Ivan the Terrible (28 page)

However, according to a later historian, Filiushkin, writing in 1999, there is no evidence that Adashev was ever appointed to the rank of gentleman of the bedchamber, even though he was so frequently in Ivan's company and seems to have carried out the functions associated with that post; nor is there any evidence of the existence of the Chamber of Requests in 1549. According to A.A. Zimin, the Chamber of Requests was an extremely important institution because all complaints against officials of any kind came before it, and it was Adashev who was supposed to decide on them, either after referring them to the Tsar or on his own initiative. He was thus at the centre of the ‘judiciary’.
³⁶
It is worth noting that the official title of the head of a government office was
sud'ya
or ‘judge’, which confirms the extent to which administrative and judicial functions were perceived as interrelated, as were the abstract concepts of ruling and dispensing justice. But no trace has been found of any documents purporting to issue from the Chamber of Requests until the 1560s, so historians have now cast grave doubts on its existence in the 1550s. There is, however, evidence that Adashev was closely concerned with a number of policies implemented by the Boyar Council and the Treasury (
kazna
).

Lists of the boyars and other council ranks, and military leaders who were closest to Ivan at this time suggest that there was a change of personnel about him in the years 1555–8, and that within the new and most high-ranking group there was a core of active agents of Ivan's will, including the three
okol'nichi
, namely Aleksei Adashev, L.A. Saltykov and F.I. Umnoi Kolychev, whose names appear more frequently than anyone else's on documents issued on behalf of the Tsar. But Adashev rarely appears as the initiator, only as the executor of a given order, and therefore to identify him with the leader of a government is far-fetched.
³⁷

The death of the Tsaritsa Anastasia in August 1560 was the signal for the final downfall of Adashev. He had participated in several successful military operations in Livonia since joining the army under the overall command of Prince I.F. Mstislavsky; nevertheless, he was removed from his post as third
voevoda
, and appointed
voevoda
of
Fellin, a form of honourable exile. Moreover, almost immediately after Adashev's new appointment, on 9 October 1560, Ivan issued an order confiscating all his lands in Kostroma (where they were very extensive – the whole village of Borisoglebsk, comprising some fifty-five estates), and also the patrimonial estates of his mother in Pereiaslavl' (his father had meantime become a monk in the Beloozero monastery and may have died in 1556),
³⁸
which were handed over to the boyar I.V. Sheremetev Men'shoi (junior). Adashev was allocated instead larger, but less productive, estates in Novgorod district, a clear indication that he would not be serving in the court in Moscow again.
³⁹
In Fellin he was promptly involved in a local precedence suit with a noble, junior in rank and standing to himself, who appealed to the Tsar. Ivan was not going to take the side of his ex-protégé and removed Adashev from Fellin to Dorpat, under the
voevoda
Prince D.I. Khilkov, who also subjected him to a number of humiliating pinpricks.

Not much more is known of Adashev's life, except that he caught a fever and died in Dorpat some time in late 1560 or early 1561. After his death Prince Andrei P. Teliatevsky was sent to Dorpat to take charge of his papers, which included rough notes for the preparation of entries in the chronicles. Whether or not Adashev took a prominent part in drafting or redrafting the chronicles cannot be proved, but it seems unlikely that he had more than notes for future entries with him in Dorpat.
⁴⁰
Adashev's epitaph may be summed up in the remark of the nineteenth-century man of letters A.I. Turgenev, to the poet and tutor of Alexander II, V.A. Zhukovsky: ‘You do not belong to yourself: your name will be known to posterity. Your role will be
à peu près
that of Adashev.’
⁴¹

Daniil Adashev did not long survive his brother. One of his relatives was suspected of treason in 1563; two
voevody
were arrested and as the investigation widened almost all the surviving relatives of Aleksei Adashev were arrested including Daniil, Daniil's father-in-law, P.I. Turov, and Aleksei's father-in-law. Kurbsky, who had been transferred from Polotsk and appointed
voevoda
in Dorpat in Livonia, heard of the arrests and went first to Moscow, where he met Turov, who was a friend of his and who warned him of what was coming. A month later Turov had laid his head on the block. Probably in connection with this affair, Daniil Adashev and his twelve-year-old son Tarkh, were also executed, together with two other related families and their children.
⁴²

Sylvester as a priest had more independence than Adashev, and he was also considerably older, probably by now in his late sixties. Evidently,
when he saw which way the wind was blowing he made up his mind to take the cowl and to withdraw to the monastery of Beloozero, with which he had been keeping up connexions for some time, and where he became a monk under the monastic name of Spiridon. He took his library and other effects to the monastery with him: his name is entered in some of the books. The monk Spiridon lived for some ten years in the monastery and probably died there around 1568 or 1570.
⁴³
His name is found in the monastery's official
sinodik
(the list of names of those who have died and should be prayed for).

