BBC_Who Killed Ivan the Terrible
Transcript
00:00On March 18, 1584, the bells of Moscow rang out to mark the death of one of the most violent
00:19rulers in history.
00:20A man of extremes, he bedded thousands of women, as well as killing and torturing anyone
00:27who crossed him.
00:33The courtiers watching over his funeral had all learned to fear the man they knew as Ivan
00:39the Terror.
00:41Strangely, Ivan's sudden death came on the very day that fortune tellers had predicted.
00:48Divine intuition or, according to rumors on the Moscow streets, a palace coup.
00:56For decades, scientists and historians have argued over the facts.
01:01But now, a leading criminologist investigates whether Russia's first tsar was in fact murdered.
01:26As a criminologist, murder is my business.
01:43I've worked with some of the most violent offenders in Britain to find out why they
01:48kill.
01:49That's why I've come to Moscow to unpick the facts surrounding the death of a 16th-century
01:55serial killer.
01:56I've always been fascinated by Ivan the Terrible and why he took such a personal delight in
02:03brutalising and killing his own people.
02:07Historians have debated about whether he was mad or just bad.
02:12But what I'm interested in finding out is could the man who murdered so many of his
02:18citizens have himself been murdered?
02:31For many people in Russia, Ivan is a national hero.
02:35And yet he was a man of huge contradictions.
02:42He believed he was chosen to save the souls of his people.
02:46But he put thousands to death in bloody purges.
02:50He fought to secure his family's right to the throne, but killed his own son and heir.
03:01Throughout his reign, he waged holy wars on the lands that surrounded Russia, building
03:06up a huge empire.
03:09But these campaigns drained Russia.
03:12When he died in 1584, he left behind a broken land and enemies on every front.
03:27To find out if any of those enemies ultimately killed him, I had to establish who had the
03:33means, the motive and the opportunity.
03:36As a criminologist, the first thing I would normally do is to look for witness statements.
03:43Although Ivan's legacy clearly lives on, tracking down such evidence from the 16th
03:48century could be difficult.
03:51I needed some specialist advice.
03:54So, Yana, where are you taking me to?
03:56I'm taking you to the manuscript department of the Historical Museum.
04:00Yana Howlett is an eminent historian who has an in-depth knowledge of 16th century
04:05Russian manuscripts.
04:06And what I want to do is show you two which are directly relevant to this whole story.
04:11Excellent.
04:19I was hoping that these contemporary records would give me first-hand evidence for my case
04:25file.
04:26But as Yana explained, there could be problems.
04:31Russian historical narratives are not like contemporary European narratives.
04:37They don't discuss motives.
04:39They don't discuss anything that would go against what is the view of what is a czar's role.
04:45Right?
04:46And it's certainly the notion that you would discuss someone preparing the death of a czar,
04:50for example, would be impossible because if any scribe wrote that down, he would be immediately
04:55beheaded for treason and therefore, you know, was immediately punishable by death.
04:59So you couldn't even really write about contemporary rulers as mere mortals.
05:06With this in mind, we began searching through the Russian chronicles written at the time
05:11to try and find out what they would say about the moment of Ivan's death.
05:15This is the Battle of Kazan, so it'll be somewhere after this.
05:19HE SPEAKS RUSSIAN
05:25Am I just being so naive as to be unimaginable that his death will be at the end of this chronicle?
05:30No, unfortunately, you are being naive because, unfortunately,
05:33the end of the chronicle doesn't coincide with the death of Ivan the Terrible,
05:37so that's why I am having this difficulty.
05:40It's all bloody Kazan again.
05:43It seemed that finding an account of his death was going to be harder than I thought.
05:51Finally, tucked away in the museum's archive, we found a volume of the Russian chronicles
05:56which did mention Ivan's death, but it had all the hallmarks of Russian censorship.
06:03So I'll read you what happens, according to the chronicle, at his death.
06:08OK.
06:09And it says here, in the year 1584, the Tsar and Grand Prince Ivan Vassilievich of all Russia
06:16died in March on the 19th day at five o'clock in the evening.
06:22He had lived for 54 years and he was buried in the Archangel Cathedral in Moscow.
06:28So the chronicle makes no mention of a murder.
06:32The chronicle does not identify suspects or people who did the dirty deed.
