Throughout the opera Boris Godunov and the Pretender Dmitry, or at least the excerpts we watched, manipulation was an omnipresent theme that dictated many of the actions undertaken by many of the characters. The actions ranged from small, such as the Tsar turning away from the peasant child in the second clip, to majorly consequential when the monk lied his way into being Tsar, but manipulation was a key factor in most of the clips we watched.

My question, which I would like to pose to the rest of the class, is the following: How much of this instability and manipulation do you think can be attributed to Ivan the Terrible’s manic and cruel actions as Tsar? My contention is that much of the conniving nature of the characters can be traced to Ivan’s rule. I believe this based on how Ivan made the Boyars’ power uncertain during his rule, and represented them losing their traditionally inherited power. This would inspire them to commit several of the actions that occurred in this opera and in real life. In the opera, a boyar forced peasants to beg for a Tsar in order to shore up his own power and legitimize his position. I call this manipulation because the boyar had the Boris believing that the people wanted him as the Tsar, and the boyar did it for his own personal gain. The boyar definitely had something to gain, as his power under Ivan the Terrible was always going to be in question, but with a new Tsar that would bend to their whims as he did later when imagining the dead children, the boyar wouldn’t have to worry about losing his power.

Finally, the False Dmitry’s manipulation to gain the throne by pretending to be Ivan’s lost son is definitely attributable to Ivan’s manic actions. The primary reason this power struggle even occurred was because Ivan left behind no clear, functional heir after he killed his eldest son. Without killing him, there wouldn’t have been this power vacuum that led to a monk lying to the throne by pretending to be the son of Ivan IV. While manipulation was a key theme to this opera and the time period it encapsulated, I say that much of that manipulation stemmed from Ivan’s frenzied, unhinged actions against the boyars and his own family. Now I’d like to know what everybody else thinks.