Sylvester is assumed to have been a supporter of the non-possessors, because of his close relations with the monastery of St Cyril of Beloozero, one of their original outposts, and because he finally withdrew there. He was also in communication with Maksim Grek when the latter was transferred to the Trinity monastery. He was therefore, according to Zimin, who expounds this theory, bound to be attacked and undermined by a powerful group of Josephians. Ivan in turn accuses Sylvester of being responsible, together with Adashev, after the breach with him, for the murder by stoning at their orders of the Josephian Bishop of Kolomna, Feodosii.
⁴⁴
It seems, however, very unlikely that Sylvester, with or without Adashev, could give orders leading to the murder of a bishop. Such an analysis of his political orientation leaves out of account his relations with the Metropolitan Makarii, who was undoubtedly a Josephian, and leaves one under the impression that the political outlook of most of the major figures at the court of Ivan was not nearly so cut and dried as historians have made out in the effort to clarify their stand in the class war. The evidence is as usual very slender, and is in the nature of what they ought to have thought and done rather than of what they actually did.

The final act in the tale of the ‘Chosen Council’ occurred sometime towards the end of August, before Adashev was sent away as
voevoda
to Fellin in Livonia.
⁴⁵
The Tsaritsa's brothers, the Iur'ev-Zakhar'ins, had always been opposed to Sylvester and Adashev (the dislike was apparently mutual), and after her death they circulated reports that she had been poisoned by her enemies at court and persuaded Ivan to set up a formal trial of Sylvester and Adashev. The evidence that such a trial took place seems to lie exclusively with Kurbsky in his
History of Ivan IV
; he states that the Tsar immediately believed in the accusations of witchcraft brought against ‘these good and holy men’ by his brothers-in-law and, deceived by their flattery, he ‘summoned a council, composed not only of his secular senate, but of all the clergy’, that is to say the Boyar Council, the Metropolitan and the bishops and all the higher
clergy. The main charge of sorcery was directed at a certain Maria Magdalina, a venerable Polish lady with five sons, who was said to live in Adashev's house. She was ‘a great faster’ according to Kurbsky, who is the sole source to mention her, who mortified herself even further by wearing heavy chains. She was charged with being a witch and a confederate of Aleksei Adashev and was put to death with all her children.

The existence of a council called to try Sylvester and Adashev is accepted by one of the leading Russian scholars, R.G. Skrynnikov, because in his view, as an
okol'nichii
Adashev had to be judged by his peers, i.e. the Boyar Council. There is no evidence for this requirement in Russian sixteenth-century judicial procedure (the concept of ‘peers’ did not exist), but the Tsar may have felt the need to secure a public proclamation of the guilt of his previous councillors. Kurbsky does express outrage at the procedure adopted by Ivan, namely a so-called trial,
in absentia
. ‘Where under the sun is such a judgment – without confrontation – heard of?’ he exclaims. And he quoted from John Chrysostom's letter to Pope Innocent I, in which John protested against the accusations made against him in Constantinople: ‘Neither in pagan law-courts nor in barbarian places of justice have such things ever happened. Neither Scythians nor Sarmatians ever gave judgment on one side only, in the absence of the accused.’

Only the Metropolitan Makarii urged that the two men (Adashev and Sylvester) ‘should be brought before’ the Council ‘so that the charges may be brought against them in their presence for it is indeed right that we should hear what they have to say in reply’. But the flatterers of the Tsar shouted him down: ‘It is not right, O bishop, these men are recognized evil-doers, and they will bewitch the Tsar and destroy us if they come.’ Kurbsky then states that Sylvester was sent to the Solovki monastery, while Adashev, then in Dorpat, was arrested and ended up in prison.
⁴⁶
There are, however, substantial inconsistencies in Kurbsky's story, notably his assertion that in October 1560, after the so-called trial took place, Adashev was given the substantial land grant in Novgorod province to replace his confiscated estates, an unlikely event had he been condemned for witchcraft; while Sylvester's son Anfim, a highly placed
d'iak
, was merely removed to a provincial post. It seems, therefore, that Kurbsky, writing in Lithuania and in the 1570s, may have confused some of the detail and the timing of events; he had been in Moscow in 1563, when he saw P.I. Turov, the father-in-law of Daniil Adashev, who warned him of the visions he had had of the executions to come and could well have informed him of the conviction of Adashev and Sylvester
for witchcraft had they taken place. Moreover, Kurbsky is clearly wrong about the exile of Sylvester to Solovki. But what he wrote is very good evidence of his own passionate hatred of what Ivan IV had become.
⁴⁷