06:37Most of the really interesting stories that you read about Ivan's death
06:41is based on accounts written by Westerners,
06:45of whom one of the most famous is Jerome Horsey,
06:49who claims to have written an account of Ivan's death based on an eyewitness experience.
06:54Oh, wait a minute. An eyewitness account of Ivan's death.
06:59That's what he claims.
07:02Could this be what I was looking for?
07:04To find out, Janna led me to a place called the English House
07:08to see a copy of the manuscript.
07:12It was here, round the corner from the Kremlin,
07:15that English diplomats stayed in the time of Ivan.
07:18And it could have been here that Horsey wrote his observations.
07:25Janna, explain to me a little bit about Jerome Horsey.
07:29He was a trader from London who worked in Moscow.
07:34He came to Moscow on several embassies
07:36and then was sent also by the court of Ivan to England on several embassies.
07:42So clearly he was somebody who was close to the court
07:45and who had spent several years here.
07:48So Jerome Horsey was actually in Moscow,
07:51living and working at the time of Ivan's death.
07:54In March 84, as far as we know, he was definitely in Moscow.
07:57Read to me what he says about the last few hours of Ivan's life.
08:02He says that...
08:04The emperor in his loose gown shirt and linen
08:07made great preparation for the bath.
08:11He came out about the seventh hour,
08:14was brought forth and sat down upon his bed.
08:25He called his gentleman, who he favoured, to bring the chessboard.
08:29He set his men, his chief favourite Boris Fyodorovich Garanov, about him.
08:41They say today is the day I will draw my last breath.
08:47But I feel myself reviving.
09:08Then the emperor faints and falls backwards.
09:12One man was sent for Aquavita,
09:15another to the apothecary for Marigold and Rosewater,
09:19and to call his ghostly father and the physicians.
09:22In the mean, he was strangled and stark-decked.
09:25Strangled.
09:29Many people who've read this wonder whether, in fact,
09:32Horsey here means strangled,
09:35or whether he's referring to some kind of internal strangulation.
09:39Blockage in the man's throat, which prevented him from breathing.
09:43This might be the information that was actually being spoken about
09:46in the streets, but didn't exist in the chronicles.
09:49It is not impossible that such information circulated in the streets,
09:54but you cannot give him the status of an eyewitness, I would have said,
09:59unless at least there is some corroboration
10:02to the information that he gives.
10:04This looked like my first lead.
10:07Could it be that Horsey,
10:09although not physically present at Ivan's death,
10:12had spoken to someone who was?
10:16Jan has given me a copy of Horsey's account
10:19and other bits and pieces of documentary-supporting evidence,
10:24and, you know, she's right.
10:26I can't simply presume that Horsey was actually a witness to Ivan's death.
10:31I need other kinds of corroborating evidence.
10:34In fact, I need to see the body.
10:45And for that, I had to go to a place
10:48where Ivan's body has lain since his death,
10:51the Archangel Cathedral,
10:54deep within the foreboding walls of the Kremlin.
10:58CHOIR SINGS
11:17I felt as if I was truly entering Ivan's world.
11:23To help in my investigation,
11:25I'd arranged to meet my Russian translator, Yelena Smolina.
11:31And as we entered the Archangel Cathedral,
11:34I knew this was my chance to come face-to-face
11:38with one of the cruelest men in history.
11:41Gosh, look, Yelena.
11:43Where is the air-conditioning?
11:45Yes, I'm seeing all this for the first time.
11:49Very first time. It's absolutely wonderful.
12:03The Archangel Cathedral contains all the tombs
12:06of the Russian royal family since the 16th century.
12:10Ivan's tomb lies in a room behind the altar of the church.
12:15Access is forbidden to all but the most privileged.
12:19But Yelena has arranged for me to meet
12:22the head of the archaeology department of the Kremlin,
12:25Dr Tatiana Panova.
12:29Hello. How are you?
12:31Thank you very much.
12:33I gather you can help me find Ivan the Terrible's tomb.
12:39Thank you.
12:42To be allowed to pass through this door is an incredible opportunity.
12:54This is one of the very few times
12:57that Western television cameras have been allowed inside.
13:03And so is his body actually in there or is it lowered down?
13:12This is just a tombstone.
