FEARFUL MAJESTY: The Life and Reign of Ivan the Terrible

by Benson Bobrick ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 11, 1987

Even allowing for the fact that little is known for certain about the personal life and psychological motivations of Ivan IV, called ""The Terrible,"" it suggests a particular kind of missed opportunity to find his ""life and reign"" treated in a way that is haplessly uninteresting. Although he claims in his Preface here to have consolidated the findings of several of the past half-century's ""remarkable scholars,"" Bobrick has not succeeded in melding this material into a vivid portrait of either Ivan himself; the royal, military and ecclesiastical figures surrounding him; or the events that marked his violent life. The major problem is that Bobrick refuses to opt for the specific when the general comes more easily to hand. The reader is distanced from the action, as if the author was overly concerned about being accused of sensationalizing his subject. Many writers might, of course, have turned Ivan's story into a ""made-for-TV"" pageant of kaftans and kinky doings in the Kremlin, of boyars and bloodletting. Although Bobrick has resisted that temptation, he has, unfortunately, produced instead a narrative drained of color and impact. Little effort is made to speculate on the psychological roots of his subject's contradictory drives: religiosity, real or feigned; cruelty; vengefulness and progressivism. Though Bobrick proposes that many of the national characteristics seen in the West today as ""typically Russian""--duplicity, xenophobic paranoia, expansionism--had their origins during Ivan's reign, this potentially involving thesis is left undeveloped. Ivan the Terrible may have had more than his share of faults, but he deserves more probing and life than this.

Pub Date: Sept. 11, 1987

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1987

Categories: NONFICTION