The Origins of Autocracy

Then where but in autocracy is the salvation of Russia? "What do you want," asks the tsar, repeating the thought of Ivan Peresvetov, "—the same thing that happened to the Greeks, who ruined their

Poslaniia Ivana Groznogo, p. 307.

Ibid., p. 299.

"The tsar's epistle," la. S. Lur'e writes, "is in fact directed least of all to 'Prince Andrei.' This epistle, as we can now say with confidence, was not even formally addressed to 'Prince Andrei.' Its address was 'the entire Russian kingdom"' (ibid., pp. 470-71). In other words, it was an open letter.

Ibid., p. 298.

kingdom and were given over to the Turks?"⁶⁸ More than this, for the tsar the corrosion of autocracy means not only the ruination of the state, but the ruination of the faith as well—that is, of the hope of eternal life. "And what they do say of godless peoples! Among them, the kings do not own their kingdoms, and as their subjects tell them, so they rule."⁶⁹

One can, of course, look on all this as a clumsy attempt to justify the Oprichnina. But let us examine the political process which took place in the Kremlin in the 1550s, and, from the tsar's point of view, gradually transformed him into the chairman of the council of boy­ars. First, Adashev and Sil'vestr "began to take counsel with each other in secret from us." Then "Sil'vestr introduced into our council his cothinker, Prince Dimitrii Kurliat'ev . . . and they began ... to carry out their evil plans." What plans? First of all, according to the tsar, rearrangements of personnel, which led finally to their actually forming a government, "not leaving a single power to which they would not appoint their supporters."⁷⁰

In other words, the tsar was gradually deprived of all the key positions in the government, and all the levers of real political power, including even the ancient preroga­tive of determining the makeup of the supreme state hierarchy: "They deprived us ... of the right to distribute honors and positions among you, the boyars, and turned this matter to your desire and will." Little by little, Adashev, Sil'vestr, and Kurliat'ev "began to subject you, the boyars, to their will, and taught you to disobey us, and almost made us equal to you."⁷' Ivan was convinced that they were attempting to turn him into a nominal head of state: "You and the priest decided that I should be the sovereign only in words, and you in fact."⁷² Prohibiting the tsar from taking decisions single-handed was a usurpation of his power, and a sacrilegious violation of his "patrimonial" heritage: "You . . . took into your power the state which I had received from God and from my ancestors."

⁷³

Now we can see how unjust Pogodin was in characterizing this man as a "pedantic chatterbox with the mind of a petty bureaucrat—and that is all." For all his paranoia, the tsar appears to be an intelligent man, not only deeply convinced of the Tightness of his position, but perfectly able to articulate it. For all we know, he describes the crisis in the Kremlin quite adequately. According to Kliuchevskii and Ser- geevich, the political meaning of the reforms was chiefly reducible to

68. Ibid., p. 294. 69. Ibid., p. 288.

Ibid., p. 307. In translation by Lur'e, this reads "not leaving a single place." However, the original says "not leaving a single power."

Ibid. 72. Ibid., p. 295. 73. Ibid., p. 288.

two propositions: (a) the Assembly of the Land was to take the lead in improving the administration, which would in fact deprive the tsar of his unlimited mandate in the executive field, and (b) Article 98 of the law code deprived him juridically of his unlimited mandate in the leg­islative field. In other words, the latent and informal limitations on power were growing into juridical and institutional ones. But this is precisely what the tsar was trying to express in plain Russian by say­ing that his power was being replaced by the "rule of many."

The logical extension of Pogodin's hypothesis, whether he would like it or not, is that a political crisis was in full swing in Muscovy at the time of the reforms. Moreover, if we believe the tsar (and I do not know why we should not, inasmuch as Kurbskii, himself a witness, did not object to the claims quoted above), the autocratic tradition faced a grave challenge—if it was not, indeed, losing the game.

Thus, according to the logic of his own hypothesis, Pogodin was wrong in asserting that Ivan's terror was senseless and purposeless. On the contrary, it looks as though terror was the only means by which the autocratic tradition in Russia could avert its ultimate col­lapse. Nevertheless, Pogodin's contribution to Ivaniana was signifi­cant. It could in the 1820s have yielded results to which Ivaniana came only after many tortuous decades. It could have—but it did not.

8. Prolegomena to the Second Epoch