13:14The body itself is below the floor level.
13:17However, Ivan hasn't lain here undisturbed since his death.
13:24When the Archangel Cathedral was refurbished in the 1960s,
13:29Ivan's body was exhumed under the watchful eye of the Soviet leadership.
13:34And after 500 years, his coffin was opened up.
13:42This gave scientists an opportunity to study his bone structure
13:47and allowed them to use techniques pioneered at the time
13:51to create a snapshot of how Ivan may have looked.
13:58Oh, my word!
14:01May I touch it?
14:07Look at this.
14:10There used to be a 19th-century criminological theory
14:14that you could tell a lot about a person
14:17by the bumps on his head, phrenology.
14:20It was rubbish, of course, but look at his mouth.
14:24He's so contemptuous.
14:26And the sharpness of his nose and his beard.
14:29He just looks very, very, very cruel.
14:35But the exhumation offered much more than the chance to see how Ivan looked.
14:41Examining the bones for any signs of fractures
14:45offered the possibility of discovering whether he was, in fact, strangled.
14:51Was there any evidence of physical trauma to the neck?
14:56No.
15:01No harm was done to the neck,
15:03which proves that he wasn't smothered or he wasn't choked.
15:08So he wasn't strangled? There's no evidence of strangling then?
15:12No.
15:14But that wasn't the end of the story.
15:16Scientists made an astonishing discovery
15:19when they carried out a chemical analysis of Ivan's remains.
15:26There was very high content of both mercury and arsenic in all the bones.
15:31At high enough levels to have killed him?
15:39Yes, in theory, the content was high enough to have killed the person, yes.
15:47Surprisingly, in the 1960s, this research was carried no further.
15:53Ivan's bones were reburied
15:55and all that remains are some of the records and these photographs.
16:02It's hard to understand why,
16:04except to remember that we're talking about Soviet Russia,
16:08when, bizarrely, Ivan was hailed as the saviour of the masses.
16:12Any suggestion of a successful plot against him could have been dangerous.
16:22Dr Panova, where are you taking me?
16:25In a Kremlin attic, Dr Panova has been carrying out some controversial research,
16:30which might have a crucial bearing on the cause of Ivan's death.
16:35So this is your office?
16:37Yes, it's our archaeological office.
16:40Although Ivan's bones were reburied 40 years ago,
16:43Dr Panova has been able to get access to those of his mother, Elena Glenskaya,
16:49and for the past three years, her team has been carrying out extensive tests on Glenskaya,
16:54as well as creating an accurate image of her.
16:57Oh, look at this. She's very, very beautiful.
17:04Elena Glenskaya was a powerful figure in 16th century Moscow.
17:11When Ivan was just three years old,
17:13his father died leaving Russia under his mother's control.
17:19She stopped at nothing to increase the power and influence of her family.
17:27She made many enemies amongst the ruling classes,
17:30executing them at will if they dared to stand in her way.
17:36But less than three years after she took charge,
17:39she died suddenly, leaving Ivan alone and isolated.
17:45Some have suggested hers was not a natural death.
17:56Dr Panova has been searching to find any evidence of this.
18:01Among other things, her hair survived very well,
18:05and criminologists or forensic experts studied the remains of the hair.
18:11And a very high content of mercury was discovered.
18:16In the tissues of her body, in the bones of her body, everywhere.
18:25This is why it became quite obvious that she was poisoned, and this is how she died.
18:32She was poisoned?
18:38The content of mercury was so high that even experienced forensic experts were surprised.
18:45And the tests were done twice just to confirm the findings,
18:50and everyone came up with the conclusion that she was definitely murdered.
18:56Dr Panova's research suggests that Ivan was brought up in a world
19:00where poison and intrigue were a way of life,
19:03making it far more likely that the mercury in Ivan's remains are an indication of murder.
19:12With the possible means of Ivan's death established,
19:15the next thing I needed to do was to find a motive.
19:20I've got to look at significant points in Ivan's life,
19:24and by looking at the enemies that he created,
19:28we might be able to list a group of suspects who would have had it in their interest to have killed him off.
19:38There are plenty of enemies to choose from.
19:41Much of Ivan's life is characterised by power struggles,
19:45and you need to understand them to understand him.
