1000 Tögrög Ivan IV

Ivan IV — "the Terrible" — consolidated Muscovite power through a reign defined by the oprichnina, his personal terror apparatus that effectively partitioned Russia into two administrative zones, one under direct tsarist control. He died in 1584, reportedly from mercury poisoning, a conclusion supported by forensic analysis of his exhumed remains in the 1960s. Mongolia's interest in issuing his portrait is less eccentric than it appears: Ivan spent decades warring against the remnant Tatar khanates, successor states to the Mongol Empire, finally destroying the Astrakhan Khanate in 1556.