The oprichnina (Russian: опри́чнина, IPA: [ɐˈprʲitɕnʲɪnə]; ) was a state policy implemented by Tsar Ivan the Terrible in Russia between 1565 and 1572. The policy included mass repression of the boyars (Russian aristocrats), including public executions and confiscation of their land and property. In this context the term can also refer to: [3][4]

Oprichnina, private court or household created by Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible (1565) that administered those Russian lands (also known as oprichnina) that had been separated from the rest of Muscovy and placed under the tsar’s direct control.

Aug 4, 2017 · The oprichnina, the personal force of Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible, was responsible for mass executions, the persecution of the monarch's enemies, and confiscation of property:...

Mar 14, 2025 · Ivan the Terrible - Oprichnina, Tsar, Russia: Ivan’s first executions apparently arose out of his disappointment over the course of the Livonian War and the suspected treason of several Russian boyars.

The oprichnina was a state policy implemented by Tsar Ivan the Terrible in Russia between 1565 and 1572. It was a tool of mass repression of the boyars (Russian aristocrats), including public executions and confiscation of their land and property.

May 30, 2019 · Ivan IV of Russia's oprichnina is frequently portrayed as some sort of hell, a time of mass torture and death overseen by sinister black-robed monks who obeyed their insane Tsar Ivan the Terrible and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

The massacre of Novgorod (Russian: Новгородский погром, romanized: Novgorodsky pogrom) was an attack launched by Ivan the Terrible 's oprichniki on the city of Novgorod, Russia, in 1570.

Born out of paranoid fear of one individual, Tsar Ivan IV, oprichnina policies claimed tens of thousands of lives in the 16th century Russia, setting a ghastly high bar for campaigns of state-instituted terror that would befall Russia in coming centuries. Conspiracies, real and imagined.

This essay takes issue with Charles Halperin’s assertion, in his book on Ivan the Terri-ble, that the state terror imposed by the tsar in the period of the oprichnina bore no relation to the concept of carnival employed by Mikhail Bakhtin.

The oprichnina was introduced in response to the interests of the dvorianstvo (nobility or gentry), who sought to weaken the economic and political importance of the big feudal aristocracy and take further measures toward enslaving the peasantry.