19:51Several letters exist which were actually written by Ivan,
19:55and these make reference to his bitterest enemies, the Boyars, who tormented him even as a child.
20:11They began to feed us as though we were foreigners,
20:15or the most wretched menials.
20:19Suffering did I not endure through lack of clothing and hunger,
20:24for in all these things my will was not my own.
20:35I wanted to find out more about the Boyars,
20:38so I arranged to meet Professor Borisov,
20:41a Russian historian who specialises in 16th-century political history.
20:46The Boyars, well, they were the top-level aristocracy,
20:50and practically they were the ruling class.
20:53They had military leaders, governors, landlords,
20:57and here they had their palaces, their monasteries, their churches.
21:01So what was life like in Russia when the Boyars were in charge?
21:07Well, you know, under the Boyars, Russia was practically in chaos,
21:11because the Boyars were generally interested in a struggle among themselves.
21:18They were in a sort of civil war.
21:23So Moscow at the time of the Boyars was a brutal place
21:27where murder was the means to power.
21:34The young child understood nothing but violence.
21:38Unable to strike out at his tormentors,
21:41Ivan took his frustrations out in other ways.
21:54Borisov's account of the young tsar's life was not what I would have expected.
22:02Far from enjoying the privileges of a young royal,
22:05he was ignored by those he believed should serve him.
22:08According to his own letters, he was a servant in his own court.
22:17Then, at the age of 13,
22:21he decided to take the Boyars on.
22:31He ordered one of the most prominent Boyars to be arrested.
22:42Ivan accused the rest of having taken advantage of his extreme youth,
22:47but he had decided to make an example of only one of them.
22:55He was to show no mercy to their leader.
23:18Through my work, I know that children who are exposed to extreme violence at an early age
23:24often go on to display personality disorders of various kinds.
23:31The more I understand about Ivan's childhood,
23:34the more I begin to understand why he may have become so cruel,
23:38sadistic and psychotic later in his life.
23:41And when, at 17, he declared himself to be divinely appointed,
23:45Ivan already seemed to be showing signs of delusion.
23:58In 1547, he had himself crowned Russia's first tsar,
24:02a title which not only suggested his divine status,
24:06but it also suggested his desire for territorial expansion.
24:20With his position temporarily secured,
24:23he began to formulate plans which would change the face of Russia forever.
24:27Ivan launched a holy war against his traditional enemies, the Muslim Tatars.
24:32Seeing them as infidels, his conquests of Kazan, Astrakhan and Siberia
24:37glorified him as the orthodox crusader
24:40and expanded Russia's borders like never before.
24:43This, above all else, would mark his place in history.
24:55His military success had kept the border between Russia and Siberia
25:00His military success had kept the boyars at bay,
25:03but it took its toll on his health.
25:11Fearing for his life,
25:13Ivan demanded the boyars swear allegiance to his newborn son.
25:19The boyars appeared to go along with Ivan's request,
25:23but behind the scenes were planning a revolt.
25:41A request was made to the boyars,
25:45a request was sent to Ivan's cousin, Prince Tsaritsa,
25:49to usurp the throne of Ivan's son,
25:52destroying Ivan's main goal in life to secure the Tsardom for his family line.
26:05It's clear from the records that Tsaritsa lost his opportunity
26:09when Ivan made an unexpected recovery.
26:15But what this whole episode indicates to me
26:18is that Ivan was an increasingly isolated figure
26:21and had become acutely aware of the weakness of his position,
26:25possibly to the point of paranoia.
26:28What happened next confirmed Ivan's fears.
26:32When his much-loved wife, Anastasia Romanoff, fell mysteriously ill,
26:37Ivan became convinced the boyars had a hand in it.
26:50She died soon after, poisoned, Ivan believed.
26:53But the boyars didn't believe her.
26:56She died soon after, poisoned, Ivan believed, by the boyars.
27:27Professor Borisov sees her death as a turning point for Ivan.
27:51After Anastasia's death,
27:53once he starts this process of repressing the boyars,
27:57could that have given people a motive for killing Ivan?
28:17With Anastasia gone, so too went his mental stability.
28:23Ivan started hallucinating and saw enemies everywhere.
28:27He became convinced he would be the next to die.
28:37It looked like Ivan was finally beaten.
