Ivan the Terrible in the Russian Historiography of the 19th-21st Centuries. Problems, Methodology, Opinions

Abstract

1 The notion „Grozny studies“ (groznovyedenie) is not at all common in Russia . Quite the reverse, it is barely recognized and used . Still, we deem it promising (not only because the other possible names – The Terrible studies? Terriblistics? – sound like an academic joke) . Firstly, it enables to operate within an interdisciplinary field . Secondly, it describes a group of precisely stated problems connected with the key figure of the „Russian 16th century“ and is very convenient to use . Thirdly, the Russian historiography has already collected a huge body of literature about Ivan IV created by successive, intertwined and polemizing lines of study . Therefore, the Grozny studies have already become an important and notable field of the Russian historical thought and should be recognized as such . VLADIMIR PANOV