The Origins of Autocracy

In all of these interpretations—in which, incidentally, it is quite clear that the absolutists, despite all their righteous indignation in theory, are fully agreed in practice with their opponents the despo­tists—the struggle of the state with the church in the pre-Oprichnina century appears as a transient episode in Russian history, which came, went, and left no trace behind it. But in fact this struggle was an en­tirely logical continuation of the internal policy of the developing ab­solutist state. Everywhere in Europe, this process was connected with the formation of the proto-bourgeoisie, the rise of Protestantism, and the breaking up of autonomous feudal corporations competing with centralized authority. So it was in Russia too. One after another, Ro­stov, Novgorod, and Tver' had fallen. There remained the church— the mightiest feudal corporation of medieval Rus'. Ivan's campaign against the Josephites was fundamentally an extension of the battles of Kulikovo Pole, of the Ugra, and of the Novgorod expedition.

This epochal struggle of the state and the Non-Acquirer movement against the Josephite hierarchy left behind it the tradition of the Rus­sian intelligentsia and of the Russian political opposition: the tradition of sympathy for the oppressed little man (all the so-called "peasant- ophilism" of Russian literature comes from the Non-Acquirers—Vas- sian Patrikeev was the first peasantophile); the tradition of tolerance for the heterodox minority (no one in Muscovy except the Non-Ac­quirers struggled against the death sentences passed on the heretics, and no one else dared to polemicize against the bloodthirsty Jose­phites); the tradition of dissidence (and the courage to speak against a frightening majority); the tradition of European rationality, and the belief in reason as the highest force given to man—reason counter- posed to external discipline, to the passions, and to blind obedience. Even in a purely political sense, it was the Non-Acquirer literature which in the sixteenth century advanced the idea of a universal coun­cil to which "men of all the people" should be called. In other words they were the first in Russian history to call for a national assembly, which clearly meant turning the dispute between the state and the church (where the state proved the weaker party) into a dispute between the church and the nation.

Only a few decades later, after Ivan Ill's death, when the government fell once again for a short time into the hands of the absolutists and was under the influence of the Non-Ac­quirers, the Assembly of the Land was in fact called. Ivan IV's ques­tions to the church assembly of 1551 (i.e., a decade before his coup d'etat) were saturated with the spirit that the Non-Acquirers had breathed into Russian political life.

However, it may be objected, the second campaign of seculariza­tion, even if projected by Ivan III, never took place. The countertra- dition of the Non-Acquirers never worked, and the calling of the As­sembly of the Land did not lead to reform of the church. This is true. The Non-Acquirers were defeated. To Russia's cost and their own, the Josephites suffered a crushing victory. But was this victory of theirs inevitable? This is the question, decisive for Russia's past—and for its future—which my opponents try to avoid with the help of vague reflections about "economic prerequisites" and the absence of "ideological support." I cannot, of course, know what Ivan Ill's real plans were. But neither can my opponents. With what justification, for example, does Plekhanov assert that "Ivan III abandoned the idea of secularizing the monastery lands" ?

The hypothesis suggested here may be debatable, but at least it leaves open the question of why Russia, having gone much further than other European countries along the path of church reform, proved incapable of carrying it out.

8. The Pyrrhic Victory of the Josephites