The autocracy dictated by the Princes would continue for centuries. .
Ivan IV became the Prince of Muscovy in 1533. In 1547, he assumed the title "Tsar (Caesar) of All the Russias." " .
Called Ivan the Terrible by the Russians, Ivan IV led one of the most oppressive and cruel reigns of all the Russian rulers. He was faced with the following two problems that had been facing the Russian Empire for centuries: the need to centralize the vast Russian terrain and the need to solve the backwardness of Russian culture and technology. .
However, instead of solving these problems effectively, Ivan used his power to double the oppression of his people and forcefully subdue any signs of uprising. This nature of the Tsarist regime prevented any political reform.
Ivan's son left no heir to the throne, but the succeeding Romanov dynasty (1613-1917) did not change any of Ivan's political tactics.
Most of Russia's Romanov Tsars proved to be uninterested in any sort of reform and were perfectly content with their stable position. Even the supposed "great " rulers such as Peter the Great and Catherine the Great were only different in the way that they were actually aware of the suffering of the peasants and serfs (neither achieved anything in benefit for the lower classes and neither succeeded in the attempt to modernize Russia). .
Source 2 - Curtiss, John Shelton - "The Russian Revolutions of 1917" (New York: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1957. Print).
Despite its ruthless reign, the Romanov dynasty remained in absolute power for three centuries, due to a number of reasons. .
Most importantly, the people were too uneducated and the culture was so removed from the rest of Europe that they had no clear notion of liberty, or how to obtain emancipation.
The Russian Orthodox Church, the religion upon which the majority of the peasants depended on spiritually, taught among other things that the Tsar was divinely appointed by God.