Words sovereign and sovereignty (the modern meaning is 'independence'; 'unaccountable in his activity') comes from French souverain ('monarch'; 'supreme') and souveraineté ('supreme authority'; from Latin super - 'above'). Russian words самодержавие (autocracy) and cамодержец (autocrat) means approximately the same as French souveraineté and souverain of that time when France was monarchy. Certainly, expression 'sovereign autocracy' is somewhat tautological, but there is also an expression 'popular democracy'.
Moscow sovereigns began to bore a title 'tsar' ('autocrat', Russian cамодержец) in the second half of the XVI century. One Russian tsar, namely Ivan IV, called Ivan the Terrible made much for it.
He inherited the Moscow throne in 1533, being three years old, after his father had died. While he was small, different boyar clans grasped the power alternately, doing their best to push away all rivals from the growing up tsar. One cannot say for sure to what and how Ivan Vasilyevich has been taught, but it is certainly that he knew the Holy Scripture well. In his adolescence he amused himself with throwing cats and dogs from roofs. Later he liked to gallop along streets and to dash at full speed into a crowd. He walked on stilts and put on a shroud. When he grew up a little, he began commanding sometimes. One of his first political acts was to cut off a tongue of one boyar for impertinent speech. In 1547 Ivan was crowned and married. Did he become solider after that? It is difficult to say, since his inclination to eccentric entertainments and corporal punishments remained for his whole life, but at age sixteen it is impossible to rule properly a problem country without competent counselors. He did have them. Two main figures were Alexei Aldashev, who belonged to the gentry from Kostroma and became the first Kremlin administrator, and a priest Sylvestre, a decency mentor of a young tsar.
As it usually happens when there are energetic people in a government, first there were reforms and conquests. Reforms of the 50s of the XVI century are the matter of a special conversation, but the conquests were impressive. In 1552 he defeated the Kazan Khanate; in 1556 he annexed the Astrakhan Khanate, so that Volga became a great Russian river; and gained lands were shared among the boyars. Then he turned to the West and in 1558 he began a war with Livonia (nowadays partly Estonia, party Latvia). Livonia was a buffer zone between Russian trade centres and west markets. In two years, almost all Livonian lands were conquered; but other neighbors, Lithuania and Sweden interfered. So the war continued for almost twenty years more, until Russia lost all conquered lands and gave some its own to sign a peace treaty.
While the glory of the sovereign grew and one could not foresee war disasters, two events happened that eventually changed Ivan's personality. In 1553 he got seriously ill and was near death. During that illness he asked the boyars to swear an oath of allegiance to his eldest son Dmitry, an infant at the time. Many boyars refused, deeming that in case of the tsar's death older relatives of the infant, the Zakharjins, would rule. They nominated for the throne a cousin of Ivan, Vladimir Staritsky. Although Ivan was fatally ill, he threateningly ordered all boyars without exception to swear allegiance to the infant. Having gained his end, he cured completely. The infant died soon, but the tsar had a nasty taste in his mouth after the controversy with the boyars.
In 1560 his beloved wife Anastasia Romanovna died (later Ivan got married six times). It was determined that the tsarina had died because of evil spells. In their time Adachev and Sylvestre had been against the marriage of the tsar to a common boyaryshnia; and they had been in strained relations with her relatives. That's why the boyars who also were in strained relations with the tsar's councilors, found them guilty of practicing witchcraft for evil purposes. Sylvestre was sentenced to eternal imprisonment in Solovki, and Adashev died because of a 'fiery disease' (evidently he committed suicide).
That all even added to the tsar's distrust to the boyars; there followed multitude disfavours and cruel assassinations. At last the greatest real treason happened. In the end of April 1564 in Revel (now Tallinn) one of the best voevodes, prince Andrei Kurbsky left his wife and son, property and even books in the city, climbed over the fortress wall and leapt away to Lithuania where he became a war councilor against his compatriots.
In a half a year tsar Ivan with his family and personally picked out bodyguards started on a journey having announced neither reasons of his departure nor his itinerary. He took along all his property, the treasury and the most esteemed Kremlin icons. Nobody in Moscow knew where his tsar had left.
In the beginning of 1565 the tsar reached Alexandrovskaya Sloboda (100 km North-East of Moscow; now a town Alexandrov). From there Ivan announced that he was to give up his reign because of boyars' self-will. He was sent ambassadors with entreaties not to leave his slaves. Ivan gave in the entreaties but only on conditions that nobody could dare impede him to punish traitors, and announced that he establish a special staff, whom he would give orders and lands on his own. The Oprichniki constituted tsar's personal administration and special tast military units. All other lands and deals were under the jurisdiction of the boyars, who could not form a united political opposition; so they agreed.
Thus the state was formally divided into the Zemschina and the Oprichnina. At the head of the kingdom was a person with mental deterioration who wasn't restricted in his sovereignty. It is obvious, that that has led to a dictatorship with quite predictable consequences. The repressions became even more mass; it was now the prerogative of the Oprichniki. Lands of boyars in disgrace were confiscated in behalf of new tsar's servants; and traitor were found in all estates, beginning with the Church hierarchs of high rank up to serfs.
Not all obeyed resignedly. There were intrepid people like, for example, metropolitan Philip or prince Repnin who dared exhort the tsar openly. But after that they lived not long. Courage of some even got the tsar's dander up. Now he annihilated his opponents with their families and even with whole cities. He impaled the disagreeable on sticks, set the dogs and bears on them, hanged, burned, quartered, slashed, cut, drowned. In January 1570 the Oprichniki under the personal command of Ivan Vasilyevich slaughtered almost all population of Velikiy Novgorod. According to reports of the Oprichniki, during a month they killed about a thousand in a day. The Oprichnina came to the end; and even the very word "Oprichnina" was forbade to be spelled. But the terror continued until in 1581 the tsar killed his son Ivan; after that he reflected on the Doomsday and in three years suddenly died.
What was it all for?
Generally speaking, at that time it was customary. For example, in two years after the massacre in Novgorod Catholics in Paris annihilated all Huguenots in one night (of St. Bartholomew). Another question is the following: why the massacre in France led to a religious civil war whereas Novgorod submitted? But this a matter of national mentality. National mentality of the XVI century supposed that to annihilate enemies and traitors was a tsar's duty. Since a true tsar was under patronage of ethereal divine forces; that means that he was accountable to none of his contemporaries and had right to give vent to his anger on anybody.
When Ivan was 15 years old, one enlightened monk wrote to him that a tsar on Earth was a real image of the God. At that time a metaphor had another value. Where we now see a play of a mind or a natural phenomenon, people of that time saw concealed senses. If one believe that tornados, drought and pestilences are the result of the God's anger, then why not to assume that anger of the earth tsar is a reflection of anger of the Tsar of the Heavens.
In his famous letters to Kurbsky Ivan analyzed his children and adolescent psychic traumas not worse than modern psychoanalysts. He wrote about all causes of his charismatic self-importance, that are constant offences at the boyars, who had governed the country in his childhood, at Adashev and Sylvestre who had ruled at their own discretion and had considered him, a God's anointed sovereign, to be an unreasonable child.
An infantile fear to lose the status of tsar became a source of fear of all people who was able to act independently and could think without tsar's order. He needed constant confirmation of his might to get rid of this fear.
