Penskoy V. V. What war did Ivan the Terrible lose? (Was the Livonian War a main war of Ivan Wasyl'evitch?)

The article is devoted to the questions linked to the foreign policy of the Russian state under Ivan the Terrible and the place the wars against the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Livonian Confederation, Sweden and the Tatar states took in it. The author offers an original approach to the analysis of these events and comes to the conclusion that it was not the Livonian War but the war against the Crimean and other Tatar khanates that was the main war of Ivan IV. Fighting in the southern and eastern «fronts» for almost 40 years distracted the basic resources of the Russian state and the attention of the Moscow government, while the western and north-western «fronts» in these sircumstances are automatically converted into secondary. There were serious grounds for that. If by chance the Russian state suffered a defeat in its confrontation with the Tartars, the history of Eastern Europe could go another way. Ultimately the Moscow state succeded in surviving in this struggle and protecting itself from the Tatar threat, but its struggle against the Tartars did not allow Ivan the Terrible to finish the confrontation with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and resolve the Livonian question in a manner that would be favourable for him.

• Filyushkin, Aleksandr Il’ich. Livonskaya voyna ili Baltiyskiye voyny? K voprosu o periodizatsii Livonskoy voyny [The Livonian war or the Baltic wars? On the problem of dividing the Livonian war into periods], in Baltiyskii vopros v kontse XV – XVI vv. Moscow: Kvadriga Publ., 2010. Pp. 80–94. (in Russian.)

  Khoroshkevich, Anna Leonidovna. Rossiia v sisteme mezhdunarodnykh otnoshenii serediny XVI veka[Russia in the system of international relations in the middle of the 16^th century.]. Moscow: Drevlekhranilishche Publ., 2003. 620 p. (in Russian.)

  Krom, Mikhail Markovich. Starodubskaia voina 1534–1537. Iz istorii russko-litovskikh otnoshenii [The Starodub War, 1534–1537. From the history of the Russian-Lithuanian relations]. Moscow: Rubezhi XXI Publ., 2008. 139 p. (in Russian.)

  Penskoy, Vitaliy Viktorovich. «Tsar’ krym’skiy prishel ko bregu Oky-reki s velikoyu pokhvaloyu i s mnozh’stvom voinstva svoego…» Stoyanie na Oke v 1541 godu [«The Crimean Tsar came to the bank of the Oka river with great haughtiness and his great army…». The Stand-off on the Oka river in 1541], in Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal. 2011. № 12. Pp. 41–47. (in Russian.)

  Zagorovskiy, Vladimir Pavlovich. Istoriya vkhozhdeniya Tsentral’nogo Chernozemya v sostav Rossiyskogo gosudarstva v XVI veke [History of the joining of Central Chernozem zone to the Russian state in the 16^th century]. Voronezh: Publ. Voronezhskogo universiteta, 1991. 272 p. (in Russian.)