Tokmachev K.Yu. About One Idea of Aleksey Ivanov

Abstract: The subject of the research is the personality of Ivan the Terrible. The author of the article pays special attention to the conceptual grounds of interpreting personal qualities of this contradictory character. Tokmachev suggests that most researchers have used 'external' or 'technical' approaches to analyzing Ivan's personality. Particular sets of conditions such as historical, geographical, psychological and even algebraical are usually projected and the tzar is understood as a 'shuttlecock' that was influenced by external conditions. As a result, Ivan the Terrible is shown as an 'uneducated eastern despot', 'hysterical person', 'bonding of different personalities' or, on the contrary, 'educated ruler' and 'uniter of Russian lands' who was even less 'bloodthirsty' than European monarches of those times. The author defends his thesis that a human being or any other living creature as the matter of fact is governed by his or her internal program, text or word like a personal computer rather than an external set of circumstances. The author of the article tries to find such an internal program for Ivan the Terrible, too. The author bases his research on the novel 'Chronology from John' and Pavel Lungin's movie 'The Tzar' (based on Aleksey Ivanov's script). The author concludes that such an internal program that created the basis for Ivan's actions could have been the perception of the surrounding world as the day of The Last Judgement and The End of the World (as we know, Europe and Russia anticipated The End of the World at the turn of the XVth - XVIth centuries). Noteworthy that Ivan the Terrible perceived himself as Jesus Christ of the Second Coming and the Messiah who had come to 'judge the alive and dead'. In this sense, the oprichnina acted as the army of angels and cruel executions performed by oprichnics were taken as the punishment of the Justice. 

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