Piotr Nater
speaker
792 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2026
last heard 8 Aug
Piotr Nater’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Such was the school in which Ivan grew up.
He learned in it dissimulation, hardness, and cruelty.
These seemed to him the only means by which to maintain the power of the crown and the unity of the empire.
When fourteen years of age he seized with a firm hand the reins of government, remorselessly put to death all the leaders of the nobility, and assumed, first of all Russian princes, the title of Tsar, in fifteen eighty four.
Full of contempt for the rudeness, barbarism, and ignorance of his people, he strove to attract to his country foreign scholars, artisans, and mechanics, and by their means to secure for Russia the advantages, wealth, and power of Western civilization.
An English merchant fleet having found its way to the White Sea, Ivan gave them a ready welcome and entered into friendly relations with their country.
He published the first systematic Russian code of law.
By the side of the irregular levies of the lesser nobility and their retainers, he organized a permanent guard, the Strelzi.
To remedy the evil of varying religious views and practices, he convoked at Moscow in fifteen fifty one a council, the decrees of which, the Stolavny, or Book of the Hundred Chapters, form to this day the basis of the Russian ecclesiastical polity.
They bear upon the discipline and elementary instructions of the clergy, deal with superstitions and crimes, and present the Russian faith to the
faith and Russian morals in a definite and intended contrast to those of the West.
This did not interfere with the civilizing efforts of the Tsar and his advisers.
Ivan had a printing press set up in Moscow, and the first book printed in Russia appeared there in fifteen sixty four.
He had been reigning long and wisely when he fell severely ill, and the Boyars, who thought him near his death, turned openly against him and went back to their old practices.
This awakened in Ivan memories of his sad childhood.
He became a prey to incessant suspicions and vindictive rage, and determined to crush the least show of independence.
He decimated the higher nobility, and even his very best friends, killing many of them with his own hand.
Whole cities were ruined.
On the calumnious charge of a worthless knave, Novgorod was almost wholly destroyed, and thousands of its entire
Inhabitants were tortured to death.
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