28:53Reading through the historical records,
28:56it would seem that just at that point in time,
28:59when Ivan was under the greatest threat from the boyars,
29:03he did something that the boyars couldn't have expected.
29:07Ivan abdicated.
29:09He literally packed his bags and left Moscow.
29:23MUSIC PLAYS
29:35Ivan travelled 100 miles outside Moscow
29:38to a place that had once been his father's retreat.
29:52MUSIC CONTINUES
30:02This is the place.
30:04This is Aleksandrova Sloboda,
30:07a monastery where, in 1564,
30:11Ivan left Moscow to come and seemingly take refuge.
30:18In fact, he wasn't taking refuge,
30:21he was playing a game of kind of...
30:23a political game of Russian roulette with the boyars.
30:28Whilst Ivan bided his time here, there was uproar
30:32as the people rebelled at the prospect of the boyars
30:35once again taking control of Russia.
30:38MUSIC CONTINUES
30:53Just as Ivan had predicted,
30:55the boyars, fearing a revolt, begged him to return to Moscow.
31:02He agreed, but on one condition,
31:05that they acknowledge his God-given right
31:07to wield absolute power over Russia,
31:10punishing traitors by stripping them of their land and position.
31:16Little did the boyars know that, by accepting this,
31:20they were signing their own death warrants.
31:29To carry out his plan, Ivan set up the Oprichniki,
31:33a ruthless band of men who, one by one,
31:36forced the boyars off their land.
31:39Those who refused were mercilessly rounded up and tortured to death.
31:56Here, within these walls,
31:58Ivan took great pleasure in seeing his enemies, the boyars, suffer.
32:03MUSIC CONTINUES
32:29Over the seven years of the Oprichniki,
32:32the ranks of the boyars were decimated,
32:35and with them went their power and threat to Ivan.
32:46You know, I'm sure there were lots of 16th- and 17th-century monarchs
32:52who tortured political opponents to extract confessions,
32:58but the thing about Ivan the Terrible
33:00was he seemed to not only personally participate in the process of torture,
33:06he actually enjoyed torturing.
33:10Now, as a criminologist,
33:13I know the kind of person who enjoys inflicting violence
33:17on his fellow human beings.
33:21Fantastic sadism, cruelty,
33:24outbursts of pathological behaviour.
33:27He was, from the point of view of the people who lived under him,
33:30he was a disaster.
33:32I mean, the number of people who died, and died in horrible circumstances.
33:36You know, if you are caught, so to speak, answering back in a party to Ivan,
33:41you will be sent down to cellars and disposed of by his huntsmen.
33:45He was very sadistic.
33:47Isabel de Madriaga is the grand dame of Russian history.
33:51She has her own theories on Ivan.
33:53Do you think he was mad?
33:55I like the word mad. I don't know what mad means.
33:57There are so many different forms of madness.
34:00I think he was unbalanced, and more unbalanced as he grew older.
34:04Is part of that created by the circumstances of his childhood,
34:07the loss of his father, the loss of his mother,
34:09the violence he was exposed to as a child?
34:12I don't quite know to what extent what he describes
34:17is enough to account for the destabilisation of personality
34:22that he obviously suffered from,
34:24or whether there was some other genetic predisposition.
34:27So he's got this very kind of paranoid mindset.
34:30Well, I think that he becomes paranoid in jumps.
34:35It's not... A linear process.
34:37No. It doesn't go smoothly more and more from day to day.
34:40But every now and then, it just... And then it goes, and then it goes.
34:43And you get these episodes of fantastic cruelty and sadism.
34:48And then, for a while, maybe it calms down, and so on.
34:53The development of Ivan's sadistic madness was more erratic than I'd thought.
35:00The result of it, however, was to destroy all the boyars he thought were a threat.
35:10A new circle of advisers was to surround Ivan,
35:13and it was to them that I was to look for the murder suspect.
35:18After all, I know that murder is more often than not
35:22committed by someone close to the victim.
35:30With this criminological truism in mind,
35:33I went to Moscow Scientific Institute
35:36to meet someone who believed he had evidence that could back up this theory.
35:41Professor Boris Florya directed me to an account which surfaced after Ivan's death,
35:47which he is sure is written by one of Ivan's closest advisers.
35:54There is a version about Ivan the Terrible being murdered, being poisoned.
