granted for service, had largely disappeared: in particular, it had become impossible to remain a landlord, hereditary or otherwise, without owing service to the tsar. In 1550 and thereabout Ivan the Terrible and his advisors also engaged in an army reform, which included new emphasis on artillery and engineering as well as development of the southern defense line. Moreover, the first
permanent, regular regiments, known because of their chief weapon as the streltsy or musketeers, were added to the Russian army.
The military improvements came none too soon, for in the 1550's the Muscovite state was already engaging in a series of wars. Most important, a new phase appeared in the struggle against the peoples of the steppe. After Ivan IV became tsar, just as in the time of his predecessors, Russia remained subject to constant large-scale raids by a number of Tartar armies, particularly from the khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and the Crimea. These repeated invasions in search of booty and slaves cost the Muscovite state dearly, because of the havoc and devastation which they wrought and the immense burden of guarding the huge southeastern frontier. Certain developments in the early years of Ivan the Terrible's reign indicated that the Tartars were increasing their strength and improving their co-ordination. In 1551, however, the Russians began an offensive against the nearest Tartar enemy, the khanate of Kazan, conquering some of its vassal tribes and building the fortress of Sviiazhsk near Kazan itself. But as soon as the great campaign against Kazan opened in 1552, the Crimean Tartars, assisted by some Turkish janissaries and artillery, invaded the Muscovite territory, aiming for Moscow itself. Only after they had been checked and had withdrawn to the southern steppe could the Russians resume their advance on Kazan. The tsar's troops surrounded the city by land and water, and after a siege of six weeks stormed it successfully, using powder to blow up some of the fortifications. The Russian heroes of the bitter fighting included commanders Prince Michael Vorotyn-sky and Prince Andrew Kurbsky, who led the first detachment to break into the city. It took another five years to establish Russian rule over the entire territory of the khanate of Kazan.
Following the conquest of Kazan on the middle Volga, the Russians turned their attention to the mouth of the river, to Astrakhan. They seized it first in 1554 and installed their candidate there as khan. After this vassal khan established contacts with the Crimea, the Russians seized Astrakhan once more in 1556, at which time the khanate was annexed to the Muscovite state. Thus of the three chief Tartar enemies of Russia, only the Crimean state remained, with its Ottoman suzerain looming behind it. Crimean forces invaded the tsar's domain in 1554, 1557, and 1558, but were beaten back each time. On the last occasion the Russians counterattacked deep into the southern steppe, penetrating the Crimean peninsula itself.
Another major war was waged at the opposite end of the Russian state, in the northwest, against the Livonian Order. It started in 1558 over the issue of Russian access and expansion to the Baltic beyond the small hold on the coastline at the mouth of the Neva. The first phase of this war, to 1563, brought striking successes to the Muscovite armies. In 1558 alone