On December 3, 1564, Ivan IV departed Moscow on pilgrimage. While such journeys were routine for the throne, Ivan neglected to set in place the usual arrangements for rule in his absence. Moreover, an unusually large personal guard, a significant number of boyars, and the treasury accompanied him. [9] Under conditions of mass terror, universal fear and denunciations, the apparatus of violence acquired an entire overwhelming influence on the political structure of the leadership. The infernal machine of terror escaped from the control of its creators. The final victims of the Oprichnina proved to be all of those who had stood at its cradle. [30] Cultural depictions [ edit ] As you can see, in all the texts I found, “Гойда !” was not a quaint ye olde russky way of getting the crowd warmed up to go forward to victory. It was a way of getting their blood racing to go maim and kill. Okhlobystin’s Бойся, мы идём! Гойда! Гойда!” is more like “Be afraid! We are coming! Kill! Kill!”

And finally, just to complete our list of Russian Words That Are Easy to Confuse, there is the two-word ай да . Ай да is used with a noun to express admiration of someone – yourself, the person you’re speaking to, or a third person. Ай да молодец! ( Well done, you!) Ай да умница! ( What a brilliant kid!)

The New Russia in fiction

Day of the Oprichnik ( Russian: День опричника, Den' oprichnika) is a 2006 novel by the Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin. The narrative is set in the near future, when the Tsardom of Russia has been restored, and follows a government henchman, an oprichnik, through a day of grotesque events. In Behind the Thistle, people have burned their internal passports to show that now free under the Tsar while in Day of the Oprichnik people have burned their foreign passports to show that are now free from foreign influence. [17] In Krasnov's book the "Jewish Question" has been solved as "they [the Jews] no longer have the power to rule over us nor can they hide under false Russian names to infiltrate the government". [17] Likewise in Sorokin's novel, the "Jewish Question" has been solved as: "All this lasted and putrefied until the Tsar's degree-accordingly to which non-baptized citizens of Russia should not have Russian names, but names in accordance with their nationality. Thus our wise Tsar finally solved the Jewish question in Russia. He took the smart Jews under his wing-and the stupid ones just scattered". [17] In both the novels of Krasnov and Sorokin, every home has a television that only broadcasts the Tsar's daily speech to his subjects. [17] In both books, people watch patriotic plays at the theater, dance to the traditional music of the balalaika, listen to singers who sing only folk songs, and read newspapers beautifully printed in the ornate Russian of the 16th century, which have no editorials about any issue. [17] Mikhail Bakhtin in 1920. Much of The Day of the Oprichnik is influenced by Bakhtin's theories of the collective grotesque body

Komiaga describes a concert by a popular folk singer who performed a bitter song about Her Majesty earlier in the day, in a crowded auditorium, where a counter-protest, involving government plants in the audience, has flopped. Komiaga’s been summoned to explain the failure.

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Most etymological and historical Russian dictionaries don’t include гойда , but they put айда and гайда together. Айда , they say, is from Siberia and Eastern Russians lands; гайда is from Ukrainian lands. Both came from Tatar language(s) and were words to urge on or drive animals — the steppe version of “come on, little doggies.” It means, they suggest: иди , идём , пошёл , погоняй , ступай , живей , скорей (go, let’s go, get going, hurry up, shake a leg, get a move on, faster).