Tsar Ivan IV
The most famous of all Muscovites was Ivan IV, known as Ivan the Terrible. During his long rule (1533-1584), Ivan IV expanded the Russian lands and made Russian culture more religious than it had ever been. He eliminated rival centers of power like the democratic city of Novgorod in the North and dealt a decisive blow to the Mongols in his victory at Kazan in 1552.
As the head of a religious civilization, Ivan the Terrible had every aspect of domestic activity ritualized through semimonastic rules of conduct, preserved in a book called the Domostroi. The consequence of this radical monasticization of society was the virtual elimination of secular culture in the course of the sixteenth century.
http://www.pbs.org/weta/faceofrussia/timeline/1500/1533-84.html
Biography of Ivan IV
Prince Andrew Kurbskii, First Epistle Written to the Tsar and Grand Prince of Moscow in Consequence of His Fierce Persecution
Ivan the Terrible
SILVER COINS OF IVAN "THE TERRIBLE"
IVAN THE TERRIBLE RESOURCES
THE CZARIST EMPIRE
UNDER IVAN THE TERRIBLE
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