A hoo-ha has broken out in the city of Oryol, south-west of Moscow, over a proposal by the officials there to put up Russia’s first ever public monument to Ivan the Terrible. This 16th-century czar had some major achievements to his credit — particularly the expansion of Russia’s territory and welding it into a united state — but seems nevertheless to deserve most of the excoriation that history has bestowed on him. There is some uncertainty about whether he actually killed his son and heir as is usually claimed; but he was definitely drunken and paranoid and given to wild swings between spasms of violent cruelty and bouts of self-loathing and repentance (he was a devout Christian). He enforced his authoritarian rule through the oprichniki, gangs of black-clad horsemen, who had no compunction in repressing any perceived disloyalty to the czar with torture, murder and massacre. It is not surprising that many residents of Oryol oppose the erection of the monument, even though the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, surprisingly supports it.
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