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een broken down during the two previous reigns. Theunderlying constitutional issue in the struggle thatfollowed was whether the council of magnates couldtransform itself from a body based on long practised butindefinite custom into a crystallized institution expresslylimiting the freedom of action of the tsar. The struggleleft its mark in the most famous memorial of Russiansixteenth-century literature, the polemic between Ivanand prince Kurbsky, 1 and reached its climax in sevenyears of monomaniac suspicion and revolting excesses onthe part of Ivan (1565-72).Ivan the Terrible (b. 1530, reigned from 1533, ruled1547-84, seven times married) is, with one exception,the most debated figure among the twenty-threesovereigns of Russia. All recognize his reign to be ofthe greatest consequence, both externally and internally,and the latter half of it to be bloodily seared by hispersonality; but there agreement ends. The divergenceof opinion on him is largely due to insufficient evidence."Sharp of wits," an eager controversialist with "anespecial bitterness and remembrance of Holy Writ,"ungovernable in temper (he killed his eldest son with hisown hand), in his later years more cruel even than hiscruel contemporaries, Ivan appeared to possess a dualpersonality, belying the first ten years of his rule(1547-58) when the resounding conquest of Kazan andAstrakhan and the all-round reform of state and churchseemed to stamp him with the seal of greatness.Thereafter, in the words of one contemporarychronicler, "there did sweep upon the Tsar as it were aterrible tempest, which set him beside himself and disturbedthe peace of his goodly heart. In some mannerwhich I wot not it turned his mind, with all its plenitudeof wisdom, into the nature of a wild beast, and he madesedition in his own state." These last words reflect theattitude of his opponents, the magnates, at whom hestruck so savagely. Much misery there was indeedamong all his subjects up and down divided and harriedMuscovy, but the lesser folk could scarcely have looked1 There is a German, but no English, translation by K. Stahlin(Liepzig; 1921).100