36:00And the only person who could have given poison to Ivan the Terrible
36:08could have been his favourite, Bogdan Belsky.
36:17He was the only person from whose hands Ivan the Terrible accepted medicine.
36:26Is it possible that Belsky could have poisoned Ivan?
36:38No one else but Bogdan Belsky could have given poison to Ivan the Terrible.
36:42We have documents proving that all the medicines,
36:46that all the drugs that Ivan the Terrible was taking
36:50were being prepared under Bogdan Belsky's supervision.
36:57Well, I don't know about you, but for me that was incredibly exciting,
37:01because for the very first time,
37:04I felt we got a suspect.
37:06He tells us that Belsky, Bogdan Belsky,
37:10is somebody who mixes his medicines, who could have delivered poison to him.
37:17And this account is supported to some extent by Horsey's account,
37:21confirming that Belsky was in the room at the time that Ivan died.
37:25The Chronicles tell us that Belsky had risen up from lowly origin
37:29to become Ivan's trusted advisor.
37:41To try to find out why Belsky might have wanted Ivan dead,
37:45I returned to England to meet the historian Maureen Perry.
37:50But she took me straight back to the Horsey account,
37:53although, surprisingly, it was not the one I was used to.
37:58This version that you have is the full text of Horsey's manuscript,
38:03which, in fact, was only first published in the 19th century.
38:08But there is another, shorter version of the manuscript,
38:13published in his own lifetime,
38:16which does, in fact, have an interesting difference
38:20from the longer version.
38:23So, if you see here, you have the paragraph in which he describes
38:28the actual death of Ivan the Terrible, suddenly collapsing...
38:33He faints.
38:35..and then he says,
38:37He describes the actual death of Ivan the Terrible, suddenly collapsing...
38:42He faints and falls backwards.
38:50One man was sent for Acquavito.
38:53Meantime, he was strangled.
38:56And here you can see the word strangled is followed by an asterisk.
39:01And in the margin here, against the asterisk,
39:04we have the words,
39:10That's Bogdan Belsky and Boris Godunov,
39:13his two courtiers and favourites at the end of his life.
39:19And that is not in the published version that you've been using.
39:23So, what this version is actually saying
39:26is that there are two suspects, Belsky and Godunov.
39:30Yes, he names the two suspects.
39:33So, Belsky may have had an accomplice, Boris Godunov.
39:41Godunov was a court noble,
39:43who had, like Belsky, risen up through the ranks of the Oprichniki.
39:48His sister had married Ivan's son, so he held great sway at court.
39:53But both of these men owed their success to Ivan's patronage.
40:03Maureen, I'm clearly missing something here,
40:05because I don't understand why Godunov and Belsky
40:09would want to kill the person on whom their power and prestige lies.
40:15Yes, exactly, that's a good point.
40:18And I think in order to explain it,
40:21it helps if we consider the whole question of the succession to the throne.
40:27Ivan and his eldest son and heir, Ivan Ivanovich,
40:32were close and known to share everything.
40:37Between them, they were rumoured to have bedded
40:40thousands of virgins and orgies of sex and drink.
40:45But the line of succession that Ivan had spent his life securing
40:49would be dealt a devastating blow.
40:57In 1581, after an argument,
41:00Ivan had an irrational and inexplicable mood swing,
41:04which resulted in the unthinkable.
41:15Ivanovich fell into a coma and died soon after,
41:19leaving Ivan overcome with grief.
41:26And now he faced a dynastic crisis.
41:33Ivan knew his remaining son, Fyodor, was a simpleton
41:37and unlikely to secure Russia against the growing threat from its neighbours.
41:42He would have to look elsewhere for an heir.
41:50It was to England and the court of Queen Elizabeth
41:54that Ivan sent his envoy in a bid to gain an alliance through marriage.
41:59This would be good news for Russia's trading power,
42:03but bad news for Belsky and Gudanov.
42:07Boris Gudanov's position at court largely depends on the fact
42:12that he is the brother-in-law of Tsarevich Fyodor.
42:16You could even think of him as Fyodor's guardian.
42:19So Boris Gudanov and his crony Bogdan Belsky
42:23might have been very worried that Ivan would contract an English marriage
42:28which would upset the whole balance of power at court
42:32and that this might undermine Gudanov's position in particular.
