Ivan the Terrible Trivia
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46 free Ivan the Terrible trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Ivan the Terrible trivia quiz covers Ivan IV, the first ruler crowned Tsar of all Russia. The easy questions are the ones most people know: what his epithet actually means in Russian, the cathedral built to celebrate his conquest of Kazan, the black-clad political police he created, and the son he killed in a rage. From there it moves through his childhood as a three-year-old grand prince neglected by feuding boyars, his coronation at 16, his marriage to the first Romanov tsaritsa, the printing press he brought to Moscow and the legal code and standing army of his reforming years. The harder end covers the fake abdication of 1564, the oprichnina and its 1,000 guardsmen, the sack of Novgorod, the Tatar puppet he put on his own throne for a year, his marriage proposal to Elizabeth I of England, the Livonian War, the burning of Moscow, Yermak's Cossacks in Siberia, the 1963 exhumation that found mercury in his bones, and Stalin's notes to Eisenstein. Every answer was checked against Ivan's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our Peter the Great and Russia quizzes carry the story on.
30 of 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The title tsar, which Ivan was the first Russian ruler to be crowned with, comes from which ancient name?
Caesar
Caesar. Russians already used the word for the khans of the Golden Horde, so taking it at his coronation, aged 16, announced that he now answered to no one.
Q 02The Russian word 'grozny' in Ivan's epithet is better translated as what?
Formidable or awe-inspiring
Formidable or awe-inspiring. When the nickname was first put into English, 'terrible' still meant inspiring terror and awe rather than bad or wicked, and the old translation stuck.
Q 03Who first ruled as regent for the three-year-old Ivan?
His mother
His mother. Elena Glinskaya held power until she died in 1538, leaving the seven-year-old Ivan in the hands of feuding boyar clans.
Q 04Ivan's grandmother Sophia Palaiologina belonged to the imperial family of which fallen power?
Byzantium
Byzantium. She was a niece of its last emperor, and she brought the old empire's court ceremony to the Kremlin, feeding Moscow's claim to be the 'Third Rome'.
Q 05Ivan's mother, Elena Glinskaya, died in 1538; what do many believe happened to her?
She was poisoned
She was poisoned. That is the long-standing suspicion, and her death threw the seven-year-old Ivan into nine years of murderous feuding among the boyars, whom he never forgave.
Q 06Weeks after his coronation in 1547, the 16-year-old Ivan held which other ceremony?
His wedding
His wedding. Noble families across Russia had been told to send their daughters to the Kremlin for inspection, and from that bride-show he chose Anastasia, the first tsaritsa.
Q 07Ivan's first wife, Anastasia, came from which noble family?
The Romanovs
The Romanovs. The name came later, from her father Roman, but her great-nephew Michael became the first Romanov tsar and the family ruled Russia for three centuries.
Q 08Ivan liked to claim descent from a brother of which Roman emperor?
Augustus
Augustus. A court legend traced the ruling house back through Rurik to Prus, an invented brother of the emperor, and Ivan liked to cite it to show his blood was no ordinary Russian's.
Q 09What was the Sudebnik, which Ivan reissued in 1550?
A law code
A law code. It replaced his grandfather's code of 1497, part of a wave of reforms that also put local law and order in the hands of officials elected in each district.
Q 10The streltsy, founded by Ivan as Russia's first standing army, fought mainly with what?
Firearms
Firearms. Their name means 'shooters', and each man also carried a long-handled axe that doubled as a rest for the heavy gun barrel.
Q 11Ivan the Terrible's grandfather, Ivan III, who ended Moscow's tribute to the Tatars, is remembered by which nickname?
Ivan the Great
Ivan the Great. In 1480 his army and the khan's faced each other across the Ugra river for weeks, until the Tatars turned for home after little fighting.
Q 12A gravely ill Ivan asked his boyars in 1553 to swear loyalty to his baby son; how did many respond?
Refused the oath
Refused the oath. They thought he was past saving, but Ivan recovered, and their holding back deepened his distrust of his nobles.
Q 13Which technology did Ivan bring to Moscow in the 1550s, only for its first workshop to be burned down?
The printing press
Q 21Which wealthy trading city did Ivan's black-clad guard sack in 1570 on suspicion that it was plotting treason?
Novgorod
Novgorod. The killing went on for weeks, with victims pushed into the freezing river, and the city, until then one of Russia's leading towns, never recovered its standing.
