Ivan IV Vasilyevich, nicknamed the Terrible, is still being debated to this day: what did he bring more to Rus' - strength or ruin? On the scales are the strengthening of the central government, the strengthening of the army, the defeated fragments of the Golden Horde - the Kazan and Astrakhan kingdoms. And the lost Livonian War for access to the Baltic, which weakened the state, oprichnina executions... But one thing is clear: he was a great king who laid the foundation in Rus' for a rigid vertical power structure that lasted for many centuries.