The monograph is devoted to the disclosure of the internal mechanism for strengthening autocratic power in Russia in the second half of the 16th century, closely associated with the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible, with the violation of the traditional unity of secular and spiritual power and with the bloody struggle of the tsar against the zemstvo "conspiracy" of 1567-1572. For the first time in domestic and foreign historical science, the history of the text of the literary biography of Metropolitan Philip Kolychev, telling about the events of the turning point in the history of the oprichnina, is studied. Thanks to the use of this source, memories of the oprichnina of eyewitnesses of events, documents of that time, the author was able to restore in detail the sequence of destruction of the specific frames of the oprichnina and the spread of its jurisdiction throughout the territory of the Moscow state. With exhaustive completeness, the author describes the activities of the "council" about the oprichnina of 1568, whose decisions led to the establishment of the oprichno-zemsky dual power, and also shows the history of the oprichnina search department, the circumstances of the struggle in the upper layer of the ruling elite.