Was it the failure of the foreign policy of Adashev and Viskovaty that caused their disgrace (
opala
) – permanent in the case of Adashev, temporary in that of Viskovaty, who had been so closely associated in its conduct from the beginning, in Kazan'? (Viskovaty was after all only sent on a brief mission to Denmark before returning to his post.) Or had Ivan come to resent what he sensed as criticism, and which to him was treason? The dominant role of Aleksei Adashev, Sylvester and the ‘Chosen Council’ in policy-making in all fields has been constantly stressed in Russian historiography, but in fact traces of the activity of Adashev himself, in this period, are found mainly in the conduct of foreign policy. We do not know what Adashev actually thought, or whether the foreign policy he was pursuing, usually jointly with Ivan Viskovaty, was their own or that of the Tsar – although the language noted in the reports of the conferences held with representatives of foreign powers suggests that though the Tsar might not actually have been physically present he was undoubtedly there in spirit. There is nothing in the contemporary chronicles or surviving official records to confirm the portrayal by Ivan of the domination exercised over him by Sylvester and Adashev, of their plotting together against him, or attempting to conceal from him what was happening in the country.
⁴⁸

In fact there is nothing to confirm the existence of an institution called the Chosen Council at all. It is never mentioned except in Kurbsky's letters to Ivan IV. But Kurbsky does not mention either Sylvester or Adashev or the Council in his first letter to Ivan. The idea of such a body owes its origin to the diatribes of Ivan IV, in his first letter to Kurbsky, against two people who were at one time close to him, served him and in the case of Sylvester preached at him very powerfully, telling him how to behave, what to wear, how many church services to attend, how often to fast and possibly how often to make love to his wife. The diatribes against individuals were seized on by Kurbsky and returned in kind, but not in the context of an institution. The Chosen Council, for him, is composed of ‘select’ men, of good, even saintly character, the ‘strong in Israel’ who are being destroyed by the beast of the Apocalypse. There were chosen men about Ivan, but no Chosen Council. Similarly (if on a lower level of importance), there was no trial in 1560, though there may have been a meeting of some of Ivan's advisers which condemned the two men, thus justifying the confiscation of Adashev's lands, but taking
matters no further. The misunderstandings arising out of Kurbsky's letters and his
History
are of the same nature; his anger leads him to such violent invective against Ivan that he fails to be precise about what he is actually describing.

There were several serious fires in Moscow in July 1560, and the Tsar removed Anastasia from the city to his palace in the country at Kolomenskoe, while he, together with his cousin Vladimir of Staritsa, worked hard to extinguish the fires.
¹
Some three thousand Crimeans raided Moscow on 2 August and were put to flight. But the shock and the smoke were too much for the failing Tsaritsa, and she died on 7 August 1560 at the age of twenty-nine. Thus passed away the first Tsaritsa of the whole Russian realm. An apparently gentle and unassuming person, she was evidently much loved, not only by Ivan, and her funeral was the occasion for a huge popular demonstration, for she was merciful and bore no malice. The Tsar followed her bier, wailing and groaning, upheld by his brother Iuri, his cousin Vladimir and two Tatar tsarevichi, and accompanied by the people from the whole city, who came not in order to receive alms, but from their sorrow at her death.
²
The Tsaritsa had no doubt succumbed to the fate of so many women at that time in all countries, the anaemia and exhaustion brought on by repeated pregnancies, added to grief at the death of four of her children, and by the physical effort to keep up with her husband's activities
³
in a very hostile climate. Nothing is known about her relations with Ivan directly. Instead, she is mirrored in his correspondence, in various chronicles and in the writings of others. Ivan later accused Aleksei Adashev and the priest Sylvester of contributing to her death by urging him not to take her on pilgrimages to visit holy shrines and relics, which would have enabled her to recover her health. And he was convinced that they had used magic against her. Karamzin puts it in a nutshell: for those who believe in the existence of ‘two Ivans’, the good and the evil: ‘This was the end of the happy days for Ivan and for Russia; for he lost not only his wife, but his better nature [
dobrodetel
'].’
⁴