The Origins of Autocracy

V. O. Kliuchevskii, Sochineniia

(2nd ed.), vol. 2, p. 164.

Keenan's The Kurbskii-Groznyi Apocrypha

was awarded the first annual Thomas J. Wilson Prize. His point of view is based on a complex and inventive textological analy­sis, which a well-known emigre expert in the literature of this period has called "a fan­tastic pyramid of speculation" (N. Andreev, "Mnimaia tema," p. 270). A major Soviet expert comes to the conclusion that "the attentive reading of the sources promised by Keenan is reduced to an inaccurate and arbitrary interpretation of them, and the laws of probability serve as a bridge to unproved and fantastic speculations" (R. G. Skryn- nikov, Perepiska [Ivana] Groznogo i Kurbskogo. Paradoksy Edvarda Kinnona, p. 123). I am prepared, however, to explain this strange coincidence by the prejudice of both re­viewers. In any case, this is, as the saying is in Russia, after Pushkin, "a quarrel of Slavs among themselves"—a highly academic conflict between highly qualified textologists. What disturbs me is something else: as soon as Keenan goes beyond the limits of pure textology and addresses himself to the analysis of the content, his whole construction suddenly begins to sound somehow less than professional. Keenan is convinced, for ex­ample, that "Kurbskii . . . never really does make clear what he believes in, aside from his complaints against Ivan's personal tyranny, while Ivan, for the most part, is at pains to justify his own actions on personal and historical grounds, rather than by any consis­tent theoretical program" (p. 60). I would be prepared to agree with Keenan if he had said that Kurbskii did a poor job of defending his point of view. But unfortunately he does not analyze the political content of the correspondence at all. We shall see soon how complex, contradictory, and difficult to analyze this political content is. Keenan's refusal even to notice it rather compels me to agree with the conclusion of Professor Andreev: "What a pity Edward Keenan has thrown his enormous energy and tireless imagination into creation of an illusory theme" (p. 272). It is an even greater pity in­asmuch as there are still so many real and difficult problems in the Russian history of this period which demand all of the attention and imagination of the few people work­ing in the field. It is sad to contemplate a specialist playing with dolls, so to speak.

The classical stereotype has it that the dualism in Russian political life takes its origin from the "Westernist" modernization of Peter I (that is, from the second auto- skii's role as trailblazer—but also because he is a brilliant writer, the Pushkin of Russian historiography—I will as far as possible set forth the essence of the correspondence in his words. "Kurbskii's text con­tains . . . political judgments resembling principles or a theory," he wrote.