18 Muscovite Roots, 1462-
The extension of Moscow's power down the Volga waterway in the 1550s
Jromised 10 revolutionize the strategic situation in the steppe region. Yet the
Jpportunity to undertake a major offensive against the Crimeans and Nogays
Nas not taken. Since no records of the poiicy-making process in Moscow have
;urvived, one can only speculate as to the reasons for this. It has been argued
hat an overland campaign across the waterless steppe was technically unfeasible
the river routes being 100 insecure), and that it would have embroiled Russia
n an unequal duel with the mighty Ottoman empire, the Crimean Tatars'
;uzerain power. Perhaps 'structural' military constraints were also involved:
o be successful, such a campaign had to be waged in Cossack style, or at least
Nith active co-operation from frontier-dwellers whose loyalties, in Moscow's
1iew, were uncertain. In any event Ivan IV took the fateful decision to move
Nest, not south. In 1558 he launched an ill-prepared offensive against the lands
Jf the enfeebled Livonian knights. The war that ensued dragged on for over
wo decades, until 1581, and brought Russi~ no ultimate advantage. On the
:ontrary it strained her resources to breaking-point and directly or indirectly
ed to a major political and social crisis. Her European neighbours, more
ldvanced culturally and technologically, rallied against the menace from the
!ast and deprived her of the precarious toe-hold she acquired on the Baltic
;hore. By the 1560s there was growing disaffection among the elite servitors,
Nhich aroused exaggerated suspicions of treachery in Ivan's unbalanced mind.
fhe defection of a leading general, Andrey Kurbsky, in April 1564 was a parti-
;ularly shattering blow. The tsar set out to eliminate all opposition, real or
magined, by establishing the oprichnina: a separate 'emergency administra-
ion' for part of his realm, staffed in the main by servitors picked for their
·eadiness to obey the ruler's whims. The opric!iniki had complete licence to
nvestigate and punish alleged traitors. Their v'iolent misdeeds terrorized the
Jopulation, since their blows fell indiscriminately on the privileged and non-
Jrivileged.
Although the oprichnina was formally abolished in 1572, the level of internal
.ension remained high for the rest of Ivan's reign. One consequence was to
Neaken the border defence system, which in the 1550s the tsar had attempted
Nith some success to regularize. On the other hand, the terror also resulted
n a massive spontaneous migration by peasants and other commoners to
:he border region, where they constituted a potential reservoir of soldiers
md labourers. In 1566 the ruler spent a month visiting the fortifications at
[(ozel'.sk, Belev, and elsewhere;^14 but five years later Devlet-girey reached
\lloscow with a large army, burned the city's suburbs, and inflicted heavy loss
Jf life. According to Fletcher, 'Ivan Vasilevich, leading forth his army to
!ncounter with him, marched a wrong way, but, it was thought, of very pur-
Jose, as ... he doubted his nobility and chief captains of a meaning to betray
lim to the Tatar.'^15 However this may be, the raid occurred only a few months
14 Nikitin, 'Oboroniternye sooruzheniya', p. 122; Yakovlev, Zasechnaya cherta, p. 19.
IS Fletcher, Russe Commonwealth, pp. 191-2 (Schmidt edn., p. 91 ).