Q 22Which of Ivan's courtiers went on to become tsar himself in 1598?
Boris Godunov
Boris Godunov. His sister was married to Ivan's son and heir Feodor, and when Feodor died without children a national assembly elected Boris; Mussorgsky later made an opera of his story.
Q 23Which foreign monarch did Ivan spend years trying to win as an ally?
Elizabeth I of England
The printing press. Moscow's scribes saw it as a threat to their trade and hounded the first printers, who fled to Lithuania after the workshop burned and carried on working there.
Q 14Which Moscow landmark did Ivan build to celebrate his conquest of a Tatar khanate?
Saint Basil's Cathedral
Saint Basil's Cathedral. That is only its nickname: it was dedicated to the Intercession of the Virgin, and took its popular name from a 'holy fool' called Basil, over whose grave a chapel was added in 1588.
Q 15By legend, what did Ivan do to the architect of his most famous cathedral so he could never match it?
Had him blinded
Had him blinded. Historians call it a myth: the builder, Postnik Yakovlev, was still at work for Ivan through the 1560s, long after the cathedral was finished.
Q 16Prince Andrey Kurbsky, once Ivan's close adviser, is remembered for doing what in 1564?
Defecting to the enemy
Defecting to the enemy. He went over to Poland-Lithuania in mid-war, and from there he and Ivan traded long, furious letters that are a prized record of the reign, though some scholars argue they are later forgeries.
Q 17After abruptly leaving Moscow in December 1564, Ivan sent letters back to the capital announcing what?
His abdication
His abdication. The bluff worked: Moscow begged him to return, and his price was the right to execute 'traitors' and seize their estates without interference.
Q 18What was the oprichnina, which Ivan created in 1565?
His private state within Russia
His private state within Russia. He ruled it apart from the rest of the country, staffed it with hand-picked men loyal only to him, and scrapped it in 1572 after a reign of terror.
Q 19Ivan's oprichniki are said to have ridden with a broom and which animal's severed head?
Dog
Dog. The emblems carried a message: the tsar's men were his hounds, who would sniff out treason and then sweep it from the land.
Q 20Metropolitan Philip, Russia's senior churchman, was killed in 1569 after doing what?
Rebuking Ivan publicly
Rebuking Ivan publicly. He refused the tsar his blessing in the cathedral in 1568, was deposed and shut up in a monastery, and was strangled there the next year by one of Ivan's men.
Elizabeth I of England. She wanted trade and he wanted an alliance, and late in life he even sought to marry one of her ladies, Mary Hastings, though he already had a wife.
Q 24Which Tatar khanate fell to Ivan's army in October 1552?
Kazan
Kazan. Foreign engineers cut off the city's water and blew gaps in its walls, and 150 cannon and a final assault ended the siege after five weeks.
Q 25Ivan was crowned with the Cap of Monomakh, a jewelled gold skullcap trimmed with what?
Sable fur
Sable fur. It is the oldest crown in the Kremlin's collection, and some scholars think it began as a gift from a khan of the Golden Horde to the Moscow prince he ruled over.
Q 26Ivan's capture of Astrakhan in 1556 gave Russia the whole length of which river?
The Volga
The Volga. With both ends of the river in Russian hands the trade route to the Caspian Sea was safe, and Muscovy had become an empire ruling other peoples.
Q 27By tradition, which symbol did Ivan order placed beneath the cross on church domes after defeating the Tatars?
The crescent
The crescent. So the story goes, at least: a cross standing over a crescent was read as Christianity's triumph over Islam, and the design tops many Russian church domes.
Q 28Ivan fought the long Livonian War in the hope of winning Russia a coastline on which sea?
The Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea. After 24 years of war against Poland, Lithuania and Sweden he held less of the Baltic shore than when he began, and the economy was close to collapse.
Q 29Stephen Báthory, the Polish king who beat Ivan in the Livonian War, had earlier ruled which land?
Transylvania
Transylvania. Elected to the Polish throne in the 1570s, he carried the war into Russia and besieged Pskov for five months, until Ivan gave up all his gains in Livonia.
Q 30What did a Crimean Tatar army do to Moscow in 1571 while Ivan's troops were away fighting in Livonia?
Burned much of the city
Burned much of the city. The raiders fired the suburbs and a sudden wind did the rest, and the failure of Ivan's personal guard to stop them led him to disband it the next year.