What did ivan the terrible do

Ivan the Terrible, Russian Ivan Grozny, byname of Ivan Vasilyevich, also called Ivan IV, (born August 25, 1530, Kolomenskoye, near Moscow [Russia]—died March 18, 1584, Moscow), grand prince of Moscow (1533–84) and the first to be proclaimed tsar of Russia (from 1547). His reign saw the completion of the construction of a centrally administered Russian state and the creation of an empire that included non-Slav states. Ivan engaged in prolonged and largely unsuccessful wars against Sweden and Poland, and, in seeking to impose military discipline and a centralized administration, he instituted a reign of terror against the hereditary nobility. 

Ivan’s achievements were many. In foreign policy all his actions were directed toward forcing Russia into Europe—a line that Peter I the Great was to continue. Internally, Ivan’s reign of terror eventually resulted in the weakening of all levels of the aristocracy, including the service gentry he had sponsored. The prolonged and unsuccessful Livonian War overextended the state’s resources and helped bring Russia to the verge of economic collapse. These factors, together with Tatar incursions, resulted in the depopulation of a number of Russian provinces by the time of Ivan’s death in 1584. Nevertheless, he left his realm far more centralized both administratively and culturally than it had been previously.  Continue reading from Britannica

For hundreds of years, from as early as the 11^th century up to the middle of the 19^th, Russians lived in a feudal society. At the bottom was a huge class of peasants, very few of them free. Most toiled their lives away as krepostnoy krestyanin, or unfree peasants, commonly known as serfs.  From the 11^th till the end of the 16^th century the elements of serfdom were scattered among certain classes of the rural population. Not all serfs were the same. Smerds were serfs allowed to own property, although it’s also been a term used to refer to rural folk in general. Apart from nominally owning land though, they couldn’t leave the area they were born in and had to perform tasks for the good of the community as a whole.Continue Reading from Russiapedia