The Origins of Autocracy

But why should we not believe this? Didn't Solov'ev and Ravelin say the same thing about Raramzin and Pogodin? And didn't Pokrov­skii and Polosin say the same thing about Solov'ev and Ravelin (and also about Raramzin and Pogodin)? In this sense, Vipper and Der- zhavin behaved in the traditional way, denying from the outset the "scholarly character" of Pokrovskii and Veselovskii (and at the same time of Solov'ev and Ravelin, and Raramzin and Pogodin).

Some of them had disclaimed their predecessors for neglecting the "factual material" and having "unnatural views." Others had attacked them for not looking at things from the angle at which a genuine sci­entist should. But why did the contemporaries of Veselovskii attack all

of them?

In the first place, Veselovskii suggested, "the job of putting histo­rians on the true path . . . was taken over by belles-lettrists, play­wrights, dramatic critics, and film directors"—in a word, by laymen. But this was untrue. Academician Derzhavin, whom he had just fin­ished quoting, was not a layman, but a professional historian. Aca­demician Vipper, who four times, in the four editions of his Ivan the Terrible, sang a solemn hymn to the "major figure of a ruler of peoples and a great patriot," was likewise no layman. Professor Bakhrushin, who published three editions of his Ivan the Terrible,

in which the ty­rant is depicted as a democratic monarch, beloved by his people, was also a leading historian, who wrote the relevant sections in textbooks for schools and universities. The same went—and still goes—for the highly esteemed specialist Professor Smirnov, also the author of an Ivan the Terrible, who in his apologetic ecstasy went so far as to openly contrast scholarly analysis to "the power of the wisdom of the people, which evaluated and firmly held in its consciousness the truly pro­gressive features of [Ivan] the Terrible. . . . The figure of the terrible tsar created by the people has stood the test of time."¹

" Even Ra­ramzin had known enough to separate the intellect of the nation from its prejudices and, unlike the Marxist Smirnov, gave preference to the former.¹⁷ Derzhavin, Polosin, Vipper, Bakhrushin, Smirnov, the major professionals of current Russian historiography, were the ones who contrasted "the wisdom of the people" to scientific analysis. Specialists, and not laymen, exclaimed in enthusiasm that "official his­toriography was in sharp contradiction with the numerous popular traditions, songs, and tales" in which "the terrible tsar appears not only as a historical personage, but precisely as a hero, whose deeds are praised and glorified.'"⁸

The first of Veselovskii's theses is thus not confirmed by the facts. "But the main thing perhaps," he writes in advancing his second the­sis, "is the fact that scientific people, including historians, have long since lost the naive faith in miracles and know quite well that to say something new in historical science is not that easy, and that for this there is needed extensive and conscientious work on the primary sources, new factual material, and that inspiration is entirely insuffi­cient, even when it is of the most benevolent kind.'"⁹

But, after all, Solov'ev said the same thing a hundred years ago. And, alas, his sermons did not protect the public consciousness from the recurrence of the "historiographic nightmare." Veselovskii was a brilliant and genuine scholar. I sincerely sympathize with his con­fusion. The fact is, however, that he had encountered a national drama occurring again and again over a period of centuries, and tried to treat it as an accidental and temporary deviation from "sci­ence." Even his opponents suggested to him that things were not that simple. Polosin wrote that Veselovskii "studied the Oprichnina from the position of Prince Kurbskii—an unreliable position, and, to put it bluntly, rotten through and through."²" Veselovskii would never have