The Day Ivan the Terrible Killed His Own Son

In November 1581, in a private chamber at Alexandrov Sloboda, Tsar Ivan IV — Ivan the Terrible — brought an iron-shod staff down on the head of his own son and heir, Ivan Ivanovich. The man who spent thirty years building the most efficient engine of fear in Eastern Europe killed the one person his entire reign was built to protect. This is the story of the oprichnina — the black-clad secret police, the dog's head and the broom, the sack of Novgorod — and how the apparatus of terror Ivan built to guard his bloodline came home through his own arm and ended it. From his 1547 coronation as the first Tsar of all Russia, through the collapse of the Livonian War and the siege of Pskov, to the blow that extinguished the house of Rurik after seven hundred years and opened the Time of Troubles. The 1963 exhumation. The mercury and arsenic. The grave that settled nothing. A cinematic historical documentary. Chapters: 0:00 — The Staff and the Son: Alexandrov Sloboda, 1581 1:30 — Ivan IV Crowned First Tsar of Russia (1547) 2:13 — The Oprichnina: A State Within a State (1565) 3:29 — The Black Riders: Dog's Head and Broom 4:05 — The Sack of Novgorod (1570) 5:52 — The Livonian War Collapses: Siege of Pskov (1581) 6:22 — Ivan Ivanovich: The Only Heir Who Could Rule 7:53 — Yelena Sheremeteva and the Lost Child 8:55 — The Confrontation and the Blow 9:56 — The Disputed Date and the 1963 Exhumation 12:19 — Feodor and the End of the House of Rurik 13:28 — The Time of Troubles 14:42 — The Two Tombs in the Archangel Cathedral — 🕯️ More dark history reconstructed as cinema:    • Dark Architects of Murder   — #IvanTheTerrible #RussianHistory #History #Oprichnina #Documentary #DarkHistory #Tsar #Rurik #MedievalHistory #TimeOfTroubles