Nine of the ten articles in this Forum critique and/or expand upon themes, conclusions, or interpretations in Charles J. Halperin’s Ivan the Terrible: Free to Reward and Free to Punish (2019), albeit in greatly varying proportion. The tenth addresses how to teach from the book. The quality of the articles speaks for itself. The range of the themes addressed speaks to the scope of Ivan’s reign. All the contributions to the Forum constitute valuable contributions to scholarship on Ivan, but to further discussion the remarks below concentrate on areas of disagreement. Much research remains to be done, but it is doubtful that historians will ever fully understand Ivan the Terrible and his reign. Ivan will always remain “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” and consensus among historians will forever remain an elusive dream.