42:38Could Ivan's negotiations for an alliance with England,
42:42which may have taken place here at Hampton Court,
42:45have been the reason that he died?
42:50Gudanov and Belsky were both in the room at the moment of his death.
42:56Belsky was his chemist.
43:00Could he have administered the mercury
43:03found in such massive quantities in Ivan's body?
43:09And one other thing to remember,
43:12when Fyodor died several years later,
43:15when Fyodor died several years later,
43:18it was Boris Gudanov himself who became Tsar.
43:23Clearly, Gudanov didn't want anything to happen
43:26that would destabilise the existing position
43:29and jeopardise his own position.
43:32Jerome Horsey, as a well-informed contemporary,
43:35does seem to think that it might have provided him with a motive
43:39and he was very well placed to make that kind of judgement.
43:44So he's got the opportunity, he's got the motive,
43:47if this marriage comes off, Gudanov kills Ivan.
43:50Isn't that what happened?
43:52I think he has motive and opportunity.
43:55There were suspicions at the time that Ivan hadn't died a natural death
44:00and it was Gudanov and Belsky who were named
44:03by people rioting on the streets after Ivan's death.
44:06Gudanov ends up a Tsar himself in 1598,
44:09so if he did do it, it was a risk that you could argue did pay off,
44:13at least in the short term.
44:18I'm fascinated by what Maureen has just told me.
44:22It may well have been that Belsky was influenced by Gudanov
44:26to administer a lethal dose of mercury to Ivan.
44:30But there was to be one more twist in the tale.
44:37I took the evidence I had gathered to Cambridge University
44:40to meet up with leading pathologist Professor Austin Gresham.
44:44I wanted to find out if it was possible
44:47that one dose of mercury could really have killed Ivan.
44:52I think that's most unlikely.
44:54A single large dose of mercury would not kill you.
44:57In order to kill somebody with mercury,
45:00you have to persist in administering it over the months and years.
45:04So the chances are, if he had been administered mercury,
45:07that would have been done for some other reason,
45:10namely the treatment of a disease.
45:12What sort of medical conditions would mercury have been used
45:17to treat in the 16th century?
45:19Well, it was used for all sorts of diseases, including syphilis,
45:23and perhaps they thought it would do good.
45:26Now, syphilis makes sense because Ivan had many sexual partners,
45:30so quite clearly he could have contracted syphilis.
45:35And surprisingly, even from the limited examinations done in the 1960s,
45:40there's evidence of this if you know what to look for.
45:44In the long bones, and particularly in the tibia, the shin bone,
45:49you see pits or pocks with the bone growing around.
45:54That's a very characteristic moth-eaten appearance
45:58of syphilitic osteitis, is the word we use.
46:02And there was more.
46:04The mercury in Ivan's body was 25 times what it should have been,
46:09and this would have had a devastating effect.
46:12In the case of mercury poisoning, chronic mercury poisoning,
46:16you get a condition called erythism,
46:19and that is characterised, if I may quote to you,
46:23by changes of personality and behaviour,
46:30loss of memory, increased excitability,
46:35severe depression, delirium and hallucination.
46:41So the question of who killed Ivan has brought me to a surprising conclusion.
46:49As far as I'm concerned,
46:51Ivan showed some classic signs of being a psychopath.
46:54He was grandiose, he was sadistic, he lacked empathy,
46:58he had multiple sexual partners.
47:01But the evidence I've just been given also raises an interesting possibility.
47:06Mercury, provided as a medicine, administered by a trusted chemist,
47:12in effect fuels Ivan's psychosis.
47:17His belief that the boyars were out to get him
47:20could have at least in part been the paranoid result of this poisoning.
47:26Even the extraordinary killing of his own son that followed
47:30could have been due to a bart of mercury madness.
47:36So it seems to me the evidence suggests Ivan was poisoned,
47:41but I don't think he was murdered.
47:43In a bid to save Ivan's life,
47:46Belsky gave him the mercury that resulted in his death.
47:56She entertained the likes of Oscar Wilde and Queen Victoria
48:01with her Wild West roadshows with Buffalo Bill.
48:04We profile the sharp-shooting cowgirl Annie Oakley here on PBS America Next.
48:25.