We all know Ivan IV’s sobriquet, but the story is more complicated than it might seem Teresa Nowakowski Daily Correspondent The Oprichniki by Nikolai Nevrev (1888). The painting shows the last ...

5. He was a composer and poet Just as Hitler had a passion for painting, Joseph Stalin was a serious poet and Saddam Hussein was a prolific novelist, Ivan the Terrible also had artistic inclinations.

Today, Ivan is better known as Ivan the Terrible, though the name wouldn’t be attached to him until much later. Ivan ruled as Russia’s first-ever czar for nearly four decades. He transformed ...