Ivan the Terrible

Full name Iván Vasíl'yevich Ryurik IV. Born 25 August 1530, he would grow up to eventually become Russia's first official TSAR in 1547 and also one of its strongest.

He was known for introducing sweeping reforms, from infrastructure to diminishing greatly the power of the Orthodox Church. However, he was also responsible for the deaths of roughly 100.000 people in a country of 8 million people; his victims run the gamut from boyars (thieving nobles and landowners) to priests. In 1581, he killed his firstborn and tsarevich Ivan Jr. in a shit-fit, leaving his retarded second son Dmitry as succesor. He died on 18 March 1584. He's considered the greatest of the Rurik dynasty (Russia's founding dynasty and the predecessor of the Romanovs).

Ivan's credited for turning the overtly powerful boyars and the Church subservient to him, by any means necessary. He hated the boyars because they poisoned his mother in 1538 when he was a kid and his first wife Anastasia Romanova (a distant relative of the Romanovs).

The Pprichnina of 1565-1572 he created is the ancestor of the KGB.

Ivan the Terrible is considered Stalin's role model as the Soviet leader acted and behaved a lot like him!

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