Chosen Council

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

The Chosen Council was the informal name for Ivan the Terrible’s early government, roughly 1547 to 1560. It formed after the Moscow fire, with Aleksey Adashev in charge along with priest Sylvester and other advisers, and Ivan ruling with them. After his wife Anastasia died in 1560, Ivan grew distrustful of the council. Historians debate its exact status, but many see it as the body that ran the government and tried to balance the tsar’s power with the high nobility. The council promoted reforms: provincial governors were required to share the chair at courts with the service nobility (pomeshchiki); by 1555 many governors were replaced by elected representatives, and their dues went to the council. In 1553, while Ivan was ill, the council chose his cousin Vladimir of Staritsa as successor, but Ivan recovered and used this as evidence of a conspiracy. Traditionally the council is said to have been led by Adashev and Sylvester, a view based on Ivan’s letters to Andrey Kurbsky and the Illustrated Chronicle; the name was first used by Kurbsky. Membership and exact status are debated, with some historians questioning Kurbsky’s role and others identifying the council with the privy council (blizhnyaya duma).