The Origins of Autocracy

The character and personal political goals of Ivan the Terrible were manifested vividly in the international relations of the Russia of that time, when the question of whether the country would adopt a European or an isolationist orientation was decided. Toward the end of the 1550s, R. Iu. Vipper notes,

The haughtiness and caprices of [Ivan] the Terrible began to be re­flected in the official diplomatic notes sent to foreign powers as soon as he himself began to direct policy. In the diplomatic correspondence with Denmark, the appearance of Ivan IV at the head of affairs was marked by a striking incident. Since the time of Ivan III, the Muscovite tsars had called the king of Denmark their brother, and suddenly in 1558 Shuiskii and the boyars found it necessary to reproach the king for the fact that he called "such an Orthodox tsar as the autocrat of all Rus' his brother; and previously there was no such reference.". . . The boyars are obviously telling an untruth. Certainly, nothing had been forgotten in Moscow and there had been no mistake, but the tsar had simply decided to change his tone with Denmark and behave more haughtily/¹"

In the 1560s, at the height of the Livonian campaign, when the efforts of Muscovy should logically have been concentrated on pre­venting Sweden from becoming involved in the war, Ivan the Terrible suddenly began a mortal quarrel with the Swedish king, too, because the latter was seized by an impious desire to call Ivan his brother in diplomatic papers. "The [Holy] Roman emperor and other great sov­ereigns are our brothers, but it is impossible to call you a brother be­cause the Swedish land is lower in honor than those states," the tsar declared.[131]

Here, at least, it is hinted that there are other "great sovereigns," in addition to the emperor, who are permitted to call him brother. Dur­ing the arguments of the 1570s, it becomes clear that these "other great ones" are a fiction. The number of candidates for brotherhood is reduced to two—the emperor and the Turkish sultan, who "are the preeminent sovereigns in all kingdoms."

In 1572, when the question of the candidacy of Tsarevich Fedor for the Polish throne arose, a hint was dropped in the tsar's letter to the Poles which showed that he was not against expelling the emperor himself from the narrow circle of the "preeminent":

We know that the Holy Roman Emperor and the king of France have sent to you: but this is not an example for us, because other than us and the Turkish sultan there is in no state a sovereign whose house has ruled for two hundred years without interruption . . . [we are] the sov­ereign of the state starting from Augustus Caesar, from the beginning of time, and all people know this.

Who was the Holy Roman Emperor but a mere elected official—a "functionary" for his own vassals? And, if it came to that, who was the Turkish sultan, a Mohammedan who had no claims to the heritage of Augustus Caesar? And what price the rest of the crowned rabble— the Polish king Stefan Batory, who until recently had been a misera­ble voevoda\ the English queen Elizabeth, a "common maiden"; Gus- tav of Sweden, who, when the merchants came with goods to trade, personally put on gloves and measured out lard and wax "like the common people"; and all the other "functionaries," whether Hungar­ian, Danish, or French? This was the way Muscovite diplomats talked at the end of Ivan's life in the 1580s, on the brink of the catastrophe: "Even if old Rome and the new Rome, the ruling city of Byzantium, were compared to our sovereign, his Muscovite state would yield to none."