The Son of Grozny Ivan. Life and Death

Unlike his closest relatives — the autocrat father and brother Fyodor — Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich has not yet been honored with a separate book, and this publication is intended to fill this unfortunate gap. Mainly, the life of the elder son of the tsar interests historians only as a prelude to answering the eternal question of Russian history: “Did Ivan the Terrible kill his son or not?”
In the historical documents that have survived to our time, fragmentary information about the presence of Tsarevich Ivan during various state ceremonies and his participation in military campaigns has been preserved. Grozny prepared his eldest son to become the next Russian autocrat, but this did not happen due to the mysterious death of the heir.
This investigation presents for the first time all the records discovered by the author from chronicles, diplomatic and embassy books, and the memories of foreigners related to Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich.
Arranged in chronological order, they are accompanied by a narrative about the events connected with the mention of the heir. Brief descriptions of the relationship between the elder son and the tsar from the works of historians are expanded with primary sources that have not been previously quoted in detail. Most of them were known only to a narrow circle of specialists.