Word: oprichniki
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...struggle with the nobles, lyrical moments of happiness with his first wife, Anastasia, plotting by the boyars and the duplicitous Prince Kurbsky, who tries to destroy Ivan by poisoning his queen. After her death, the Czar's madness grows, and with it his use of the dreaded oprichniki (a primitive kind of secret police) to suppress both boyar and peasant revolts. Ivan's Stalinoid cruelties have always represented something of an ideological embarrassment to the Kremlin. Grigorovich, in a program note, argues unconvincingly that the real heroes of the ballet are the Russian people, "who withstood...
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